belmont3 Wrote:
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> Byrd Rule
> https://atr.org/congress-should-restore-full-deduc
> tibility-of-gambling-losses/

This is interesting. But leaves a lot unanswered.

First off, I have to think that if they need to find extra revenue to fill a gap to comply with the Byrd Rule they had some choices - they could have added any other tax, but they chose to add this one - what were the other candidates that lost out (actually won out) to this one? How did the jockeying work out?

Second, the Byrd Rule is sort of like balance sheet and/or double entry accounting. If they needed to add something on one side of the ledger to make things balance (my first point above), the other way to address it is to reduce the item on the opposing side of the ledger. So, there were other candidates to add, but there also had to be possible candidates to take away. What were those?

This article seems to suggest that nobody intended to stick a fork into gamblers, they just needed to find money somewhere fast. But they always need to find money fast and there are always a bunch of choices with lobbyists fighting to get picked (or not picked). I do not believe that it was an innocent oversight. There were alternatives that had bigger protection rackets than our alternative had. That is the way things work on capitol hill. Unfortunately, these choices are not made based on logic, math, and geometry. They are made by brute politics.