Conrad Black defends Donald Trump against the hysterics, and tells you what he's for

Here:

"What Donald actually advocates is the deportation of 351,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes and now imprisoned; the end of illegal immigration by building an Israeli-like wall along the Mexican border; an (as yet unspecified) screening process to justify the deportation of some of the illegals and the normalization of the others; and although he advocates the suspension already mentioned of Muslim immigration (not the Christians who are almost half of the refugees), he at least acknowledges that the United States is partly responsible for the political chaos that generated this humanitarian tragedy in the first place. He wants only a small increase in defence spending, reallocated to more effective anti-terrorism; and universal health care through health savings accounts and by smashing the insurance cartel. He is for the gradual legalization of most drugs; is a militant anti-polluter, but correctly (on present evidence) regards climate change and cap-and-trade as hoaxes. He wants to leave education (and same-sex marriage) to the states and to give them the money now wasted in the federal Department of Education. He would ban only late-term abortions, and not when there were overriding circumstances. He would reform the corrupt shambles of campaign financing by abolishing super-PACs and soft money, and lift limits on individual contributions to political candidates. He is a moderate protectionist opposite cheap labour countries, and advocates marginal income tax reductions and the reconstitution of the bloated national debt as a sinking fund to be gradually reduced by spending restraint, implicitly involving an imprecise level of entitlement-reform. Trump opposes foreign intervention in areas where the U.S. has no natural interest, including Ukraine and Syria, but wants a redefinition of the national security interest of the country, and wants to protect that interest, unlike Obama, but not over-extend it, unlike George W. Bush. This is not a radical program."

Tax package just passed will increase deficits by $68 billion annually

Reported here:

"The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that the tax bill will cost $622 billion over 10 years. Tax provisions in the omnibus will cost an additional $58 billion over 10 years, JCT said."

Rand Paul emphasizes debt is our biggest threat in closing remarks in tonight's CNN debate

He says it over and over again to no effect, but he is surely right.

The country wasn't built and didn't become great on debt, it was built on Protestant thrift.

WaPo Gen Xer drinks climate Kool-Aid, attacks Baby Boomers for causing global warming and running up the $18 trillion debt

spotted headed to Mt. Rushmore

Here:

"Boomers soaked up a lot of economic opportunity without bothering to preserve much for the generations to come. They burned a lot of cheap fossil fuels, filled the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases, and will probably never pay the costs of averting catastrophic climate change or helping their grandchildren adapt to a warmer world. They took control of Washington at the turn of the millennium, and they used it to rack up a lot of federal debt, even before the Great Recession hit."

Substitute "liberals" everytime you see "boomers" in the essay and it makes a lot more sense than attacking your parents per se. Instead the author prefers to commit Maoism in "Baby boomers are what’s wrong with America’s economy". 

Meanwhile, exporting good jobs and importing cheap labor were artifacts of the 1960s revolution, advanced by people who were fellow travelers under FDR. The height of the baby boom generation was what, aged 10 in 1967? 

In the end, Jim Tankersley can't add and subtract, but what his father gave him for Christmas in 2012 for his patricidal thesis says it all:

"After I first outlined this argument to my father in 2012, he gifted me an actual lump of coal for Christmas."

Well done, Dad! The earth remains full of coal, especially American earth, ensuring energy independence as far as the eye can see, as well as oil and natural gas and . . . thorium! If only we'll use it. 

It makes more sense to rely on these going forward because they remain so plentiful, employing technologies to make them harmless to human health, invented by smart people from every generation.

But if a Maunder Minimum ensues in 2030, we might not care as much about the health as the warmth.

The total public debt is now up $457 billion in just four days

Debt ceiling follies: The total public debt hit $18.152 trillion in mid March, but somehow the Treasury Dept. kept paying the bills for eight months without defaulting

March 2015

November 2015

The New York Times criticizes Republican tax plans, pretending revenues are needed to cover spending

Here:

"All of these candidates deny fiscal reality. In the next 10 years, revenues will need to increase by 40 percent simply to keep federal spending even, per capita, with inflation and population growth. Additional revenues will be needed to pay for health care for the elderly, transportation systems and other obligations, as well as for newer challenges, including climate change. And interest on the national debt will surely rise because interest rates have nowhere to go but up."

Who is the Times trying to kid?

Revenues have never been needed to cover expenditures and they know it, and rarely have covered expenditures. Expenditures will continue to grow whether the Times or the Republicans like it or not. They are baked into the cake of the legislation that drives them. The only way to fix that is to rescind the legislation or modify it, with its built-in cost of living increases and added population coverage assumptions.

