Tag: taxes

‘Emergency’ Spending Is Out of Control

Emergencies are, by definition, unexpected and urgent situations requiring immediate action—except in Congress, where the term is increasingly used to justify spending decisions that should be part of the normal budget process.

Congress has authorized more than $12 trillion in emergency spending over the past three decades, according to a report released in January by the Cato Institute. About half of that total was spent in direct response to the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, but much of the other half was used for purposes that strain the definition of emergency.

Keep reading

Illinois Moves To Cut Thousands Of Non-Citizens From Taxpayer-Subsidized Health Care

Illinois officials are moving to stop providing taxpayer-subsidized health care to thousands of non-citizens, including many illegal immigrants, in a bid to rein in soaring costs.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services said in a recent statement it will start annually verifying the eligibility for two programs—Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA) and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS)—after enrollment was paused due to budget concerns.

“This process will mirror the redetermination process used in the traditional Medicaid program to ensure those enrolled remain eligible,” the agency said.

The plans include closing cases for people who are enrolled who make over a certain amount or who otherwise are no longer eligible for the program in which they’re enrolled. Officials also plan on removing legal permanent residents who qualify for Medicaid, which is a federal program.

“The redetermination process ensures that those who are enrolled remain eligible for coverage,” Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services spokesperson Jamie Munks told WBEZ. “If an individual loses coverage through the redetermination process, it is because they no longer meet eligibility requirements, or they are required to respond or submit additional information to prove their continued eligibility, but they do not do so.”

The processes are estimated to reduce the number of enrollees in the state programs by about 6,000 people, state Sen. Don DeWitte, a Republican, told the Center Square after hearing from state health officials. Those removals would result in savings of $14 million.

HBIS, launched in 2020, provides taxpayer-funded health care for seniors who would receive Medicaid coverage but can’t get it due to their immigration status. HBIA, introduced in 2022, provides the same state benefits for people aged 42 to 64. Illegal immigrants are among the approximately 63,000 covered.

“Everyone, regardless of documentation status, deserves access to holistic healthcare coverage,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in one of his statements in support of the programs.

Many Republicans have opposed the programs, noting that some citizens still lack health care.

The costs of the programs have increasingly sparked concern among lawmakers of both parties.

Keep reading

DARPA picks Northrop Grumman to develop ‘lunar raiload’ concept

Railroads could open the moon to serious and sustained economic development, as they did in the American West in the late 19th century.

That’s apparently the hope of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is supporting the development of a “lunar railroad” concept proposed by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman.

“The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface, contributing to a space economy for the United States and international partners,” Northrop Grumman representatives wrote in a press statement on Tuesday (March 19).

Keep reading

Legalizing Marijuana For Adults Does Not Drive Increases In Youth Use, New Federally Funded Study Finds

New federally funded research into the impacts of marijuana legalization on youth use found no association between legal adult-use cannabis sales and the prevalence of consumption among middle-school students.

To test whether legal sales led to an uptick in youth use, authors compared middle-school use rates in Nevada and New Mexico, looking at 2017 and 2019 data from two state-run surveys. At the time, adult-use marijuana sales were legal in Nevada, while New Mexico allowed only medical marijuana.

In both states, researchers found increases in the proportions of students that had ever consumed cannabis as well as those who had consumed within the past 30 days.

In Nevada, the share of middle-school students who said they’d ever consumed cannabis rose during the study period, from 9.7 percent in 2017 to 13.3 percent in 2019. Past 30 day (P30D) use also rose, from 6.3 percent to 8.9 percent.

New Mexico, where recreational marijuana remained illegal, saw lifetime use rise from 14.1 percent to 17.4 percent over the same period. Past 30 day use rose from 8.9 percent to 10.5 percent.

Keep reading

President Joe Biden’s Magical Thinking On Taxes

I am often asked whether President Joe Biden is intentionally trying to dismantle the American economy with his imbecile energy, climate change, crime, border, inflation and debt policies. But I’ve always believed that these policies are driven by a badly mistaken ideology — not malice.

Then I watched Biden’s State of the Union speech when Biden thundered that “I’m going to make corporations pay their fair share,” The democrats in Congress leapt to their feet in applause.

When I read through the details of Biden’s new multi-trillion tax plan, it’s hard to come up with any plausible explanation other than that he’s trying to make American industry less competitive. Biden’s tax scheme would hobble U.S. businesses with nearly the highest corporate tax rate in the world — and higher than our primary competitors.

