Why We Oppose the Expansion of Backdoor Welfare Benefits in the Bipartisan Tax Bill

In Order To Ensure You Can View All The Graphics, Click Here To View The Hotline In Your Browser ([link removed])
[link removed]
Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #944
01/29/2024
New to the Hotline? Click ([link removed]) here ([link removed]) to subscribe–it's free. ([link removed])

1) Why We Oppose the Expansion of Backdoor Welfare Benefits in the Bipartisan Tax Bill
We like the tax bill crafted by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith of Missouri. It extends the expiring business tax cuts that were in the original Trump tax cut of 2017. These include allowing businesses to immediately write off the cost of all capital purchases and an immediate expensing provision for R&D expenditures, which are critical to developing new life-saving drugs. Passing this would make it easier for Trump next year to make his 2017 tax cuts permanent.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith
But we are concerned about the expansion of the child tax credit which provides cash payments to parents of up to $2,100 for each child in the home. Those payments can exceed taxes paid – and are really a backdoor form of welfare.

There are some work requirements, but there are also loopholes that encourage parents to stay out of the workforce or to reduce hours worked. According to AEI welfare policy scholar Matt Weidinger ([link removed]) :

“The tax bill allows parents to use earnings in either of the last two years to claim the child tax credit in tax years 2024 and 2025. This policy would cut the current annual work requirement in half by allowing parents to claim the CTC for two years while working in just one…

As a result, a parent with two children could have collected over $20,000 in EITC and CTC benefits for 2020 and 2021 [on top of tens of thousands of dollars of other benefits] despite not working those years.”

Oops, Washington, we have a problem.

What the left is pursuing here is a “guaranteed national income” for all Americans whether they work or not. According to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis, this strategy doesn’t work:

The guaranteed-income experiment has been tried many times before. It has always led to less work among low-income Americans, weaker families, and more poverty.

The U.S. tested guaranteed income in four large-scale random assignment pilots in the 1970s. Overall, $1,000 in added benefits was offset by a $660 earnings reduction. The reduced earnings persisted long after the programs ended. Each $1 increase in benefits led to a roughly $5 drop in recipients’ lifetime earnings.

[link removed] ([link removed])

At a time when we need MORE work-aged Americans working, this higher child credit is counterproductive to ensuring healthy families and self-sufficiency through work.

[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fwhy-we-oppose-the-expansion-of-backdoor-welfare-benefits-in-the-bipartisan-tax-bill%2F Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fwhy-we-oppose-the-expansion-of-backdoor-welfare-benefits-in-the-bipartisan-tax-bill%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
View on Website ([link removed])
2) Why Are Young Women Now SO Super-Liberal?
A new analysis in Financial Times reveals that young women between the ages of 18-29 are far more liberal than their male counterparts. The gender gap among the young has never been wider.

The chart below shows that 18 to 29-year-old women today are a gigantic 40 percentage points more likely to describe themselves as liberal than are men of the same age. In other words, if, say, 65% of young men say that are conservative, only 25% of young women do. Finding a conservative young woman these days is like winning the Power Ball.

[link removed]
We’re not sure why this is happening and would love any explanations you readers can provide. But here’s one contributing factor: women are more likely to attend college than men these days. And we know that though colleges are exceptionally talented at indoctrinating students with a leftist ideology. It’s apparently working.

[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fwhy-are-young-women-now-so-super-liberal%2F Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fwhy-are-young-women-now-so-super-liberal%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
View on Website ([link removed])
3) "Tax Cut Fever” – 14 States Have Cut Tax Rates for 2024
While things look bleak in Washington on the policy front, pro-growth policies are winning the day in the states. Income tax rates fell at the beginning of the year in 14 states. It’s mostly a red-state phenomenon, but even two blue states, Colorado and Connecticut are cutting taxes. Jonathan Williams, the Chief Economist and Executive Vice President of Policy at ALEC, says there is more momentum for lower tax rates and simple flat taxes, than at any time in recent history.

Here’s a summary of the changes that have been adopted for this year. Notice that the states are lowering RATES, which is the best way to cut taxes:

[link removed]
The map below shows that most of the cuts are happening in the southern states.

[link removed]
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Ftax-cut-fever-14-states-have-cut-tax-rates-for-2024%2F Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Ftax-cut-fever-14-states-have-cut-tax-rates-for-2024%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
View on Website ([link removed])
4) The Biden Administration’s Mindless War on Natural Gas
We’ve said many times on these pages that natural gas is a wonder fuel. It’s abundant; it’s made in America; it’s reliable; it’s safe; it’s cheap; AND it is CLEAN burning. You don’t have to believe us, here is what the Energy Information Agency tells us:

[link removed]

“Burning natural gas for energy results in fewer emissions of nearly all types of air pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2) than burning coal or petroleum products to produce an equal amount of energy. About 117 pounds of CO2 are produced per million British thermal units (MMBtu) equivalent of natural gas.”

Methane is an emission from natural gas, but methane doesn’t cause people to get sick, as does lead, sulfur, smog, and carbon monoxide – which are reduced by natural gas.

Biden’s green goons don’t care. They’ve put a hold on LNG projects because the President says that “climate change is the existential threat of our time.” He also says that exporting the LNG raises prices here at home. This is a fallacy because if we were simply to drill for more natural gas (and build the pipelines necessary), we could reduce energy costs here at home AND increase our exports.

Even the Biden Energy Department admits that we have more retrievable natural gas than at any time ever – thanks to the shale revolution. The chart below shows that the Malthusians who said in the 1970s and 1980s that we were “running out of energy” were fabulously wrong, and that, as Julian Simon taught us, energy is becoming more abundant not scarcer. All we have to do is USE it.

As we enter the frigid month of February, just remember this stat from our friend Harold Hamm ([link removed]) , CEO of Continental Energy in Oklahoma City: “Just one shipment of natural gas heats one million homes for a month.” Can windmills do that?

[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fthe-biden-administrations-mindless-war-on-natural-gas%2F Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fthe-biden-administrations-mindless-war-on-natural-gas%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
View on Website ([link removed])
5) New Jersey’s Ban on Plastic Bags Tripled Plastic Consumption
Speaking of idiotic “green” policies, New Jersey was going to save the planet when it banned regular plastic bags about a decade ago. Under the policy, shoppers would have to use thicker plastic bags, which were supposedly to be reusable. But most people tossed them away anyway. So the policy led to more plastic use, wasted money, and hurt the environment. Money wasted. A perfect Democratic policy trifecta. It’s called the law of unintended consequences.

[link removed]
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fnew-jerseys-ban-on-plastic-bags-tripled-plastic-consumption%2F Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fcommitteetounleashprosperity.com%2Fhotlines%2Fnew-jerseys-ban-on-plastic-bags-tripled-plastic-consumption%2F)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
View on Website ([link removed])
6) Now Can They Make Him Disappear?

============================================================

Know anyone else who would appreciate the Hotline? Please direct them to subscribe at: ** [link removed] ([link removed])

Have an idea for an item that should be in our newsletter? Send us any charts, statistics, heroes/villains, or humor that you’d like to see featured!
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** [link removed] ([link removed])
Copyright © *2024* *Committee To Unleash Prosperity*, All rights reserved.

This email was sent to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
why did I get this? ([link removed]) unsubscribe from this list ([link removed]) update subscription preferences ([link removed])
Committee to Unleash Prosperity . 1155 15th St NW Ste 525 . Washington, DC xxxxxx-2706 . USA