Oh, come on. I'm sure it's possible. And now I feel challenged. The GOP tax bill is going to kill us all!

I'm reading the NYT headline: "You Cannot Be Too Cynical About the Republican Tax Bill."

The most cynical thing I actually think is that the GOP benefited itself by shifting a big burden onto taxpayers in the high-taxing blue states while channeling a generous new advantage to the taxpayers in red states.

The above-linked column (by Thomas Edsall) quotes an unnamed "tax expert" on this subject:

Restriction on state and C local tax deduction — consciously vindictive imposition of double taxation on citizens of certain Democratic states; corporations and pass through businesses, the darlings of the Republicans, still get to deduct those very same taxes in full.

I don't know what the "C" in "state and C local tax deduction" is supposed to mean. Some editing glitch, I'm guessing.

Anyway, I don't think it was so much "consciously vindictive" as it was consciously convenient. Why not burden people who weren't going to vote for you anyway? There was a tax benefit — the state and local deduction — that helped taxpayers in high-taxing/Democratic-voting states and was unavailable to people in lower-taxing/GOP-voting states. The people in the GOP-voting states were providing a higher proportion of the money that went to the federal government, even as these GOP-voting people tend to support less federal spending than the Democratic-voting people who were supplying less of the federal money. I can understand the GOP wanting to rebalance that out of a combination of fairness and their own political advantage.

I don't really see calling it "vindictive." That really is too cynical. And I'm saying that as someone who believes I will pay a lot more federal tax because of this change.

IN THE COMMENTS: Eleanor eloquently explains why it's fair and not vindictive:

What the tax package does is remove the "discount" feature of the relationship between federal and state and local taxes. We won't be able to vote to spend money locally with the idea the price will be discounted by a reduction in our federal taxes. If a local project is going to add $300 to a property tax bill, then it's going to cost the full $300. I don't see any unfairness in this at all. The rules are the same in all 50 states. If we want something, we should pay for it and not expect people outside the service area of the project to subsidize it. We all benefit from military bases and farm subsidies. Federal money going into states that provide national security or feed the nation is in everybody's self-interest. Why should someone in Nebraska subsidize bus service expansion in Boston?