Policies Have Consequences

We can all look back with nostalgia at the prosperity and low inflation we enjoyed under President Trump. One of the keys to that prosperity was deregulation that allowed business and the economy to grow.

In January 2021, Forbes reported:

According to the administration, agencies in the 2020 fiscal year issued 145 deregulatory actions and 45 significant regulatory actions, for an out-to-in ratio of 3.2 to one.

Of those deregulatory actions, 58 were deemed “significant” by agencies and the administration. Comparing significant-in to significant-out still gives a ratio of 1.3 to one.

This regulatory streamlining requirement was one of the earliest 2017 moves of the Trump administration, put in place by Executive Order 13771. A Biden administration will kill it on “Day One,” as the incoming supervisors like to say.

We have now had three plus years of the Biden administration’s economic policies. It has been a tough three plus years.

On Monday, Blaze Media reported the following:

A group of black voters told MSNBC last week why they are considering voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

Reporting from Charleston, South Carolina, MSNBC correspondent Trymaine Lee spoke with black voters in a barbershop and discussed the “appeal” Trump has over President Joe Biden with black men specifically.

They explained:

    • Thomas Murray: “I just think that Donald Trump, in spite of all the craziness he may have in his head, reading some of the things that he talks about with business, I can kind of agree with as far as business-wise because I’m trying to grow my business. As far as Biden, I haven’t seen Biden really care about business like that. And my concern is having my business, so that I can build generational wealth, so my kids can see and have something to take upon when I’m not here.”
    • Kinard Givens: “A lot of my friends we’ve only voted once, and Trump is kind of all we know — Trump and Biden. And they’re like, ‘Well, we were broke with Biden. We weren’t with Trump.’ And that’s kind of the only thing that I’m hearing over and over again is that ‘with Trump, we had money.'”
    • Juston Brown: “A lot of people admire the persona and they want to be him. They want to enjoy the perks that he has. He seems to always be able to circumvent the rules.”
    • Anthony Freeman: “Donald Trump has a reputation of being the money man.”

As James Carville stated in 1992, “It’s the ECONOMY, Stupid!” That statement still holds true today.

The Question Of The Day

On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted an article asking the question, “If Biden’s Economic Plan Is ‘Working,’ Why Are Tax Revenues Plunging?” That is a very good question.

In 2018, Investors.com reported:

Taxes: Critics of the Trump tax cuts said they would blow a hole in the deficit. Yet individual income taxes climbed 6% in the just-ended fiscal year 2018, as the economy grew faster and created more jobs than expected.

The Treasury Department reported this week that individual income tax collections for FY 2018 totaled $1.7 trillion. That’s up $14 billion from fiscal 2017, and an all-time high. And that’s despite the fact that individual income tax rates got a significant cut this year as part of President Donald Trump’s tax reform plan.

Income Taxes After Trump Tax Cuts

True, the first three months of the fiscal year were before the tax cuts kicked in. But if you limit the accounting to this calendar year, individual income tax revenues are up by 5% through September.

Other major sources of revenue climbed as well, as the overall economy revived. FICA tax collections rose by more than 3%. Excise taxes jumped 13%.

As John Kennedy once said (as he lowered taxes), “A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats.

The article at Issues & Insights reports:

President Joe Biden loves to brag about the masterful job he’s doing managing the nation’s economy, as he did on Tuesday when cheering the latest inflation news – which saw food prices up almost 7% from last year – and “our historic economic progress.”

The day before that, the Treasury Department released its monthly financial statement, which shows that the federal deficit for this fiscal year has already topped $1 trillion and that’s a big factor behind this is a sharp reduction in federal tax revenues from last year.

Wait, you say. If the economy is “strong” and “historic” as Biden claims, why are revenues cratering and deficits exploding?

Or, as the Washington Times put it: “Uncle Sam’s income has plummeted this year, sending the federal deficit spiraling deeper into the red than analysts had predicted and leaving officials grasping for answers.”

The article concludes:

…But what we can say for certain is that the only thing “historic” about the current economy is how delusional the president and the media are about what is actually going on.

