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Congress Welcomes the New Year with a Budget and Tax Showdown
During the last several months of 2023 Congress rewrote the rules of inefficiency. In the House, Republicans spent nearly a month selecting, re-selecting, and finally electing a new Speaker of the House. The full House unsuccessfully attempted to pass appropriations bills, leading to a temporary “laddered” continuing resolution (CR). They then rounded out the year by expelling now-former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.). The late-2023 Senate floor schedule reads like the guest list of an Elizabethan Era social gathering: Name, State, Agency. Beyond that, the levers of power in the upper chamber spent their time squabbling over supplemental funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the U.S.-Mexico border. The fiscal year (FY) 2024 spending showdown is a tale of two parts: the incentivizing provisions within the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), and the laddered CR passed on November 14, 2023. The FRA includes incentives for passing full-year appropriations bills. This includes automatic spending cuts if the government is operating under CRs for any budget account on January 1, 2024 – or 2025. The first such cut went into effect this week. The total discretionary budget was reduced by $3.77 billion (0.24 percent). If operating under a CR at the dawn of 2025, total discretionary spending will be reduced by $19.67 billion (1.22 percent). Under the current CR, funding for 4 of the 12 budget accounts will expire on January 19th. With the laddered approach of the existing CR, the remaining 8 budget accounts will expire two weeks later on February 2nd. As part of a funding agreement, congressional Republicans’ top priorities are to accelerate cuts to IRS funding and include supplemental funding for border security. As a fiercely divided conference, many may stall to try and secure the additional cuts in 2025. Others are comfortable shutting down the government entirely if their goals are not met. The last time Congress passed all its appropriations bills on time was 1997. Since 2020, not a single standard appropriations bill has become law. From FY 2010 to FY 2023, only seven out of the possible 168 appropriations bills have become law (five of those were in 2019). This track record provides a grim outlook for enthusiastic fans of Congress meeting its basic Article I responsibilities.
Also making a rightful push to center stage is highly anticipated tax reform. Several provisions from the historic 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) are set to expire at the end of 2025. Securing the extension or permanence of TCJA should be a crucial part of Congress’ agenda. Under the leadership of Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the House Ways & Means Committee advanced the American Families and Jobs Act. This tax package provides for a new Guaranteed Deduction Bonus, inflation-adjusts IRS reporting rules, stops the Biden administration’s attack on the gig economy, and includes full business research and development expensing. While not all of these provisions may make the final cut, negotiations between tax authorities on the House Ways & Means and Senate Finance Committees seem to suggest an air of bipartisanship. Republicans remain interested in business-oriented tax policy, while Democrats seek to extend the Child Tax Credit. Notably, Democrats have indicated their desire for the Child Tax Credit to apply to the 2024 filing season, meaning an agreement would have to be made expeditiously and could be included in the ongoing appropriations battle.
With just eight session days and 14 total days until the January 19th deadline, Congress must move quickly to prevent a partial shutdown, the ripple effects of which cost the economy $11 billion in 2019. Hopefully for taxpayers, Congress leaves dropping the ball in 2024 to Times Square.
The World Health Organization’s Latest Failure
It is widely recognized that the World Health Organization (WHO) failed miserably to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Despite reports of the virus escaping the confines of China, it was not until mid-March 2020 that the WHO finally conceded that widespread community transmission was occurring and officially declared a pandemic. In fact, the WHO tweeted in January 2020 that COVID couldn’t be transmitted between people. The United Nations agency has never acknowledged its incompetence during that time and has been justifiably criticized as a result. It is now engaged in further destroying its credibility with a bizarre, ideological, and politically motivated attack on products that can help reduce the toll of combustible tobacco use worldwide.
Arguably, smoking is much more damaging to global public health than COVID. The WHO’s own figures estimate that nearly seven million have died from COVID complications in the four years since the pandemic struck, but eight million people die of smoking-related diseases every year. A bizarre, recently released WHO press release attempts to gaslight governments into banning e-cigarettes, which have been proven to reduce smoking rates around the world. In that report, the WHO peddles demonstrably false claims about their use. It is not the first time the WHO has done this. In January 2020, as it was clear that countries outside of China were reporting COVID cases, the WHO spent its time publishing a series of 14 tweets about the dangers of vaping. These falsehoods included bogus claims such as e-cigarette liquid being highly flammable and that secondhand vapor is lethal to bystanders, both of which are entirely false. Now, the WHO is recommending that governments ban vaping products, but not cigarettes, which are far more harmful. The full report contains heroic cherry-picking of research including claims that “e-cigarettes are harmful,” which fails to recognize the relative risk of vapor products being orders of magnitude less harmful than combustible tobacco. There is no indication or justification as to why the WHO is intent on protecting sales of cigarettes by recommending prohibition or medicalization of their competition.
