Whistler’s Mother
What? You cannot see a smile? Look again and compare “Whistler’s Mother” to the visage of Nancy Pelosi listening to Our President’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening.
Pay close attention to the Pelosi scowl as she scanned her colleagues to insure they were following instructions to deadpan the address.
Acknowledging good news, even of the lowest unemployment rate in history among minorities, was not to be tolerated.
The basic reason for those Democrat scowls may not be the first one that comes to mind. They were not just exhibiting the nagging inability to accept that Ma Clinton lost her bid to move back into the White House, but were showing awe at their spinning being exposed.
The Democrats, through their spokespersons Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, had been preaching that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, commonly known as the Tax Reform Act of 2017, benefited only corporations and the wealthy. In other words, their same old class warfare arguments.
Our President, however, was telling the nation how working Americans were already, or would soon be, seeing the favorable effects of the tax reform in their pay checks.
Here, in what might be called a personal incident, is an example of how the Democrat claim that the Tax Reform Act benefits only the rich will be disproved in every pay check in the country.
My daughter, Anita, is the Comptroller for her company. She told an employee that her salary would be increased on February 15. On January 31, however, this employee came to Anita’s office to thank her for moving the increase up by a couple of weeks.
Anita did not understand and asked her visitor what she meant. The employee then showed Anita her pay stub for the last two weeks of January. It was $55.00 more than her previous bi-weekly checks, and she thought that was the pay raise.
The $110.00 monthly increase, however, was not the result of a salary increase. The company treasurer had simply begun applying the new tax withholding rates under the Tax Reform Act.
Every employee in the nation who is paid on a bi-weekly or monthly basis will get that pleasant surprise in their current or next pay check. Most will be able to determine or realize that those extra dollars in their pockets are gifts just handed to them by the Republicans and Our President who enacted the Tax Reform Act of 2017.
Those are just some of the facts that were fueling the scowls on those faces on the Democrat side of the House Chamber last Tuesday evening.
The scowling was probably exacerbated by worries about the next rung of their pandering to a particular element of their base being jerked out from under them. This was the Schumer immigration gambit.
This was the Democrat threat to shut down the government by refusing to approve an extension of the budget if action was not taken on the totally irrelevant protection of the so-called dreamers.
When it became apparent, however, that the public was not buying the connection between the dreamers and the budget and that any shut down would be blamed on the Democrats, Schumer and Pelosi caved and agreed to a short extension.
Then Our President turned the tables on them. He offered a solution to the dreamers problem that is more generous than any ever proposed by Democrats. He almost doubled the number of aliens who would be affected and opened a path to citizenship for them.
That is an offer of compromise. In return, there would have to be agreement to strengthen the border and terminate chain and lottery migration.
In tennis parlance, this was a perfect serve of the ball into the Democrat side of the court. Now there appears to be an argument on that side of the court about who will return the serve and where it will be aimed.
Will they turn down an offer of citizenship for almost two million young immigrants because it would curb future illegal immigration and end chain and lottery immigration, two programs that permit or encourage questionable immigration?
What effect will their decision have on the Hispanic segment of their voting block? That’s their dilemma, and they are worried about making the wrong call.
So here’s the perspective.
Now you know why that is a big grin or smile on Whistler’s Mother’s face.
enough
