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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Obama to spread wealth to whole world
Today we mix a political cartoon with an insightful letter to the editor published Sunday in the Little Rock Arkansas Democrat Gazette and Jonesboro Sun newspaper. While the first make the point with humor, the second is both enlightening and possibly fearful.
Oct 27, 2008 Letter to editor by Berniece Evans, Bono, Arkansas:I wonder how Obama intends to fund the proposal in the Global Poverty Act (S.2433) in which Obama is the primary sponsor. This bill would commit the United States to "the reduction of global poverty…and the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people in poverty … who live on less than $1 a day" by 2015 [a step in the direction of a global tax].
Obama's choice for Vice-President, Joe Biden, pushed this Global Poverty Act through his committee. Not only does Obama's policies (like other liberal Democrats) support the redistribution of wealth in our own nation, but he also wants to redistribute our wealth to the rest of the world through this Global Poverty Act.
Does anyone think Obama, labeled the most liberal Democrat in the Senate will really cut taxes on the middle class like he promises if he becomes President? Even if he wanted to cut taxes, does anyone believe the liberal Democrats, that are predicted to have total control over the House and Senate in the next session, would let him?
How can we believe Obama feels the pain of the impoverished when he and his wife reported $4.2 million in income last year while he has a brother living in a shack in Kenya on a dollar a month? In light of all the financial problems we are now enduring, can we afford a Barack Obama presidency, especially since he wants to redistribute our wealth to the whole world?
Even the poor in the US are rich by the world standards. I wonder just how eager the poor in America (who are supposed to be on Obama's receiving end of the distribution of wealth in the US ) will be to spread their wealth around the world as Obama wants to do in the Poverty Act.[End of Letter]
For some time, we have warned readers about Sen. Barack Obama's United Nations Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) which would place at risk the sovereignty of the citizen's of the United States. The bill has cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote last week – without any hearings.Phyllis Schlafly ask this week:
Why are Republicans in Congress trying to help Barack Obama? Republicans allowed a bill that carries his name, among nine others, to pass the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote last week – without any hearings. That means there was no roll-call vote so no member can be held accountable. The same bill passed the House by voice vote last year.
The Obama bill passed out of committee with the cooperation of the co-sponsor, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-IN, A Rhodes scholar like former President Bill Clinton. Lugar has never seen a United Nations enhancement he didn't like. Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas.
In a prior post: Voting McCain, we identifed Obama sponsorship of the United Nations “Global Poverty Act" which commits nations to banning “small arms and light weapons” and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We also sent out a Legislative Alert: Oppose Law of the Sea Treaty & Global Poverty Act and warned readers that Obama's Global Tax Up For Senate Vote.
As detailed by Schlafly, "The scariest phrase in the bill is "Millennium Development Goal."
There is much more to the Millennium Goals than merely extorting more money from U.S. taxpayers. The goals set forth a comprehensive plan to put the United States under U.N. global governance.
These goals include a "standing peace force" (i.e., a U.N. standing army), a "U.N. Arms Register" of all small arms and light weapons, "peace education" covering "all levels from preschool through university," and "political control of the global economy." The goals call for implementing all U.N. treaties that the United States has never ratified, all of which set up U.N. monitoring committees to compromise U.S. sovereignty.
To achieve this level of control over U.S. domestic law, the plan calls for "strengthening the United Nations for the 21st century" by "eliminating" the veto and permanent membership in the Security Council. The goal is to reduce U.S. influence to one out of 192 nations, so we would have merely the same vote as Cuba.
The Global Poverty Act would be a giant step toward the Millennium Goals of global governance and international taxes on Americans.
This week, leaders of the U.S. Senate signaled that they are intent on giving more power to the United Nations, including the power to impose taxes, paving the way for ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Wednesday, Feb. 13, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed by voice vote the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433), sponsored by Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). This feel good legislation commits the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, over and above what we already spend. The bill references the UN's Millennium Declaration (from 2000) which calls for countries to dramatically increase foreign aid, agree to banning “small arms and light weapons,” and sign on to many dangerous treaties, including the International Criminal Court, Kyoto Protocol, CEDAW, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The U.S. should have nothing to do with these awful treaties or the UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). One of the worst aspects of LOST is the mechanism for imposing a global tax by requiring companies to pay a portion of their profits to the International Seabed Authority. If the Senate passes the Obama global tax bill, LOST can't be far behind. Since President Bush has made his support for LOST well known, we imagine he would be willing to sign the global tax legislation, hoping to speed up ratification of LOST. In fact, in his 2009 budget request, President Bush included a request for $5 million for LOST and the international tribunal established by the treaty. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Wednesday's committee hearing as to why taxpayer dollars should be going to "a new bureaucratic international organization that has not been endorsed by the U.S. Senate." Secretary Rice reiterated the administration's commitment to ratification of LOST.
Take Action: The Obama global tax bill or the Law of the Sea Treaty could come up on the Senate floor anytime! Be sure to Contact your senators today and tell them to oppose both pieces of legislation. Also, Senators will be in their home offices the week of February 18. Please stop by or schedule an appointment with them to let them know you are watching their position on the Global Tax bill and LOST! Tags:Barack Obama, Global tax, Law of the Sea Treaty, legislation, LOST, UN, US Senate, Condoleezza RiceTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Conservatives Place Hold on Obama's Global Poverty Bill
by Pete Winn, CNSNews: Two conservative members of the U.S. Senate have anonymously placed a hold on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) global poverty bill. . . . The effort is an attempt to slow down the progress of a bill (S. 2433) that conservative analysts say could eventually force the U.S. to increase its foreign aid by hundreds of billions of dollars. . . . S. 2433 has been getting "a pass" from Congress. It received absolutely no scrutiny in the House last fall, when it was passed on a voice vote, and no scrutiny last week in the Senate, when the Foreign Relations Committee also passed it on a voice vote. . . . Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-DL) placed it on a fast-track in recent weeks as Obama's presidential campaign started heating up. The Illinois Democrat praised Biden and the committee's ranking Republican, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, for "moving so quickly." Obama is the chief Senate sponsor of the bill. . . . [Read More] ARRA NOTE: Sen. Obama's the United Nations “Global Poverty Act" would also commits nations UN's Millennium Declaration which includes banning “small arms and light weapons” and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Prior Related Stories:Obama's sovereignty giveaway plan; Oppose Law of the Sea Treaty & Global Poverty Act; Obama's Global Tax Up For Senate Vote Tags:Barack Obama, Election 2008, Global tax, gun control, treaties, treaty, UN, US SenateTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
By Cliff Kincaid: A nice-sounding bill called the “Global Poverty Act,” sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations. Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee . . . is trying to rush Obama’s “Global Poverty Act” (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.
