President Joe Biden announces student loan relief in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on August 24, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

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Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Among the Greatest Partisan Rip-Offs of All Time

Roger L. Simon

 

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Commentary

Remember 1773’s Boston Tea Party and “taxation without representation” that led to the American Revolution and our ultimate separation from Britain?

I imagine you do, but perhaps not if you are one of our younger readers and all you were being taught in one of our woke schools that skin color and gender identity were far more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Nevertheless, Joe Biden—quite possibly, even likely, illegally and certainly as the most obvious kind of vote grubbing—has gone one (or multiple times) up on King George in the “taxation without representation” department with his student loan forgiveness, partial though it may be.

Consider this: The gullible poor slob (aka good citizen), whether parent or graduate, who has been paying or has fully paid his/her student loan is being asked to pay for someone else’s, once again through taxes, even though the recipient of this largesse may be less needy than the benighted taxpayer.

He or she is paying twice, rather like the estate tax but worse because it taking the money of yet more people that can ill afford it.

How much will this loan forgiveness cost all of us taxpayers? Estimates vary, of course. The other day Penn Wharton put it at $300 billion after 10 years. That translates to $2,000 per taxpayer, according to the National Review.

But those are not the most recent figures. Fox Business on Aug. 25 is estimating between $440 and $600 billion over the same time frame.  Something called the Committee for a Responsible Budget has now put it at $500 billion.

In most of our experiences, these estimates tend to go up, often also in multiples, so no one knows what it will actually cost, but we can be sure it’s a stupendous amount.

Driving home from my early morning stint on the Tennessee Star Report today, I heard Glenn Beck—who immediately follows on the same station to his national audience—mention ever more disturbing numbers, comparing the expenditure to the annual cost of the U. S. Military and to the gross national product of over a hundred countries.

All this at a time when our national debt is rising exponentially, inflation (with the temporary exception of heavily-managed gas prices) is doing the same, and the Fed is working overtime to fight these trends through rapidly increasing interest rates.

And yet the man in the White House is taking us all in the opposite direction for a few votes that might not really be there, especially if the Republicans wake up, as opposed to being woke, and communicate well to the public. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)  has made a good start at a Senate hearing.

More, please, and as forcefully as possible—not just at hearings for the C-SPAN crowd, but everywhere for everyone.

Messaging, with exceptions (notably Trump and DeSantis), has been a weakness for Republicans, especially with the quondam-left’s stranglehold on mainstream media.

This relates interestingly to the larger higher education discussion. For the last year or so, I have been conducting a private—admittedly random and without concrete statistical value—survey of liberals and progressives to ask them whether they knew Biden had plagiarized (rather extensively at that) in law school, of all places.

Only one of seven or eight did!

When I informed the others about the plagiarism and its extent (he lifted an entire legal brief and claimed it as his own), repeated several times with Neil Kinnock and others (when he lifted their speeches), I watched as ears seemed to close and eyes grew unfocused. Some even looked away as if overcome by a sudden cognitive disorder, while trying to figure out how to walk away or change the subject. Such is communication in our times.

Which makes me wonder if Biden really respects education, whether he sees it as any more than just a road to getting votes, just as he saw a law degree as something for getting a job or getting into politics, but not as something enshrining, or even recognizing your belief in, the rule of law this country was founded on.

He clearly is acting lawlessly against the separation of powers in our Constitution in many areas—trampling on it really—whether at his own behest or that of others.

Anyway, I hope and actually suspect that this loan forgiveness will backfire.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-among-the-greatest-partisan-rip-offs-of-all-time_4689612.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-08-26&utm_medium=email&est=yx0c6Z%2B6chEb038YGA4AQoBmXF%2BL41qWGLlAT747tyCgVdTpkOpp7JHOTjbx

Dems Weaponize the IRS to Silence Critics

The Left's hit squad magnifies.

Betsy McCaughey

30 comments

[Read the free download of our IRS Ebook: Internal Radical Service.]

The public should be frightened that Democrats are passing new legislation to weaponize the already abusive Internal Revenue Service.

For nearly a century, the IRS has been used by presidents and members of Congress to harass and incriminate political foes. In addition to collecting revenue to fund the government, the IRS is a hit squad that destroys reputations and criminalizes dissenters.

A lot of pain can be inflicted under the guise of tax “auditing.” The bill passed by Congress last week, erroneously labeled the Inflation Reduction Act, will mean more audits and investigations. The bill roughly doubles funding for the IRS enforcement division, adding an estimated 49,600 agents and auditors.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is starving the Defense Department, requesting too little funding to even keep up with inflation, despite Russian and Chinese aggression. Yet his bill will make the IRS three-quarters the size of the U.S. Marine Corps. Who’s Biden making war on?

