Tag: taxes

Biden To Ask for $813 Billion Military Budget for 2023

President Biden plans to ask for $813.3 billion for military spending for the 2023 fiscal year, anonymous US officials told Bloomberg.

Of that number, $773 billion would go to the Pentagon, and the rest will be for other government agencies’ military spending, including the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program.

Biden’s request represents a $31 billion increase from the $782 billion for military spending that was included in the massive $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill he signed earlier this month. Also packed into the omnibus bill was an additional $6.5 billion for the Pentagon to pay for troops deployments in Eastern Europe and restock weapons being sent to Ukraine.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there are growing calls in Congress from both Republicans and Democrats for more military spending. The Pentagon is in a position where it can get just about anything it requests.

Included in Biden’s request for the 2023 budget is $130.1 billion for research and development of advanced weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence. The Pentagon views such spending as vital to its focus on countering Russia and China.

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Hunter Biden Bio Firm Partnered With Ukrainian Researchers ‘Isolating Deadly Pathogens’ Using Funds From Obama’s Defense Department.

An investment firm directed by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was a leading financial backer of a pandemic tracking and response firm that collaborated on identifying and isolating deadly pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories, receiving funds from the Obama administration’s Department of Defense in the process, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) – a subsidiary of the Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz-founded Rosemont Capital – counted both Biden and Heinz as managing directors. Heinz is the stepson of former U.S. Secretary of State and current Climate czar John Kerry.

Amongst the companies listed on archived versions of the RSTP’s portfolio is Metabiota – an ostensibly San Francisco-based company that purports to detect, track, and analyze emerging infectious diseases.

Financial reports reveal that RSTP led the company’s first round of funding in 2015, which amounted to $30 million. Former managing director and co-founder of RSTP Neil Callahan – a name that also appears many times on Hunter Biden’s hard drive – sits on Metabiota’s Board of Advisors alongside former Clinton official Rob Walker who discussed, in another unearthed Hunter Biden hard drive e-mail, reaching out to the Obama Department of Defense with regard to Metabiota.

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As possibility of 4th doses looms, White House says it has no money for them

Federal regulators and health officials are due to assess the need for fourth COVID-19 vaccine doses, which the Biden administration currently lacks the funds to purchase for everyone, the Washington Post reports. 

Second booster shots went from a questioned possibility to a more likely reality last week as drugmakers filed for the FDA’s green light for the additional dose. Pfizer and BioNTech submitted an application to the FDA seeking emergency authorization for a second booster shot of their COVID-19 vaccine for people 65 and older. Moderna followed suit days later, seeking emergency use authorization of a second booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine for all adults.

“Right now, we don’t have enough money for fourth doses, if they’re called for,” Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said on a forthcoming episode of the podcast “In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt” that was recorded March 21 and shared with the Post. “We don’t have the funding, if we were to need a variant-specific vaccine in the future.”

If regulators determine fourth doses, or second boosters, are necessary, federal officials have enough doses to cover a fourth shot for Americans age 65 and older and the initial regimen for children under age 5, three officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Post. The officials said they can’t place advance orders for additional vaccines for those in other age groups unless lawmakers pass a stalled $15 billion funding package.

If the U.S. aims to have enough doses for a fourth shot for everyone, there are currently not enough doses purchased. “They will run out of supply,” Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Post. She estimates that about 750 million additional doses are needed to reach that goal.

The FDA is due to meet April 6 to discuss the country’s COVID-19 booster shot strategy, including the timing of boosters for the coming months and when the shots should be updated to target specific variants. The FDA has not scheduled a specific vote nor is it expected to discuss Pfizer or Moderna’s recent applications for fourth vaccine doses at the meeting. 

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How Much Waste Is In The $1.5 Trillion Spending Bill

The bill is 2,700 pages – the length of ten books.

Congress had less than one day to read the bill before they voted. President Biden has already signed off — a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill. Magic!

Do we really have a representative republic if our representatives don’t even know what they are voting on?

Here are just a few examples of what was in the bill: 

  • $1 million for a “farm-to-refrigerator training facility” in Pennsylvania
  • $2 million for George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change
  • $2.5 million for a museum in Vermont.
  • $3 million for a fisherman’s coop facility in Guam

These examples represent only four of 4,400 earmarks in the bill. 

Earmarks are the ‘currency of corruption in Congress.’ It’s legal bribery to give away member pet projects for votes.

(It took 367 pages alone just to list the earmarks!)

Republicans cheered a 6% increase in defense spending. Democrats cheered a 7% increase in social services and executive administration spending. 

And, presto, you — the taxpayer — are paying for all of it.

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The IRS already has all your income tax data – so why do Americans still have to file their taxes?

Doing taxes in the U.S. is notoriously complicated and costly. And it gets even worse when there are delays and backlogs, making it especially hard to reach the Internal Revenue Service for assistance.

But to me this raises an important question: Why should taxpayers have to navigate the tedious, costly tax filing system at all?

The case for a ‘simple return’

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan promised a “return-free” tax system in which half of all Americans would never fill out a tax return again. Under the framework, taxpayers with simple returns would automatically receive a refund or a letter detailing any tax owed. Taxpayers with more complicated returns would use the system in place today.

In 2006, President Barack Obama’s chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, suggested a “simple return,” in which taxpayers would receive already completed tax forms for their review or correction. Goolsbee estimated his system would save taxpayers more than US billion a year in tax preparation fees.

Though never implemented, the two proposals illustrate what we all know: No one enjoys filling out tax forms.

So why do we have to?

As an expert on the U.S. tax system, I see America’s costly and time-consuming tax reporting system as a consequence of its relationship with the commercial tax preparation industry, which lobbies Congress to maintain the status quo.

A costly and time-consuming system

Return-free filing is not difficult.

At least 30 countries permit return-free filing, including Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom.

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