Thom wants your Thip$$$

Our huge national embarrassment is opening his mouth one more time for his adoring fans in the drive-by media.  One would figure Thom Tillis would have learned his fawning drive-by news coverage comes from his rebellion against Donald Trumpscrewing him on his nominees, bad-mouthing his policies. 

Once Thom escapes the 2026 senatorial primary and advances to face Democrat nominee Roy Cooper, all of that drive-by love and adulation will fade away.  Kind of like it did once John McCain became the nominee to face Barack Obama. 

I hear the GOP establishment and the Tillis camp are still holding out for a Trump endorsement.  Even after stuff like THIS.  And THIS.  And THIS.  And, well, THIS. (You get the idea.)

Tillis racked up a voting record in the last session to the left of socialist Bernie Sanders.  He took to Fox News during Trump 1.0 to badmouth Trump’s border wall. 

Despite all that, he has the nerve to campaign as a MAGA Republican.

Now, our scraggly *genius* is going after another Trump proposal that would benefit folks who can’t afford a lobbyist or the minimum wage *donation* for entry into one of Thom’s shakedowns fundraisers:

Sen. Thom Tillis indicated Tuesday that he wants significant changes to Republicans’ plans to cut taxes on tips, one of President Donald Trump’s top priorities in the megabill now before lawmakers.

The House-approved draft of the tip proposal is unfair to people who work in industries where tipping isn’t customary, the North Carolina Republican told POLITICO. He complained that a waiter would qualify for the break but a warehouse worker would not, even if they had similar incomes. […]

Does this moron honestly think wait staff and warehouse workers get paid the same?  Let’s do a little research.  

At IHOP in Garner wait staff can pull down $2.13 per hour.  At The Drum & Quill here in Pinehurst, the pay is $4 per hour. At Ron’s Barn in Coats, the pay is $2.13 per hour.  (Base salaries could run higher in the more chic sections of Charlotte and Raleigh.) 

Let’s compare that to warehouse workers.  In North Carolina, the average salary for a warehouse worker is $16.60 per hour.  The range runs from a low of $12.67 per hour to a high of $21.75 per hour.  On average, overtime for warehouse workers can run to $4,687 per year.

Warehouse workers can also be eligible for benefits — paid days off, sick leave, health care, etc. — that wait staff at eating establishments are often not.

Warehouse workers do not play the same role for their employers that wait staff do.  Restaurants depend on happy customers pleased with good service returning again and again. Wait staff — on the front line and face-to-face with customers — are incentivized to provide that good service with the tipping system.

So, who knows what the hell senator dingleberry is talking about.

MORE:

[…] Tillis, a tax writer, said he wants a different approach that would treat people with similar earnings more equally.

He also raised the possibility of dropping the $40 billion tip proposal from the legislation altogether, noting the idea has bipartisan support and expressing doubt that Democrats would stop Republicans from passing it separately later.[…]

The best way to treat people equally is a flat tax.  Everybody coughs up x percent of their reported income.  Accompany something like that with some serious cutting of spending and you’ve got a deal. 

Thom’s progressive pals won’t like the flat tax.  They think it’s wrong to tax 10 percent of a warehouse worker’s pay and ten percent of his bosses’ pay.  Everybody’s taking a ten percent hit. The bosses are still paying more than the warehouse workers.

Taxing tips puts a lot of wait staff and hairdressers and Uber drivers in the cross-hairs of IRS auditors.  The kind of folks who don’t have white-shoe Raleigh or Charlotte lawyers and CPAs on standby. 

Thom is moaning about equality and equity in this case, while at the same time trying to protect special tax breaks for big investors in those scams a/k/a solar panels and wind farms. (Mucho dinero from those same investors often manages to find its way into the Tillis campaign account, as well.) 

All in all, this is more nonsense from our scraggly senator.  He’s been told to keep poking Trump AND his party’s base in North Carolina.  Eventually folks get tired of being poked and just walk away from you. 

Let’s see how well all of this works for him, shall we?