Pushback on VP Kamala Harris’ Tax Proposal Plan Grows as Costs Are Counted

Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris’s tax proposal plan is getting significant pushback from Congress members and others as the costs of tax hikes on the American people across the political spectrum are being examined.

Upon a closer look at Harris’s tax proposals, an economist, a New York Times reporter, a small business owner advocate, and members of Congress all voiced their concerns over what the plan entails. Most of them note how the economy will be negatively impacted by her plan and the real-world implications for everyday Americans.

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Commentary: The ‘Great Opportunity Project’ Spreads Best State Economic Policies Nationwide

Next Monday is Tax Day, the last day for Americans to file their 2021 tax returns. This year’s Tax Day coincides with President Biden’s recent proposal to raise taxes on small businesses, corporations, and individuals by $2.5 trillion. His plan would partly reverse the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed at the end of 2017 that led to historic shared economic prosperity in 2018 and 2019.

While Biden is seeking to contract the size of the private economy through tax increases, numerous states are making positive reforms, including cutting taxes, to expand economic opportunity and well-being for their residents. Rather than fixating on Washington, policymakers can harness these best practices in the states and, eventually, adopt them at the federal level when the political climate allows. Call it the Great Opportunity Project.

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Commentary: Taking the Infrastructure Bill Hostage Didn’t Work

Nancy Pelosi, AOC's mother and her all together

Back in August, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait blessed the strategy of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to withhold their votes for the Senate’s bipartisan physical infrastructure plan until that bill was effectively linked to a bigger, broader, and surely partisan, measure investing in a range of items from climate protection to universal preschool. He argued that “ransoming the infrastructure bill” would turn the tables on the party’s moderates:

Historically, most partisan bills are shaped by the preferences of the members of Congress closest to the middle, and their colleagues on the political extreme simply have to go along with it. … This time, the left has real power. Progressives can credibly threaten to sink a priority that moderates care about more than they do.

Twice in the past two months, most recently last Thursday, the House progressives successfully executed this strategy, blocking attempts by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass the bipartisan infrastructure legislation before an agreement is reached on the larger “Build Back Better” bill.

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U.S. Consumer Spending Grew Slowly in September amid High COVID-19 Cases, Supply Chain Problems and Rising Inflation

U.S. consumer spending growth slowed in September, and income dropped due to high COVID-19 cases, supply shortages, rising inflation, and ending unemployment benefits.

Consumer spending increased 0.6% in September, down from a 1% jump in August, the Commerce Department announced Friday. Personal income fell 1% in September, driven by a 72% drop in unemployment insurance benefits that offset a 0.7% spike in wages and benefits, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Economists polled by Reuters projected a 0.5% in consumer spending. Delta variant cases peaked in the middle of September, and the continued supply chain backups have caused shortages and rising prices, making it harder for consumers to purchase their desired goods, the WSJ reported.

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Commentary: Tax All Foundations and Endowments Now

Yale University

If there were trillions of dollars socked away in convenient vehicles to avoid taxes and benefit the ultra-elite should we not tax them? Are they not fair game in a just system of taxation, where the little guy and the middle class have to pay up—or else? 

The largest endowments, mainly universities indoctrinating students in social justice, wokeism, and class warfare, pay absolutely no taxes. 

The big foundations, promoting radical left-wing activism, likewise pay no taxes. 

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Commentary: The Biden No-Go Zones

Joe Biden

In American journalism, there are supposed to be some clear, nonnegotiable third-rails. 

One is zero tolerance for overtly racist language and comportment among our movers and shakers. Reporters, for example, for four years damned Donald Trump for his neutralizing summation that there were both “fine people” and extremists mingled among the hordes of protestors during their occasionally violent encounters in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

It mattered little to the media that Trump added qualifiers of “many” and “both” sides of the protests: 

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides . . . And I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? . . . Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats—you had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.

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Commentary: Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan is Loaded with Corporate Welfare

President Biden has just unveiled a new $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” plan, but a shockingly large portion of this bill is actually unrelated to infrastructure.

The plan includes massive subsidies for corporations as well as state and local governments, and comes right after the administration’s proposed increase in the corporate tax rate, which would raise the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

There’s $300 billion for manufacturing, $100 billion for electric utilities, $100 billion for broadband, $174 billion for electric vehicles, and a whole lot more. A significant portion of this spending is directed at subsidizing big corporations.

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