You can only lie to people about how good the economy is for so long when they are feeling inflation every day in gas and supermarket prices.

The Growing Federal Budget Deficit

On Friday, MRCTV reported that the federal deficit has grown dramatically during the first eight months of Fiscal Year 2023.

The article reports:

The federal budget deficit was $1.2 trillion in the first eight months of fiscal year 2023 (FY23), nearly three times higher than it was in the first eight months of fiscal year 2022 (FY22), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported Thursday.

From October 2022 through May, the FY23 federal deficit was $1.161 trillion – $735 billion higher than $426 billion shortfall recorded the previous year, even after $63 billion of expenditures were shifted into FY22.

In May alone, the federal deficit was $236 billion, CBO estimates – $170 billion higher than the amount recorded in May 2022. Revenues were $81 billion lower this May than they were in 2022. Outlays increased by $89 billion.

In the first eight months of FY23, revenues were 11% lower and expenditures were 9% higher than in the same period year-earlier. Receipts were $380 billion lower (a larger decline than the CBO says it expected), while expenditures were $355 billion higher.

“Outlays for the largest mandatory spending programs increased by a total of $193 billion,” a 12% increase, the CBO reports.

In particular, interest paid on the public debt rose by $112 billion (up 34%), “mainly because interest rates are significantly higher.”

Expenditures rose in other key categories, as well:

    • Spending for Social Security benefits rose by $85 billion (11%),
    • Medicare outlays increased by $77 billion (17%),
    • Medicaid outlays increased by $31 billion (8%),
    • Outlays of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) rose by $53 billion, as a result of facilitating the resolution of bank failures in the spring of 2023.

On the revenue side, federal government collection of individual income and payroll (social insurance) taxes together declined by $299 billion (10%) and collections of corporate income taxes increased, on net, by $5 billion (2%).

The Biden administration’s economic policies have been a disaster for the government, the private sector, and the American citizen. Americans are dealing with rampant inflation, corporate layoffs, and rising taxes. Meanwhile, cities are trying to cope with inflation without imposing crippling tax hikes. Unless something changes, America’s economic future does not look good.

Inconvenient Facts

President Biden will make his State of the Union speech tonight. He will tell us that his economic plan is working–he is not responsible for inflation, high gas prices, or the lack of security at the southern border. If you believe what he says, I have a bridge I would like to sell you in Brooklyn.

On Tuesday, The Daily Wire posted some actual numbers related to the Biden economy.

The article reports:

Let’s start with inflation, which a few months ago hit a 40-year high. In December 2020, the last full month in office for President Donald Trump, the rate of inflation was 1.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The average for the entire year of 2020 was 1.2%, data show.

But after Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline, froze student debt collection, rejoined the Paris climate accords, made a pathway for illegals to gain citizenship, and halted construction on the border wall — all actions he took on Day 1 — inflation started to climb.

In his first six months in office, inflation went from 1.4% to 5.4%. It was worse in 2022, rising to 9.1% by June. But Biden is a highly skilled liar: Inflation has fallen for six straight months — all the way down to 6.5%. The average for 2022 was 8%, soaring from 1.2% in 2020.

Now, some people argue that the president shouldn’t take credit for a good economy and certainly doesn’t deserve the blame for a bad one. But in Biden’s case, he definitely deserves the blame.

“Economists say Biden’s pandemic relief policies including the American Rescue Plan exacerbated matters, by giving Americans too much money to spend when goods and services supplies were too low, which drove prices higher,” PolitiFact wrote on Monday.

The article mentions gasoline prices:

Then there are gas prices. When Biden took office, a gallon of regular averaged $2.38. Today it’s $3.46, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

That’s nearly 50% higher (46% to be exact) than it was when Biden took office. And remember, by February 2022, the eve of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the price had already risen above $3.50 — which negates Biden’s endless claims of “Putin’s price hike” at the pumps.

The article mentions food prices:

Let’s just talk about the State of the Union since the last time Biden delivered the State of the Union address. “In 2022, food prices increased by 9.9 percent,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports. “Food-at-home prices increased by 11.4 percent, while food-away-from-home prices increased by 7.7 percent.”