They’re the big winner here if God forbid these policies were adopted? Even China and Russia — one communist and one autocratic nation — would have LOWER tax rates on their businesses than we would on ours.

This will lead to an outmigration of capital from the U.S. to our rivals as sure as river water flows downstream.

One of my first meetings with Donald Trump was in early 2020 when I showed him a chart that indicated the U.S. had the highest tax rate of all our competitors. When Trump saw the chart, he instantly remarked: “This is like a head start program for all the countries we compete with.”

His goal was to empower American businesses with the lowest rate in the world. We didn’t get the rate down to 15%, but we did lower it to 21%.

This helped attract more than $1 trillion back into the United States from all corners of the globe — from Switzerland to Bermuda, to Euroland. It helped raise incomes for working class Americans despite being disparaged as a “tax cut for the rich.” As Trump once put it, because of the lower tax rates and other pro-growth reforms, for the first time in decades factories moved from Mexico to Maryland rather than the other way around.

Keep reading

California Trans Study Finds Remarkable Increase In Suicides Post-Operation – Matches Sweden And U.S. Is Expanding Trans Operations To Illegals In America

Everyone paying attention to how parents are being slammed with the fearful and false narrative that if they do not affirm their gender-confused child choices that their child may commit suicide if the parents do not agree need to comprehend that narrative is a lie.  

A study using California government data found suicide rates double after surgery for transgender females who receive male-to-female gender change surgeries. 

A 2020 analysis of the entire Swedish population found there is “no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”

The California study, published in the Journal of Urology, studied 859 Californians who underwent a vaginoplasty (male-to-female gender surgery), and 357 who underwent phalloplasty (female-to-male surgery) for two years before and after their surgeries. 

“All persons undergoing feminizing (vaginoplasty) and masculinizing (metoidioplasty/ phalloplasty) genital gender affirming surgery were identified in California from 2012-2018 from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development datasets using appropriate ICD-9/10 codes,” reads the California study abstract. 

Of those who underwent gender affirmation surgery, a similar proportion of vaginoplasty and phalloplasty recipients experienced at least one psychiatric encounter, coming in at 22.2% and 20.7% respectively. 

Suicide rates were higher among vaginoplasty than phalloplasty patients after their surgeries; vaginoplasty suicide rates more than doubled from 1.5% to 3.3%, whereas phalloplasty suicide rates remained stable at 0.8% before and after surgery.

“Although both the phalloplasty and vaginoplasty patients have similar overall rates of psychiatric encounters, suicide attempts are more common in the latter. In fact, our observed rate of suicide attempts in the phalloplasty group is actually similar to the general population, while the vaginoplasty group’s rate is more than double that of the general population,” reads the study. “Patients undergoing [gender affirmation surgery] with a history of prior psychiatric emergencies or feminizing transition are at higher risk and should be counseled appropriately.”

Medi-Cal, the state’s taxpayer-supported public health system, includes hormonal and surgical gender transitions for beneficiaries, which expanded on January 1 to include illegal immigrants. 

Keep reading

US gives Haiti millions more tax dollars after armed gangs take over, billions in aid disappears

Armed gangs have overrun most of the capital of Port-au-Prince and political instability has plateaued, but the American taxpayer dollars keep flowing with no oversight though billions in assistance have vanished since an earthquake struck Haiti nearly a decade and a half ago.

This week Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. is sending another $33 million in humanitarian assistance to the Caribbean nation to provide in-kind food assistance, nutrition support, essential health services, improved access to clean water, and prevention and response to gender-based violence, among other critical humanitarian activities.

“Since February 29, organized criminal groups have escalated violence, exacerbating the humanitarian situation for Haitians,” says the government press release announcing the recent allocation. “Displaced people are struggling to access food, health care, water, hygiene facilities, and psychological support, further compounding their already dire needs.”

The document reveals that the U.S. remains the single largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Haiti, providing tens of millions of dollars in assistance in the last year alone. “The United States will continue to stand with Haitians during this challenging time, working to save lives and alleviate suffering caused by the humanitarian crisis,” the government writes.

Since the 2010 earthquake Uncle Sam alone has provided Haiti with over $5.6 billion to help the nation bounce back but 14 years later the situation is more dire for the island’s 12 million residents and no one really knows what happened to the money.

Keep reading

After a Century, the Federal Tea Board Is Finally Dead

“I see no reason,” the late Sen. Harry Reid (D–Nev.) once declared on the Senate floor, “why those in this country who enjoy drinking tea need someone else to tell them what tastes good.”

