Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ tax and spend dream is being whittled down

In the span of just eight months since January 20, President Joe Biden has given us the border crisis, the Afghanistan debacle, the issues with China and Russia and North Korea, a broken supply chain, ridiculously high gas prices, and staggering inflation throughout the economy. 

That works out to nearly one catastrophe for each month. Some are wondering if America will be able to survive another three-plus years of Biden rule.

If many of the desired elements in Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda are approved, the answer to that is: America will be moving even farther from the country our Founders designed.

Some of the things in that agenda are not legitimate roles for the government of a democratic republic that was founded on the principal of individual, God-given freedoms. They are wrong for a nation which was created by its individual states, and that gave themselves a degree of independence from the federal government. They are wrong for a nation with a government of limited authority.

Our system of government purposefully gave us the ability to follow our desires for how to make a good life for ourselves, and not be dependent upon the government to take care of us from cradle to grave.

If you want to ply a particular trade, participate in a particular profession, start a business, or work in some other way to build your life so that you support yourself and perhaps a family, or just live independently, go for it. You may succeed, or you may not. If not, you are free to try something else.

Eventually you may make a decent living, a pretty good living, or become wealthy. What you choose to do is up to you. It is not the government’s place to tell you what you can or cannot do, beyond some common-sense laws, or to take care of you if you decide you don’t want to try anymore. And in the case of some who have bad luck and are unable to support themselves, the most generous people in the world — the American people — will most likely help you when you need it.

Yes, it is true that through the decades our government has grown well beyond its desired size, costs far too much, goes well beyond its designed restrictions, and interferes in our lives more than it was designed to do. That is not good. But it can be corrected.

Instead, the left in America is working overtime, not at trying to make their individual lives better, but to make our government even larger, more expensive and more controlling.

Some of the things President Biden and the Democrats, who still hold tenuous control of the government, want to do are simply improper. Such things as paying for child care, “free” community college, $450 billion for government-run preschools, are not the proper role of our government.

Some other things, such as amnesty for more than 8 million illegals, complete with payments of $450,000 for some; doubling the size of the IRS to monitor bank accounts of citizens; and spending $3.5 billion for a “Civilian Climate Corps” of Climate Change activists, are not good for the country, or our freedoms.

As Congress struggles to get support to pass Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, the monstrous $3.5 trillion, 2,465-page tax and spend leftist dream is being whittled down. Even though it now spends less money and uses less paper, it is still way too expensive and much too heavy. And Biden’s tax and spend agenda is still a disaster.

One really goofy idea for funding some of the multi-trillion-dollar spending plan is a tax on the “unrealized capital gains” of anyone who makes more than $100 million a year, or whose worth is at least $1 billion. This idea is likely unconstitutional. But if not, it most certainly is an oxymoron. 

A capital gain is the profit you make when you sell an investment asset for more than you paid for it. If you buy an asset for $1,000 and sell it for $5,000, you would pay tax on the additional $4,000. But this weird tax idea would be applied to the increased value of the asset before it has been sold.

If the asset later lost some or all of its gain, would the government return the taxed amount? Nope. This concept beautifully illustrates the twisted understanding many liberals/socialists have for economics.  

The left is determined to transform our nation of maximum individual freedom and world-leading prosperity into a government-run nation like Cuba and Venezuela, and all the others that have failed.

And some of our citizens, who have never seen worse times than these pretty good times of the 21st century, do not understand how things have improved through time in America, and how good of a country they have been blessed to live in. They don’t understand that America’s poor are so much better off than those that live in the poorest nations. 

They are eager to see the left succeed, believing that socialism — and ultimately communism — will make things better for us. It won’t. Let’s hope this effort fails.

Democrats are working overtime to change our nation for the worse

The rule of thumb of the Joe Biden presidency must be to undo what Donald Trump did. That is essentially what has been happening since January 20.

Is it simply the idea that Trump was so horrible a person and president that everything he did must be undone? Or, is it that Biden’s carefully hidden leftist philosophy demands moving us away from the successful capitalist nation that we are?

The “it’s not a crisis” catastrophe on the southern border that has allowed tens of thousands of migrants to enter the country, heads the list. Many thousands of them are overwhelming the facilities for housing them, and thousands more of uncertain origin and motive just walked across the border and disappeared into the country. What else is on the list of equally poor decisions from this president?

The Club for Growth recently highlighted several proposals and their predicted negative results. These include Biden’s proposed hiking of the corporate tax rate by one-third, from 21 percent to 28 percent, and predicting that as many as one million jobs could be killed, that GDP would fall by 0.8 percent, and worker’s wages will fall by 0.7 percent or, on average, $2,500 per year.

Biden’s executive order ending construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has already put about a thousand people out of work and is expected to kill another 10,000 jobs, which represent $1.6 billion in gross wages lost to the workforce. Another executive order halted drilling on federal lands, and that is said to eliminate as many as 60,000 jobs.

The proposed hike in the capital gains tax may go as high as 43.4 percent. And the planned minimum wage hike to $15 per hour is predicted to put 1.3 million workers out of work by 2025. 

And last, but hardly least, two climate-related proposals are predicted to kill even more jobs. Ending the use of fossil fuels will take out more than a million jobs, and rejoining the catastrophic Paris Climate Accords could cost the U.S. $3 trillion and eliminate 6.5 million jobs by 2040.

Another of Biden’s executive orders, this one on his first day in office, rescinded the prohibition of critical race theory (CRT) training for federal agencies and federal contractors that Trump put in place.

Calling that “a sad reversal for Americans committed to colorblindness in public life,” the New York Post said of CRT: “Critical race theory understands the world by viewing everything — society, economics, education, family, science — through the lens of ‘whiteness’ and white racism. White people, according to CRT, drift in a kind of amniotic fluid of privilege and unearned gifts based on the brutal ideology of ‘white supremacy.’”