The bill, which is item number four on the committee’s business meeting agenda, passed the House by a voice vote last year because most members didn’t realize what was in it. Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require. According to the website of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no hearings have been held on the Obama bill in that body. . . .
In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning “small arms and light weapons” and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as “the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development.”
Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.’s “Millennium Project,” says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.’s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the “Millennium Development Goals,” this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels. . . .
It appears the Senate version is being pushed not only by Biden and Obama, a member of the committee, but Lugar, the ranking Republican member. Lugar has worked with Obama in the past to promote more foreign aid for Russia, supposedly to stem nuclear proliferation, and has become Obama’s mentor. Like Biden, Lugar is a globalist. They have both promoted passage of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty, for example. . . . [Read More] Contact your senators! Tags:Barack Obama, Cliff Kincaid, Global tax, UN, US SenateTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Bill Smith, ARRA News Editor: The below article by ALG Chairman Rich which he originally titled "The United Nations’ $72 Trillion Lie." This same lie is perpetrated within the United States. Thus, the revised tile for this article. The lie is a root cause of the massive expansion of Government which seeks to regulate all walks of American life. Today, we are experiencing the extreme consequences of the redistribution of wealth efforts under the Obama administration. However, America began its alignment with the UN Agenda long ago. And a major step (or stumbling block for America) was the Johnson administration and later administration pushing the redistribution of wealth under the banner of President Johnson's declared "War on Poverty."
Unfortunately, the agenda quickly overshadowed the Republican efforts via the Civil Rights Acts to guarantee equal access to opportunity. Instead, the Democrats opted to control the less fortunate through program funded via the redistribution of wealth -- the government taking what is yours to both consume, waste and to pass on to others allegedly less fortunate. And these efforts included exponentially growing forms of government ponzi schemes, like the alleged Social Security Trust Fund.
While our founding forefathers believed in individual liberty and freedoms, most of them also subscribed in some form or fashion to the principles detailed in a set of Judeo-Christian principles often called the 10 Commandments. And one of those principles was don't covet another person's property (which included their money). Yes, there was a short period time when some colonist experimented with communal living but soon learned that slackers soon consumed the product of those that worked to the point that no one wanted to work. It didn't take long of them to return to "if you don't work, you don't eat" policy. Time for us to do so again in America.
And, before getting sidetracked, working didn't not mean that a person's work was from a list of either a "bad" jobs or a "good" jobs. Unlike today, Americans just 30 to 40 years ago considered all work was of value to society as long as it was not immoral or illegal. Unfortunately, the American judgmental public education system started classifying jobs as "bad" or "good" jobs.
Rich's article begins with a focus on the UN but ends focusing on today's America. This message needs to be detailed and repeated often. Stop the redistribution of wealth; return to a free market system.
Howard Rich, Chairman, Americans For Limited Government: In addition to preserving the inalienability of our individual liberties, limited government ideology has always revolved around the belief that the invisible hand of the free market creates more prosperity for more people than command-and-control economic wealth redistribution.
Actually this isn’t so much a belief (or theory) as it is an incontrovertible economic law. Unfortunately, this law has been willfully ignored by Barack Obama and his congressional allies, who have rung up trillion dollar deficits as part of an ongoing socialist crusade to “spread the wealth around” here in the United States.
A rising tide lifts all ships, the old cliché goes — while teaching a person to fish will feed them for a lifetime, not just one day.
These fortune cookie truisms — ignored both at home and abroad — were lent vital new expression earlier this month when the United Nations effectively acknowledged that its global wealth redistribution scheme has failed to eradicate poverty as efficiently as good old-fashioned capitalism.
In the UN’s “Millennium Development Goals Report 2011” — released on July 7 to virtually no American media coverage — the international organization acknowledged that poverty rates were falling fastest in those nations which have embraced free market reforms.
“The fastest growth and sharpest reductions in poverty continue to be found in Eastern Asia, particularly in China, where the poverty rate is expected to fall to under five per cent by 2015,” the report notes. “India has also contributed to the large reduction in global poverty. In that country, poverty rates are projected to fall from 51 per cent in 1990 to about 22 per cent in 2015.”
Meanwhile in Sub-Saharan Africa — which has received the lion’s share of foreign aid over the last half-century — there have been negligible reductions in poverty. Not only that, there is increasing empirical evidence to suggest that the massive aid being dumped into this region has actually suppressed economic growth while perpetuating popular dependence and government corruption.
“Aid has so spectacularly failed to achieve its intended outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa because high aid intensity is actually associated with an erosion in the quality of governance,” notes a 2009 report in the Stanford Journal of International Relations. “Foreign aid appears simply to increase the volume of funds at the disposal of already corrupt government officials and kleptocratic elites.”
Even studies which argue for the infusion of additional aid into the region acknowledge that the impact of this avalanche of foreign cash is “difficult to pin down” and that its failure to stimulate economic growth is “confounding.”
Of course the UN — which has not-so-cleverly disguised its wealth redistribution scheme under the guise of climate-friendly “green investment” — isn’t the least bit confounded. Even as its own data conclusively proves the efficacy of free market reforms (and the futility of government handouts), the global bureaucracy is once again inexplicably upping the command economic ante.
After paying lip service in its millennium report to the creation of “conditions in which people are able to carve out and sustain a livelihood,” a separate UN paper released earlier this month proposes the largest wealth transfer in human history.
America simply cannot afford to continue pouring tax dollars into failed wealth redistribution schemes — whether at home or abroad. Not only are these plans destined to fail, but they actually prevent the free market from reducing poverty. Tags:Barack Obama, Free Markets, poverty, Redistribution of Wealth, United Nations, lie, Lyndon Johnson, War on Poverty, Howard Rich, Americans For Limited governmentTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
by Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum: The global warming prophets and propagandists, who enjoy living in style on other people's money, gathered last month in the plush resort of Cancun, Mexico, where January temperatures usually hover around 80 degrees. God must have a sense of humor because Cancun was hit by its coldest temperature in a hundred years.
The first day of the conference featured an address from Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, who spoke with much concern about global warming and the damage that humans are perpetrating on the planet. He cited the deaths of 60 people in Mexico because of weather extremes, but didn't mention Mexico's 22,000 deaths caused by the illegal drug trade.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that "We need to fundamentally transform the global economy, based on low-carbon, clean energy resources." Barack Obama's announced goal of fundamentally transforming the United States has morphed into transforming the world.
This 16th annual conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), called COP 16 (Conference of the Parties 16), attracted some 20,000 delegates from 194 countries. It had little to do with any science about climate change, and everything to do with trying to get the United States and other industrialized nations to redistribute their wealth to the poorer nations under the supervision of eager United Nations bureaucrats.
