2) CBO Forecasts Another $400 Billion in Taxpayers Student Loan Losses
Biden's legally dubious "income-driven repayment" rules make most student loans forgivable after payments capped at just 5% of income above 225 percent of the federal poverty level. This year, 225 percent of the federal poverty level is $70,200 for a family of four.
Now we have an official score of what this means for taxpayers from the Congressional Budget Office: 10-year losses of $400 billion:
We’re hopeful the same Supreme Court that ruled against Biden's last wholesale student loan bailout may veto this one too. But will Biden openly defy the Court again?
It’s clear Liberals think they can buy a lot of votes from young deadbeat borrowers with $400 billion.
Back a number of years ago, the Democrats and left-leaning Republicans in Topeka sabotaged a tax rate reduction plan by then-Governor Sam Brownback. They blamed big deficits on the tax cuts - when the real culprit was runaway spending in Topeka.
The Kansas experiment became a punching bag for the national media and left-wing advocacy groups wanting to prove that tax cutting is dangerous and irresponsible.
So imagine our pleasant surprise to learn that Kansas has enacted a solid tax cut that shaves the highest income tax rate from 5.7% to 5.58%. The bill would also exempt Social Security benefits from income tax. It’s not perfect: the bill doubles the tax credit for childcare expenses – a provision that discriminates against stay-at-home moms.
Democratic Governor Laura Kelly has pledged to sign the bill.
What a relief that tax cutting is back in style in Kansas.
4) Quote of the Day: How Progressivism Destroyed the West Coast
Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes in his New York Times: column
"We in the West impeded home construction in ways that made cities unaffordable, especially for people of color. The basic reason for homelessness on the West Coast is an enormous shortage of housing that drives up rents. California lacks about three million housing units, in part because it's difficult to get permission to build...
What matters is improving opportunities and quality of life, and the best path to do that is a relentless empiricism — which clashes with the West Coast's indifference to the laws of economics….What is needed is less purity and more pragmatism and first step must be the humility to acknowledge our failures."
Nigel Farage's return as leader of the Reform Party could cause a welcome realignment of British politics in the moribund UK.
Farage, whose party is quickly gaining on the governing Conservative Party in new national polls, freely admits the opposition Labour Party will win. His goal is to "reshape the center-right.”
He began that process on Monday by releasing a "Contract With Britain" – a nod to Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract With America" – which includes his plans for a bold agenda of tax cuts, tough curbs on illegal immigration, fewer regulations that block new housing and serious spending reform. Newt emailed us yesterday calling the development "amazing."
Our read is that the unprincipled Conservatives are in shambles because they've alienated both their traditional voters and the blue-collar voters they won in their historic 2019 election triumph. They've become the Incompetent Party.
Farage has the kind of message Margaret Thatcher delivered in rescuing the Britain of the 1980s. "I support real, genuine change to give us a better, brighter, and stronger future," he told reporters. He said Britain is "broken economically," mired in debt, that Brits feel "less safe on our streets" and "in decline culturally — we've begun to forget who we are, what our history is, what we stand for."
The contract would slash the income tax code from 21,000 to 500 pages, cut income taxes, slash the corporation tax to 20% and then to 15%, and abolish the inheritance tax for estates below $2.5 million - around 98% of the total.
Most bold of all is that this contract would "scrap Net Zero and Related Subsidies," saving a staggering $38 billion per year over the next 25 years.
This is an agenda that the stodgy Conservatives should be endorsing - but won’t. So it’s time for a realignment.
We hope Farage succeeds and can become the new Margaret Thatcher, and make Britain great again!
