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Trump Signs Tax, Government Spending Bills Into Law 2 men attempt early-morning Share Your News with organization events, and school ation, please send to Southern Daily news to us includinig your name and [email protected] jewelry heist in River Oaks If you would like to share news or phone number in case more informa- or contact information with our readers, please tion is needed. John Robbins 832-280-5815 send the unique stories, business news For news and information consider- Jun Gai 281-498-4310 Inside C5 Saturday, December 23 , 2017 | www.today-america.com | Southern News Group Trump signs tax, government spending bills into law WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. tion, healthcare and military spending. President Donald Trump signed Republicans also are divided over whether Republicans’ massive $1.5 trillion to follow up their sweeping overhaul of the tax overhaul into law on Friday, U.S. tax code with a dramatic restructuring cementing the biggest legislative of federal benefit programs. victory of his first year in office, and House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he would also approved a short-term spending like to revamp welfare and health programs bill that averts a possible government but Senate Republican Leader Mitch McCo- shutdown. nnell told National Public Radio on Monday Trump said he wanted to sign the that he was not interested in cutting those tax bill before leaving Washington programs without Democratic support. on Friday for his Mar-a-Lago estate Trump’s year also closes with significant in Florida, rather than stage a more turnover of many top staffers who had been formal ceremony in January, so he in the White House since early in his term. could keep his promise to finish work On Friday, the White House confirmed before Christmas. Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn and “I didn’t want you folks to say I Jeremy Katz, who worked under White wasn’t keeping my promise. I‘m House economic adviser Gary Cohn, were keeping my promise,” he told report- leaving.individual insurance plans through ers in the White House. the Obamacare online exchanges that the The two pieces of legislation repre- government subsidizes based on a person’s sent Trump’s most significant accom- income. plishment with Congress since taking Trump in October cut off billions ofdollars office in January, as well as a sign in subsidy payments to insurers that help of what awaits when he returns from people pay for medical costs, causing insur- U.S. President Trump displays signature after signing tax bill into law at the White House in Washington Florida after the Christmas holiday. ers to raise 2018 premiums by more than 20 The tax package, the largest such percent or drop out of selling plans in the overhaul since the 1980s, slashes the Obamacare marketplace. corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 His administration also halved the enroll- Business percent and temporarily reduces the ment period to six weeks and cut the federal tax burden for most individuals as advertising and outreach budget by 90 well. percent. It also has proposed putting cheaper Bitcoin plunges below $12,000, heads Trump praised several companies that insurance policies offering bare-bones med- have announced employee bonuses ical coverage on the Obamacare market in for worst week since 2013 in the wake of the bill’s passage, 2019 or 2020. naming AT&T, Boeing, Wells Fargo, The Republican tax overhaul passed by Con- NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) Comcast and Sinclair Broadcast gress on Wednesday revoked a key element - Bitcoin plunged by a quarter to Group. of Obamacare: a fine imposed on people below $12,000 on Friday as investors “Corporations are literally going wild who do not obtain health insurance. dumped the cryptocurrency in manic over this,” he said. Health policy experts have said repeal- trading after its blistering ascent to a Democrats had opposed the bill as a ing that fine is likely to destabilize the peak close to $20,000 prompted warn- giveaway to the wealthy that would Obamacare online marketplace by allowing ings by experts of a bubble. the young It capped a brutal week that had been and healthy touted as a new era of mainstream to forego trading for the volatile digital currency coverage, when bitcoin futures debuted on CME leaving Group Inc (CME.O), the world’s larg- people est derivatives market on Sunday. with costly Friday’s steep fall bled into the U.S. pre-existing stock market, where shares of com- Broken representation of the Bitcoin virtual currency, placed medical panies that have recently lashed their on a monitor that displays stock graph and binary codes, are conditions fortunes to bitcoin or blockchain - its seen in this illustration picture and driving underlying technology - took a hard In the futures market, bitcoin one-month up premi- knock in early trading. futures <0#XBT:> on Cboe Global Markets ums. The biggest and best-known cryp- were halted due to the steep price drop, while The non- tocurrency had seen a staggering those trading on the CME BTCF8 hit the limit partisan twentyfold increase since the start down threshold. Congressio- of the year, climbing from less than In the spot market, bitcoin fell to as low nal Budget $1,000 to as high as $19,666 on the as $11,159, down more than 25 percent on add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion Office estimated that repealing the so-called Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange national debt during the next decade. individual mandate fine would increase the BTC=BTSP on Sunday and to over BTC=BTSP, its largest one-day drop in nearly The spending bill extends federal number of uninsured by 13 million by 2027. $20,000 on other exchanges. three years. For the week, it was down around funding through Jan. 19, largely at It also said premiums would rise 10 percent Bitcoin has fallen each day since, with a third - its worst performance since April current levels. It does nothing to re- most years over the next decade. losses accelerating on Friday. solve broader disputes over immigra- 2013. 12/01/2017 to 12/31/2017 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2017 C2 BUSINESS “It’s 2017,” Musk said. “We should have SpaceX’s Elon Musk Has Unveiled a lunar base by now. What the hell’s going on?” (Courtesy https://qz.com/) A Rocket That Can Fly To The Related Moon, Mars— Elon Musk wants to fly people And Shanghai! around the world in under an hour lunar landers and rockets to perform ro- Red Dragon turned out to require a seri- botic science missions on the lunar sur- ous redesign of the vehicle’s heat shield, SpaceX’s founder, Elon Musk, presented SpaceX’s “BFR” space vehicle is face, and lay the groundwork for human which would have made it impossible to his vision for getting people to Mars with- shown docked with the Internation- exploration. The administration’s deci- achieve on time while accomplishing the in five years at the International Astronau- al Space Station in this rendering. sion to tap Oklahoma congressman Jim company’s other goals. tical Congress in the South Australia city (Photo/SpaceX) Bridenstine to lead NASA is seen as con- Musk’s new plan envisions sending a car- of Adelaide on Friday. The spaceship, dubbed the BFR, would If Elon Musk has to make his big rocket firming that view, though the Senate has go mission to Mars without humans on carry about 100 people into outer space, smaller, he’s going to make sure it still has yet to confirm him. board in 2022—the next window when it but at the end of his presentation he float- enormous ambitions. is easy to fly from earth to the red plan- ed the idea of using it to fly anywhere SpaceX’s chief executive updated his Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos et. Then, in 2024, he hopes to follow up around the world in less than 60 minutes. company’s plans to colonize Mars at a poses in front of his rocket. Credit: with human colonization. The BFR is de- He painted a picture of people boarding global space conference in Australia. He Blue Origin signed to carry about 100 passengers, with a ship in New York City to head out to described a rocket and spacecraft suitable 40 cabins and several community spaces SpaceX has said in the past that it hoped a launchpad in the Hudson River, where for transporting humans safely to the sur- during a mooted three- to six-month voy- to finance its Martian plans byoperating they take a 7,400-mile flight from the Big face of the moon in 2022, to a Martian age. Such a mission is far more ambitious an internet-broadcasting satellite constel- Apple to Shanghai in just 39 minutes. colony by 2024—and from New York to than anything currently contemplated by The SpaceX rocket landing lation, but that scheme has faced regula- The most popular long-haul flights could Shanghai in less than 40 minutes. space exploration agencies, and for that in Shanghai. (Screenshot via tory difficulties and Musk did not mention be completed in under 30 minutes, Musk The serial entrepreneur’s speech at the reason many are skeptical of the timeline SpaceX/YouTube at http://www. them during his talk. said — from Los Angeles to New York International Astronautical Congress is a described by Musk, who has been a serial businessinsider.com/elon-musk- The proposed system depends on a num- in 25 minutes; Melbourne, Australia, to sequel to one delivered in 2016 that de- over-promiser when it comes to delivery wants-to-fly-people-around-the- ber of still-unproven technologies, in- Singapore or New York to London in 29 scribed the architecture for a rocket sys- dates.
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