There’s more. Egg prices increased 11.1% in December, pushing the price since December 2021 59.9% higher. And we haven’t hit the ceiling yet, not even close. “Egg prices are predicted to increase 27.3 percent in 2023,” the USDA reported.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The article goes into wages and also reports on America’s mood. The speech will make a lot of claims, but those of us who live under the Biden economy probably won’t believe those claims.

Lying With Statistics (Calling Them ‘Adjustments’)

On Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about the economic numbers the Biden administration is currently bragging about. President Biden has tamed inflation and created massive growth in the economy–or so he says. I wonder how Americans who are paying double for gasoline and more than double to heat their homes feel about being told how great the economy is. I expect to hear how well we are doing in the State of the Union address, but I truly wonder if Americans will actually believe what they are told.

The American Thinker reports:

Bloomberg, which exists to serve active traders on Wall Street, is throwing shade on the January jobs report that “surprised” a lot of people with its positive numbers. Before addressing the technical factors used to produce the rosy numbers, consider the buried lede hundreds of words into the piece: Stripped of all the technical jargon is this stark reality:

On an unadjusted basis, payrolls actually fell by 2.5 million last month.

The article continues:

Molly Smith writes:

Employers added 517,000 jobs in January — nearly double the prior month’s advance and above all estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The unemployment rate also unexpectedly retreated to 3.4%, the lowest since 1969, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

Those are the numbers that grabbed headlines and enabled Team Biden to claim credit for what they want to bamboozle the public into thinking we have a great economy.  But it turns out that there were changes in the way the data were gathered and reported that made things look rosier:

…“If it seems too good to be true, that’s because it is too good to be true — the gain is mostly due to seasonal factors and revisions to past data. Still, it can’t be denied that the labor market remains tight. The Fed won’t place too much weight on this headline jobs number when formulating policy.”
— Anna Wong and Eliza Winger, economists

Hang on to your hats. I truly believe that 2023 may be a difficult year economically for all Americans. I believe we will get through it, but I believe there will be serious economic challenges for both individuals and for the nation.

The Real Picture Of Inflation

I have heard a number of Biden-friendly commentators explain that Bidenomics is working–inflation is down and wages are up. You could fertilize your garden with that statement.

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article which gives a more accurate picture of where the country is economically.

The article reports:

This knuckleheaded narrative engineer from the New York Times/Atlantic even has the audacity to say, “let prices continue to fall to target,” as if there is a single item at any price that is dropping.  His spin is a good example of gaslighting just from the use of the statement “price inflation is falling back towards where we want it.

Price inflation is not price.  ‘Price inflation’ is the rate of increase.  There’s a BIG DIFFERENCE between “inflation falling back” and prices dropping. Inflation falling back is merely a lessening of the rate of price increase.  The price does not drop, and never will.

The article includes the following chart:

If you are wondering why you currently have more month than money, the above chart might explain things.

The article notes:

Government monetary, fiscal and energy policy created inflation.  Devalued currency from spending, simultaneous to massive government policy changes driving up supply side energy costs, exploded inflation.

Prices for energy, oil, gas, home heating, fuel and food all skyrocketed as a result.  Workers need pay raises to afford these essential costs of life.  However, the same people who created the inflation are now worried that wage rate increases may drive inflation.  The mindset at work here is infuriating.

Consider these empirical data points.   In August of 2021 the Biden administration permanently increased food stamp benefits by 25% for everyone who needed the subsidy {LINK}.  This permanent benefit increase was delivered at the same time as the administration was claiming “inflation was transitory.”  They knew it wasn’t transitory. They were lying.

The Social Security Benefits were also raised in 2022 by 8.7% for the largest ever cost of living adjustment in 2023 {LINK}.  Both the 25% food stamp increase and the 8.7% SSI COLA were needed to offset the inflation created by government policy….  However, the same government doesn’t want wages to rise.  Can you see the hypocrisy.

Workers are being crushed by the outcomes of policy, and those who created the policy making the outcomes do not want worker wages to offset the policy.