This country has run minor annual surpluses in just twelve years since 1939, doing nothing but slowing down our present arrival at $18.2 trillion in debt.

Spare us the histrionics.

The heavy hitters when it comes to spending are:

• HHS ($1 trillion, 91% of which is Medicare and Medicaid)
• Social Security ($.96 trillion)
• Defense ($.59 trillion, protecting the world without reimbursement)
• Treasury Dept. ($.57 trillion, $.4 trillion of which is interest on the debt overspending)
• Veterans ($.16 trillion, which does such a good job veterans die waiting for appointments)
• Agriculture ($.14 trillion, over half of which is the food stamp program).

Together those six account for 88% of federal spending, and the Times dares the Republicans even to think about reforming Social Security and Medicare, calling instead for higher taxes.

Meanwhile there's plenty else to cut just by axing all the other departments which account for the remaining $.48 trillion making up the 2015 fiscal outlay total of $3.9 trillion.

Let's start with the Education Dept., $76 billion, then International Assistance Programs, $22 billion.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching! You're 20% of the way there, just like that.

See how easy that was?

US Senate passes House sequester buster, budget and debt ceiling package this morning at 3:00 AM

They do nothing most "weeks", which run from Tuesday to Thursday, and then ram utter crap through in hours. Bunch of goose poopers.

From the story here:

"The bill cleared on a 64-35 vote, with just 18 Republicans joining all Democrats in backing the bill. ... The debt deal had already cleared the House on Wednesday, as part of a rush by Republican leaders to get it done as quickly as possible, leaving little time for scrutiny. The 144-page deal was written late Monday, and the final Senate vote came at 3 a.m. Friday, meaning it was sped through in less than 100 hours."

Just 79 Republicans voted for new budget, blowing sequestration caps, lifting the debt ceiling to March 2017, and attempting to decide all spending for two years, a complete rout of the conservatives

The Roll Call vote is here, taken at 5:21 PM yesterday, before today's activities electing Ryan.

Boehner voted for it after engineering it. So did Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, Steve Scalise, Peter King, and Kevin Brady among others.

I note Peter Roskam voted No.

The story is discussed here.

A complete travesty abdicating spending responsibility just like Cromnibus, but worse. 

The unending fascination of Sarah Palin for little Democrat minds

Dunderhead Democrat Party hack William Daley is stuck on stupid.

Here he is in full flutter in WaPo, like a moth drawn to a lightbulb, typing "The GOP’s dysfunction all started with Sarah Palin". It proves nothing but that it takes a dunderhead to know a dunderhead. The GOP has failed, he says, to distance itself from this simpleton who flunked Newspapers 101, and her ilk. Reading it one wonders when Democrats will distance themselves from ignoramuses like Bill Daley, but then you realize they're all ignoramuses. Where would they go?

Certainly not Chicago.  

Bill Daley, it must remembered, comes from the same Democrat family which presided over the decades long ruination of the finances of that once great city, and with it of the state. The place is now so bankrupt it can't even pay lottery winners. Those who can flee the state, do. Illinois ranks first in America for out-migration in 2014. These nincompoop Daleys are the same people who seriously thought they could afford to host the Summer Olympics next year, forgetting how all those $100,000+ pensions for unionized teachers can really add up. As it is Chicago's bonds have this year achieved junk status, despite the highest sales taxes in the nation and the highest property taxes of any state, save New Jersey. The place is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because of perennially spendthrift Democrats.

In charge of the Department of Commerce under Bill Clinton, Bill Daley long ago proved his own incompetence. The man couldn't even manage to find a staffer at the Bureau of Economic Analysis to give him the correct figure for year 1900 gross domestic product in a 1999 speech commemorating the invention of the metric under FDR. Daley was only off by an order of magnitude and fifty years at the time, saying the year 1900 $20 billion economy was actually $300 billion in size, a level which it did not reach . . . until 1950! Bill Daley only ran the place. You'd think he could at least get its monthly claim to headline fame right.

But Democrats have good reason to forget the size of things, especially GDP. After all under them it took eleven long years to restore the 1929 $100 billion economy back to its size, in 1940. And presently the chief Democrat holding a veto pen in one hand and a copy of Rules for Radicals in the other is on schedule to produce the very worst GDP record since that Great Depression.