Like previous climate change conferences, COP 16 deliberately pitted the poor countries against the rich countries, encouraging the poor countries to demand what the rich countries have without earning or paying for it. This is the internationalist version of the basic Marxist tactic called the class war.
COP 16 propagandists blame every human tragedy on the high standard of living enjoyed (and earned) by the rich countries. Our over-consumption is alleged to cause global warming. We are guilty because we are prosperous, so we supposedly owe reparations to the poor nations.
At COP 15 in Copenhagen a year ago, the poor countries ganged up on us and agreed that the United States should create a $30 billion "Fast Start" global climate fund by 2012 and reduce U.S. greenhouse gases by 17 percent below the 2005 levels. This Fast Start climate fund would be committed to grow to $100 billion by 2020.
Fortunately, the Copenhagen proposals were never formally adopted. President Obama came and left empty handed, Communist China refused to limit its emissions, and the Third World dictators didn't get the $100 billion handouts they expected.
The poor countries now say they want cash handouts, not loans, because they don't want to take on any debt. They also floated a scheme to force 37 industrialized nations to transfer their technologies along with huge financial bonuses to the poorer 155 nations.
Donations to the Fast Start Fund are not coming in as rapidly as the avaricious countries want, so COP 16 participants decided it's time to call for a global tax. They want it to be unlimited in scope and unlinked to national treasuries so that tax receipts can flow without the nuisance of having to be approved by the rich countries' legislatures.
The UN Secretary General's High Level Advisory Group confirmed that the goal is to impose taxes on international shipping, aviation, and financial transactions involving stocks, bonds and foreign exchanges, as well as a carbon tax. Those taxes could raise at least $100 billion annually, and the International Maritime Organization is ready to be the assessor-collector.
COP 16 agitators consider all these payments compensatory for damages caused by the rich nations. The World Wildlife Foundation estimates that the amounts needed to protect against climate change will run to $160 billion to $200 billion yearly by 2020.
COP 16's bag of tricks also includes plans for global governance. The new UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, said that COP 16 "is a litmus test for global governance capacity," and that "Cancun will be successful if governments compromise" by launching "a new era."
The poor nations at COP 16 presented a document called "Declaration from the South-South Summit on Climate Justice and Finance." It claimed that climate change is "an economic and social crisis, a political crisis, a food and energy crisis, and an ecological crisis."
This diatribe called for "climate justice, ecological justice, economic justice, gender justice and historical justice." Its presenters concluded by chanting, "Let's globalize the struggle!"
The main cause of poverty in other countries is the lack of enough energy. We should be increasing the use of energy rather than expanding government powers to restrict energy.
Tell your newly elected members of Congress that we reject all COP 16 demands as well as the insulting proposition that our successful economic system caused the world's poverty. If poor countries want to be rich, the way to go is to follow our American model for success, freedom and prosperity. Tags:Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum, cold weather, global warming, cop 16, Cancun, Mexico, United Nations, Framework Convention, Climate Change To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
This is the final reporting on the meetings and actions of the First session of the 114th Congress (2015). The Second regular session of the 114th Congress begins at Noon on January 4, 2016. Congress is heading home for the Holidays for the remainder of December.
They passed: H. Con. Res. 104 (Agreed to without objection) — "Providing for the sine die adjournment of the first session of the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress. Motion to concur in the Senate amendment with an amendment specified in section 3(a) of H. Res. 566 (316-113). H.R. 2241 (Voice Vote) — "To direct the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to submit to Congress a report on the development and use of global health innovations in the programs, projects, and activities of the Agency." S. 2425 (Unanimous Consent) — "To amend titles XVIII and XIX of the Social Security Act to improve payments for complex rehabilitation technology and certain radiation therapy services, to ensure flexibility in applying the hardship exception for meaningful use for the 2015 EHR reporting period for 2017 payment adjustments, and for other purposes."
Yesterday, Dec. 17, 2015, the House passed: Senate amendment to H.R. 3594 (Agreed to without objection)
On Dec. 16, 2015, the House passed: H. Res. 536 (399-2) — "Supporting freedom of the press in Latin America and the Caribbean and condemning violations of press freedom and violence against journalists, bloggers, and individuals exercising their right to freedom of speech." H.J. Res. 76 — "Appointing the day for convening of the second session of the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress." H.R.3654 - Combat Terrorist Use of Social Media Act of 2015
Senate amendment to H.R. 2029 (318-109) with a further amendment containing the bill making permanent tax relief for families and businesses.
At 1:07 PM, The House adjourned Sine Die the first session of the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress after the U.S. Senate passed H.R. 2029, the 'omnibus' Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations and stand adjourned Sine Die for the first session of the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress."
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) released the following statement after House passage of the one-year spending bill to fund the government: “Today, the House came together to ensure our government is open and working for the American people. This bipartisan compromise secures meaningful wins for Republicans and the American people, such as the repeal of the outdated, anti-growth ban on oil exports. The legislation strengthens our military and protects Americans from terrorist threats, while limiting the overreach of intrusive government bureaucracies like the IRS and the EPA. I appreciate Chairman Rogers’s leadership and the entire Appropriations Committee for their work in shaping this bill. Congress can now move into 2016 with a fresh start and a plan to return to regular order in order to better protect taxpayer dollars."
The Senate reconvened at 9:30 AM today. At 10:30, the Senate received the House message to accompany H.R. 2029, the vehicle for the omnibus Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations bill and the bill making permanent extension of tax relief for families and businesses.
Senators then began a series of votes on the package: they first voted 72-26 to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the House amendments to the Senate amendments to H.R. 2029; they then rejected by a vote of 31-67 a motion to table the first House amendment, which contained the omnibus bill; senators then voted 73-25 to waive a budget point of order against the House amendments.
Finally, at noon, the Senate voted 65-33 to concur in the House amendments to the Senate amendments to H.R. 2029, which sent the package of appropriations and tax relief legislation to the president for his signature.
Yesterday, the Senate agreed by voice vote to pass H.R. 3594, which extends the federal Perkins Loan program for two years. In addition, all senators agreed by unanimous consent to truncate debate time and time for consideration for H.R. 2029, allowing the series of votes this morning.
Speaking on the floor this morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the case for supporting the bill the Senate voted on today to fund the government and give permanent tax relief to families and businesses. “We know our constituents are deeply concerned about America’s struggling economy. So let’s take steps — as the legislation we’ll consider proposes — to support more jobs, more opportunity, and more economic growth.
“Let’s enact permanent tax relief for American families and small businesses. Let’s set the table for pro-growth tax reform. Let’s permanently eliminate an energy policy from the 1970s that not only costs American jobs, but also strengthens American adversaries like Iran and Russia.