We need to see wage growth in the 20% range just to keep pace with the increased cost of living created by policy.  Food costs 40% more, energy 30% more, housing 20% more and the list keeps going.

The prices for many goods have already doubled, worker wages need to compensate for those increases.   However, government, Wall Street, corporations and policy makers do not want to see wage growth that will offset the price of goods because they fear those wage gains will drive inflation.

The financial media, Wall Street, govt policy makers (republican & democrats) and corporations are lying to us and simultaneously killing the working-class. We, the workforce, are in an abusive relationship with govt…. and they have the nerve to blame us for inflation.

Let’s hope the House of Representatives discovers fiscal sanity in the next year.

The Latest Excuse For The Low Workforce Participation Number

On Saturday, Breitbart posted an article about the Biden administration’s explanation for the drop in the Workforce Participate Rate in July. The explanation was about on a par with ‘the dog ate my homework.’

The article reports:

Claim: The decline in the labor force participation rate fell in July because fewer teenagers were working.

On Friday, after the Department of Labor’s jobs numbers showed that the labor force participation rate declined from 62.2 percent to 62.1 percent despite employers taking on 528,000 new workers, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the decline as “about teenagers.”

The article includes a Fact Check of the claim that teenagers were at fault:

Verdict: False.

While the teenage participation rate did fall in July from a seasonally adjusted 36.6 to 35.8, this represented a decline in the number of teenagers in the labor for of 126,000. That contributed to the decline but it contributed less than the decline in the number of adult men in the labor force.
Men aged twenty and over saw their labor force participation rate decline from 70.1 to 69.9. While smaller in percentage terms than the teenage decline, it was larger in absolute terms because it represented a 183,000 decline in participation. As a result, grown men contributed more than teenagers to the decline in the participation rate. The data show that men aged twenty-five to thirty-four saw their labor force participation drop by 136,000, for a decline from 88.9 to 88.3.

If the Inflation Reduction Act becomes law, you can expect the Workforce Participation Rate to decline further.

Welcome To The Biden Economy

Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog reported on Wednesday that in June prices rose 9.1 percent above last year. That is a forty-year high.

The article reports:

Inflation hit a new four-decade high in June as prices rose 9.1 percent from last year — 1.3 percent from the prior month — according to the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning. The BLS’s “all items index increased 9.1 percent for the 12 months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981.”

I put it this way: We see it everywhere and every day. The BLS puts it this way: “The increase was broad-based, with the indexes for gasoline, shelter, and food being the largest contributors.”

If anyone tries to tell you it’s not as bad as it seems, note that the more plausible case belies it: “The energy index rose 41.6 percent over the last year, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1980. The food index increased 10.4 percent for the 12-months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending February 1981.”

Every American is paying more to eat, travel, and have a place to live. This is the direct result of policies put in place by the Biden administration. There has been no move by the Biden administration to change any of the policies that caused this–if fact they are considering using the reconciliation process to pass a bill that will make things even worse–the increased taxes and increased spending in that bill will definitely move us from inflation to a recession.

If you want things to change, your only hope will be to change Congress so that the Biden administration cannot pass its economic policies. The economic policies of the Biden administration will bankrupt all of us.

 

You Know You Are Toxic When…

On Wednesday, Just the News reported that Ohio Senate Democratic nominee Representative Tim Ryan will not be appearing with President Biden next Wednesday when the President visits Ohio to discuss a program benefiting union workers. That is an indication of how low the President is in the polls.

The article reports:

Ryan’s campaign says the candidate will be a no-show due to an unavoidable scheduling conflict – the same explanation given by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Nan Whaley’s campaign.

The absences from candidates in tough elections at the Biden event suggests some hesitancy to appear on stage with a president whose has low poll numbers – amid record inflation.

In addition, Biden in 2020 lost to incumbent GOP President Trump roughly 53-to-45% in Ohio, a traditional labor union state.

Biden will, however, on Wednesday be joined by Ohio lawmakers and fellow Democrats Sen. Sherrod Brown, Reps. Shantel Brown and Marcy Kaptur and Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, as well as Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.