The WHO also claims that “electronic cigarettes as actually used in the population as consumer products have not been proven to be effective for cessation at the population level” which is simply untrue. The Cochrane Library (the gold standard of evidence reviews) concluded in Nov. 2022 that “[t]here is high-certainty evidence that [e-cigarettes] with nicotine increase [smoking] quit rates compared to [nicotine replacement therapy].” In countries with liberal regulation towards vaping, smoking has been found to decline twice as fast as the global average, and vaping is recommended by the National Health Service in the UK for smokers looking to quit. The WHO claims that flavored vapes are solely aimed at youth. But flavors play a key role in product use initiation, as they are often cited as the one of the reasons for adults to switch to vaping instead of combustible tobacco. The WHO further claims that elements in e-cigarette aerosol “are known to cause cancer and increase the risk of heart and lung disorders” but fails to tell the truth that they are in such low doses that they are not at a level which would harm anyone’s health. It further implies that vapor and tobacco smoke are similarly harmful to bystanders, which relies on one study from 2016 that says nothing of the sort. The picture painted by the WHO’s delusional report is that vaping products are a serious threat to health and should be prohibited despite global scientific consensus that they are orders of magnitude less harmful than combustible tobacco.
The WHO pretends to be oblivious to the fact that vaping displaces smoking in both adult and adolescent populations and endorses prohibition as if there is no evidence that such policies always fail. To do so, it promotes fake news and cherry-picked research about vaping from authors with significant conflicts of interests and presents them without context of the massively reduced risk of death and disease compared to smoking. The U.S. is the largest contributor to WHO funding. This should be re-evaluated if the organization continues to operate in such a blatantly irresponsible and anti-scientific manner.
BLOGS:
Tuesday: The WHO’s Credibility Nosedives Still Further, Its Funding Should Now Be Questioned
Wednesday: American Compass Dodges KOSA’s Deficiencies
Friday: Congress Welcomes the New Year with a Budget and Tax Showdown
Media:
December 17, 2023: Sportsfindings.com mentioned TPA in their article, “A huge amount of money could be given to the Capitals and Wizards building in Virginia.”
December 18, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about a vote to make the Baltimore County Inspector General permanent.
December 19, 2023: The Daily Caller ran TPA’s op-ed, “The WHO Bungled COVID. Now It’s Making An Equally Disastrous Blunder.”
December 19, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about a new lease deal for the Baltimore Orioles.
December 19, 2023: The NH Journal mentioned TPA in their article, “NH Voters Pan Government-Run Tax Prep Plan in New Poll.”
December 19, 2023: The Boston Herald (Boston, Mass.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “FDA’s pouch puree purge could harm consumers.”
December 21, 2023: I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about a year in review for taxpayers and the economy.
December 21, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about auditing safe streets
December 21, 2023: RealClearMarkets ran TPA’s op-ed, “There's Something Wrong with Enlarging Universal Service Fund.”
December 22, 2023: The Washington Examiner (Washington, D.C.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “Federal Trade Commission doesn't have the evidence in its Amazon case.”
December 21, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about the increase in the minimum wage in Maryland.
January 2, 2024: The Daily Caller quoted TPA in their article, “Congress Unlikely To Pass All Appropriations Bills Before Next Government Funding Deadline In 2024, Experts Say.”
January 2, 2024: WTOP News Radio (Washington, D.C.) mentioned TPA in their article, “Alexandria mayor says funding plan for Wizards, Capitals arena at Potomac Yard ‘minimizes the risk’ for taxpayers.”
January 3, 2024: The Tennessean (Nashville, Tenn.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “Justice Department must heed senator's call to see if TVA is limiting broadband buildout.”
January 4, 2024: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about Maryland’s new climate change plan.
January 4, 2024: I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about the Internal Revenue Service’s proposal to prepare people’s taxes.
January 4, 2024: Florida Daily quoted TPA in their article, "IRS Looking to Roll Out A Government-Run Tax Prep System."
Have a great weekend!
Best,
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1101 14th Street, NW
Suite 1120
Washington, D.C. xxxxxx
www.protectingtaxpayers.org
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