It’s true the IRS needs funding to improve services to taxpayers, including getting phone calls answered and returns processed, and moving from antiquated paper files to modern technology. The bill allocates a minuscule amount to those priorities and puts the lion’s share — over $45 billion — into “enforcement,” including hiring and arming agents.

As much as 90% of the funds raised through beefed up audits will come from people making less than $200,000 a year, according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Audits can bring a tsunami of government document demands and repeated visits from IRS agents over months or even years. Most people don’t have accountants and lawyers to insulate them from the pain.

While the bill increases IRS muscle, it fails to impose serious criminal penalties for leaking confidential taxpayer information and political targeting. History shows how dangerous that will be.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who opposed his New Deal and adversaries like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin.

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, the IRS gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover access to its files, allowing tax information to be weaponized against the National Council of Churches, the NAACP and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

President John F. Kennedy set up the Ideological Organizations Audit Project to target right-leaning groups, including the think tank American Enterprise Institute and the John Birch Society.

President Richard Nixon’s counsel, John Dean, admitted the administration used “the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The IRS was Nixon’s weapon of choice. The article of impeachment against Nixon included charges that he ordered “income tax audits or other income tax investigations” in “a discriminatory manner.”

President Bill Clinton sicced the IRS on accusers Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones.

President Barack Obama’s IRS targeted tea party groups and other conservative nonprofits leading up to the 2012 presidential election, delaying their tax status to keep them from raising money. That scandal blew open in 2013 when IRS official Lois Lerner admitted the targeting. Yet no charges were brought against Lerner or any other IRS official, and she retired with full benefits.

And the abuse continues. Biden’s IRS leaked confidential tax information from Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and other billionaires to left-wing publication ProPublica. Tax information is supposed to be kept confidential. We Americans have no choice but to provide it. But the IRS was playing footsie with left-wing media to help Democrats push their false claim that a tax crackdown is needed.

NPR praised the bill passed last week for “going after rich tax dodgers,” while Slate magazine cheered the “supercharged” IRS.

Don’t buy the rhetoric. Tax evasion is not a serious problem in the U.S., as it is in many other nations. Americans deplore tax cheats, according to the polls. The U.S. has one of the highest voluntary tax compliance rates in the world — about 84%.

In truth, the agency’s magnified clout will be used to muzzle and punish political critics. That’s a serious blow to our freedom.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/dems-weaponize-irs-silence-critics-frontpagemagcom/

IT WON’T REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING, EITHER

IT WON’T REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING, EITHER

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE, DEMOCRATS, ENERGY POLICY

Democrats quickly gave up on the Inflation Reduction Act, since they couldn’t sell the idea that another $700+ billion in deficit spending would somehow reduce inflation. So now it is alleged to be a climate control act, instead.

But the bill won’t affect the climate any more than it would have reduced inflation. Even if you assume the UN’s inflated estimate of the impact of CO2 emissions on global warming, the bill’s impact is nil:

[W]e get somewhere between 0.028 and 0.0009°F reduction in temperature by 2100 for about 400 billion dollars in climate spending contained in the bill.

But the oceans will stop rising! Which, by the way, they have been doing for the last 15,000 or so years.

Bjorn Lomborg created this chart, using the UN’s climate model. It shows graphically the climate impact of the Inflation Reduction Temperature Reduction Act. See if you can spot the difference:

So the Democrats’ prize legislation is an exercise in futility. Unless, of course, you are one of the many Democratic Party constituents who will be cashing the checks that add up to more than $700 billion, with a little over half ostensibly going to benefit the climate.

The purpose here is to buy votes, obviously, and the Democratic Party press is ecstatic over the idea that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer finally have a “win” to brag about. But I wonder. I haven’t seen much evidence that the Democrats’ deficit spending extravaganzas are especially popular outside the precincts of those who cash the checks. (And, by the way, the number one beneficiary of this particular $700 billion will be the Communist Chinese, who dominate “green” energy.) My guess is that most Americans have caught on to the Democrats’ game, and understand that this legislation will no more dictate the Earth’s climate than it will bring our crippling inflation under control.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/it-wont-reduce-global-warming-either.php

WHAT’S BEHIND THE DEMOCRATS’ IRS EXPANSION?