CRT considers long-standing American values like hard work, objectivity, deferred gratification, family and respect for the written word as intrinsically racist, and strongly suggests that these values relentlessly suppress “black achievement while boosting white mediocrity into advancement,” the Post article said.

Where will America end up if qualities that have been so important to the nation’s development and success — such as the family, learning, working hard to achieve success, and being the best you can be — somehow become viewed as racist?

We now are hearing cries to abandon the sensible concept that the most qualified, most talented people are the ones who should be selected to fill jobs, hold positions, or get access to some things — a merit-based system. Instead, the idea is to fill jobs or award things based on equity of race, ethnicity, gender/gender identity.

If the subject is the allotment of public housing or similar things, the result won’t be terrible if this new concept is put in force. However, this concept is not a prescription for the most efficient, highest performing companies, teams, organizations, or whatever, and it will weaken the United States in every area to which equity mania is applied. It is especially dangerous if applied to the military services.

Most people are far less concerned with the gender/gender identity, race or ethnicity of their doctor, lawyer, teacher, mechanic, home improvement worker, care taker, etc., than with that person’s knowledge and ability to do the job ably and professionally. That’s what really matters. If quality is assured and social quotas are also met, great. 

But equity among the different groups must not be the primary consideration when selecting the people who will do critical, important work. Quality is essential.

Why is the American Left so bent on changing everything that has served the nation so well for its entire history? Obviously, these folks do not like being part of the most successful, free, and unique nation ever. They seem compelled to change those important elements that made America great, and move it into the group of failed socialistic nations that limit freedom, and insist that everyone share equally in the misery.

Tens of thousands of people from other countries want to come here. And few if any want to leave here. Why? Because it is the bright light of the world.

And yet Congressional Democrats are working overtime to change it into something much less than it is now. Why?

Biden’s “Building Back Better” is really “Biden Boldly Blunders”

President Joe Biden’s early days in office do not bode well for the next three-plus years.

Changes to successful illegal immigration measures have created a true border catastrophe. This is readily demonstrated by record-breaking numbers of illegal aliens entering the country. 

Some of those seeking asylum surrender to the Border Patrol; other illegals avoid capture when Border Patrol officers are moved from the border to tend to illegal aliens that overwhelm housing facilities, allowing illegals to stream into the country unimpeded.

Why not keep the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for those seeking asylum? That would reduce the number of people overloading holding facilities by temporarily returning the asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. 

Some of those avoiding Border Patrol are criminals, gang members, drug dealers, and some are on the terrorist watch list. And, there are significant numbers of all illegals that test positive for the coronavirus. 

And the administration is considering a conditional cash transfer program to help address economic problems that encourage Central Americans to head north. A New York Post story said the administration is “considering sending cash payments to Central Americans in order to dissuade them from making the journey to the United States,” actually paying people not to come to the United States. Like that is going to work.

Illegal immigration is Biden’s most visible and dangerous calamity. So far. 

And then there is the idea of “packing” the Supreme Court.

Biden has said in the past that he is not a fan of Court packing, and called it “a bonehead idea.” Packing would involve adding activist justices to the Court who would apply their personal political and ideological philosophies to their legal rulings.

However, despite his not being a fan, Biden has appointed a commission of mostly liberals to look into various aspects of the Court, including adding justices and placing term limits on justices.

However, in addition to Biden, many other people oppose the idea of packing the Court, including former Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away last September, and current Associate Justice Steven Breyer.

During an interview on National Public Radio in 2019, liberal Justice Ginsburg made it clear that she opposed such proposals. "If anything would make the Court look partisan," she said, "it would be that — one side saying, 'When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.'" She added that it "was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court" in 1937.

In remarks prepared earlier this month for delivery at Harvard Law School, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said, in what ABC News termed a stark public warning, that "It is wrong to think of the Court as another political institution," he continued, "And it is doubly wrong to think of its members as junior league politicians."

Prior to being elected, Biden campaigned on repealing the tax cuts made by then-President Donald Trump as one of his highest priorities, if elected.

In order to defend tax increases, Democrats play down the effects of the Trump reductions in tax rates. The Washington Examiner noted last October that “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dismissed any benefit to the middle class as ‘crumbs,’ while presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that $1.3 trillion of these tax cuts went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent of wage earners.”

The Washington Post fact-checker gave Biden’s claim that the middle class did not see a tax cut its highest rating of four Pinocchios for being factually deficient.

The Trump economic policy changes resulted in the unemployment rate dropping to a 50-year low 3.5 percent in 2019. And, median household income rose by $4,440 or 6.8 percent, which is the largest one-year wage growth in history. 

Taxpayers in Pennsylvania and Colorado earning between $50,000 and $100,000 saw their tax liability drop by over 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively, while households with incomes over $1 million saw their tax liability drop by just 3.1 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively.

The Examiner also reported that the doubling of the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 not only reduced taxes for families, “but the number of households claiming the credit increased from 22 million to 36 million.”

When Trump cut tax rates, it helped generate an economic upswing and benefitted millions of not-wealthy families and individuals. 

Biden, however, wants to raise more than $2 trillion over 15 years by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, the global minimum tax to 21 percent, and placing a 15 percent levy on book income for the largest corporations, and corporate inversion.

Will that money be used to pay down the enormous $28.1 trillion national debt? No, it will be used to support so-called infrastructure, most of which is not what is considered infrastructure, such as manufacturing, $300 billion; electric vehicles, $170 billion, et al. These are corporate subsidies, not infrastructure. 

Where will that additional tax money come from? Higher prices, lost jobs and other undesirable actions.

This is bad spending policy funded by bad tax policy.