The Biden administration should focus on the real problems we have

May 2, 2023

The insecure U.S. southern border allows thousands of unknown people to enter the country daily. Mexican cartels continue drug trafficking, human trafficking, and criminal entry into the country. These people kill Americans through direct violence, and through bringing in deadly fentanyl and other drugs. 

“The number of migrants apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities after crossing the Mexican border without authorization increased by 25 percent in March as the Biden administration prepares for a major policy shift next month,” CBS News reported last month. It’s good that apprehensions increased, right?

In February, U.S. Border Patrol recorded 130,000 apprehensions of illegal entries between the official ports of entry. However, in March that number grew to 162,000. We do not know how many entrants escaped capture, but we know that this year’s March apprehension number was less than in March of 2021 and 2022, despite the fact that the number of those trying to get in illegally grows in the spring.

And from the CBS News report, there is this: “Absent any major policy pivot, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for up to 13,000 migrants to cross the southern border per day, about 400,000 each month, once Title 42 lifts in early May, according to internal projections. The Trump-era order is set to lapse once the national COVID-19 public health emergency expires on May 11.”

As recently as last month Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas continues to claim that the border is secure. “It is my testimony that the border is secure and we are working every day, day and night, to increase security,” he said in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on April 18.

However, anyone with eyes and an open mind knows this is profoundly untrue. That includes Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who said basically the exact opposite of Mayorkas. Ortiz has said that five of the nine sectors along the southern boundary were not secure, and neither was one sector of the northern border.

When asked whether he disagreed with Ortiz, his top border expert, Mayorkas said he did: “I respectfully do in that regard,” he said.

The border is not secure, and Mayorkas’ performance is disgraceful, and creates a dangerous and unacceptable situation.

With this horrible and humiliating performance by our government at the borders, the Biden administration has it focus elsewhere.

Rather than strengthen the border with more Border Patrol agents and adding barriers to slow illegal entry, President Joe Biden wants to hire more IRS agents. From Townhall.com: “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to place special gun-carrying agents in all 50 U.S. states.”

“According to the agency’s website, the Criminal Investigation (CI) division is looking for IRS employees authorized by law to carry and use firearms, which are responsible for investigating financial crimes, money laundering, tax-related identity theft, and terrorist financing efforts.

“The ‘major duties’ listed for the position say that agents will be trained to ‘follow the money’ and prosecute any financial crimes.

“’No matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation. Because of the expertise required to conduct these complex financial investigations, IRS Special Agents are considered the premier financial investigators for the Federal government,’ the website reads.

“Additionally, agents must carry a gun and be prepared to protect themselves from physical attacks without any warning. The description for the role also cautions that the agent may face life-threatening situations forcing them to use a firearm.”

The IRS seeks to fill 360 positions in 249 locations, with at least one agent in each state, the job posting notes.

“The IRS role is to help the large majority of compliant taxpayers with the tax law, while ensuring that the minority who are unwilling to comply pay their fair share,” according to IRS.gov.

Most of the work of the IRS involves income taxes, both corporate and individual, and collecting taxes owed to the government is obviously an important function.

But is the current state of taxation and taxes collected more important than the number of illegal entrants to the country, and the violence and death to American citizens that occur daily because of the disgraceful situation at our southern border?

And isn’t the primary function of collecting taxes dependent upon agents who help tax payers with questions about their tax returns, and review tax returns for accuracy, as the IRS website states? Does the IRS really need an armed law enforcement division, and 360 new employees?

If there are really problems with tax collections warranting hiring a division of armed agents to deal with them, there is likely a simpler, safer and less expensive way to fix it: Change and simplify the tax code.

The tax code is contained in two volumes totaling 2,652 pages. And it is ridiculously complex. At 450 words per page, the tax code is well over 1 million words.

We need a low and universal tax rate, say 10 to 15 percent, and only a few deductions, for dependents and for charitable and other beneficial donations. And, obviously, some low-income people should not be taxed.