“Because here’s something else. We know our constituents are deeply concerned about America’s national security. So let’s take steps — as the legislation we’ll consider proposes — to strengthen our national security in a dangerous world.
“Let’s help ensure our military has more of the funding it needs to train, equip, and confront the threats that face us from every corner of the globe. Let’s bolster the FBI’s ability to confront terror within our borders. Let’s bring badly needed reform to the Visa Waiver Program. Let’s prevent the transfer of dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo’s secure detention center into American communities. Let’s provide the people we represent with some long-overdue protection from cyberattacks. Let’s honor our veterans and enact critical reforms to help address the crises we’ve seen at the V.A.
“The legislation . . . would take steps to strengthen our economy and strengthen our national security. It would bolster the First Amendment. It would attack key pillars of Obamacare and prevent a taxpayer bailout of this partisan law. That last provision is especially important. Protecting the Middle Class from financing a bailout of Obamacare means we’re likely to speed up America’s day of liberation from Obamacare too.
“So here’s my view: This legislation helps our economy, helps our national security, and strikes more blows to a partisan health law that hurts the Middle Class. I think its legislation worth supporting.”
News & Organization's Comments:
One aspect not receivingd much attention was looked at by The Washington Post: “There is no love lost between Republicans in Congress and the Internal Revenue Service, whether it’s their dislike for the tax code, the current tax commissioner or their fury at the agency’s treatment a few years ago of conservative groups. With many lawmakers still smarting over that controversy, the GOP used the budget deal reached by House and Senate negotiators this week to tighten the reins on the IRS . . .
“The budget now prohibits the agency from producing videos at conferences unless they are approved in advance by a special board, punishment for a Star Trek parody made for a lavish training conference in Anaheim, Calif., in 2010 . . . .
“The IRS cannot give a bonus or award to any employee — or one who’s been rehired — if they owe a cent in back federal taxes, punishment for watchdog reports showing that some employees owe back taxes and are not penalized. . . .
“Its employees must not use personal email accounts for work communications, a practice that got both Hillary Clinton and Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the scandal over tax-exempt groups in trouble.
“The IRS must now report to Congress on how much it spends on salaries of full-time union officials, who are paid by taxpayers.
“And it cannot target groups for scrutiny based on their ideological beliefs, new language repeated in three separate provisions of the bill.”
The editors write, “The budget and tax bills moving this week usefully block the IRS and other agencies from restricting political speech.
“In 2014 opposition from the left and right forced the IRS to back down on its rule limiting political activities by tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups. But director John Koskinen, the most tone-deaf man in Washington, says he wants to try again, and the spending bill includes a provision that shuts that down.
“The tax bill also blocks the practice of IRS employees using personal email for official business. The use of personal email by Lois Lerner, then head of the tax-exempt division, became a stumbling block for investigators trying to discover what happened. A provision in the tax bill also bans the IRS from imposing the gift tax on donations to 501(c) groups, an idea the agency considered in 2011 when it audited several conservative donors.
“Also helpful is a measure in the omnibus that would prevent the Securities and Exchange Commission from writing a regulation to require publicly traded corporations to disclose contributions to tax-exempt groups, trade associations or other political causes. . . . The spending bill also prevents the Obama Administration from issuing an executive order to require federal contractors to disclose their political contributions.”
On the Obamacare taxes, The WSJ editors argue, “The Congressional Budget Office estimates the insurance tax is passed through to consumers and raises premiums by 2% to 2.5%. The device tax is a drag on jobs and innovation. . .
“The Cadillac tax is already causing vast disruptions across the businesses that sponsor health coverage for about half of Americans, or 147 million people. The IRS interpretation of the law—a 40% excise tax applies to the cost of a health plan over a certain amount—is complex nearly beyond human comprehension, and not all companies can afford HR departments. Roughly half of businesses were expected to pay the tax in 2018, according to Towers Watson, and in some cases they couldn’t avoid it without violating a separate regulation about the minimum value of benefits they must offer.”
Importantly, they also point out, “[T]he omnibus retains language preventing the Administration from using extra funds to prop up insurers that lose money on the exchanges. The exchanges will continue to malfunction, and their failures will be exposed to the public.”
Further, the editors contend, “The larger story is the political attitude adjustment in the Democratic Party. Supporting any change to ObamaCare was once apostasy. Yet in a test vote this month 90 Senators voted to kill the Cadillac tax, and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have denounced it. This isn’t a change of heart so much as a cardiac transplant. Harry Reid’s opposition to this cornerstone of ObamaCare is good news. The omnibus shows the entitlement is more vulnerable than the political class claims to believe.”
While one part of this legislation, “take[s] an ax to the economic underpinnings of the [health care] law and create new headaches for Democrats as they try to protect Obamacare after 2016,”As Politico put it yesterday, another section finally gives some certainty to families and businesses on tax relief.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday, “The tax bill would permanently extend nearly two dozen tax breaks for businesses and individuals while temporarily extending others. The credits being permanently extended include:
An expanded Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income earners;
The Child Tax Credit for low and moderate income workers;
The American Opportunity Tax Credit to help students under age 40 pay college tuition and expenses;
Low income housing credits;
An expanded research and experimentation credit;
Section 179 business expensing, which allows businesses to fully deduct the price of equipment and software investments;
State and local sales tax deduction;
Tax deductions for food inventory donated to food banks;
A deduction for land donated for conservation; and
A tax break for individuals to donate to charity from qualified retirement accounts.”
Employers were vocal about the importance to the economy of pro-growth tax relief. The National Federation of Independent Business, an association of 325,000 small business owners, declared, “Making small business expensing permanent is the single most critical action you can take to help small businesses in 2015.” NFIB explained, “The current temporary nature of small business expensing fuels greater doubt regarding the economy and prevents small business owners from enacting long-term growth plans, making purchasing decisions, and expanding their businesses. By making Section 179 expensing levels permanent, predictable and at sufficient levels, Congress can take a vital step in boosting our economy and helping the true engine of our economy, small businesses, grow.”
The American Farm Bureau Federation said, “Farmers and ranchers need tax deductions that they can count on to effectively operate their businesses. Providing certainty to the tax code makes the difficult business of running a farm more manageable.”
A member of the National Association of Manufacturers representing small and medium manufacturers said, “Permanent and multiyear extensions of the expired investment incentives will help manufacturers of all sizes, producing a positive ripple effect throughout the economy. ... The agreement will encourage businesses to invest in the capital equipment and machinery that will increase efficiency, productivity and growth . . . .”
“It doesn’t mean this is the legislation I would’ve written on my own. It doesn’t mean this is the legislation Speaker Ryan would’ve written on his own either. It’s not perfect and we certainly didn’t get everything that we wanted.
