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Democrats Still Want to Spend Trillions. But They Don’t Want To Raise Taxes To Do It. – Opinion

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The opposition to one moderate senator has stopped Democrats from increasing taxes to fund their Build back Better agenda. This Wednesday, February 3, 2012 at 3:00 p.m. Wall Street Journal reported that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D–Ariz.) Reports that Sen. Kyrsten Silena (D. Arizona) was against plans to finance the huge $3.5 trillion bill through raising taxes on income earners, capital gains and business owners.

The House Democrats proposed increasing the highest income tax bracket by 37 percent to 39.5%. The House Democrats would increase corporate taxes by 21 percent to 25%. Capital gains taxes would be increased to 28.8 percent from 23.8 percent.

Joe Biden repeatedly stated that these tax hikes would result in the rich paying more and corporations getting their fair share. Critics argue that the tax increases will actually hurt the “working poor”, who pay extremely high marginal taxes.

The combined effect of all the new spending Democrats have proposed—plus the taxes and debt needed to pay for it—is projected to be a major drag on the economy as well.

Sinema is apparently overpaid and this could result in a lower overall spending bill. This is the Journal Reports claim that $840 billion would be raised by the corporate and income tax hikes she opposed. The Build Back Better bill’s overall cost will be close to $2 trillion if it does not generate this revenue.

Political wrangling has intensified over the shrinking size (but still massive) Democratic spending bill. Other centrist liberal groups proposed removing the $300 Billion in housing-related spending from the legislation. The White House is reportedly considering forgoing a $150 billion clean energy program in an effort to appease Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.The following is the article.

Legislators have endless options for budget gimmicks to include in their bill to cut costs and preserve some of their programs and spending. It could be setting the program’s start date years before or giving them expiration dates that make it difficult for lawmakers to adhere to. All of this helps to lower the Congressional Budget Office score on how much the bill would cost over a 10 year period.

Although it would seem the easiest thing to do for Democrats, engaging in this budgetary trickery could be politically advantageous. However, there are lots of reasons not to.

Writing over at Full Stack Economics Alan Cole, an economist, argues that frontloading costs by setting up temporary programs that immediately go into effect would result in pouring money onto an already struggling economy.

ReasonPeter Suderman of UC Berkeley has also criticised these gimmicks for being “simultaneously ashamedless and timid,” writing that yesterday they are “a refusal to recognize the necessity of tradeoffs. In a sense that is true. What legislating means—a matter of sifting through options and establishing what’s important given the resources and political constraints.”

It is good to know that Democrats are at risk of losing their tax plans. Be wary of any shrinking of overall cost for the Build back Better agenda.

FREIGHT MARKETS

Famous California hamburger chain, California Burger King had their San Francisco branch shut down because it refused to be a vaccine cop. This week, news broke that In-N-Out’s one-restaurant in San Francisco was temporarily shut down by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The reason? Employees were failing to verify customers’ vaccination status according to a local mandate.

According to CBS, Arnie Wensinger is In-N-Out’s chief legal-business officer. “We don’t want to be the vaccine police for any country,” he said. It is unsafe, unreasonable and invasive to make restaurant employees segregate their customers based on documentation or other reasons.

Since then, the restaurant is open but no indoor dining has been provided. This led to some funny jokes by SFDPH.

You don’t need to be smug about enforcing an autoritarian, irrational vaccination passport system if you have a sense for humor.

MINDSETS ARE FREE

OnlyFans doesn’t only cater to sex workers.Vienna’s tourism board joined the site to upload photos of vulgar artworks not allowed on other social media sites. The New York Times These are the reports

The Venus of Willendorf is the offending artwork, which is a limestone figurine of a lady made over 25,000 years ago. Facebook deleted a photograph of the Venus of Willendorf from its page at Vienna Museum of Natural History several years back because it was “pornographic.”

Koloman Moser’s late 20th-century painting “Liebespaar” was also featured in the Leopold Museum’s September video. Christine Kociu (the museum’s social media manager) said that the video was blocked due to the algorithm of Instagram and Facebook. The video shows an intimate couple hugging. This is actually quite sweet.

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