A critically important pro-growth feature of the Trump tax cuts of 2017, just phased down yesterday – January 1, 2024. It’s a back-door tax increase that the Democrats are hoping no one notices.
But WE noticed, and so do American businesses — especially construction and manufacturing firms — that make critical capital investments in our economy. We are speaking of the provision of the Trump tax plan that allows businesses to immediately write off the cost of their purchases of everything from equipment, to machinery, to delivery trucks, to Boeing airplanes.
Because of arcane budget rules, that 100% "expensing" provision gets phased out by 20% each year starting in 2023. This year, firms will only deduct 60% of their capital purchases and by 2026 they will lose the incentive entirely.
What is infuriating about this tax hike is that the Trump tax cut delivered huge dividends to the economy. The expensing provision combined with other features of the plan that lowered tax rates, helped bring more than $1 trillion of capital investment and factories back into the United States from abroad. Hello! It WORKED JUST AS PLANNED. But the Democrats in Congress and Biden are immune to this evidence and then they complain about jobs being exported overseas.
This is stupidity on steroids and will hurt American workers and companies.
2) Study Finds That Just 3.4% of American Journalists Are Republicans
We are hard at work at CTUP trying to discover who those 3.4% are – if you know any of them, please, ask them to sign up for the HOTLINE.
The chart below, from The American Journalist, shows that 10 times more reporters self-identify as Democrats as Republicans and the percentage of those who call themselves Republicans has steadily declined for 50 years. So much for fair and balanced.
3) Cost of California High-Speed Rail Boondoggle Now More Than $100 Billion – and Rising
HOTLINE readers know that the California high-speed train that was supposed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco won't reach either city, will not be high-speed, AND will cost at least triple the original forecast. Yet Biden keeps touting bullet trains and just threw another $3 billion at this "train to nowhere," as our CTUP senior fellow Wendell Cox, calls it in his must-read WSJ article today. Here's a brief excerpt.
It didn’t get a lot of attention, but last month the White House awarded $3.1 billion to the California High-Speed Rail project. This was supposed to be a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. Instead, its costs keep rising even as the state scales back the plan. Since 2008, when California voters authorized a $10 billion bond issue for the train, they’ve been sold a bill of goods...
In legislative testimony, Louis S. Thompson, chairman of the Peer Review Committee, put the Phase I funding gap at $93 billion to $103 billion....
Meanwhile, Florida has a new rail system up and running between Orlando and Miami, with all private financing. Florida also has a state budget surplus.
4) India Will Not Transition Away From Coal – So Why Are We?
One of the things that is so dangerous about Biden and the left is that they see the world as they want it to be – not as it is. They wish upon a star and ignore reality.
Here is the reality about coal. China and India are going to use more and more of it – no matter what planet John Kerry is living on. China is building more than 50 new coal plants and here's a pretty direct statement from the Indian Ministry of Coal (shouldn't we have one of those?):
“In India, the transition away from coal or Just Transition is not happening in foreseeable future. Although India is pushing for renewable/non-fossil-based energy, but the share of coal in the energy basket is going to remain significant in years ahead to ensure affordable energy availability, accessibility, and energy security to enable sustainable development and poverty eradication."
5) Green Activists Now Advocate Jailing Climate Deniers
The Reuters Institute is in charge of a six-month climate change indoctrination course for journalists who are on sabbatical. We've noted before this program is funded with seven-figure contributions from leftist foundations.
So maybe we shouldn't be surprised that the “scholars” who “teach” at these sessions are almost all climate fanatics. One of them is climate hysteric Saffron O’Neill, who has just been appointed a member of the "faculty." She has suggested the need for “fines and imprisonment” for anyone expressing skepticism about “well-supported” science. Does she mean the kind of "well-supported" consensus of shutting down the economy and the schools during COVID?
We used to think these crazies were best to be ignored, but increasingly the green movement is the modern-day Spanish Inquisition driven by religious fanatics who won't tolerate skeptics or debate.