The address will primarily be aimed at appealing to blue collar voters.

The article concludes:

On Wednesday, Ohio GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance tried to tie Ryan to Biden and his policies.

“Ryan has worked in lockstep with Biden to destroy our economy and Ohio’s middle class is suffering today because of it,” he said “But now, for the second time in two months, Ryan is refusing to be seen in public with his own party’s president.”

If the blue collar workers cannot see the difference in the impact of President Biden’s policies and the impact of President Trump’s policies, they are not paying attention. Under President Biden, the middle-class is struggling with high gasoline prices, high food prices, high energy prices, and no end in sight. Under President Trump, the middle class prospered.

On January 28, 2022, The Wall Street Journal posted the following:

Part of what made the Trump boom unique, however, is who benefited the most. The economy grew in ways that mostly benefited low-income and middle-class households, categories that cover a disproportionate number of blacks. In 2016 the percentage of blacks who hadn’t completed high school was nearly double that of whites—15% vs. 8%—and the percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree was 35% for whites and only 21% for blacks.

These education gaps are reflected in work patterns. Blacks are overrepresented in the retail, healthcare and transportation industries, which provide tens of millions of working- and middle-class jobs. In 2019, 54% of black households earned less than $50,000 a year, versus 33% of white households. At the other end of the income distribution, slightly more than half of all white households (50.7%) earned at least $75,000, compared with less than a third (29.4%) of black households. What this means is that reductions in income inequality can translate into reductions in racial inequality, which is what the country experienced in the pre-pandemic Trump economy.

Between 2017 and 2019, median household incomes grew by 15.4% among blacks and only 11.5% among whites. The investment bank Goldman Sachs released a paper in March 2019 that showed pay for those at the lower end of the wage distribution rising at nearly double the rate of pay for those at the upper end. Average hourly earnings were growing at rates that hadn’t been seen in almost a decade, but what “has set this rise apart is that it’s the first time during the economic recovery that began in mid-2009 that the bottom half of earners are benefiting more than the top half—in fact, about twice as much,” CNBC reported.

Citing a graph included in Goldman’s analysis, CNBC added that the “trend began in 2018”—the first year that the corporate tax cuts were in effect—“and has continued into this year and could be signaling a stronger economy than many experts think.”

Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s policies have erased all of those gains in eighteen months. Electing a Republican Congress may help put back some policies that will be beneficial to the middle class, but we won’t see any upward mobility to and within the middle class until we vote Democrats and liberal Republicans out of office.

The Economy Isn’t Really Roaring Along

On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit reported that the US trade deficit surged to over $109 billion in March. This is the first time the trade deficit has gone over $100 billion.

The article reports:

The U.S. trade deficit surged to a record high in March, confirming that trade weighed on the economy in the first quarter and could remain a drag for a while as businesses replenish inventories with imported goods.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the trade deficit accelerated 22.3% to $109.8 billion in March amid a record increase in imports. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a $107 billion deficit.

The government reported last week that a record trade deficit sliced 3.20 percentage points from gross domestic product in the first quarter, resulting in GDP contracting at a 1.4% annualized rate after growing at a robust 6.9% pace in the fourth quarter.

There are a number of factors that have created this deficit.

In 2018, I reported the following (article here) (quoting from Reuters):

The United States now exports up to 1.7 million barrels per day of crude, and this year will have the capacity to export 3.8 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas. Terminals conceived for importing liquefied natural gas have now been overhauled to allow exports.

Below is a chart of American crude oil exports (source here):

Obviously the Biden administration’s war on fossil fuel has not only hurt the American economy, it has increased our trade deficit. It is time to put businessmen in Congress and in the White House.

Other factors include over-regulation by the government which generally has reduced manufacturing in America, the inflation caused by overstimulating the economy, and generally bad economic policies on the part of the Biden administration.

The Cost Of The Biden Presidency

If inflation is a tax, Americans have just received one of the biggest tax increases in history courtesy of the Biden administration.

On April 13th, Just the News posted an article about the latest inflation numbers.