WHAT’S BEHIND THE DEMOCRATS’ IRS EXPANSION?

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN DEMOCRATS, IRS

Nearly half of the Democrats’ Inflation Promotion Act is devoted to increasing the budget of the IRS. Think about that: when has more IRS ever been popular? Never. So what are the Democrats up to?

Monica Showalter writes:

The other half [of the Inflation Promotion Act], some $300 billion, will be dedicated to IRS enforcement, surveillance upgrades, and audits against small businesses, who have now been re-labeled “the rich.”

$300 billion to the IRS? Seriously?

Sinema got her demand to not close the carried interest tax loophole which is what her hedge fund donors wanted. Democrats replaced that with a provision to tax businesses even more.

This is ironic. Democrats say the IRS will go after “the rich,” but the one provision in the Inflation Promotion Act that actually would have been bad for the rich–repeal of the carried interest treatment of income earned by hedge fund managers–is now out of the bill. A friend of mine who made a lot of money as a hedge fund manager describes the carried interest concept as “completely unjustifiable.” Yet Chuck Schumer has protected it against reform for many years, on behalf of Democratic Party donors.

Now, finally, the Democrats ostensibly were ready to turn on their hedge fund backers–Wall Street is not entirely a Democratic enclave, but almost–and what happens? Kristen Sinema rides in to save the day not only for her own hedge fund supporters, but for Schumer’s as well. Coincidence?

That was a digression. More on the IRS:

The [Washington] Post reports the IRS expects a much lower return on all those “rich” people they claim they are going to audit with those 87,000 new agents, which is an eightfold increase in their budget….

Wait! 87,000 new IRS agents? Can this possibly be right? And an eightfold increase in the IRS enforcement budget? What do you suppose the IRS will do with that massive influx of money and manpower?

Showalter and others think the Democrats’ IRS will attack small businesses in a major way. That probably is true. But, as the president of a conservative policy organization, I have another concern. We all remember how Barack Obama’s IRS went after Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations before and after the 2010 midterm wipeout. Mostly, they slow-walked the 501(c)(3) approval process. But imagine an IRS hostile to conservative principles, and emboldened by an eight-fold budget increase and 87,000 new agents. What would the IRS do in the liberals’ wildest dreams?

I think the liberals who run the IRS would sic their agents on every conservative nonprofit in the country. They would audit such organizations, looking for evidence that they somehow had violated the extremely vague regulations governing political activity. Such audits would require even squeaky-clean organizations like my own to hire lawyers to defend them. Government lawyers work for free–that is, courtesy of the taxpayers–while private lawyers have to be paid. Thus, a concerted attack by the IRS could largely disable conservative nonprofits, whose revenue would be dissipated by paying for lawyers, and whose energies would be dissipated in dealing with IRS attacks.

Call me paranoid, but I think this lies behind the Democrats’ sudden desire to drastically upsize the IRS.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/whats-behind-the-democrats-irs-expansion.php

Top 10 tough votes Democrats had to take during vote-a-rama for massive spending bill

GOP amendments forced votes on issues ranging from border security and tax increases to gender roles.

By Nicholas Ballasy

During a "vote-a-rama" on their $739 billion reconciliation spending bill that has hundreds of billions for climate and health care programs, Democratic senators had to take a series of uncomfortable votes on hot-button issues — particularly tough for those representing swing states.

The bill, which also includes federal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents, passed on a party line vote 51-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie. 

GOP senators proposed a series of amendments that forced difficult votes for moderate Democrats on issues ranging from border security and tax hikes to gender roles, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders forced two votes that could alienate the Democrats' progressive base. The tough votes for Democrats included these 10:

1. Energy price increases: South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed an amendment to "strike a tax increase that would result in higher consumer prices for gasoline, heating oil, and other energy sources for Americans earning less than $400,000 per year." It was defeated by Democrats 50-50 with Harris breaking the tie. 

2. Oil and gas leases: Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso's amendment to "require certain additional onshore oil and gas lease sales in certain states" was rejected 50-50. Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo proposed a related amendment to expedite consideration of permits and provide regulatory certainty for infrastructure and energy projects, which was also rejected by Democrats 50-49.

3. IRS audits: Crapo proposed a separate amendment to "prevent the use of additional Internal Revenue Service Funds from being used for audits of taxpayers with taxable incomes below $400,000 in order to protect low- and middle-income earning American taxpayers from an onslaught of audits from an army of new Internal Revenue Service auditors funded by an unprecedented, nearly $80,000,000,000, infusion of new funds." His amendment was rejected 50-50.

