Tag Archives: political parties

Border Crises

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There are two, and both of them are real.  One is the caravans, organized by three Central American nations’ activists explicitly to overwhelm our southern border and border enforcers with illegal alien wannabes and faux asylum seekers (false because they’ve already been offered asylum—and job opportunities, to boot—by Mexico).  Secreted among these seemingly innocuous ones (aside from their deliberate numbers) are drug smugglers, firearms smugglers, human traffickers, and outright thugs.

The other crisis, wholly artificially done, is the Progressive-Democrats’ efforts to block the installation of security measures to protect our borders and so our interior and our citizens.  That obstructionist and open-border policy is now exemplified by their lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration and associated reallocation of Federal funds to build walls in key sectors of that border.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent Trump from shifting billions of dollars from military construction to the border without explicit congressional approval. The suit also asks a court to declare Trump’s actions illegal, arguing that Trump showed a “flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution” by violating the Constitution’s Presentment and Appropriations Clauses, which govern federal spending.

Never mind that the Courts have no say in what constitutes a national emergency; that’s strictly an Executive Branch decision.  Never mind that the funds being shifted have already been appropriated and allocated to the relevant Department and Agency heads.  Never mind that the funds being reallocated were never earmarked by Congress within those facilities to specific purposes, as the vast majority of appropriated funds are—these few funds explicitly were left to those Department and Agency heads’ discretion regarding the things on which they would be spent.

And never mind, either, that the targets for the spending are directly related to the Department/Agency functions: military construction funds are going to be spent on construction.  Drug interdiction funds are going to be spent on drug interdiction—that being one of the purposes of the walls.  Funds for ATF not specifically allocated are going to be spent on interdicting trafficked firearms—that being another purpose of the walls.  Never mind that DHS funds not otherwise specifically allocated are going to be spent on interdicting human traffickers and violent criminals—that being another purpose of the walls.

And never mind that while there is considerable money appropriated and allocated for border and border crossing point detection surveillance technology, increased border personnel, increased numbers of immigration judges assigned to the border cases, and increased asylum seeker housing, these are useless without walls, just as walls are useless without those others.

This second border crisis is a wholly artificial crisis manufactured solely for the personal political gain of Progressive-Democrats and for the benefit of Party.

Full stop.

Progressive-Democrats and Integrity

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In an interview on Bill Maher’s show, Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel had this to say about promises.  The comment was in the context of Emanuel and Maher nattering on about Trump, but it’s plainly made as a universal principle.

Emanuel…believes Trump is using a national emergency declaration, not to enhance border security, but to deliver on his signature campaign promise.
“You have a faux constitutional crisis to basically cover a real campaign crisis,” he said, “This is all about the campaign. Some pledge he made.”

Some pledge he made.  Because promises are made only to sway voters; they’re not actually meant to be kept.

That’s one view of integrity.

“Goosed” Paychecks

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Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR), Finance Committee Ranking Member, had this bit:

It looks like the Trump Treasury Department spent 2018, an election year, goosing people’s paychecks by under-withholding, and it should have been obvious that the bill would come due eventually[.]

Never mind that the IRS also warned taxpayers—and their employers—to carefully check their existing withholding arrangements, especially in this period of large changes to the tax code.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) was just as disingenuous:

Many Americans depend on their tax refund to pay bills and make ends meet….

Never mind that large tax refunds, far from being a savings account (that pays even less interest than a bank savings account), is an interest free loan to the government.  Leave it to a Progressive-Democrat, with his constant demands for OPM, to insist that this interest free loan to Government of a citizen’s money is entirely appropriate.

Keep in mind, too, that these are the same politicians who will work to prevent the tax reform’s current personal income tax cuts from becoming permanent.  Because the money in those paychecks isn’t the citizen’s; it belongs to Government.

Goosed paychecks?  Those could be permanently increased paychecks—because of the so far lowered income tax rates—but for those Progressive-Democrats.

You Need to Pay my Taxes

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No.  No way in H E Double Toothpicks.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo [D] visited the White House on Tuesday to urge President Donald Trump to rethink a provision in the 2017 tax overhaul that Cuomo says is prompting a sharp decline in state revenues.
The Democratic governor met with the Republican president to discuss the $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes—known as SALT.
Cuomo said the cap is prompting wealthy residents to flee New York and contributing to a recent drop of more than $2 billion in tax receipts.

If there’s a drop in State tax receipts from this, there are two intertwined parts to the obvious solution, and they don’t include raising the Federal taxes on everyone else so New York (and New Jersey and California) can continue their profligate ways.  Those two parts are reducing the States’ current usurious tax rates to more reasonable levels and reducing spending to fit within those collection levels.

Then step back and watch the increased economic activity that will result increase the prosperity of all the citizens of the State—and enjoy the increased revenues to the State that will result from the increased economic activity.

Aside: the AP‘s own distortion: Residents in high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey and California could see substantial increases in their federal tax bills this year because of the deduction cap. No, they won’t.  They may well see their total Federal and State tax bill go up, but that’s due entirely to the increase taxes owed the States from their high tax structure.

More Government Intervention

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Shades of FDR, and a betrayal from the putative right of center.  Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) wants Government to dictate to private enterprises what they must do with company profit.

The plan backed by Rubio encourages domestic investment by making full and immediate expensing permanent “as a way to discourage companies from pursuing share repurchases.”

Right move, wrong reason.  Immediate expensing ought to be a permanent item in tax code reform on its own right.  Delaying expensing or stringing it out is just another aspect of using our tax code for social engineering, which bastardizes our tax collections and distorts our market away from the most efficient use of our money—whether business money or personal.  And that most efficient use might well include stock buybacks; that’s a business decision with which Government has no business interfering.

“Discourage” companies?  That’s a fiction.  What Government starts as “discouraging,” it very quickly converts to barring.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) are pushing for precisely this sort barring of legislation,

to curtail the ability of companies to purchase stock buybacks[,]

and Rubio is just as enthusiastically joining with them on this.  A report released by Rubio’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee had this in it:

Cash spent on share repurchases is not cash spent on capital investment, though the degree to which a relationship exists may vary by sector and firm type[.]

That’s not strictly true.  Money spent on buybacks is money not spent on that business‘ capital investment.  But do Rubio, Schumer, and Sanders really think that money goes under the mattresses of those now ex-shareholders?

Of course that money does not. It goes into one of three places, each beneficial to our economy. One is investments in other companies, facilitating those companies’ capital investments.

Another is spending on consumer and business goods, which enhances market demand, which increases cash flow into those producers’ coffers—which facilitates their capital investments.

The third is savings.  As anyone who didn’t sleep through their high school econ course knows, savings are banks’ and other lenders’ source of funds which they loan out—to businesses so they can carry out their capital investments.

Hence the need to let businesses make their own decisions without Government diktat.  It’s disappointing that a nominally Republican Senator doesn’t understand any of this.