Thank You, Goernor Ducey

Fox91 in Arizona announced today that Governor Doug Ducey has appointed Representative Martha McSally to replace U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl in the U.S. Senate seat that belonged to Sen. John McCain. Senator Kyl had only agreed to serve until the end of 2018.

Just as an aside, we have lost the vision of our Founding Fathers when Senators hold a Senate seat long enough to die while in office and have the Senate seat they vacated referred to as their seat. It wasn’t John McCain’s seat any more than the seat in Massachusetts was Ted Kennedy’s seat. However, these men had been in office for so long it was as if they owned the seat. That is not what our Founding Fathers intended–Congressmen were supposed to serve one or two terms and then return to public life to live under the laws they passed. In 1992, former Senator George McGovern wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal about what he had learned since leaving office. Please follow the link and read the letter. It perfectly illustrates our current problems in Washington.

The article at Fox91 reports:

McSally is a two-term congresswoman who was long considered for the Senate by the state’s GOP establishment. The first female combat pilot, McSally rose to the rank of colonel in the Air Force before entering politics. She got a taste for it through working for Kyl’s office as a national security aide.

McSally represented a swing district in Tucson that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She carved out a reputation as a moderate who could win tough elections. That went out the window during her Senate campaign this year. She had been critical of President Donald Trump in 2016 but praised him during the midterm election. Facing a primary challenge from her right, McSally embraced a tougher stance on immigration.

Hopefully Ms. McSally will vote with the President to keep our country’s borders secure.

When Is A Tax Cut Not A Tax Cut ?

President Obama and the Democrat party are currently complaining that the Republicans really do not support tax cuts for the middle class because the Republicans are not supporting the extension of the payroll tax cut. That may be good for the campaign trail, but it really doesn’t tell the whole story.

On Sunday, the Business Insider posted the following:

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the retiring minority whip, said he is opposed to extending the payroll tax cut — raising taxes an average of $1000 on American families and risking eliminating half-a-million jobs from the economy — because he is concerned about the longevity of Social Security.

“The problem here is payroll doesn’t go into general revenue, it supports Social Security, and you can’t keep extending the payroll tax holiday and have a secure Social Security,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

The problem with the cutting the payroll tax is that you are taking money directly out of Social Security, which is already in financial trouble. The government has gotten into the habit of manipulating Americans through tax policy–if you do this, you get a tax break, if you do that, we tax you extra. The payroll tax gives Americans the sense that they are getting something back, without explaining that they are helping destroy the future viability of Social Security. Again–the problem isn’t taxes–it’s spending, and until we deal with the spending (and excessive government regulations), the economy will not recover.

As much as I would love to have extra money in my pocket to spend, extending the payroll tax cut is a bad idea.

 

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