4. 87,000 new IRS hires: Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz suggested striking the $80 billion "slush fund for the Internal Revenue Service to prevent the hiring of 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service employees that will surveil and audit the private account information and transaction data of innocent Americans and small businesses." Democrats shot it down 50-50.

5. War on Coal: Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby offered an amendment to "end the president's War on Coal through the approval of coal leases," which was also rejected 50-50.

6. Pregnancy programs limited to females: Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio proposed an amendment to limit federal pregnancy programs to biological females that was defeated by Democrats 50-50.

7. Border barriers: Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan introduced an amendment designed to "replace the funding for the Office of the Chief Readiness Support Officer with a $500,000,000 appropriation for the construction or improvement of primary pedestrian fencing and barriers along the southwest border." Senate Democrats sunk the amendment 50-50.

8. Ban on strategic oil reserve sales to China: Cruz also proposed an amendment that would have prevented the U.S. government from selling oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China. While the amendment failed to garner the 60 votes needed to pass, moderate Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) supported the amendment in the 54-46 vote. Each of these senators is locked in a tight reelection race.

9. Medicare coverage for dental, hearing, and vision: Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, proposed an amendment to "provide coverage for dental and oral health care, hearing care, and vision care under the Medicare program." It was rejected overwhelmingly in a bipartisan vote, 97-3. 

10. Civilian Climate Corps: Sanders also proposed creating a Civilian Climate Corps, which was part of the original multitrillion Build Back Better Act. Every senator other than Sanders voted against it, including Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who has been a vocal supporter of creating a Civilian Climate Corps.

Republicans predicted that the Democrats will pay a political price in the midterm elections for pushing the massive spending package through.

"Democrats will pay the price in November for raising taxes on families during a recession," Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. 

The Democrat-led House is set to come back into session this week to consider the legislation. House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York said the bill is going to worsen inflation.

"Democrats' radical spending bill will raise taxes and crush hardworking families and small businesses at a time when Americans can least afford it," she said in a statement. "While every American family is already suffering from historic inflation as a direct result of reckless spending by one party Democrat rule in Washington, Democrats are doubling down on their failed agenda to spend billions more and increase inflation."

Richard Grenell, former acting Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration, said that the votes Democrats took during the vote-a-rama would damage swing state moderates up for reelection, such as Sen. Masto.

"I think when the public gets to see these people, then they will absolutely vote against some of these phonies who pretend to be moderate," he told Just the News. 

He said Masto has been "solidly voting" with Biden's agenda.

"I don't think that she wants to win," he said. "I think she wants to be in Biden's cabinet when she loses. And the only way to be in Biden's cabinet is to be a progressive. There's no room for moderates, and so she realizes she's going to lose."

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/top-10-tough-votes-democrats-had-take-during-vote-rama-massive-spending-bill

Biden and the Democrats Are About to Raise Your Taxes

Biden and the Democrats Are About to Raise Your Taxes

BY MATT MARGOLIS 

 

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

If you’re reading this, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will most likely raise your taxes. Even those who aren’t reading this will see their taxes go up, despite claims by Joe Biden to the contrary.

“The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will lower health care costs for millions of Americans. And, for the first time in a long time, make the largest corporations pay their fair share without any new taxes on people making under $400,000 a year,” Biden tweeted on Sunday.

I’m sure whoever wrote that tweet on Biden’s behalf believed it, too. However, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) the only people who won’t see their taxes go up are those who make between $10,000 and $30,000 a year. Everyone else will be paying more.

Related: One Year Ago Today, Biden Claimed ‘No Serious Economist’ Was Predicting High Inflation

“Those making under $10,000 will see a .3% increase in their federal taxes; those making between $30,000 and $75,000 will see a .1% increase; those making between $75,000 and $100,000 a .2% increase; those making between $100,000 and $500,000 a .3% increase; those making between $500,000 and $1,000,000 a .5% increase; and those making over $1,000,000 a year will see a .6% increase,” explains the Daily Wire.

Last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) struck a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to support the bill.

“It will subsidize the wealthy at the expense of working families, raise taxes on workers making as little as $10K a year, and unleash an army of IRS agents on taxpayers,” Sen. Cornyn (R-Texas) tweeted. “Oh, and it won’t reduce inflation anytime soon.”

