I don’t think it really changes the narrative. 2020 was also a congressional election year, even had Trump won (as he appeared to want desperately) he could not have been assured of a Republican congress.
My argument is simple: Occam’s Razor
The Republicans in congress put the provision in solely as a gimmick to get past the CBO.
Frankly I don’t think legislators in either party are competent enough to have foreseen the consequences and even if they had been they wouldn’t have put a bomb like this in that would be more likely than not to backfire and affect them.
I just think that too often people interpret incompetence as malice, especially nowadays when things are so polarized that it’s fashionable to hate people who differ with one’s political opinions.
I think you’re wrong that legislators are incompetent. They’re human, and they’ve spent much of their lives learning how to get votes, but they’re not incompetent. A lot of them aren’t malicious, but there seems to be a small group of people outside of the legislative branch who are hell bent on taking control at all costs. And if you want to keep the votes rolling in you have to work with those people or get primaried. The dysfunction follows from fear more than incompetence these days.
I think legislators are skilled politicians and many are lawyers of varying competence. I would not expect them to deeply understand the negative downstream economic consequences of changing an obscure provision of the tax code. Maybe some of them could but would those have even been in the room? I get the impression most legislation is written by staffers (polysci or lawyers) and particularly spending legislation is tightly controlled in committee; only a handful of lawmakers ever saw the actual legislation before it was passed.
My argument is simple: Occam’s Razor
The Republicans in congress put the provision in solely as a gimmick to get past the CBO.
Frankly I don’t think legislators in either party are competent enough to have foreseen the consequences and even if they had been they wouldn’t have put a bomb like this in that would be more likely than not to backfire and affect them.
I just think that too often people interpret incompetence as malice, especially nowadays when things are so polarized that it’s fashionable to hate people who differ with one’s political opinions.