Tag Archives: political parties

Border Wall Funding

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is continuing to insist—brag, really—that there aren’t the votes in the House or the Senate for funding for a border wall.  Presently, he’s focused on the Senate:

Schumer maintained that Trump does not have the votes for a wall, at least in the Senate.

Schumer’s prior remarks might have been right about the House; the Republican caucus there has been as unfocused and undisciplined and dither-ridden as they’ve been for the last several years regarding border security.  Thursday, though, President Donald Trump injected some backbone into the caucus and sharpened its focus: he told Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and other Republicans present in a mid-day meeting—in no uncertain terms—that he would veto the CR that the Senate had so cravenly passed because it had no border wall money in it.  Thursday evening, the House responded, passing 217-185 (with 8 Republicans voting with the Progressive-Democrats) an amended CR with $5.7 billion in it for a border wall.  That bill has been passed to the Senate.

However, the reason President Donald Trump doesn’t have the votes in the Senate is because Schumer actively, proudly, blocks such a thing, even as he claims the Republicans control the Senate—as though in his fantasy world 60 is less than 51 (or next year, 53).  Of course, Schumer knows better, he’s just proud of his obstructionism.  He’s also proud of his hypocrisy, having supported several more billions of dollars than just five for a border wall—the 2006 Secure Fence Act, for instance—and as recently as last January, after which he welched on an agreement that involved solutions for 1.8 million DACA people (more than the 800 thousand for whom Progressive-Democrats had been seeking help) along with a parallel $25 billion for the wall.

Prepare to greet the Schumer Shutdown redux.

Tax Cuts Don’t Have Long-Term Benefits

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the claim of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.  It’s an accurate claim, too, when tax cuts are taken in isolation, as Furman took them throughout his piece.  That loneliness was emphasized by his closing remarks.

Going forward, policy makers should aim for a reformed tax system that is more stable, economically efficient, simple, and directly supportive of the middle class. Do this right, and the results could be higher economic growth and higher wages without the higher deficits. That’s a combination that’s proved elusive to date.

“Tax system,” not “tax and spend system.”  Leave it to an Obama staffer to miss the boat on this. The major reform remaining is to make the existing individual income tax cuts permanent (much less, lower)—an action the Progressive-Democrats in Congress will actively block. The necessary dual to tax cuts, though, is completely inconceivable to folks like Furman and his Progressive-Democrat cronies: cutting spending to fit within the lowered tax revenues.   After all, it’s those associated spending cuts in combination with the tax cuts, that produce the mid- and long-term benefits.

It’s true enough that feckless members of the Republican caucuses contribute to this failure, but their failure centers on how and where to make the cuts; they don’t have a mental block against even thinking about them.

Another Schumer Shutdown?

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) told NBC News‘ Meet the Press that there would be no money for a border wall “in any form.”  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has been saying much the same thing the last couple of weeks, but she doesn’t have the votes to block the money, and she doesn’t have the votes to become Speaker next month if she doesn’t say no this month.

But Schumer: this is the same Senator who a couple of administrations ago voted enthusiastically to fund a border wall.  This is the same Senator who earlier in this administration enthusiastically supported a DACA fix the took care of 1.8 million illegal aliens vice the 800 thousand Schumer wanted to handle and that also had $25 billion for a border wall—and then welched on the deal.  This is the same Senator who agreed earlier this year to $1.6 billion for a border wall but now says no money.

It’s clear that Senator Chuck Schumer is so desperate to oppose President Donald Trump that he’s willing to have open borders and a free flow of illegal aliens rather than see to the security of our borders—or the safety of aliens who want to and try to enter our nation legally.

Trump said he’d proudly take the blame for any government shutdown over the matter, but the responsibility plainly will be that of the automatic obstructionist.  After all, Democrats…aren’t eager to help the Republican president fulfill his signature campaign pledge in 2016….

Go figure.

Taxing Speech

Posted on by
Reply

California has decided to kill two birds with one stone.  The State thinks it needs more money, so it’s going to raise a new tax.  The State is anxious to…manage…speech of which it disapproves, so it has chosen its target for its new tax.

California state regulators have been working on a plan to charge mobile phone users a text messaging fee intended to fund programs that make phone service accessible to the low-income residents, reports said Tuesday.

Here’s Jim Wunderman, Bay Area Council President, on the plot, though:

It’s a dumb idea. This is how conversations take place in this day and age, and it’s almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have.

Wunderman understated the problem.  It’s not just a dumb idea, it works out to a naked attack by Government on its citizens’—its employers’—speech.

In the event, when the FCC decided to designate texting to be  an “information service,” and not a telecommunications service, the State decided to withdraw its proposal to tax it.  The State rationalized it decision by claiming “text messaging was not a classified service under federal law.”

However.

The FCC’s designation is a quibble that’s meaningless in this context. Taxing speech directly is the beginning of an effort to manage permissible speech by artificially driving up the cost of it.  The medium used for making speech–a “telecommunications service,” for instance–is just as critical to the freedom of speech as are the utterances themselves. Taxing the service is an opening toward managing speech indirectly by artificially driving up the cost of using a medium for speaking.

Beyond that, the State’s excuse that text messaging hadn’t yet been designated is disingenuous. Not every activity in which an American citizen engages needs Government designation in order to be engaged.  Only those activities to be explicitly proscribed or managed need designation.  That’s at the core of our founding principles of limited government that works for us and of individual liberty and individual responsibility.

As a result, questions arise concerning this Progressive-Democrat- run State’s move to use taxes to manage speech.

What other forms of speech will California try to tax?

Whose forms of speech will California try to tax?

What can we expect regarding speech–and any other individual liberty and responsibility–can we expect a Progressive-Democrat national government to attempt?  Especially in their universe of “you didn’t build that,” and “we’re a collectivist society in which it takes a village to most anything?”

Brexit Botch

Posted on by
Reply

British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday pulled today’s planned Parliament vote on her Brexit deal with Brussels when it became clear that not even her fellow Tories supported the deal in sufficient numbers to pass.  What’s more, she’s not suggested a new date for the vote, even though something is required to be presented to Parliament by 21 Jan 2019.

The deal as it stands is a terrible one, worse IMNSHO than a plain, unadorned breakout from the European Union.  It represented May’s meek submission to Brussels on nearly every one of their demands—including functional retention of EU immigration “rights” and EU court rulings within what used to be sovereign Great Britain for several years after the British nominal departure.

Nevertheless, May’s failure before Parliament represents further damage to Great Britain.

And this:

[May] will tour European capitals and then go back to Brussels to try to secure sweeteners that might buy off huge opposition to the package.
She insisted her blueprint was still the “best deal negotiable”, and said she still planned to put it to a vote once “reassurances” had been secured on the Irish border backstop.

Never mind that the Brussels “negotiators” have already said the present deal is a done deal and there will be no further negotiations on the matter.  There can be no sweeteners, as a result, nor can there be any reassurances: in particular, Brussels has already given all the assurances on the Irish border matter that they intend to putter around with.

Stand by for further May surrender to Brussels.