Tag Archives: political parties

Taxes

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Progressive-Democrats’ limiting factors for Evil Rich’s fair share and for how high to raise taxes are converging to: all of it. Pay everything you have.

Here’s an enumeration of what they’re demanding currently, courtesy of the WSJ‘s editors:

  • California: Service Employees International Union affiliate is seeking to qualify a referendum for the November ballot to impose a 5% wealth tax on residents with more than $1 billion in net worth. This includes stocks, illiquid stakes in private companies, artwork, patents, and family trusts.
    The tax would even be levied on illusory assets. Silicon Valley investors who own super-voting shares in a company would be taxed on their voting rights, rather than the value of their shares. A startup founder could be required to pay tax on the 25% of voting rights he controls even if he only owns 5% of shares.
  • Washington: Democrats have passed a 9.9% income tax on millionaires, despite a state constitutional ban on a graduated income tax.
    [I]n 2022…Democrats enacted a 7% tax on capital gains exceeding $250,000…[l]ast year they raised the rate to 9.9% on capital gains over $1 million. Now they’re extending the 9.9% tax to all forms of income.
  • New York: Albany…Assembly wants to raise the top state-and-local income-tax rate to 15.9% from 14.8%, and the Senate to 15.3%. Democrats also want to raise the state top corporate tax rate and let New York City raise its rate. That would make the top business tax rate nearly 20% in New York City.
    New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani…wants to increase the estate tax to 50% from 16% and impose a two percentage-point city tax surcharge on incomes over $1 million. That would raise the top individual rate in the city to 16.8%. If Democrats in Albany don’t deliver, he’s threatening an across-the-board 9.5% property tax hike.
  • Rhode Island: [Progressive-]Democratic Governor Dan McKee is pushing a 3% surtax on income over $1 million, which would raise the state’s top rate to 8.99%.
  • Virginia: One bill would impose a 3.8% tax on investment income of taxpayers making more than $500,000, which would raise the top rate to 9.55%. Another bill would create two new individual top tax brackets of 8% (starting at $600,000) and 10% (more than $1 million).
  • Congress: Maryland [Progressive-Democrat] Senator Chris Van Hollen wants to add three new tax brackets on high earners, which would raise the top federal rate by 12 percentage points to 49%. New Jersey [Progressive-Democrat] Senator Cory Booker is proposing to raise the current 35% tax bracket (starting at $256,226 for individuals) to 41% and the 37% bracket ($640,601) to 43%.
    …
    This [also] is a gigantic tax increase on small businesses that pay taxes at the individual rate—$1.01 trillion over 10 years for the Booker proposal, according to the Tax Foundation.

This, and much more—dangerously more—is what we can look forward to when the Progressive-Democrats resume their reign over our republic.

CBC Arrogance

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The Congressional Black Caucus has demonstrated its collective arrogance in spades in the aftermath of the Illinois primary election of Progressive-Democrat Governor JB Pritzker’s preferred candidate over that of the CBC. Congressman Gregory Meeks (D, NY), CBCPAC Chairman:

We don’t need to reach out to the governor. Others are going to have to reach out to us[.]

Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D, OH):

Keep in mind, the Democratic candidate for president that prevails has to go through [our CBC]….

This Progressive-Democrat attitude of “do it my way, or—wait, there is no “or”—is what we can expect should Party regain power.

This is Idiotic

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R, SD) is putting the SAVE Act up for a vote this week, but he opposes using a talking filibuster to get it passed. Aside from not having the Republican votes and support for that—he’s right on that score; there are far too many timid Reluctant Republicans presently in the Senate—his rationale includes this bit:

In the end, you’re family and this is a team and we need the team to succeed, and you have differences of opinion along the way, and you know, you don’t always get 100% of what you want[.]

This is the idiotic part. The Progressive-Democratic Party Senators don’t agree that they’re part of any Senatorial family, nor are they members of any team but their own. They’re holding themselves apart, attempting to dictate to the Senate and impose their demands, regardless of what any other Senator—or us average Americans—might think. It’s only necessary to see their behavior vis-à-vis their shutdown of DHS over their personal demands regarding ICE to understand this.

When half the Senate believes itself not part of any family, when that half holds itself out as their own team, it’s idiotic for the other half to act like the whole is a family or that there’s some sort of teamwork available.

Tax-Addicted Progressive-Democrats

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Party has never seen a tax or an increase in existing taxes they don’t like. Washington and New York present examples.

