The Commerce Clause of the Constitution has been used as a garbage can of left-wing jurisprudence to grant the federal government infinite power over the the citizenry for years. Ironically, the original intent of the Commerce Clause was to serve as a check on state power grabs across state lines, not as a new power for the Feds to wield over the people. Here’s what | Read More »
Well, Obama is approaching another milestone. In addition to breaching the $16 trillion debt mark, Obama will earn another gold medal in the Greek Olympics for fiscal insanity. According to CBO, we will definitely incur another $1 trillion debt this year, ensuring that Obama will become not only the only president to rack up a trillion dollar debt, but the only one to ever do | Read More »
Last week, with the help of Senator Orrin Hatch, the Senate Finance Committee voted to extend dozens of special interest tax preferences for green energy – preferences that are nothing more than subsidies and market distorters. Included in the $205 billion package is the Production Tax Credit, which subsidizes up to 80% of wind energy production. Score one for Big Wind! Other special interest handouts | Read More »
Whew! It’s good the Utah primary is over. Now Senator Hatch can relapse into his natural modus operandi. As we’ve noted before, at the end of every calendar year, Congress passes a ‘tax extenders’ bill to temporarily reauthorize specific tax breaks that have not been permanently written into law. Some of these extenders include universal tax cuts such as, the AMT patch, the R&D business | Read More »
Mitt Romney actually stood for bold colors yesterday. For conservatives, it should be the biggest story of the week. Conservatives are rightfully focused on the impending tax cliff that is facing American taxpayers at the end of the year. But we must not forget the subsidy cliff either. Dozens of special interest tax preferences, known as tax extenders, are slated to expire at the end | Read More »
In recent weeks, we’ve been subjected to mellifluous pandering to our nation’s farmers by liberals in both parties. They admonish us about the need to provide farmers with a “safety net” and to protect them from catastrophic events. To that end, they are pushing a massive $1 trillion Ag subsidy, which happens to contain over $750 billion in food stamp spending. Aside for the fact | Read More »
While Obama is prosecuting a flaccid war overseas and apologizing for our troops when they defend against Taliban attacks, he is fighting a no-holds-barred class war at home. Once again, Obama has announced that he will orchestrate the largest tax hike in American history on those earning more than $200,000. After all, taxing the rich is a great way to raise revenue; it worked so | Read More »
Over the past few months, there has been a daily trickle of establishment Republicans coming out before the media in hostage style confession statements to declare that they would accept tax increases as part of a “grand bargain” to cut the deficit. The latest member was Lindsey Graham, who stated his newfound opposition to the taxpayer pledge of Americans for Tax Reform, which he considered | Read More »
Barack Obama and the Democrats have promised to make this election a turning point in the fight to make the rich “pay their fair share” of taxes. They are using biblical innuendo to suggest that it is immoral for the top 1% of earners (who happen to make 17% of nation AGI) to only pay 36.7% of the federal income taxes. This is their hill | Read More »
Much ink has been poured over the past 24 hours regarding Jeb Bush’s controversial remarks about the state of the Republican Party. In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg News, Bush said the following: “Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, similar to my dad, they would have a hard time if you define the Republican | Read More »
Among the many Republican capitulations we have witnessed over the past year, one of the most egregious is their willingness to support the Senate highway bill. We’ve chronicled the problems with the highway bill extensively in these pages over the past few months. Aside for the policy issues, the cost of the bill is most problematic because it will engender future bailouts. The $109 billion | Read More »
There’s an enduring rule in all aspects of life that is very applicable to conservatives in politics. Whenever you achieve a rare, hard-fought victory, you do everything possible to ensure that the victory stays intact. The House-adopted earmark ban is one of our biggest achievements over the past decade. As such, we must not reinstate the practice of passing Miscellaneous Tariff Bills (MTBs), which are | Read More »
It’s another week in Washington, and another story is out containing a plethora of quotes from Republicans who are willing to “put revenues on the table.” Here are some quotes from today’s article in Politico: “Nobody wants to raise taxes, but the question is can you lower tax rates, lower loopholes and deductions and apply that to debt reduction? I think the answer is yes,” | Read More »
For those in the media who suffer mental gyrations over the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, here is a story that exemplifies the obstacle to working together. We all know that there are sharp disagreements over tax policy and immigration policy, but we can all agree that illegal aliens should not receive $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits. Can we? Last July, the Treasury Inspector | Read More »
The liberal cycle of statism, at its core, originates from a government-induced problem. When nobody is paying attention to an issue, liberals swoop in and impose a pernicious regulation or mandate on a private industry. That regulation lays dormant for a number of years like a ticking time bomb. Then, many years later, it blows up the industry. Liberals summarily swoop in to accuse private | Read More »
Well, that didn’t take long. Just one week into the conference committee on the highway bill, Republicans are showing signs of caving on their insistence that the Keystone pipeline be approved as part of the deal. Throughout the past few months, we have been chronicling how Republicans have been apathetic to the underlying vices of the highway bill (S. 1813). They basically told the Democrats | Read More »
Recently, some of my friends have expressed shock and dismay over the Chamber of Commerce’s endorsements of big-government establishment Republicans like Dick Lugar and Jon Bruning. After all, they suggest, isn’t the Chamber a bastion of free-market, pro-growth policies? The answer is really simple. It is no enigma. The Chamber of Commerce is not conservative, pro-free-market, or even necessarily pro-growth. They support the special interests | Read More »
As we’ve noted throughout the past year’s imbroglio over transportation spending, it is clear that complete federal control over transportation spending in a post-interstate highway era (post 1992) is inefficient, costly, anti-federalist, and precludes state and private innovations. Yet, Congress continues to buckle down on a policy that has failed in recent years, exposing taxpayers to future bailouts and tax increases. Worst of all, it | Read More »
Over the past few weeks, Obama has exhibited the intensity of a Navy SEAL in his execution of class warfare. He is trying to convince everyone that those who earn 17% of Adjusted Gross Income, yet pay 36.7% of federal income taxes don’t pay anything, while those who pay little or no taxes shoulder the entire tax burden. Obama will continue to toss out misinformation | Read More »
Last year, we were proud to be one of the first websites to publicly promote the Republican Study Committee’s Cut, Cap and Balance (CCB) plan. What started out as an idea hatched by a few principled conservatives grew into a unifying rallying cry for the entire conservative movement. Sadly, GOP leadership jettisoned the universally-heralded CCB plan in favor of the Budget [Out of] Control Act, | Read More »
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