Tag Archives: The Center Square

This Might Help Deal With Some Of Our Immigration Problems

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One of the differences between the current migrants coming into America and the migrants that came here during the first fifty years of the twentieth century is the welfare safety net. Until the 1960’s War on Poverty, the safety net was comprised of your neighbors and your local church. The government had nothing to do with keeping people fed or housed. Just for the record, we obviously lost the War on Poverty and we need to admit that and end it. Rand Paul may be on to something.

On Thursday, The Center Square reported:

With billions of American taxpayer dollars on the line, and funding for over a dozen welfare benefits for refugees set to continue, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is taking a stand.

Paul introduced the End Welfare for Non-Citizens Act to end taxpayer benefits for refugees, asylees and illegal immigrants.

As previously reported by The Center Square, nearly $6 billion in continual funding for refugees is poised to be approved.

Funding for the refugee program skyrocketed under the Biden administration as part of the Refugee and Entrant Assistant programs.

The funding rose from less than $2 billion in fiscal year 2021, the last year of President Donald Trump’s first term, to nearly $9 billion the next fiscal year – the first year of former President Joe Biden’s administration.

Right now we have too many people sitting in the wagon and too few people pulling the wagon. It’s not right to take large sums of money from people who earned it and give it to people who did not.

The article concludes:

Congressionally appropriated spending on refugee and migrant assistance programs rose sharply under the Biden administration, totaling roughly $30 billion over those four years.

In particular, lawmakers significantly increased appropriations for the Refugee and Entrant Assistance programs – housed in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – which provide benefits to eligible refugees.

In fiscal year 2021, the last year of Trump’s first term, Congress appropriated $1.91 billion for REA programs. That number shot up to $8.92 billion the following year, coinciding with the influx of Afghan refugees and record-high border crossings.

Total federal assistance for refugee programs in fiscal year 2023, however, reached $10 billion, as an OpenTheBooks investigation highlighted.

“With a national debt exceeding $38 trillion, Washington should not be running a welfare system on autopilot,” according to a release from the Rand’s office. “The End Welfare for Non-Citizens Act puts America First by stopping taxpayer dollars from being siphoned into benefits for non-citizens. If we want a sustainable safety net and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars, this bill is a must-pass.”

Among his first acts upon his second inauguration in January 2025, Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, sayng “it would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

We cannot afford to continue doing what we are doing.

This Is Going To Be A Problem

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On Friday, The Center Square reported the following:

New York City lost nearly 5,000 businesses early last year as employers closed their doors or left for other low-tax states, according to a new report.

The analysis comes as newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes to hike business taxes to foot the bill for his agenda.

The report, released Thursday by the Economic Development Corporation, showed more than 3,500 new businesses opened their doors in New York City during the second quarter of the fiscal year but that was offset by a loss of about 8,400 employers. That’s the weakest quarter for business formation since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report’s authors said.

The corporation’s report is the latest to highlight New York City’s shrinking business sector with employers looking to other low-tax states as Albany piles on new regulations and costs.

It also comes as Mamdani seeks to draw up support for higher taxes to pay for plans for universal childcare, tuition free college and free bus service in the city.

Mamdani’s plans call for increasing the state’s top corporate tax rate by about half, up to 11.5% from its current maximum of 7.25%, which has caused concerns among New York City’s business community. If approved, that would match the highest corporate rate in the nation next door in New Jersey. He’s also called for “wealth” tax and a $30 per hour minimum wage for the city.

His ideas will seriously damage the City’s economy.

The article concludes:

In 2023, New York’s effective state business tax rate was 5.9%, making it the ninth-highest in the nation, the report’s authors noted. The state also ranks poorly for individual income, sales, property and unemployment insurance taxes. It has the fourth highest percentage of housing-burdened households in the country, with 38.6% of households spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

Those factors have contributed to outmigration, with New York losing more domestic taxpayers than any other state from 2020 to 2022, according to the report, as residents fled to New Jersey, Florida, and other low-tax states.

The independent businessman is the backbone of the American economy. People who are self-employed don’t work a 40-hour week. People who are self-employed and successful work an 80-hour week. Logically, why would you stay in a state that takes a large percentage of what you work so hard for when you can move to a state with less regulation and lower taxes? That is what has happened in the past, and if Mayor Mamdani implements his policies, we will see more businesses leave New York City.