Washington demonstrates the desperation for ever more tax fixes that Party needs to feed its collective addiction for OPM. The State’s Party is determined to impose a 9.9% tax on household income over $1 million a year.

On Monday lawmakers in Olympia pulled an all-nighter to push through the legislation, which [Progressive-]Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson has said he will sign. The bill passed the House 51-46 and goes back to the state Senate.

Never mind that the State’s citizens have repeatedly rejected income taxes in referendum after referendum. What do Party politicians care about the wishes of the small people of their State.

Never mind, either, that the State’s constitution forbids any form of income tax. What do Party politicians care about laws, however foundational, that get in their way?

And never mind that the State’s Senate Majority Leader, Manka Dhingra (D), campaigned for office on her opposition to income taxes, and now in office, actively supports this one. What do Party politicians care about truth or honesty?

Next is New York.

Democratic senators want to increase the state’s top income tax rate by 0.5 percentage points on households making more than $5 million. That would raise the top state-and-local rate in New York City to 15.3%. They also propose to raise the state’s corporate tax to 9% from 7.25% on businesses with more than $5 million income and let New York City raise its corporate tax rate to 10.62% from 8.85%. All told, large businesses would pay a nearly 20% tax rate in New York City.

And this one:

Governor Kathy Hochul, Democratic legislators, and union leaders held a rally over the weekend in support of rolling back the state’s 2012 pension reforms that raised the retirement age to 63 and requires workers to contribute between 3% and 6% of their paychecks to their pensions. “I’m fighting for a fair pension plan,” the Governor declared.

I’m not sure France is a useful model to emulate in the areas of work and retirement.

Taxes are a far more powerful addiction for Party politicians than are nicotine, or sugar, or opioids for us average Americans. Worse, Party’s addiction is severely damaging to our nation, whereas nicotine, sugar, and opioid addictions do their primary damage to the users.

Talking Filibuster

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It’s complicated, claims Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R, SD), and it’s a mirage claim the editors at The Wall Street Journal.

Thune:

The talking filibuster idea “is much more complicated and risky than people are assuming,” Majority Leader John Thune told reporters this week. He said Tuesday that Republicans lack the votes to get to a talking filibuster or sustain one if they did.

The editors:

The reality is that Democratic Senators could take turns giving interminable speeches. Cory Booker last year went 25 hours all by himself. Meantime, Republicans would have to keep most of their Senators handy at all times, ready to answer a quorum call, meaning it would turn into an endless GOP campout. Bring your pajamas, toothbrush, and CPAP machine.

And

Democrats could offer amendments that either undermine the bill’s intent or put swing-state Republicans on the spot. Raise the minimum wage? Extend ObamaCare subsidies? What else?

The editors are straight up wrong with their claims, though. Look past this poster’s over-the-top polemics, and look at the facts presented. Under existing Senate rules, Senators are limited to two speeches per day on a particular piece of legislation. A Senate day, though, isn’t 24 hours; it runs from Senate adjournment to Senate adjournment. Recesses don’t count. And recesses could be had for hygiene breaks, grabbing a drink of water, eating something, etc. All Thune would have to do is not adjourn the Senate once the SAVE Act is brought to the floor until it’s voted on.

Endless amendment proffers? The Majority Leader controls the amendment process, including being first to offer amendments. Just as Reid did routinely (and other Majority Leaders of either party), Thune could fill the amendment tree with his own amendments, preventing the Progressive-Democratic Party, and Precious Republicans, from offering their own amendments. That imposes a small and finite number of amendments and votes on them.

Do the “camping,” but it would be only for a week or two. The limiting factor is those Republicans themselves. Republicans lack the votes to get to a talking filibuster or sustain one if they did? As recently as mid-February, the Republicans had 50 votes for the Act, which with the Vice President’s vote, is all he majority they need. Is Thune really saying he can’t hold his caucus together in the face of Progressive-Democrat intransigence? If so, that, in the eventuality, would be the end of the Republican Party for a long sequence of election cycles, as they would be exposing themselves as not having the stomach for serious struggle.

The editors rationalized their position with this cover excuse for those Reluctant Republicans’ timidity:

Democrats would have done it [used the talking filibuster] already—and they’d certainly copy the maneuver next time to pass far more transformational bills than the SAVE America Act.

That’s not an excuse for timidity; it’s simply stating a fact. The Progressive-Democrats most assuredly will use it, whether or not they eliminate the cloture vote filibuster when next they get a Senate majority. Republicans using it now is irrelevant to that.

General George Patton:

Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.

That appears to be not the case with today’s crop of Republicans, if Thune is right.