According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model, it won’t reduce inflation at all — in fact, it will likely increase inflation through 2024.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/08/01/biden-and-the-democrats-are-about-to-raise-your-taxes-n1617393

SEN. MCCONNELL: IT AIN’T US, BABE

SEN. MCCONNELL: IT AIN’T US, BABE

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN BUMMER BEYOND BELIEF, MITCH MCCONNELL

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sat for an interview with Bret Baier on Special Report last night. Senator McConnell himself has posted the video below on YouTube. In it he explains the Schumer/Manchin Bummer Beyond Belief light bill as beyond his power to affect. It is a reconciliation package that requires only the Democratic majority for adoption. “Reconciliation is something done by one party only,” McConnell explained. “There’s nothing we could have done to prevent the Democrats from doing a bill that only they will vote for — so it’s not a question of being played here,” he added. Translation: Republicans are innocent bystanders.

However, Senator McConnell vowed to stop any reconciliation bill before he and 16 other Republican Senators joined the Democrats to pass the CHIPS spenderama. The CHIPS spenderama was the predicate to the Schumer/Manchin deal. It was to be held hostage to prevent any reconciliation bill. See Senator McConnell’s tweet below.

Baier took up the question as posed by Joe over Twitter: didn’t Republicans get played? That was the point of Kim Strassel’s Wall Street Journal column “Manchin and the GOP dupes.”

In his remarks to Baier Senator McConnell implied that the Spenderama 17 relied on the previous public protestations of Joe Manchin. Really? Baier simply moves on from McConnell’s explanation quoted in the first paragraph above.

The 17 GOP Senators might have been dupes. They might have been collaborators. What were they thinking? Who did what to whom?

That question deserves an answer that should be reported out, but it appears to be beyond the scope of the Washington press corps. At the least, Senator McConnell should be pressed for an answer with specifics beyond the pat self-exculpation he served up to Baier.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/sen-mcconnell-it-aint-us-babe.php

Economy contracts as 'Bidenflation' glides toward 'Bidencession'

Economy contracts as 'Bidenflation' glides toward 'Bidencession'

by Washington Examiner

You have to feel sympathy for President Joe Biden's defenders. There is only so much they can do.

For the longest time, they made excuses for the record levels of inflation. At first, they claimed that it would be transitory. When that line was no longer plausible, they argued that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin's fault. When this proved unconvincing, they took up a new argument: that in spite of appearances, the economy was actually doing really well — that it was "deceptively strong."

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But the numbers have finally caught up with that argument, too. The Bureau of Economic Analysis released new data yesterday showing that the U.S. economy contracted by 1.4% in the first quarter of 2022. Biden inherited an economy rapidly recovering from the COVID recession, and it took him just one year to start another recession. Indeed, it is an ominous sign that Biden's own White House is preemptively admitting that the second quarter will probably also see the economy contract, which would mean that the nation's economy is currently in recession.

To be sure, people generally overestimate presidents' ability to control the economy. But Biden has done some very specific things to cause damage despite multiple warnings.

First of all, the underlying inflation problem is a direct result of his decision to dole out an unnecessary round of trillions in stimulus at the beginning of his presidency, after the pandemic lockdown period was over. Too much (or at least enough) had already been spent at that point. Economists — Obama advisers, even — warned Biden not to do it, specifically arguing that inflation would result. The results were not only predictable — they were predicted. Inflation, which until mid-2021 had not been a problem for any president since the Reagan era, is now destroying ordinary workers' savings and defining Biden's presidency.

That would already be enough to make him deserve whatever blame he gets, but Biden has gone further. He began his presidency with his sights on one of the few industries that has consistently produced high-income jobs for decades — the oil and gas industry, which during the Trump era had turned the United States into an energy-exporting nation for the first time in 70 years. Naturally, Biden opened his presidency with a full-frontal assault on the industry, preventing it from acquiring new leases to drill on federal land. He blocked the construction of a key pipeline that would have created massive additional jobs and wealth and helped keep gas prices down. When gas prices started rising, instead of selling leases and encouraging more U.S. production, he begged other oil-producing countries (many of them with no environmental scruples) to take people's money.

Last week, Biden undid vital Trump-era regulatory reforms that would have made it possible to expand the economy by building infrastructure quickly in the U.S.

Now Biden wants to spend additional trillions, part of that through student debt forgiveness for the nation's wealthiest and most privileged, which would have the effect of making inflation even worse. And to add insult to injury, he and his party want to raise taxes on the very people whose savings are being eroded by his incompetence.

If you think Biden's approval numbers are bad now, just wait until the current recession is announced in three months — or until voters figure out what Biden wants to do to them next.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/economy-contracts-as-bidenflation-glides-toward-bidencession