1) NO! Extending the Trump Tax Cut Won't Cost $4.5 Trillion

The Washington bean counters just announced that the extension of the Trump tax cut will cost $4.5 trillion.

Are they on planet mars? So far the tax cut over the first six years has cost close to nothing in lost revenue. Tax collections for the fiscal year that just ended were a half-trillion-dollars higher than CBO predicted they would be WITHOUT the tax cut.
 

So where does this fictional $4.5 trillion "cost" come from?

The CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation. But these are the same geniuses who said that the Trump tax cut of 2017 would cost more than $2 trillion.  Whoops!

These are also the same people who said the inflation reduction act would cost almost nothing and its actual price tag is now likely to exceed a trillion dollars. 

We are basing future tax policy on a bunch of fake numbers. 

Good news. A handful of conservative Senators agree with us at UP that the we should redefine how we score these tax bills. When Republicans take control of the House and Senate in January they need to fix the scoring process. If they don't, they are putting their pro-growth economic agenda at risk.

2) Manchin and Sinema Save the Day

The bad news is that there are only two moderate and half-sane Dem/independent lawmakers left in the entire Senate - Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona. They are both retiring at the end of the year. 

The good news is they just heroically bucked a scheme by Chucky Schumer to extend the term of Lauren McFerran, the radical union-hack NLRB chair.  Schumer tried to install her for another term to hamstring Trump on labor policy. Thanks to Manchin and Sinema the plot failed yesterday on a 49 to 50 vote.

Manchin raced back from a speaking engagement just to vote no. Manchin told Semafor that supporters were "playing hardball" to get his vote but he voted no due to McFerran's support for the joint-employer regulation, which would hurt small businesses.
 

Republicans had nearly perfect attendance for the vote. JD Vance flew back from Palm Beach specifically to be there for this vote.

Great work, Chuck.
 

The Fed keeps cutting interest rates, even though inflation is still lingering out there. Why?  

We just got the November inflation report and it doesn't show the CPI trending to 2%.

The consumer price index ticked up in November. We sometimes worry that if Powell keeps cutting rates, we may be in danger of retracing the path from the late 1970s.  Donald Trump likes low interest rates, but the last thing he needs is another blast of inflation to wreck the economy.
 

Poor Joe Biden. Remember him? 

He moved yesterday to limit international approval of oil and gas projects – a back-door maneuver to free up more taxpayer cash for his green energy boondoggles. 

He wants to kill financing for an LNG export terminal in Mozambique just days after promising Africans that the US supports investment and development on their continent, and that the US is a more reliable business partner than China. Apparently not.
 

In contrast, Trump has just announced:
 

Liberal groups claim the idea is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, a 54-year-old law that requires the Feds to study the potential environmental impact of any project and consider alternatives.

We are seeing a complete change of the guard on energy, from an administration that wanted to stop every project that didn't meet its wacky definition of "green", to one that will make America an independent energy colossus again.
 

Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit struck down SEC-approved quotas for corporate boards. This is great news!  But it got us wondering – how popular is the left's race-hustling these days?

We were thrilled when we saw these poll results from the Manhattan Institute, showing that by a three-to-one majority, Americans want to treat all Americans the same regardless of race or ethnicity, rather than install racial preference policies. This is a rejection of the divisive "race-conscious" orthodoxy of the left, and another sign that "wokeism" is on the decline.
 

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