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.

It’s a Step

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) has signed an Executive Order barring the State from doing business with six enemy nations. She’s also pushing legislation to codify that and to block the People’s Republic of China from buying South Dakota agricultural land.

It’s a start, but there’s a critical following step that the State needs to take, and it’s a step that all other States need to take, also. That is to use the State’s constitutional eminent domain authority to seize the lands and other properties the PRC already has bought and commit them to the State citizens’ public use.

It would be good if the Federal government used its Constitutional authority to do the same, but I have no confidence the Biden administration has the…will…to do so.

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.

Federal Debt Ceiling

The Progressive-Democratic Party says they’ll refuse to negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. Not at all. Those politicians are looking to hold our nation’s weal and our national security hostage against their demand to spend, spend, spend.

Republican Party politicians—at least those in the House and some of them in the Senate—insist that the debt ceiling can’t be raised without agreement on spending cuts in the next and subsequent budgets: not agreement to talk about cuts, but actual, specific cuts.

These Leftist politicians insist that the debt ceiling is solely about current bills that must be paid and that future spending questions—cuts or otherwise—are separate questions and must be negotiated separately. This is badly mistaken.

Today’s debt ceiling problem is the result of past failures to cut spending: failures to agree to do more than just talk about cuts and, where cuts actually were agreed, failures to honor those agreements. The next budget’s spending will impact the next debt ceiling and create pressure to raise the ceiling again. Failure to accept, or even to recognize, the relationship between a debt ceiling and budgeting just leads to functionally automatic debt ceiling raises and so functionally automatic debt increases.

Current debt ceilings and future spendings are inextricably intertwined. The Republicans in the House need to stand tall and not allow any debt ceiling increase without agreement to specific, measurable cuts (not reductions in increases) in future budgets’ spending on specific programs. Senate Republicans need to find backbone and stand tall on this pairing, also.

Progressive-Democrat refusal to negotiate on this puts our nation’s debt crisis squarely on their backs, and no place else. Their refusal to negotiate is just their demand to continue spending us average Americans‘ money in ever increasing amounts, their demand to drive our nation ever more deeply into debt—demands born of the irrational concept that money can be created out of the æther with no economic consequence.