The State of the Union speech was more like a campaign appearance

February 14, 2023

President Joe Biden continues to set records as President of the United States of America. His State of the Union (SOTU) message of February 7th set a record. It was the least-watched SOTU since viewership has been tracked, beginning in 1993, with only 27.3 million viewers. 

This year’s SOTU was 30 percent lower than last year’s 38.1 million. The only one with lower viewership was his unofficial one in 2021, which was termed an address to a joint session of Congress, and drew only 26.9 million.

Contrast those numbers with Bill Clinton’s 1993 unofficial SOTU of 66 million viewers, and George W. Bush’s 2003 address of 62 million viewers.

This year’s SOTU was the second longest one since 1964 at 1 hour, 12 minutes, and 44 seconds. That’s about 16 minutes shorter than Bill Clinton’s SOTU of 2000.

Perhaps this disappointing showing reflects the public’s dissatisfaction with the Biden presidency, of which only 41 percent of Americans approve, according to the latest Reuters poll. And currently, only 37 percent of Democrats want him to run for reelection in 2024. Worse, only about 25 percent of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction.

Perhaps the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris earned an even lower approval rating helps Biden feel a little bit better about his numbers.

In the interest of what the actual State of the Union is, here are some pertinent items, in no particular order:
* The inflation rate of 1.4 percent when Biden took office is now 7.0 percent.
* Thirty-year mortgages have risen from 2.7 percent to 6.5 percent.
* Prices of goods have risen, too. Eggs are now $7 a dozen, steak is about $15 a pound, and plywood is $95 per sheet.
* Biden’s war on fossil fuels ended America’s recently realized energy independence, and has killed nearly 70,000 jobs since 2021.
* Gasoline prices rose from $2.39 a gallon to $5 a gallon in some states, and while prices have dropped, gas still costs on average $3.42 a gallon.
* Natural gas prices have tripled over the last year.
* In his two years as President, more than 5 million people have illegally entered the country over the southern border.
* The disastrous pullout from Afghanistan left 13 American military personnel dead, stranded dozens of friendly Afghanis and left an estimated $7 billion in American military equipment behind for the Taliban.
* During his tenure, we have given away so many of our weapons from our arsenal to Ukraine without replacing them, and lowered the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a dangerous level to try and lower gas prices.

The SOTU was marked by some unusual and objectionable things. Perhaps the most frequently mentioned is the “raucous” and “rude” behavior of Republicans reacting to Biden’s comments.

Congress members normally are quite polite and reserved in reaction to a speaker who speaks with dignity. That was not the case this year. Both the President and the Republican members of Congress strayed beyond the normal, acceptable and expected behavior.

While not excusing this aberrant behavior, we must recognize that it was in reaction to “misstatements” and “errors” in the President’s remarks.

For example, Biden claimed to have created 12 million new jobs, but neglected to say that most of them were people going back to work after the Covid pandemic killed 22 million jobs. 

He also didn’t mention the millions of Americans who lost jobs and aren’t looking for another job, due to over-generous and unnecessary government payments. These people who dropped out of the workforce make the unemployment figures look much better than if they were still in the workforce looking for a job.

He falsely accused a group of Republicans of wanting to sunset Social Security and Medicare, which drew the loudest rebuke from them.

He also asserted his confused understanding of taxes paid by people and businesses. Criticizing businesses and wealthier Americans for not paying “their fair share” appeals to many people. But such a tactic ignores so much of the sad reality of our broken tax system, our too-big government, and the 42 percent of total taxes that the wealthy actually pay.

And, he carefully avoided talking in detail about China spying on us. Beginning before the SOTU and ending after it was the situation where the administration allowed a Chinese spy balloon to float across the nation for days before taking it down. 

News of this balloon first became public when airline passengers saw something odd, and a civilian on the ground saw it, had a co-worker photograph it, sent the photos to the government, and published the photos. The Department of Defense then announced it had been tracking the balloon for a few days.

Since that fiasco at least four other unidentified objects have been spotted in our airspace and taken down. These objects have apparently been visiting us for some number of years without the Defense Department’s knowledge. 