“But it makes strides in defending our nation at a time of global unrest.
“It advances conservative priorities in several areas and enacts significant reform in several areas, on everything from tax relief to energy policy to cybersecurity.”
Americans of Limited Government President Rick Manning today blasted the passage of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill: "House Speaker Paul Ryan has reacted to passage of the omnibus spending bill by saying it 'advances Republican priorities.' Which ones?
"We agree with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley who has said it will help terrorist travel and economic espionage in the U.S. It leaves our borders wide open, and fails to stop Obama's executive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children. It increases spending $112 billion over the next two years, busting the spending caps. It does nothing to defund Planned Parenthood. It reinstates the Wind Production Tax Credit. It funds Obamacare. It quardruples H2-B visas for low-skilled workers at the expense of American workers. It fails use the power of the purse to rein in a single one of Obama's economy crippling regulations. It funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development racial and income zoning quotas being imposed on 1,200 counties and cities that accept any portion of $3 billion of annual community development block grants.
"The omnibus does not advance Republican priorities, or even the American people's priorities, it advances the priorities of the power elite in Washington, D.C. that continues to operate within a vacuum."
Gary Bauer, Contributing Author noted: "Planned Parenthood gets full funding. So, too, does the Syrian refugee program, even as the administration continues to insist that no changes are needed to ensure that there are no jihadists among the refugees."
Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service noted when posting of this article, "Congress has 'jumped the shark' with this Omnibus Bill. Let hope America is not eaten alive by our own government and by terrorists. No wonder Congress and the Obama administration have an extremely low approval rating. It appears that they are out to take everything they can from the American people.
"As of this moment in time, the U.S. Gross National Debt exceeds $18,801,230,000,000. We are plagued by terrorists and trials abroad. We have extreme growing poverty in our nation. American atheist may not like what I am about to say; but they can stuff it. God please save America because surely our Government cannot!" Tags:Congress, Omnibus bill, Governments Spending, Jumped the Shark, terrorists, trials abroad, national debt, growing povertyTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Here’s What the Tax Cuts Have Done for America in 2 Years
by Rep. Brad Wenstrup: It’s been two years this month since Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, providing the first major tax reform since 1986.
The tax cuts lowered our federal corporate income tax rate, which was hurting American job creators’ ability to compete on a global stage. Previously at 35%, the U.S. rate was one of the highest in the developed world.
Now at 21%, it is closer to the average corporate income tax rate among developed countries, which allows U.S. companies to compete on a more level playing field.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also created innovative Opportunity Zones to provide tax incentives to boost long-term investment in historically distressed, underserved communities across our country.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, but this is an important part of a long-term effort to strengthen America’s economy and afford greater economic opportunities to all of our citizens in the decades to come.
In addition to bolstering our national economy as a whole, tax reform provided real relief for American families on a personal level. This came in the form of an increased standard deduction, as well as doubling the Child Tax Credit and expanding eligibility so more families can participate.
It also included strengthening 529 savings plans, which are one of the most commonly utilized tools for planning and saving for education expenses.
Under the old rules, families could only apply their 529 savings plans toward eligible colleges or universities. Now, thanks to tax reform, the money invested in your 529 savings plan can be used to cover qualifying expenses for private, public, or religious schools from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade.
Each of these reforms is playing a part in reenergizing our economy, one family at a time.
Consumers are highly optimistic. Richard Curtin, the chief economist at the Surveys of Consumers Attitudes, recently said consumer sentiment has been at 95 or higher in 30 of the past 35 months, according to CNBC. That’s a 20-year high.
Curtin also noted that, despite political uncertainties, “Personal spending will be energized by record favorable evaluations by consumers of their personal financial situation, with gains expected across the entire income distribution … .”
Our tax code will always be a work in progress, but this overhaul was an important step forward in updating our antiquated and overly complicated system. It also serves as a powerful reminder of what can be accomplished when we are directing our energy toward fixing real problems for the American people.
Moving forward, we must ensure these tax relief provisions are made permanent and continue our efforts to simplify and streamline the tax code.
Congressional leaders should be focusing on innovative solutions to make the system work better for American small business owners who are trying to create jobs, middle-class families trying to provide a better future for their children, and underserved communities trying to break out of generational poverty. After all, that’s what our constituents elected us to come here and do.
Unfortunately, however, under Democratic leadership, this Congress has only turned about 70 bills and resolutions into law, according to Congress.gov. In comparison, the last divided Congress, when Harry Reid controlled the Senate, was able to pass nearly 300 bills and resolutions into law between 2013 and 2014.
This is the opportunity cost of Democrats’ endless investigations and impeachment trials. It is not just about the cost of valuable time and taxpayer dollars being expended, but also about the loss of what we could otherwise be accomplishing to address real problems facing our country.
The two-year anniversary of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doesn’t just commemorate an important piece of legislation; it is also a call to Congress to get to work.
The American people hired us to be problems solvers, not circus performers. Let’s put an end to endless investigations to justify a predetermined push to impeach and focus on working to improve the lives of the people who put us here in the first place.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 proved that we can tackle an enormous challenge that had been festering for decades—and deliver real results. Now, we need to harness that energy toward the opportunities that remain to continue improving our tax code, modernizing our trade deals with agreements like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and addressing the challenges that impact underserved communities, families, and individuals across our country on a daily basis.
Let’s not let those opportunities go to waste.
-------------------- Brad Wenstrup (@RepBradWenstrup) is the U.S. representative for Ohio's 2nd congressional district. Tags:Brad Wenstrup, US Representative, Ohio, 2nd District, Tax Cuts, Have Done for America, in 2 YearsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: The Treasury Department’s Office of Environment and Energy has finally begun to turn over documents about its preparations for a carbon tax in response to transparency warrior Chris Horner’s Freedom of Information Act request. The documents provide solid evidence that the Obama administration and its allies in Congress have every intention of implementing a carbon tax if we fail to stop them.
The Office of Environment and Energy, if you’ve never heard of it, is housed in Treasury’s Office of International Affairs and exists principally to wait for authority to administer the revenue from a cap-and-trade scheme or carbon tax. And, apparently, to trick Americans into supporting the tax to provide it the money. So the documents they’ve reluctantly released are worth a careful look.
There’s the G-20 report titled “Mobilizing Climate Finance,” which pegs the price tag at $2.1 trillion “of investment requirement” in a “global carbon market.”
There’s the helpful IMF report from Ian Parry of the Fiscal Affairs Department on “Public Sources of Climate Finance.” Parry’s stated goal for the United States is “raising revenue and putting it to good use.”