Yet for nearly 100 years that is exactly what the government did, thanks to one of the strangest agencies ever to be a part of the federal bureaucracy.

In addition to the usual beverage regulations aimed at ensuring proper storage and safe handling, imported tea was required for decades to pass a literal taste test before it could be sold in the United States. The task fell to a group of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appointees, who would gather annually in a converted Navy warehouse in Brooklyn to smell, slosh, sip, and spit the various oolongs, greens, and Earl Greys that tea merchants sought to sell to Americans.

This was the federal Board of Tea Experts.

The board’s members would taste dozens of teas over the course of several days. The process was more an art than a science. According to a 1989 Washington Post profile, there was no uniform method for tasting. Some board members worked in silence while others slurped their tea or gargled it loudly. Some preferred to taste the tea hot; others let it cool first. The warehouse where they gathered was outfitted with pictures of old-timey sailing ships, a kitchen sink, several kettles for boiling water, boxes upon boxes of tea, and large windows. The board’s then-leader Robert H. Dick told the Post thatto properly inspect the tea, “I have to have a north light.”

When Reid voiced his objection to the tea board in 1995, the agency had already survived two decades’ worth of efforts to shut it down. Congress finally ended the board’s oversight of tea imports a year later, but the federal Board of Tea Experts technically still existed for another 27 years. It was officially terminated on September 19, 2023.

The bizarre history and surprising longevity of the federal tea-tasting board is something of a mixed bag for anyone who wants to see more federal programs iced for good.

On one hand: The board was eventually shut down.

On the other: If it takes nearly 50 years to get rid of something as useless and insignificant as the Board of Tea Experts, what hope can there possibly be to do away with larger governmental entities backed by more powerful special interests? Hardly an election season goes by without some (usually Republican) presidential hopefuls promising to abolish this department or that agency—the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency are perennial favorites. Are those efforts doomed before they begin? Will those promises always be empty?

Keep reading

The Government Doesn’t Want You To See the Unused Space Force Logos

As Sunshine Week 2024 draws to a close, the Air Force has marked the occasion by hiding the draft designs of logos and uniforms for the Space Force.

Reason filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Air Force in January 2020 for drafts or alternate designs for the logo of the nascent Space Force, one of the Trump administration’s more expensive and whimsical farces.

A quick four years later, the Air Force released 122 pages of communications between the public servants who designed the uniforms, logo, and seal for Star Fleet—excuse me, Space Force.

Unfortunately for everyone who was looking forward to seeing Project Runway: Department of Defense Edition, the Air Force redacted all images of the draft versions, citing Exemption (b)(5) of the FOIA.

Exemption (b)(5) is also known as the “deliberative process” exemption. It protects discussions between bureaucrats about policy decisions, under the reasoning that bureaucrats wouldn’t be as frank if everything they said got dragged into the public eye (by annoying reporters like myself). 

Congress amended the FOIA in 2016 to state that agencies should operate with a “presumption of openness” and only withhold documents when there is a “foreseeable harm,” not out of fear of embarrassment. Despite that, federal agencies still regularly abuse exemptions, especially (b)(5). In this case, the Air Force seems to be claiming that its staff would be afraid to design uniforms if their mock-ups were public. Sorry, but fashion’s a tough business.

All is not lost, though. Some tidbits slipped by the censors.

Keep reading

GAO: ‘Unclear’ If Pentagon Tracking Reports Of Misused Aid In Ukraine

While the Pentagon has assured Congress that no U.S. military equipment sent to Ukraine has been diverted, stolen, or otherwise misappropriated, a new report from the Government Accountability Office could not determine if the Department of Defense was tracking allegations of misuse two years into the conflict.

“If you never look, you will never find it,” a source familiar with how the report was compiled said of the worst-case possibility that aid was being misappropriated.

The report comes as President Biden struggles to keep the supply lines open to Ukraine. Although a majority of Congress supports sending further aid to help hold back the Russian onslaught, and the Senate passed a bipartisan aid package late last month, House Republicans have yet to approve the latest round of now-stalled military assistance.

The United States remains the leading supplier of munitions and other aid to Ukraine, providing more than $42 billion in assistance since Russia’s invasion. Much of it has come through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to transfer equipment from American stores directly to allies. The annual amount was limited by law to $100 million a year until Congress lifted the cap to $14.5 billion.

Keep reading