Tag Archives: State of the Union

When The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up

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Issues & Insights posted an article Monday about President Biden’s claims in his State of the Union address about the taxes the wealthy pay versus the taxes he thinks the wealthy should pay. The bottom line is ‘simply hang on to your wallet no matter how much you make,’ but the article refutes some of his claims.

The article reports:

First, consider his claim that the tax rate paid by billionaires is 8.2%. That plays well with soak-the-rich leftists. But where did he get this number?

Not from the IRS. It calculates the actual tax rate that various income groups pay, including the ultra-rich. Its data show that the 400 people with the biggest incomes in America were paying an average tax rate of more than 23%. Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation figures that the tax rate on the top 0.4% of families is 26%.

So where does Biden come up with an 8.2% tax rate? He changes the definition of taxable income to include all unrealized gains from investments.

If you have money in the stock market, any gains in the value of those stocks would count as income to Biden, even if you don’t sell the stock. Presumably so would any gains in the value of your home. Or the value of any other assets you possess.

By artificially inflating income, Biden can make their tax burden seem tiny. 

The idea of taxing unrealized gains — in other words, extending the income tax to things that aren’t income — could very well be unconstitutional in addition to being economically reckless.

Just for the record, Americans are already taxed on unrealized gains–every year we pay a real estate tax on what the city or county assesses is the value of our house. We haven’t sold our house. The only actual gain from our house is having a place to live, yet every year we pay taxes on it.

The article concludes:

What about his claim that taxing the wealth — not the income — of billionaires would raise $500 billion?

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Except Biden is hoping nobody notices the caveat — that it’s $500 billion over 10 years. In other words, $50 billion a year.

Even that might sound like a lot … until you put it in context.

That $50 billion wouldn’t even cover one month’s worth of interest payments on the national debt, which was $69.2 billion in January.

It wouldn’t even pay half of the increase in the deficit in the first five months of this year compared with last year. (The deficit from October through February was $830 billion, which is up $108 billion from the same months the year before.)

The idea that an extra $50 billion could finance a new childcare entitlement, paid leave, and home care isn’t just ludicrous, it’s insane.

We don’t expect Biden to know or understand what he’s reading on the teleprompter, but shame on anyone else for believing the lies he’s spewing.

Someone needs to explain the Laffer Curve to the Biden administration.

How Long Can This Continue?

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On Sunday, Clarice Feldman posted an article at the American Thinker about our rapidly disintegrating President.

The article notes:

A day after his pumped-up divisive State of the Union address, unsurprisingly headlined “fiery” by the copycat media lackeys, President Biden, speaking in Pennsylvania, reverted to his old befuddled self.

“Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: send me to Congress!” 

“Last night [at] the U.S. Capitol — the same building where our freedoms came under assault on July the 6th!”

“We added more to the national debt than any president in his term in all of history!”

Some Americans believe that the senility and dementia are an act. I don’t agree, but I think it would probably be better if it were.

The article continues:

Well, the last statement is true. I’ll give him that. And large budget deficits are a pattern in Democrat-run cities and states. Democrats pay off cronies and constituencies with government money and then raise your taxes because they’ve spent more than they were able to squeeze out of the economy.

Nearest to me, that pattern is evident in Maryland and Washington, D.C.: They look the other way at rising crime because they defunded the police and decriminalized conduct and then bemoan empty purses as people and businesses flee. They locked down their states and were surprised to learn that capped the revenue spigot. They made ridiculous, frivolous expenditures like bike lanes and street cars and painting BLM on a major street and then can’t pay for necessities like cops, road repairs, and schools.

The article concludes with a list of some of the accomplishments of Calvin Coolidge and some of the things that happened under his watch:

Without government interference, private enterprise quickly electrified the country and created a transportation revolution as more Americans could drive their new automobiles.

Average earnings rose 30 percent in a decade. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by a third… This great economic and lifestyle revolution for Americans of modest means happened with basically no guidance from the federal government. The government largely stayed out of the way. 

We can dream, can’t we?

It really is time for a change.