He suggests a $25 per metric ton carbon tax – right in the middle of the range suggested by the discussion draft legislation recently released by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee – and noted that $25 billion a year could be sent abroad “for climate finance.”
He singles out aviation and maritime fuels as “under-taxed” and suggests new taxes on fuels or directly on aircraft and ship operators. Parry notes that this “will harm developing countries” – for the simple reason that it’s economically harmful -- and concludes “compensation needed for fairness.” (Obama recently asked Congress to OK another $65 billion in increased IMF dues, no doubt so we can receive more of this kind of advice.)
By far the biggest document is from the World Bank. It’s titled “Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development.” The document itself is posted on the World Bank website, but that doesn’t mean its use at the U.S. Treasury Department doesn’t require scrutiny. The report notes that “some observers, mostly in high-income countries, have argued against the need for more growth, suggesting that what is needed instead is a redistribution of wealth.” It seems this “remains more relevant for high-income countries” like the United States.
The report goes on to outline how a carbon tax could be used to drive a massive redistributive scheme based on – believe it or not – Iran as a model of success: “The political economy of reform will likely require compensatory transfers to the middle class. In the Islamic Republic of Iran… 80 percent of households received significant transfers—no doubt contributing to the success of the reform.” It continues: “In the end, the redistributive impacts of a carbon price scheme depend on how revenues from the scheme are used.”
Such a redistributive scheme is a key element of carbon tax proposals from Waxman and from Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
It’s easy to foresee a “gas stamps” program much like food stamps that would provide a taxpayer-funded gas purchasing card to people up to some multiple of the federal poverty level. Much like ObamaCare, a policy driving up costs would be paired with a huge new welfare program that would foster government dependency and political loyalty.
The World Bank paper also advises Treasury on how to convince the public. It says to call the carbon tax an “offset” instead of a “tax,” and downplay economic costs to “focus on framing green policies as a way to reach an ambitious and positive social goal (such as becoming carbon neutral by 2050 or becoming a leader in solar technologies).”
This advice helps explain why an administration so heavily invested in implementing a carbon tax attempts to deny any such thing is going on.
What else are they hiding? At least 10,000 emails from 2012 alone. Horner has filed suit, and Treasury can only stonewall for so long.
One thing that’s already clear is that the preparations to pursue a carbon tax are very much proceeding in earnest.
Colonialist Bernie Wants White Tax Dollars to Help Exterminate Foreign Babies
by Peter Heck: An old white guy recommends taking American tax dollars to go to primarily black countries and finance the extermination of their future generations.
Colonialist? Imperialist? Racist? It would sure seem that way. And in a media culture that currently prides itself on its wokeness, the poor sap who suggested something so ignorant and so offensive should expect to be exposed and buried.
Unless that old white guy is a notoriously hypocritical socialist Senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders, that is. In that case, everyone in media yawns and starts talking about President Trump’s sharpies.
Of the myriad examples of profound media bias that have already surfaced in the 2020 presidential election season, surely the contemptible silence of the mainstream press in the face of Sanders’ call to exterminate black kids for the sake of the planet is the worst.
If you missed it, and given the paucity of coverage you could be excused if you did, the appalling suggestion came during CNN’s absurd climate townhall. A teacher in the crowd named Martha Readyoff asked a question of Sanders that was stunningly dimwitted in its premise:READYOFF: Good evening. Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years. The planet cannot sustain this growth. I realize this is a poisonous topic for politicians, but it’s crucial to face. Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact. Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?Again, it was a breathtakingly ignorant question. Claiming the planet is incapable of sustaining the population growth we are experiencing is unsubstantiated conjecture at best, intentional conspiracy theory based fear-mongering at worst. All quantifiable indicators, including the global poverty rate decrease, improvement of living conditions, decline in malnutrition, etc. tell us the precise opposite. So no, this isn’t an issue that is “crucial to face.” It’s not an issue at all. But Bernie is always excited to jump on the next radical policy proposal that comes down the pike. So he waded into the whirlpool of nonsense:SANDERS: Well, Martha, the answer is yes. And the answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions…So I think, especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies, and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, it’s something I very, very strongly support.Now remember this is the same Sanders who not only opposes the Mexico City Policy, but also opposes the 1974 Helms Amendment. In other words, the Vermont socialist is so dedicated to the extermination of foreign babies that he opposes a common sense law forbidding the practice that has enjoyed bipartisan support for 45 years – almost as long as aborting kids has been judicially permitted in the United States.
We know that progressives and socialists like Sanders want to use the climate change issue to deprive the third world of the ability to industrialize and lift themselves out of poverty. That’s despicable enough. But to go from support for the passive extermination of foreign kids by locking them into poverty to support for the active extermination of foreign kids by American-financed abortion would be newsworthy in a sane culture.
------------------- Peter Heck (@peterheck) writes for The Resurgent and PeterHeck.com. Tags:Peter Heck, The Resurgent, Colonialist, Bernie Sanders, Wants White Tax Dollars, to Help, Exterminate Foreign BabiesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Blackwell Discussing Trump's Economic Plan on Fox Business Network
ARRA News Service Author Ken Blackwell was on the Fox Business Network and joined a panel to discuss Donald Trump's latest speech in Detroit regarding trade, tax policies, and various economic policies. Let's get our economy growing again!
First, recommend reading the following transcript of Mr. Trump's speech at the Detroit Economic Club which the panel is discussing:
AN AMERICA FIRST ECONOMIC PLAN: WINNING THE GLOBAL COMPETITION
Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. It’s wonderful to be in Detroit.
We now begin a great national conversation about economic renewal for America. It’s a conversation about how to Make American Great Again for everyone, and especially those who have the very least.
The City of Detroit Is Where Our Story Begins
Detroit was once the economic envy of the world. The people of Detroit helped power America to its position of global dominance in the 20th century.
When we were governed by an America First policy, Detroit was booming. Engineers, builders, laborers, shippers and countless others went to work each day, provided for their families, and lived out the American Dream.
But for many living in this city, that dream has long ago vanished.
When we abandoned the policy of America First, we started rebuilding other countries instead of our own. The skyscrapers went up in Beijing, and in many other cities around the world, while the factories and neighborhoods crumbled in Detroit. Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense.
Today, Detroit has a per capita income of under $15,000 dollars, about half of the national average. 40 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty, over two-and-half times the national average. The unemployment rate is more than twice the national average. Half of all Detroit residents do not work.
Detroit tops the list of Most Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime – these are the silenced victims whose stories are never told by Hillary Clinton, but victims whose suffering is no less real or permanent.
In short, the city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. Every policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton.
She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community…and the crime policies that have made you less safe…and the immigration policies that have strained local budgets...and the trade deals like NAFTA, signed by her husband, that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries… and she supports the education policies that deny your students choice, freedom and opportunity.