The article reports:

Wholesale prices leapt 1.4% in march from the February figures to hit a record 11.2% annual increase as inflation continues to smack the U.S. economy.

The newly released numbers follow the news Tuesday of an 8.5% annual rise in consumer prices – the highest figure on record since December of 1981.

The Producer Price Index, which is also put out by the Department of Labor, measures the price of goods and services that businesses pay each other.

A significant portion of the wholesale price increase in March was due to the jump in energy prices brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

While outsized factors like the war in Ukraine, and the supply chain issues brought about by the pandemic, continue to impact inflation numbers, some economists are gesturing toward the federal government’s ongoing fiscal response to the pandemic as a driver of the issue.

Hoover Institution economist John H. Cochrane wrote in a beginning-of-year message that “n response to the disruptions of COVID-19, the U.S. government created about $3 trillion of new bank reserves, equivalent to cash, and sent checks to people and businesses. Mechanically, the Treasury issued $3 trillion of new debt, which the Fed quickly bought in return for $3 trillion of new reserves. The Treasury sent out checks, transferring the reserves to people’s banks. The Treasury then borrowed another $2 trillion or so, and sent more checks. Overall, federal debt rose nearly 30 percent. Is it at all a surprise that a year later inflation breaks out?”

The Biden administration has searched left, right, and center for a scapegoat for the inflation issue that is hurting the wallets of so many Americans ahead of the critical midterm election. Thus far, blaming Big Oil companies for price-gauging and Vladimir Putin for escalating gas prices has done little to divert attention of the American people from what they view as failing policies of the administration.

For a little historical perspective on inflation, here is a chart from The U.S. Inflation Calculator:

As you can see from the chart, the inflation rate was beginning to climb before Putin invaded Ukraine. The Biden administration’s spending and energy policies paved the way for the inflation we are now seeing. The best way to deal with the current inflation is to vote out of office anyone in Congress who continues to vote for massive spending bills and to vote President Biden out of office in 2024.

The November Jobs Report

On Friday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the November Jobs Report. The expectation was that approximately 535,000 jobs would be created. The actual number created was 210,000.

The article reports:

The situation itself is not that difficult to understand when you look at Main Street.  However, so many of the professional punditry class are confused because they only focus on the Wall Street economy, their only prism of reference for the last several decades.

Americans are preparing, cutting back and hunkering down from the Hurricane that is Joe Biden’s inflation.

Inside the jobs numbers, you will note the areas where consumer spending contraction first hits: retail, luxury, leisure and hospitality, is the area where November employment was flat or jobs were lost.   DUH!

The ‘retail sectorlost 20,000 jobs in November.  Think about that.  What usually happens in November?  People are hired to handle holiday seasonal shopping…. but they weren’t… why not?  The professional economic punditry cannot figure it out, so they avoid those questions entirely.  Those questions hold the key to unlocking the understanding.  Does the “pretending not to know things” ring familiar?

The damn jobs report is simply reflecting how Main Street USA workers, consumers, spenders and survivors live when gasoline, energy and food costs necessarily skyrocket.  The November employment results are a reflection of the blue collar prepper mindset.  This is not hard to figure out.   As long as inflation rages on, items that cannot be avoided, at a level that is two to five times the rate of wage growth, decisions are made that are based on checkbook economics.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a graphic of the hurricane of inflation about to hit the middle class. It also includes a quote from MSM blaming the Delta version of Covid for the problem. Somehow the media would rather blame a disease than face the fact that the inflation the Biden administration is creating with runaway spending might be the problem.

Policies Matter

One of the successes of the Trump administration was the growth of small business and the growth of the middle class during his administration. There were a lot of reasons for that growth–the corporate tax cut caused all businesses to grow and the elimination of a lot of government regulation gave small and large businesses freedom to grow. The elimination of red tape took some of the load off of businessmen trying to start or grow a business. Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems to be blindly determined to undo anything the Trump administration did regardless of whether or not the Trump policies actually helped Americans and the American economy.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about the Biden administration’s plans for businesses in America.

