1) Yes to Trump's 15% Corporate Tax Rate  

From the moment in 2016 when we started working with Donald Trump on tax policy, he has talked longingly of a 15% tax on domestic businesses. He still does. In 2017 he won a reduction in the rate down to 21% (federal) from 35%. That was a great pro-growth accomplishment, but we still have a rate that is above the level of many countries.

The chart below, from Cato's Adam Michel and Joshua Loucks, makes a compelling case for Trump's proposed 15% corporate rate.

The cut would take us from the middle of the pack to one of the lowest rates among OECD countries:
 

2) Red Storm Rising

As lawmakers across the country get back to work this week, this Axios headline and political map of party control of state governments says it all:

What an opportunity! 

Our 501 (c)(4) partner organization, Unleash Prosperity Now, are working closely in the state capitals with our friends at ALEC to achieve two major goals: elimination of state income taxes in three to five more states (there are nine no-income tax states today), and school choice expanding to five more states as we strive to get 25 parental choice states by the end of 2025.

Over the past 40 years, the ONLY times we have made ANY progress on reducing federal spending and deficits has been by using the debt ceiling as leverage. It's the taxpayers' best friend. 

https://nypost.com/2025/01/03/opinion/stephen-moore-how-trump-can-cut-spending-with-debt-ceiling/

That was true in the 1980s with enactment of the Gramm-Rudman spending caps. It was true in the mid 1990s when Republicans negotiated the balanced budget deal with Bill Clinton as a debt ceiling loomed (and we actually had THREE balanced budgets for the first and only time in 60 years). It was true when John Boehner negotiated the Budget Control Act spending caps when Obama was president. 
 

Trump is right that he's not responsible for the monster deficits and spending expansions of the Biden years. But we hear too many Republicans now saying we should give Congress an unlimited credit card. To get rid of the debt ceiling is like unlocking the liquor cabinet in your house and hoping your teenage kids don't raid it. 

Reaching the debt ceiling does NOT mean a debt default. That's a boogeyman. It simply means Congress can't borrow another penny and thus can only spend what it brings in each day. The first obligation of the government is to pay the bond holders.

Trump should use the debt ceiling to force Congress to cut spending and enact pro-growth policies - like selling federal assets and leasing federal lands for drilling and mining.

You can always count on leftists to blame every natural disaster on climate change.  

But Roger Pielke, a former chairman of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Weather Forecasting, points out that even the alarmist Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) "has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change."

Forest fires were much worse in the 1930s than today and that was long before we had 300 million cars and trucks and homes had gas stoves.

We love this headline from the 1930s dug up by our friend Marc Morano of Climate Depot:
 

Watching the tragedy in California makes us think of the Billy Joel anthem "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Well, the federal, state, and local officials may not have started the fire, but they've done almost everything wrong to contain it, and fulfill their basic duty to protect lives and property.

Rick Caruso, a former commissioner for the city's Department of Water and Power, says officials failed to properly refill a reservoir, and now "there's no water in the fire hydrants...the firefighters are there and there's nothing they can do -- we've got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning... It should never happen."  

And then there were budget cuts to fire fighting, at a time when Southern California was known to be a tinderbox, as this tweet well documents.
 

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development has an excellent report on all the things we can do, without retreating into climate hysteria:
 

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