She is the candidate of the past.
Ours is the campaign of the future.
This is a city controlled by Democratic politicians at every level, and unless we change policies, we will not change results.
Today, I will outline my economic vision. In the coming weeks, we will be offering more detail on all of these policies, and the ones we have already rolled out can be viewed on my campaign website.
Our opposition, on the other hand, has long ago run out of ideas. All Hillary Clinton has to offer is more of the same: more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on American energy and American production.
If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America, you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda.
Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence.
The one common feature of every Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you for working and doing business in the United States. Every policy she has tilts the playing field towards other countries at our expense.
That’s why she tries to distract us with tired political rhetoric that seeks to label us, divide us, and pull us apart.
My campaign is about reaching out to everyone as Americans, and returning to a government that puts the American people first.
Here is what an America First economic plan looks like.
First, let’s talk tax reform.
Taxes are one of the biggest differences in this race.
Hillary Clinton – who has spent her career voting for tax increases – plans another massive job-killing $1.3 trillion-dollar tax increase. Her plan would tax many small businesses by almost fifty percent.
Recently, at a campaign event, Hillary Clinton short-circuited again – to use a now famous term – when she accidentally told the truth and said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class.
I am proposing an across-the-board income tax reduction, especially for middle-income Americans. This will lead to millions of new good-paying jobs.
The rich will pay their fair share, but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs, or undermines our ability to compete.
As part of this reform, we will eliminate the Carried Interest Deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and people like me, but unfair to American workers.
Tax simplification will be a major feature of the plan.
Our current tax code is so burdensome and complex that we waste 9 billion hours a year in tax code compliance.
My plan will reduce the current number of brackets from 7 to 3, and dramatically streamline the process. We will work with House Republicans on this plan, using the same brackets they have proposed: 12, 25 and 33 percent. For many American workers, their tax rate will be zero.
While we will develop our own set of assumptions and policies, agreeing in some areas but not in others, we will be focused on the same shared goals and guided by the same shared principles: jobs, growth and opportunity.
These reforms will offer the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan Tax Reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation.
We will Make America Grow Again.
In the days ahead, we will provide more details on this plan and how it will help you and your family. It will present a night-and-day contrast to the job-killing, tax-raising, poverty-inducing Obama-Clinton agenda.
The State of New York has already lived through Hillary Clinton’s failed leadership. The Washington Post just published a devastating article on Hillary Clinton’s broken promises. She pledged 200,000 jobs for upstate New York as Senator. But what happened? The Washington Post writes, and I quote: “upstate job growth stagnated overall during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent…the former first lady was unable to pass big ticket legislation… Many promised jobs never materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first presidential run…data shows that upstate actually lost jobs during Clinton’s first term.”
Compare that to my record. In a recent New York Post article by Steve Cuozzo, “How Donald Trump Helped Save New York City,” the paper writes that I – and this is a direct quote – “waded into a landscape of empty Fifth Avenue storefronts, the dust-bowl mugging ground that was Central Park and a Wall Street area seemingly on its last legs as companies moved out…almost by force of will — [he] rode to the rescue. Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kick-starting the regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.”
This is what I want to do for our country – I want to jumpstart America.
Now let’s look at what the Obama-Clinton policies have done nationally.
Their policies produced 1.2% growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression, and a doubling of the national debt.
There are now 94.3 million Americans outside the labor force. It was 80.5 million when President Obama took office, an increase of nearly 14 million people.
The Obama-Clinton agenda of tax, spend and regulate has created a silent nation of jobless Americans.
Home ownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years.
Nearly 12 million have been added to the food stamp rolls since President Obama took office. Another nearly 7 million Americans were added to the ranks of those in poverty.
We have the lowest labor force participation rates in four decades.
58 percent of African-American youth are either outside the labor force or not employed.
1 in 5 American households do not have a single member in the labor force. These are the real unemployment numbers – the five percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.
Meanwhile, American households are earning more than $4,000 less today than they were sixteen years ago.
The average worker today pays 31.5 percent of their wages to income and payroll taxes. On top of that, state and local taxes consume another 10 percent.
The United States also has the highest business tax rate among the major industrialized nations of the world, at 35 percent. It’s almost 40 percent when you add in taxes at the state level.
In other words, we punish companies for making products in America – but let them ship products into the U.S. tax-free if they move overseas.
This is backwards. All of our policies should be geared towards keeping jobs and wealth inside the United States.
Under my plan, no American company will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. Small businesses will benefit the most from this plan. Hillary Clinton’s plan will require small business to pay as much as three times more in taxes than what I am proposing, and her onerous regulations will put them totally out of business. I am going to cut regulations massively.
Our lower business tax will also end job-killing corporate inversions, and cause trillions in new dollars and wealth to come pouring into our country – and into cities like Detroit. To help unleash this new job creation, we will allow businesses to immediately expense new business investments.
No one will gain more from these proposals than low-and-middle income Americans.
My plan will also help reduce the cost of childcare by allowing parents to fully deduct the average cost of childcare spending from their taxes.
We are also going to bring back trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas. Our plan will bring that cash home, applying a 10 percent tax. This money will be re-invested in states like Michigan.
Finally, no family will have to pay the death tax. American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death – it’s just plain wrong. We will repeal it.
Next comes regulatory reform
As with taxes, I will have one overriding goal when it comes to regulation: I want to keep jobs and wealth in America.
Motor vehicle manufacturing is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. The U.S. economy today is twenty-five percent smaller than it would have been without the surge of regulations since 1980.
It is estimated that current overregulation is costing our economy as much as $2 trillion dollars a year – that’s money taken straight out of cities like yours.
The federal register is now over 80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more.
In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy.
It is time to remove the anchor dragging us down.
Upon taking office, I will issue a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations. My running mate, Mike Pence, signed a similar order when he became governor of Indiana. This will give our American companies the certainty they need to reinvest in our community, get cash off of the sidelines, start hiring for new jobs, and expanding businesses.
I will also immediately cancel all illegal and overreaching executive orders.
Next, I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.
We are in a competition with the world, and I want America to win. When I am president, we will.
One of the most important reforms of all is trade reform
As Bernie Sanders has said, Hillary Clinton has bad judgment. We’ve seen this bad judgment overseas, in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. We’ve seen it in Iran. We’ve seen it from President Obama, when he gives $150 billion to Iran, the number one terror state, and even gives them $400 million in money-laundered cash as a ransom payment.
But we’ve also seen the terrible Obama-Clinton judgment right here in Detroit.
Hillary Clinton has supported the trade deals stripping this city, and this country, of its jobs and wealth.