The article reports:

President Biden accelerated the regulatory state on his first day in office by ordering agencies to consider aspirational but vaguely defined goals and benefits when imposing new rules on businesses large and small.

The order greenlighting regulations even when the benefits “are difficult or impossible to quantify” sent shudders down the spines of CEOs. They fear business growth will be smothered in pursuit of vague objectives such as “human dignity” and “the interests of future generations.”

“It is the most aggressive thing I’ve ever seen by an administration,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a right-leaning economic think tank. “It’s one thing to put out a bunch of regulations, but this changes the way regulation is done. It allows you to jam through any regulation you want regardless of the impact [on] the private sector.”

The order, which tosses out the government’s traditional cost-benefit analysis before approving a regulation, is among a slew of executive actions Mr. Biden has signed to curb the power of businesses.

Mr. Biden‘s regulations provide a road map for his plans to transform business and what he sees as anti-competitive business practices. Without the regulations, Mr. Biden said, businesses can stifle competition, raise prices and limit consumer choice. The regulations are also designed to give workers more power to demand higher wages and mobility, the president has said.

The article concludes with an example:

Mr. Holtz-Eakin sees it differently. He said the red tape combined with the administration’s rhetoric has created a “negative business environment.” He views Mr. Biden‘s talk and actions as a two-pronged approach to getting business to bend to the administration’s will.

Last month, Mr. Biden‘s agriculture secretary and top economic adviser accused the meat industry of illegal price-fixing and blamed it for soaring food prices. They vowed to investigate and restrict the industry in the name of protecting consumers.

An industry trade group accused the administration of scapegoating meat producers. It said the prices increased because of a nationwide labor shortage.

“I think that was relatively unprecedented,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin (Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum) said of the attack on the meat industry. “There have been other industries singled out by presidents, but that one was a surprise.”

What we need to be aware of is the fact that the Biden administration is moving us away from private enterprise to government control of businesses. It’s not a good direction to be headed. The only solution to this is to elect conservatives to Congress in 2022 and elect either President Trump of Governor DeSantis as President in 2024. Otherwise we will probably be a socialist country within five years.

The Hidden Taxes In The Bill

The Western Journal posted an article today about the tax-and-spend bill the Biden administration is trying to push through Congress.

The article reports:

According to a media release from the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, the Joint Committee on Taxation — a non-partisan congressional tax scorekeeper — found that almost every income level below the threshold the Biden administration said would be immune would take a hit.

Furthermore, the committee’s analysis found the vast majority of taxpayers would see no benefit from the plan in its current form.

According to the analysis, by the calendar year 2023, nearly 5 percent of those making between $40,000 and $50,000 would see a tax increase. Nine percent of those making between $50,000 and $75,000 would see an increase, 18 percent earning between $75,000 and $100,000 would see their taxes go up and 35 percent of those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would be subject to a hike.

The media release also noted that the benefit most people see will pretty much be nil.

In 2023, two-thirds of all taxpayers won’t get see any kind of real benefit from the legislation, either seeing their tax bill changed by less than $100 or getting a tax increase.

By 2027, this number would balloon to 85.5 percent, with huge swaths of the middle class seeing a sizable tax increase; these numbers are projected to stay mostly steady until 2031.

The article concludes:

And yet, in March of 2020, MarketWatch reported that “Americans paid almost $64 billion less in federal income taxes during the first year under the Republican tax overhaul signed into law in late 2017 by President Donald Trump, with some of the sharpest drops clustered among taxpayers earning between $25,000 and $100,000 a year, even as the overall number of refunds dropped during a turbulent tax season” in 2019.

Biden plans on taking that away. In return, he’s offered nothing of substance — except, as promised, he’s soaking the rich. And the upper-middle class. And some people in the middle class, too. But mainly the rich. See, priorities!

Biden may not be giving people in towns like Scranton — the folks he grew up with — a break the same way Trump did. But at least they can watch as his administration takes (and then squanders) Park Avenue’s money. He’ll be squandering Scranton’s money, too, but at least they get the joy of class-based schadenfreude out of the deal.