At least Sarah Palin has learned a few things along the way since her quixotic candidacy, for example rejecting the appropriateness of bailouts and crony capitalism. Democrats on the other hand have learned nothing, and only keep repeating the mistakes of the past.

Caroline Baum should be Treasury Secretary: She knows there's no reason even to think defaulting on the debt is possible

. . . unlike the rogues running the place currently, who are playing chicken with the full faith and credit of the US government.

Once again Caroline Baum cuts through the silliness and explains that there's plenty of revenue to pay what must be paid, here:

'The U.S. Treasury can’t cover all its monthly payments with incoming monthly revenue. But it can avoid default . . .. In any given month, the tax revenue flowing into the Treasury far exceeds interest payments — by a lot. Last month, for example, the Treasury took in $365 billion in tax receipts and made $21 billion in interest payments. For fiscal 2015, which ended Sept. 30, those figures are $3.2 trillion in tax receipts versus $402 billion in net interest. The U.S. government’s ability to service its debt — the principal can be rolled over — should not be an issue. But Treasury has made it one, claiming in 2011 and 2013 that it lacks the authority to prioritize debt payments, something households do all the time. ... [I]n written communications with the House Financial Services Committee in May 2014, the Treasury admitted that it would be “technologically capable” to prioritize debt payments.'

The Tax Foundation says Trump tax plan will blow up the deficit, reducing revenues to 12% of GDP

From Alan Cole, here:

"Looking at these rates, collectively, note that Mr. Trump is frequently cutting rates in half, and sometimes cutting them by even more than that. Taken together, these rate reductions are enough—by my estimates—to reduce tax collections from about 18 percent of GDP to about 12 percent. Under rates as low as these, economic growth—moderate or otherwise—cannot restore federal revenues to current-law levels.

"Tax cuts can do a great deal of good; each of the provisions I outlined above could help a lot of people lead better lives. However, the reductions in federal revenue need to be acknowledged, and likely mitigated through substantial cuts in spending, in order to make this plan feasible."

Larry Kudlow really likes the Donald Trump 15% corporate tax plan, saying he never thought he'd see it

Here:

'Kudlow, who hosts his own syndicated radio show, has long championed a 15 percent corporate tax rate, but "I never thought I'd see a candidate do it. "It'll give us a gigantic advantage. Bring capital and businesses to the U.S., make us the most hospitable place to invest — and that's what Donald Trump has done."'

CBS News claims Trump keeps the EITC

Here.

For the current 5-year period 2012-2016 the Joint Committee on Taxation has previously estimated the annual cost of the Earned Income Tax Credit to be about $64 billion.

That's actually less costly than the food stamp program was in 2014: $74.2 billion.

Keeping the EITC means keeping what amounts to a welfare program, but one which rewards only those who work. The transfer payments to such individuals basically rebate the Social Security taxes they pay even though they generally make too little to pay much in the way of federal income taxes, if they pay any at all.

Trump's claim that his plan will be revenue neutral is already taking incoming because of things like this.

Of course we don't know what spending Trump plans to cut. He might go really big and call for shuttering some cabinet level departments entirely. The Department of Education, for example, costs $77.4 billion.

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

Trump's tax plan released to the public today is ambitious and pro-growth

The Trump tax plan can be reviewed here.

Notable features include exemption from federal income taxation entirely for up to about 73 million households who make up to either $25,000 individually or $50,000 jointly.

This is in the spirit of the original income tax law, which for its first few years, that is until the demands of World War I and the bureaucratic state came into play, taxed the incomes of no one except the very wealthiest.

It is unclear whether the plan retains the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, two programs which effectively transfer welfare to lower income families who pay no income tax anyway and who receive through these two vehicles what is effectively a rebate of Social Security taxes they pay as employees, eliminating its regressivity.

For the rest there are just three tax brackets of 10%, 20% and 25%, kicking in at joint incomes up to $100K, up to $300K and beyond $300K. Presumably, but not stated, short term capital gains are taxed at these ordinary rates. Long term capital gains tax rates are 0% up to $100K of joint income, then 15% and 20% up to $300K and beyond $300K of joint income.

Business taxes are slashed to 15% no matter the size, which is YUGE for American competitiveness.

The AMT is eliminated entirely, along with the marriage penalty and . . . the death tax. It's going to be unbelievable!

Deductions are capped for the richest Americans, but deductions for charity and mortgage interest are retained.

We'll see what the dynamic scorers will have to say about it for revenues, as time goes by.