She supported Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, she supported the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Let’s talk about South Korea for a moment, because it so perfectly illustrates the broken promises that have hurt so many American workers.
President Obama, and the usual so-called experts who’ve been wrong about every trade deal for decades, predicted that the trade deal with South Korea would increase our exports to South Korea by more than $10 billion – resulting in some 70,000 jobs.
Like Hillary Clinton’s broken promises to New York, these pledges all turned out to be false. Instead of creating 70,000 jobs, it has killed nearly 100,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Our exports to South Korea haven’t increased at all, but their imports to us have surged more than $15 billion – more than doubling our trade deficit with that country.
The next betrayal will be the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton’s closest friend, Terry McAuliffe, confirmed what I have said on this from the beginning: if sent to the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton will enact the TPP. Guaranteed. Her donors will make sure of it.
A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for TPP – and it’s also a vote for NAFTA.
Our annual trade deficit in goods with Mexico has risen from close to zero in 1993 to almost $60 billion. Our total trade deficit in goods hit nearly $800 billion last year.
This is a strike at the heart of Michigan, and our nation as a whole.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.
Detroit is still waiting for Hillary Clinton’s apology. I expect Detroit will get that apology right around the same time Hillary Clinton turns over the 33,000 emails she deleted.
Hillary Clinton’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be an even bigger disaster for the auto industry. In fact, Ford Motor Company has announced its opposition to the deal.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. trade deficit with the proposed TPP member countries cost over 1 million manufacturing jobs in 2015.
By far the biggest losses occurred in motor vehicles and parts, which lost nearly 740,000 manufacturing jobs.
Michigan ranks first for jobs lost as a share of state workforce due to the trade deficit with TPP members.
Just imagine how many more automobile jobs will be lost if the TPP is actually approved. That is why I have announced we will withdraw from the deal before that can ever happen. Hillary Clinton will never withdraw from the TPP. She is bought, controlled and paid-for by her donors and special interests.
Because my only interest is the American people, I have previously laid out a detailed 7-point plan for trade reform, available on my website. It includes strong protections against currency manipulation, tariffs against any countries that cheat by unfairly subsidizing their goods, and it includes a renegotiation of NAFTA. If we don’t get a better deal, we will walk away.
At the center of my plan is trade enforcement with China. This alone could return millions of jobs into our economy.
China is responsible for nearly half of our entire trade deficit. They break the rules in every way imaginable. China engages in illegal export subsidies, prohibited currency manipulation, and rampant theft of intellectual property. They also have no real environmental or labor protections, further undercutting American workers.
Just enforcing intellectual property rules alone could save millions of American jobs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, improved protection of America’s intellectual property in China would produce more than 2 million more jobs right here in the United States.
Add to that the saved jobs from cracking down on currency cheating and product dumping, and we will bring trillions of dollars in new wealth and wages back to the United States.
Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.
Also critical to our economic renewal will be energy reform
The Obama-Clinton Administration has blocked and destroyed millions of jobs through their anti-energy regulations, while raising the price of electricity for both families and businesses.
As a result of recent Obama EPA actions coal-fired power plants across Michigan have either shut down entirely or undergone expensive conversions. The Obama-Clinton war on coal has cost Michigan over 50,000 jobs. Hillary Clinton says her plan will “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.”
We will put our coal miners and steel workers back to work.
Clinton not only embraces President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions but wants to expand them, including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10 million Americans.
According to the Heritage Foundation, by 2030, the Obama-Clinton energy restrictions will eliminate another half a million manufacturing jobs, reduce economic output by $2.5 trillion dollars, and reduce incomes by $7,000 dollars per person.
A Trump Administration will end this war on the American worker, and unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, lifting the restrictions on all sources of American energy will:
Increase GDP by more than $100 billion dollars annually, add over 500,000 new jobs annually, and increase annual wages by more than $30 billion dollars over the next 7 years;
Increase federal, state, and local tax revenues by almost $6 trillion dollars over 4 decades;
Increase total economic activity by more than $20 trillion dollars over the next 40 years.
The reforms I have outlined today are only the beginning
When we reform our tax, trade, energy and regulatory policies, we will open a new chapter in American Prosperity.
We can use this new wealth to rebuild our military and our infrastructure.
As part of this new future, we will also be rolling out proposals to increase choice and reduce cost in childcare, offering much-needed relief to American families. I will unveil my plan on this in the coming weeks that I have been working on with my daughter Ivanka and an incredible team of experts.
Likewise, our education reforms will help parents send their kids to a school of their choice.
We will also give our police and law enforcement the funds and support they need to restore law and order to this country. Without security, there can be no prosperity. We must have law and order.
In the coming days, we will be rolling out plans on all of these items. One of my first acts as President will be to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare, saving another 2 million American jobs.
We will also rebuild our military, and get our allies to pay their fair share for the protection we provide – saving us countless more billions to invest in our own country.
We also have a plan, on our website, for a complete reform of the Veterans Health Administration. This is something so desperately needed to make sure our vets are fully supported and get the care they deserve.
Detroit – the Motor City – will come roaring back. We will offer a new future, not the same old failed policies of the past.
Our party has chosen to make new history by selecting a nominee from outside the rigged and corrupt system.
The other party has reached backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday – who offers only the rhetoric of yesterday, and the policies of yesterday.
There will be no change under Hillary Clinton – only four more years of Obama.
But we are going to look boldly into the future.
We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports and airports that our country deserves.
American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas.
American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring.
We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.
It will be American hands that rebuild this country, and it will be American energy - mined from American sources - that powers this country.
It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.
Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo.
Our country will reach amazing new heights.
All we have to do is stop relying on the tired voices of the past.
We can’t fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place.
We can’t solve our problems by relying on the politicians who created them.
Only by changing to new leadership, and new solutions, will we get new results.
We need to stop believing in politicians, and start believing in America.
Before everything great that has ever happened, the doubters have always said it couldn’t be done.
America is ready to prove the doubters wrong.
They want you to think small. I am asking you to think big.
We are ready to dream great things for our country once again.
We are ready to show the world that America is Back – Bigger, and Better and Stronger Than Ever Before.
Thank you, and God Bless You.
------------------ Ken Blackwell (@kenblackwell) is a former ambassador to the U.N., Ohio Secretary of State and mayor of Cincinnati. He is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a contributing author to the ARRA News Service. Tags:Donald Trump. An American First, Economic Plan, Detroit, Michigan, Fox Business, discussion panel, Ken BlackwellTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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Today we mix a political cartoon with an insightful letter to the editor published Sunday in the Little Rock Arkansas Democrat Gazette and Jonesboro Sun newspaper. While the first make the point with humor, the second is both enlightening and possibly fearful.