This Might Be One Of The Problems With Our Government

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On Tuesday, The Center Square posted an article about the political spending of government unions.

The article reports:

(The Center Square) – Government unions across the country spent more than $900 million during the 2023-2024 election cycle, according to a new report.

The Commonwealth Foundation’s most recent report found the top four public sector unions: the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees spent over $915 million on politics during the 2023-2024 cycle.

The unions spent $755 million on federal elections and policies while their state affiliates spent $160 million on state races and policies. California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Washington saw the highest amount spent on state races with a total of $105 million of union spending.

Almost $650 million came from union members’ dues, which makes up more than 85% of what the unions spent on national politics. The remaining amount of money came from the unions’ political action committees.

Did the people paying the union dues agree on where the money should be spent? I doubt it.

The article notes:

The report found that 95.8% of donations for state-level candidates went toward Democrats. On the federal level, 98.8% of union donations went to Democrats.

The four unions donated $5 million to President Joe Biden’s campaign, according to the report. Biden was eventually replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris. 

When looking at the state breakdown, Illinois’ public sector union officials spent $29.9 million, more than what union officials spent in any other state. In 2023, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson received more than $5.5 million from the government employee unions, according to the report.

Followed by the spending in Illinois, union officials spent $25.8 million on political initiatives in California; $18.6 million in Washington; $17.9 million in Massachusetts; and $12.8 million in Pennsylvania.

“Workers deserve to know how their hard-earned money is spent by their union leaders. Union influence across the nation should be earned through member participation, not by shady back-door money shuffling through PACs and affiliated group contributions,” Osborne (David Osborne, senior director of Labor Policy for the Commonwealth Foundation) said.

First of all, government workers should not have unions. Secondly, union dues should not be used for political purposes. If members want to donate to political causes, they should be free to do so, but dues should not be used politically without the consent of the members paying them.

Rerouting Money To Good Use

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On Sunday, Hot Air posted an article about some of the changes being made in the way the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spends its money.

The article quotes an article at The Center Square:

“VA staff will now get to spend more time with Veterans, VA facilities can focus on treating Veterans, and VA can manage its staff according to Veterans’ needs and national security requirements, not union demands,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said. 

Earlier this month, Veterans Affairs canceled its contracts with most unions on Wednesday, saying the unions fight against the best interests of veterans. VA said the move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order from March to do away with public employee unions at the federal level after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a preliminary injunction that previously stopped 21 agencies from implementing the executive order.

Before 1962, federal employees did not have the right to collective bargaining. On January 17, 1962, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988 that granted federal employees the right to collective bargaining.Theoretically, an Executive Order by a President can be reversed later by a different President. This could get interesting.

The article at The Center Square reports:

When VA canceled those contacts, it cut the number of VA bargaining unit employees from about 375,000 to about 7,000. Trump’s executive order exempted public safety employee unions, so employment contracts covering VA police officers, firefighters and security guards represented by unions will remain in place.

VA is redirecting nearly $45 million per year in federal funds from unions to America’s Veterans by ending taxpayer-funded union time, reclaiming federal office space used for public union activities, and getting back federal IT equipment.

Ending taxpayer-funded union time is expected to save the most money. In 2024, VA spent $39.75 million to allowed 1,961 VA employees to spend nearly 750,000 hours working on behalf of government unions rather than VA beneficiaries. After ditching the union contract, the agency no longer has to allow union employees to do union work on taxpayer time. 

VA officials said that vast majority of these employees are back working full time for VA in the positions they were hired to do rather than doing work on behalf of the union. This includes more than 1,000 employees serving in direct patient-care roles.

VA also reclaimed more than 180,000 square feet of office space worth about $5.4 million that had been provided to unions free of charge. The space will be repurposed to serve VA beneficiaries, including expanded administrative and clinical services in several facilities across the country.

Our veterans deserve the best healthcare available.

Does He Even Believe This?

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On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Senator Schumer’s explanation of the reason for the defeat of so many Democrats in November’s election.

The article reports:

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that voters “didn’t realize how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years heading into November’s elections, claiming it played a key role in his party’s demise.

President-elect Donald Trump scored a historic win for Republicans in November, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, while Vice President Kamala Harris failed to even match the numbers President Joe Biden had received in 2020. On “Meet the Press,” NBC host Kristen Welker questioned Schumer about his thoughts on the “root cause” of the Democrats’ loss, noting that Democratic strategist James Carville had blamed the state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration.