Conservatives give thanks for the achievements of John Boehner, libertarians, the ignorant and the stupid just snarl

• Saved taxpayers $762 billion over ten years by making the Bush tax rates permanent for 98% of all filers beginning at the dawn of 2013
• Saved taxpayers $1.8 trillion over ten years by finally fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax for all victims of bracket-creep
• Saved taxpayers $339 billion over ten years by maintaining the 15% capital gains tax rate for incomes below $450,000
• Saved families $354 billion over ten years by maintaining the child tax credit
• Cut average annual federal deficits of $1.3 trillion 2009-2012 by 57%, to $556 billion on average 2013-2016 by ending the emergency Social Security Tax reductions and instituting the sequester spending cuts
• The S&P 500 immediately responded with total returns in 2013 of 32.39%, the fifth best year since 1970  
• The moribund US Dollar rose 19%, from below 80 to 95 today as overall fiscal rectitude improved
• Causing oil prices to plummet from an average of $95/barrel 2011-2014 to $52/barrel on average in 2015 
• Causing average US gasoline prices to fall from $3.34/gallon one year ago to $2.28/gallon today
• Helping to keep the all-items consumer price index year-over-year nearly flat, rising just 0.2%

Politico lies about what John Boehner and Barack Obama accomplished together

Here:

"But [Boehner's] tenure will also be remembered for his complicated relationship with President Barack Obama. He and Obama tried — but repeatedly failed — to cut a deal on a sweeping fiscal agreement."

Boehner got the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and under a Democrat president no less, something Bush couldn't do while he himself was president. If I were Politico I wouldn't mention it, either.

Boehner also got the fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax made permanent, something which eluded Republicans for decades, again under a Democrat president.

Passed at the very opening to 2013, the stock market boomed as a result, tax revenues recovered and the dollar soared from 80 to 95ish today, helping to tank oil prices, for which each and every American should be grateful everytime he fills the gas tank.

"Repeatedly failed"?

Utter nonsense.

Rush Limbaugh can't remember shit about taxes under Reagan: Why do we listen to this guy?

Here yesterday, wrong on both years, and forgetting that G. H. W. Bush raised taxes by adding a 31% bracket in 1991, getting himself defeated by Clinton in 1992:

"What did Ronald Reagan do? When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 the top marginal tax rate was 90%. And the amount of money raised by the tax code was about $500 billion back then. When Reagan left office in 1989, there were three tax rates, essentially two, but there was a 31% bubble in there. But the top 90%, that marginal rate of 90% had been dropped to 28%. And the amount of money generated by the tax code had doubled, almost a billion dollars, by reducing tax rates."

Revenues in 1981 were $599.3 billion nominal, in 1989 $991.1 billion, up 65%, not 100%. Revenues did not double until 1993-1994, after Bush and then Clinton raised marginal rates as high as 39.6%. Revenues did not double again until 2006. The record shows that whether marginal rates were higher or lower, revenues took twelve to thirteen years to double.

What Rush Limbaugh means by "doubled, almost a billion dollars" is anybody's guess. Only his pharmacist knows for sure.

The facts are that Ronald Reagan persuaded Democrats to bring the top marginal rate down from 70% in 1981 to 50% 1982-1986. After the tax reform of 1986 the top marginal rate dropped to 38.5% in 1987. For three years 1988 through 1990 there were just two marginal rates: 15% and 28%. That was the brief golden age of taxation under Reagan, which his successor totally screwed up.

Reagan had NOTHING to do with the introduction of a 31% bracket. That was all on George Herbert Walker Bush, for which the Democrats recently gave him the Profiles in Courage Award.

Jeb Bush the snake: omitted plan to cap itemized deductions in Wall Street Journal tax op-ed

Reported here:

"But the full plan includes one very significant change not mentioned in the Wall Street Journal op-ed where Bush announced his plan—one that would likely raise more than a trillion dollars in revenue over a decade, and secretly accomplish a policy goal sought by everyone from President Obama to Paul Ryan. The change: Bush wants to limit itemized deductions sharply, capping them at 2 percent of aggregate gross income, and eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes entirely. (The exception would be the deduction for charitable giving, which is politically toxic to attack, and would still be unlimited.) ...

"But it’s the politics of the cap that make it really interesting. If you look at who would actually be affected, it appears that the cap is a very benign-sounding way to do something politically difficult: limit the mortgage-interest deduction. Of the $54 billion a year the cap would raise according to the Feldstein estimate, $46 billion comes out of the mortgage interest deduction."