Xavier Becerra (D), Joe Biden’s nominee for Health and Human Services, has long had a firm dislike for charitable organizations that don’t spend according to his requirements.
Case in point from then-Congressman from California Becerra on charitable foundations:
…someone needs to do something, especially when you’re using the taxpayers of America’s money to do your philanthropic work[.]
Notice that. Taxpayers’ money. Not working stiffs’ money. Not citizens’ money. Government’s money.
That’s Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D, MD) lament as he closed the Progressive-Democrats’ case on the floor of the House during Wednesday’s impeachment “debate.”
We cannot erase the last four years.
Though the Progressive-Democrats tried every day of those four years. They and their Obama Executive Branch bureaucrats spied on the Trump campaign and trumped up charges against General Michael Flynn, false charges it took all this time to clear.
They and their Democratic National Committee commissioned a salacious and false dossier in an effort to besmirch a President and to serve as the foundation of an investigation that culminated in finding that President Donald Trump had done nothing wrong.
They and their FBI agent-assistants lied to courts in order to get subpoenas and warrants to “investigate” Trump’s team.
They ran a sham impeachment.
They obstructed financial aid to Americans fiscally harmed by government shutdowns ostensibly due to the Wuhan Virus situation—done as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) admitted after the election was done solely for the purpose of interfering with Trump’s reelection.
Here’s what Hoyer and his Progressive-Democrats want to erase.
A major tax rate reduction for American businesses and a major income tax rate reduction for Americans. This kept his campaign promise.
Unemployment endured by blacks, Hispanics, women reduced to historic lows. This kept his campaign promise.
Income inequality reduced to multi-decade lows—by previously unemployed minority citizens actually getting jobs while the rich got no better off. This kept his campaign promise.
Historic support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities by increasing Federal funding support for those schools and making that support multi-year. This kept his campaign promise.
An improved trade deal with Mexico and Canada to replace NAFTA. This kept his campaign promise.
Working toward improving and strengthening NATO by getting the European NATO nations to increase their financial and equipment commitments to NATO—commitments that those nations had voluntarily committed years ago but welched on subsequently. This kept his campaign promise.
Bringing American soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan—for good or ill, but this kept his campaign promise.
Overtly and concretely facing the People’s Republic of China over that nation’s trade, technology, intellectual property depredations. This kept his campaign promise.
Overtly and concretely facing the People’s Republic of China over that nation’s seizure of the South China Sea and the islands and resources therein, and its attempts to seize the East China Sea. This kept his campaign promise.
Strengthened our ties with the Republic of China. This kept his campaign promise.
Strengthened our ties with Japan. This kept his campaign promise.
Improved our defense arrangement with the Republic of Korea. This kept his campaign promise.
Attempted serious diplomacy with northern Korea vis-à-vis that nation’s nuclear weapons program. This kept his campaign promise.
Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, an accord that our compliance with would seriously damage our economy while strengthening, in relative terms, the PRC’s and so increasing its leverage over our Asian allies and over us. This kept his campaign promise.
Withdrawing from the JCPOA, which authorized Iran to freely develop nuclear weapons as soon as it expired. This kept his campaign promise.
Strengthening our physical border with Mexico, thereby strongly reducing illegal entry into our nation by illegal aliens. This kept his campaign promise.
Reducing Federal regulations that interfere with American business development and growth. This kept his campaign promise.
Reducing regulatory barriers to our hydrocarbon-based energy industry, thereby making us a net energy exporter and virtually eliminating our dependence on foreign energy. This kept his campaign promise.
I’m sure there are more; this short list is just the high points.
This is the economic, social, and political strengthening of the last four years that Hoyer and his Progressive-Democrats want so desperately to erase.
That’s the position of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D). On the heels of the Progressive-Democrats winning both of Georgia’s Senate seats, giving control of the Senate to the Progressive-Democratic Party, he had this to say:
Washington has…literally have taken billions of dollars from us, and that was a function of the Senate and the president, and they are both gone. And today, Washington theft ends and compensation for the victims of the crimes of the past four years begins. New Yorkers have been crime victims by the theft of the federal government.
We want a return of the state’s property that was stolen by Washington over the past four years. They wouldn’t pay us state and local funding, even though this state has a $15 billion deficit….
Because it’s not our money. It’s not anybody’s money but the New York Government’s. Pay up, suckers.
Maybe. While it took us ignorant colonials only a decade, or so, to figure it out.
The eurozone has always had a fundamental weakness compared with the US when dealing with financial and economic crises: while its 19 countries share a currency and interest-rate policy, they have no common tax-raising or spending power.
In 2020, the European Union took a big step toward correcting that deficiency by starting to issue bonds on behalf of all member countries, known as common bonds. Beginning in 2021, some common bonds will be repaid through taxes raised by the EU itself.
That’s a one-off, but maybe it’s a first step and not a last one.
The lack of central taxing and spending power—and authority—was a Critical Item in the failure of the diplomatic concord that was our 13 States operating under their Articles of Confederation, and it took our Constitution to rectify the failure.
Of course, the EU still lacks the homogeneity of understanding of the role of government and of the purpose of money so necessary to the success of a polity that our original States, even under the Articles, had.
But, hey, baby steps. Maybe in another 50 years….
Various nations insist on taxing corporations that provide digital services—imposing a “digital services tax”—to ensure, those nations are pleased to claim and as most clearly articulated by Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, that
everyone pays their fair share
The Canadian government has been explicit in another direction, also: Canada will act unilaterally if an international taxing regime isn’t worked out by the OECD quickly enough to suit them.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has said he’ll demand a European Union response if the US goes ahead with our impertinent objection to the French government’s decision to tax those same digital service-providing corporations.
There are three problems with this insistence.
One is—let’s be clear—those corporations providing digital services are almost exclusively American companies—Alphabet, Facebook, and so on. European nations and Canada (and Indonesia) don’t want to compete economically in the digital services industry, for all that they’re jealous of American success. Rather than repeating that success for themselves, they want, in the finest socialist tradition, to cap our success: they’re implementing mercantilist, protectionist taxes against us.
The second problem is that these nations refuse to identify what “fair share” is, and they refuse to say what their limiting principle is regarding that claimed fair share. That refusal makes clear that their position is a deliberately open-ended one: “fair share” always will be “more,” and the limit of their principle is “all of it.”
The third problem is these nations’ naked assault on American sovereignty. Using the OECD as their tool, these nations are demanding that American domestic taxing laws be submitted to international approval and control.
Each of these alone is a contemptible disguise of those nations’ refusal to compete, whether economically, politically, or morally. Any combination of them is…unacceptable.
The Biden administration will be inviting national disaster if it accedes to any of these.