Hopefully, Biden will do something to get the Defense Department to focus all of its attention on its critical mission of protecting the country.

The State of the Union is not good. And it is getting worse. 

Biden and the Democrats want to increase the size and cost of government

President Joe Biden’s rushed and ill-conceived exit from Afghanistan was a true disaster, with 13 American military personnel and other innocent lives lost, and many Americans and allies still trying to get out of there, without any American assets left in the country to help make that happen.

This colossal mess has damaged our relations with some allies, caused others to question our strength and direction, and has strengthened our adversaries.

Our southern border, which the Biden administration insists is “closed,” still allows and encourages thousands of illegal aliens to enter the country every day. These people — whose identity and character are unknown, and few if any of whom have been vaccinated against the Covid virus — are mostly left in the country, while some are deported.

In the chaos at the border our Border Patrol (BP) officers are now under fire for doing their job: trying to prevent people from illegally entering the country. 

People who see what they want to see, or who never fact-check their perceptions, falsely accused the mounted BP officers of carrying whips and beating the illegal migrants, when in fact the only migrants who received any sort of physical action were those who refused to obey the officers, or were trying to interfere with them by grabbing the reins of their horses as the officers tried to keep them out of the country.

Why aren’t these critics more concerned with the safety of our BP officers than that of the trespassers?

After launching an attack on Border Patrol officers, now Biden has launched an attack on wealthy Americans and large corporations, saying, "I'm sick and tired of the super-wealthy and giant corporations not paying their fair share in taxes. It's time for it to change."

First, let’s look at who pays what in taxes. The bottom 50% who make less than $43,600 per year pay only 3% of total income taxes; those making $43,600 to $87,000 pay 10%; those making $87,000 to $152,000 pay 16%; those making $152,000 to $218,000 pay 11%; those making $218,000 to $540,000 (the top 2% to 5%) pay 20%; and the hated top 1% making more than $540,000 pay 40% of total income taxes, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

If 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of income taxes and the top 5% pay 60%, while those in the lowest tax bracket pay only 3%, what would the fair share of total taxes paid be?

Just like there is some fraud in elections, there is some fraud among tax payers. But you likely would find that most wealthy people and large corporations follow the tax code pretty strictly.

If corporations are not paying enough in taxes, or maybe nothing in taxes, don’t suggest they are “un-American,” change the tax code.

Biden wants to change the reporting requirements for financial institutions, and for the IRS to be able to view transactions of all bank accounts with $600 or more in them. This is aimed at anyone who doesn’t report their income accurately, the tax dodgers. But it puts most people under the IRS microscope.

Biden’s “American Families Plan calls for banks and other financial institutions to report more than just a taxpayer’s interest earned, capital gains and losses,” Forbes magazine reported. “Banks and other financial institutions would also be required to report ‘aggregate account outflows and inflows.’

“In other words, the IRS will know about all of your bank accounts, whether you earned income on that account or not, how much is in the account in a given year, and how much was transferred in and out of the account,” the Forbes report continued. “It is unclear how this would work, but what is clear is that this new reporting obligation will create a massive compliance effort on the part of financial institutions, and eliminate a massive blind spot that the IRS is currently enduring.” Some good things, but also some bad things.

This new big government plan prompted Sen. Chuck Grassley, R–IA, to say, "Instead of promising a chicken in every pot, Biden's plan promises an auditor at every kitchen table."

And to make sure all bank accounts properly report everyone’s financial activities, the IRS will hire 87,000 new employees, and everyone can expect more scrutiny of the flow of money to and from their accounts.

Assuming that these employees make minimum wage, each one will receive gross pay of $15,080 for a year of 40-hour weeks. Figured for all 87,000 new IRS workers, that comes to an additional $1,311,960,000 per year. Most likely, they will make a bit more than the minimum wage, and probably at least double that figure. And that is only the wage cost of the new employees, not including office space and the needed equipment, etc.

Supposedly, this process will find additional income to be reported and taxed. But what it also does is increase the size and cost of government, and increase the weight of government on the shoulders of those who pay the salaries of Joe Biden, and everyone else who is employed by the federal government.