The Misinformation In The State Of The Union Speech

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On Friday, The Federalist posted a list of the thirty lies President Biden told during the State of the Union Speech. For further details, follow the link to the original article, but here are some of the topics of the lies:

1. Sending Money To Ukraine

2. Trump’s NATO Remarks

3. World Security And Ukraine

4. Jan. 6 Demonstrations

5. Alabama IVF Issue

6. Kate Cox

7. Covid Shots And Cancer

8. 15 Million New Jobs

9. U.S. Inflation Rate

10. Consumer Confidence

11. Drug Prices

12. Biden Beat Big Pharma

13. Student Loans

14. Decreasing The Federal Deficit

15. Corporations Aren’t Paying Their Fair Share

You get the picture. Follow the link to find the other lies.

“Get Off My Lawn,” He Shouted

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Last night I watched the State of the Union Address. I watched the entire speech and the rebuttal. I learned that to our ‘representatives’ and the elites in Washington, the most most important issues are Ukraine and January 6th. In the rebuttal, I learned that the four things important to Republicans are our southern borde5r, conflicts overseas, inflation, and crime–not necessarily in that order. When the State of the Union Address was over, I felt like someone had yelled at me for an hour and a half. The speech proved that President Biden does have the energy to give an hour and a half speech. It also left many Americans wondering if there were drugs involved.

In his speech, the President needed to allay doubts about his cognitive abilities. He also needed a reset from his image as a tired old man. He did a reasonable job on both counts as long as you ignored the yelling and the slurred speech near the end of the address.

There were a number of lies told during the speech. January 6th was not an insurrection–there were no guns involved and no one has been convicted of insurrection. The President did not inherit a struggling economy–he inherited low inflation, low interest rates, energy independence, and an economy on the rebound from the Covid lockdowns. A large number of the jobs he claims to have created were simply people returning to the jobs they held before the Covid lockdowns. I would also like to note that many of the jobs currently being created are part-time jobs. During the past two months, the number of full-time jobs has significantly decreased. The President also claimed that crime is down under his administration. That is simply not true, although much of the increase in crime is due to Democrat-run cities who have eliminated bail and are not keeping criminals in jail. In New York, the National Guard has been called up to patrol the New York City subways because crime has become a serious problem there.

Also, why was there a fence around the Capitol, but not a wall at our southern border? Do fences and walls work or do they not work? There was also a comment about increasing taxes on corporation and on the wealthy. Corporations do not pay taxes–they pass them on to their customers, fueling inflation. “Taxing the rich” is a proposal that simply feeds class envy. If you want to see the results, look at the Laffer Curve. I would also like to note that during the Obama administration, General Electric paid no income taxes. Why weren’t they sharing the burden?

The speech was loud, inaccurate, and divisive. The tone was not attractive. I do wonder if this speech, which seemed more like a campaign speech than a State of the Union Address, actually won over any undecided voters.

Is This Legal?

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As the Republicans prepare to take the majority in the House of Representatives, Democrats are preparing for the change. However, some of the preparation seems a little odd.

On Sunday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the Jan. 6 committee will have to “scrub” some evidence from its final report before Republicans take over the house in 2023.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Schiff was asked by anchor Dana Bash about Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becoming chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and will “go through the evidence you left out … you’re saying that there won’t be evidence that will not be made public?”

“The evidence will all be made public,” Schiff told Bash in response. “Now, we will have to make sure that we scrub that evidence for personally identifiable information, that the evidence that we provide protects people’s security, it doesn’t put them at risk. So, there are things that we’re going to have to do along those lines.”

The article also notes:

Elsewhere in his interview, Schiff declined to say whether he would comply with a House Republican subpoena when the GOP takes control.

“We’ll have to consider the validity of the subpoena,” he said. “But I would certainly view my obligation, administration’s obligation to follow the law. And the fact that they have disrespected the law is not a precedent I would hope that would be broadly followed. But we’ll have to look at the legitimacy or lack of legitimacy of what they do.”

Schiff, meanwhile, did not say when the final Jan. 6 select committee’s report would be released to the public. The panel will end with the start of the next Congress in January 2023—like all other select committees created during the current session of Congress.

So there are only consequences for not complying with a subpoena when the Democrats issue the subpoena? I am honestly beginning to wonder if our unequal system of justice has reached the point on no return.