Mistaken?

In a Fox News article centered on Congressman Chip Roy’s (D, TX) proposed legislation that would bar Federal funds from going to schools that teach critical race theory (the foolishness doesn’t deserve capitalization), Cato Institute’s Colleen Hroncich had this in objecting to Roy’s proposal:

For starters, the federal government has no constitutional role in education[.]

Plainly, the Federal government does have a role, Constitutional or otherwise, in education—hence the existence of those federal funds to schools that Roy’s proposal would block.

Alternatively, Hroncich is correct, and all Federal funds transfers to schools should stop.

Free Market or Pro-Working Class?

That’s the question posed regarding the future of the Republican Party in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal Saturday Essay.

The headline and subheadline combine to posit a false dichotomy, though.

Can the GOP Become a Real Working-Class Party?
Some Republicans want the party to break from its longtime free-market agenda and focus instead on the needs and frustrations of workers. Others see danger in moving away from the legacy of Reagan.

It isn’t possible to be pro-working class without being also being pro-free market. It’s the free market that generates the prosperity, flexibility of business decision-making, and breadth of worker and potential worker choice that produce the most benefit for workers.

The Tax Cut that Isn’t

Minnesota’s Progressive-Democratic (formally, Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor) governor, Tim Walz, is proposing a “tax cut” of up to $2,600 for Minnesotans. His plan calls for income tax credits, paid in the form of checks to recipients rather than reductions in taxes owed at tax filing time, for Minnesotans. The checks would be for

$2,000 for families with incomes below $150,000, and $1,000 for single filers making less than $75,000. They would be exempt from federal taxes. Taxpayers could also get an additional $200 for each dependent—up to three.

But only for some Minnesotans. Those of whom Walz and his government cronies disapprove, those earning more than those income caps would get…nothing. They’re the ones who will be paying those checks with their tax remittals.

If Walz, et al., were truly interested in a tax cut, those wonders would push for an across the board income tax rate reduction.

But, no—leave it to a Progressive-Democratic Party politician to masquerade an income redistribution scheme as a tax cut.

State Hotel California

The State of California wants to tax the Evil Rich even if they aren’t citizens of that State, but only visit or otherwise are there part-time.

California Democrats have introduced a bill in the state legislature that would impose a tax on the state’s highest earners that would include residents who live there part-time or have moved.

And

The tax will apply to every resident, regardless of whether they are in the state part-time or temporarily. It will also allow the state to pursue wealth taxes from former residents who built their wealth in California but moved.

The State’s determination of how and where an American’s wealth was built, of course.

It’s not just a waste of time to be in California—it’s destructive of anyone’s weal and prosperity.

The Failure of the Trump Tax Cuts

They failed to live down to the claims of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who’ve decried them since their enactment. They’ve also exceeded the expectations of the CBO.

The government collected a record $4.9 trillion in revenue last year, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency. That’s nearly $500 billion higher than what the CBO had projected.

In particular, those Left-hated reductions in corporate taxes didn’t yield the Left-promised drop in Federal revenue:

Receipts from corporate income taxes, meanwhile, were $425 billion, exceeding CBO’s projection by 25%….

Regarding that disastrous tax cut that was only for the rich:

…receipts from individual income taxes were $2.6 trillion, exceeding CBO’s projection by 11%.

With all that money rolling in, it doesn’t seem like any particular group of Americans got any special breaks. But the Feds did, from the increased economic activity that resulted from all that pre-2017 tax cut money staying in the hands of private citizens, who know better than our Government Betters where and how to spend our dollars.

That greater money-handling wisdom is illustrated by these tidbits:

…business investment increases spiked by the end of 2019 by 9.4% compared to the pre-tax cut trend…. For corporations, real investment was up by as much as 14.2%

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to put an end to with Party politicians’ demands to tax ever more, spend ever more, and unconditionally raise the debt ceiling so as to potentiate their addiction to ever-increasing spending.

They’re trying to get their mojo—and our dollars—back.