None of this represents the government that our Founders designed.

Biden’s early days in office do not spur confidence for the future

The beginning of a new president’s tenure is often rough and tumble. Former-President Donald Trump’s certainly was. And President Joe Biden’s is also following that well-worn path.

In 2019, for the first time in 62 years the US achieved energy independence, or higher energy production than its energy consumption. But this good energy project, the Keystone XL pipeline, had been targeted by candidate Biden, and was ended by executive order, almost before Biden’s hand came down after taking the oath of office. 

The pipeline would have transported 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska. We haven’t lost access to that oil, but it will now be transported overland by trucks and trains instead of underground by pipe.

When you consider that about 70 percent of US petroleum products are already transported through roughly 200,000 miles of pipelines, why was canceling the XL pipeline project of such importance? Though used to move far less petroleum product, truck and train transportation are where a majority of mishaps occur. Trucks and trains also produce more CO2 than a pipeline.

The initial effect of this foolish move was to immediately end a thousand good-paying jobs. Roughly 10,000 more good jobs will not be created. And, $3.4 billion will never be added to the gross domestic product.

Another self-inflicted wound is the senseless change in attitude and policy addressing the security of our southern border and the constant entry of illegal aliens.

“Statistics released Wednesday by US border officials reveal that the surge of children at the US-Mexico border is worse than previously reported,” according to a story in the New York Post last week, “with nearly 30,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border in a single month.”

The Post continued: “The one-month total in February is nearly as high as the count of unaccompanied minors in the entire year of 2020 and is five times higher than the 5,871 unaccompanied minors in January, which itself was an increase from 4,995” in the month following the Presidential Election.

More than 100,000 illegal aliens entered the country in Biden’s first full month, compared to 36,000 for the same period in 2020, an increase of 170 percent since Biden suspended the border security system. Most are not being tested for COVID, and of those who were tested, 10 percent were positive. 

For tweeting the truth that illegals were bringing the virus with them into the US, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had his Twitter account suspended. Yet another blunder for Twitter owner Jack Dorsey and company.

To make a bad situation worse, most of these illegals are being released into the country, and sometimes are taken by bus to areas far away from the border, as far as New York.

Does anybody know who these people really are? Are 100 percent of them good people merely looking for a better life? No. How many are drug users or dealers, gang members, child traffickers or pedophiles, other types of sex offenders, or are infected with the virus. I don’t know. You don’t know. And Joe Biden doesn’t know.

The Epoch Times reported that 22 wanted felons were captured recently at the border in Texas, and that the Biden administration has proposed a plan to legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States. 

If anyone thinks Biden’s border policy is foolish, this information certainly does nothing to contradict that idea. And, more than a few of those wishing to enter the US illegally were wearing tee shirts proclaiming “Biden please let us in.”

Yet, the administration continues to call this crisis a mere “challenge.”

Biden seems dedicated to the idea of overturning every action taken by his predecessor, even the good things. Of course, the Democrats do not acknowledge, or admit, that Donald Trump’s administration did anything good. It is a fool’s errand to try to compare the border situation under Biden with the much-better results under Trump.

During the Biden administration’s first two months of existence, the wall on the southern border has been halted, and a border wall around the US Capitol, and the National Guard security there have been maintained. This has the effect of making it easier for people -- some of whom are violent criminals -- to waltz into the country, and harder for citizens to access the people’s house.

Of those two conditions we know that the threat of illegal entry along the southern border is real; we don’t know that the alleged threat of illegal activities at the Capitol is real.

Biden seems content to rule by executive orders, sometimes circumventing the proper lawmaking process through Congress. And he gives public statements, occasionally answers a question shouted by reporters, but does not hold actual news conferences. 

This behavior gives some the idea that the Biden administration will be more of an authoritarian one than it will be the administration of a democratic republic. And his behavior with the press gives credence to the idea that he is unable to speak to the press and the public without a teleprompter.

The Biden administration may ultimately be as bad as many expect.