“I told my caucus and I’ll say it here, too. We should regard this election, certainly it was a loss, but it’s also a challenge, and we did some things right against very severe headwinds. We kept four of those seven contested Democratic seats, but we did some things wrong and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong,” Schumer said.

“Then there’s some things we didn’t do that we should have done. One of the things we have to do is we must focus on the working families of America,” Schumer added. “We believe in them and we passed all kinds of legislation that helped them with the infrastructure bill which made our economy stronger and employed lots of people.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, on December 22, 2024, The Center Square reported:

President Joe Biden is only a few weeks away from the end of his time in office, and one key part of his legacy is undeniable: inflation.

Biden has battled inflation from the start, but critics say he helped fuel it with trillions of dollars in deficit spending during his four years in office. Federal debt spending is offset in part by printing money, which increases inflation.

Biden has boasted bringing inflation rates down from about 9% earlier in his term to roughly 2.5% currently.

While the rate of inflation has slowed, that doesn’t mean prices have decreased. In fact, they continue rising, albeit slower than earlier in his term.

The federal government released a a key inflation marker Friday, its Personal Consumption Expenditure index, which rose 2.4% last month, a bit less than expected.

Overall, though, prices have risen more than 20% since Biden took office.

It really is the economy, stupid.

Who Do You Trust To Keep This Promise?

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Both the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign have pledged to stop taxing tips in the service industries. When President Trump made the suggestion, the media immediately calculated the missing tax revenue. When Vice-President Harris made the suggestion, the media praised her for the idea. That is how the media works right now.

On August 30, The Center Square reported the following:

In a mirror of national politics, California Republicans followed former President Donald Trump’s lead by proposing to end taxes on tips. While Vice President Kamala Harris, who formerly represented California in the U.S. Senate, embraced the measure, California Democrats said no, shooting down the proposed amendment in the California Senate.

“Even Trump and Harris both say we should eliminate the ‘tip tax,’” said the California Senate Republican Caucus in a statement. 

Soon after Trump announced his proposal to a crowd in Nevada, which has the highest percentage of tipped workers in the nation, Harris also came out in favor of the proposal. The Budget Lab at Yale University reports there are approximately 4 million tipped workers — 2.5% of all workers nationwide. Many tipped workers earn less than the minimum wage, and thus earn the lion’s share of their income from tips. Some higher-paid tipped professions such as barbers and hair stylists would also benefit from this rule change. 

…In the California Senate, Democrats — except for Senate President Pro Tempore Senator Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who abstained, voted to put aside the amendment, while all nine Republicans voted for it.

I think it is rather telling that there are only nine Republicans in the California Senate–which has forty seats. Don’t try to blame the Republicans for anything that happens in California!

The Impact Of Inflation

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On Thursday, The Center Square posted an article about the impact of inflation on homebuyers.

The article reports:

(The Center Square) – The housing market is not immune from inflationary woes as buyer’s purchasing power has significantly diminished in four years. Home buyers in 2024 need 80% more income to purchase a home than they did in 2020, according to a new report by Zillow.

“The income needed to comfortably afford a home is up 80% since 2020, while median income has risen 23% in that time,” the report states. That equates to $47,000 more than four years ago.

“Home shoppers today need to make more than $106,000 to comfortably afford a home,” according to the report. “That is 80% more than in January 2020.”

A monthly mortgage payment for a typical U.S. home has nearly doubled since January 2020, the report notes, up 96.4% to $2,188. The calculations are based on a 10% down payment.

Home values also increased over 42% in the last four years, with the typical home nationwide worth roughly $343,000, according to Zillow’s January market report. Mortgage rates in January 2020 were 3%, the report notes. By February 2024, they are closer to 7%.

The article notes:

The report’s analysis was based on quarterly median household income from the American Community Survey, Moody’s Analytics, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index.

The findings were announced as total household debt reached a record $17.5 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report. Mortgage debt increased by $112 billion in Q4 2023 to reach $12.25 trillion. Balances on home equity lines of credit increased by $11 billion, the seventh consecutive quarterly increase after Q1 2022. There are currently $360 billion in aggregate outstanding balances, the Fed states.

The overspending of our government impacts all of us. There will eventually be a tipping point where the housing market crashes because people cannot afford to buy houses. We need to un-elect any Congressman or Senator that continues to vote for overspending.