Any Congressman who votes for President Biden’s economic proposals needs to be voted out of office as quickly as possible. I am not sure we can afford the current President.

Who Is Favored In The Biden Economic Plan?

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about the Biden administration’s economic plans. The Biden administration is not friendly to small businesses.

The article reports:

Over the last several months, small businesses persevered the best they could, holding on until “temporary” welfare programs driving people away from work expired. But if there were any doubt left that Dems’ ultimate goal wasn’t a temporary boost to Americans most impacted by lockdowns, but rather a calculated step toward government control and socialism, their proposed $4.3 trillion tax-and-spend bill removes it all ($4.3 trillion is the true cost, as we learned in the Budget Committee). 

Walk down any main street or city avenue in America today, and you will see sign after sign with help-wanted pleas, hiring incentives or apologies in advance for shortened hours and delayed service due to staff shortages. There are nearly 11 million job openings nationwide, and our small businesses are trying to get back on their feet after the crushing lockdowns. 

But where are the workers? The short answer is that the Biden administration is more interested in handouts that pay more, or just as much, to stay home than going back to work. Since taking office, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have prioritized big government over earned pay stubs. 

The article concludes:

Biden and the Democrats’ plan raises the corporate tax rate to 26.5 percent, even further away from a proposed “global minimum tax” of 19 percent that will drive more businesses overseas, further discouraging production and innovation in America.

The Democrats argue that big business can afford to pay more. But aside from their hypocrisy that creates new carve-outs for rich university endowments like Harvard, their plan hurts the little guy. By removing deductions and increasing taxes by nearly 4 percent for business owners that operate as “pass throughs,” the plan puts at risk small businesses that have been struggling since March 2020 — and the new ones created since the pandemic under assumed tax burdens.

As a former small-business owner, I know these conditions aren’t sustainable. Americans don’t deserve to bear the brunt of policies pushed by people in Washington who will never feel the effects of them, and who will receive a healthy paycheck each month no matter what.

The Democrats’ idea of an economic plan is to punish citizens who are producing for our country and working to support their families, while rewarding themselves and others for staying home.

This is not sustainable. If the Biden economic plans pass Congress, we will soon be living in a country we won’t recognize.

The Impact Of Bidenomics

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday about the impact on our economy the Biden administration’s policies are having. The Biden administration’s economic policies have not been kind to women.

The article reports:

Well, well, well…. though financial media will say this is remarkably unexpected, it is something CTH specifically predicted we would see – and it is happening exactly on the timeline CTH anticipated.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the second quarter national wage rate data today {BLS DATA HERE}.  U.S. wages DECLINED 1.2% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to last year.  When reviewing the data [Table 2], look at the negative impact to women, specifically Black and Asian women:

Combine a 1.2% decline in earned wages with a 5.4% overall inflation rate recently reported {Go Deep},  and what you get is a 6.6% drop in real income amid the working class.  That, my friends, is exactly what we said should be expected.  That is also why the JoeBama administration needs to pump more money into the system (human infrastructure spending) in order to stop people from realizing just how bad it is.

You cannot have declining wages and massive inflation and expect the middle-class to survive.  Additionally, when I said six weeks ago that we had just passed peak home value, this is another data point to bolster that prediction.  We are in a plateau period on macro-level real home values, from this point they start dropping.  You cannot have near double digit drops in real income and simultaneously expect people to afford high mortgages.  It just doesn’t happen.

The declining wage rates, and the more substantive drop in real wage rates due to massive inflation, are specifically hitting the lower tier of the working class harder.  Yet despite this,  Biden is intent on importing even more economic migrants to put even more downward pressure on wages for the working class.

These are very real outcomes of policy.  Working class Blacks and Latinos will feel this even more, yet this is the special interest group that Democrats claim to support.  The reality is exactly opposite from the narrative sold by the Biden administration.

The only hope we have for the future economy of America is to elect conservative Republicans to Congress next year. RINO’s might as well be Democrats–they won’t help. Look at the voting record of your House of Representatives member or Senator if they are up for election, and then decide whether to support them. There is still time to recruit conservatives for public office.