People across the country enjoyed Amazon Prime Days this week. For the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, it was a reminder to urge antitrust regulators at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission to finally cease their reckless antitrust enforcement actions. These lawsuits raise costs for both American taxpayers and consumers. The government is currently involved in legal action against Amazon and other major U.S. companies such as Apple, Google, Live Nation Entertainment, and Visa. These companies collectively employ millions of people and provide valuable services and products to billions of consumers. Every day, large and successful businesses provide opportunities to countless workers and give consumers a host of added choices and protections. These companies also give entrepreneurs the tools to thrive. For example, Prime Day offers low and competitive prices for Amazon’s vast consumer base. However, these promotions and large-scale discounts are jeopardized by a
federal government that has grown far too large and unaccountable. Regulators exploit fears about consolidation, acquisition, and monopolization without ever clarifying any actual threat to American consumers. Everyone pays in the form of higher prices and runaway bureaucracy. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation [TPAF] has shone a light on antitrust regulators’ wasteful and inappropriate activities, such as creating wristbands that presuppose the guilt of opposing parties, with Freedom of Information Act requests. Unfortunately, the DOJ has stonewalled TPAF at every turn and refuses to be honest with the American people. Businesses should be given the freedom to expand and thrive rather than be worried about overzealous regulators.


Baby Bonus is a Bust

It’s hard to focus on any one piece of the recently passed and highly contentious One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). Broad-based tax relief is jumbled in with spending hikes, bizarre new taxes (e.g., the remittance tax), and new loopholes that further distort an already-complicated tax code. Hidden among the big-ticket provisions and seldom discussed are newly created “Trump accounts.” These tax-advantaged savings accounts for newborns will include $1,000 of taxpayer-funded seed money for children born between 2025 and 2028. While it’s laudable to encourage savings and wealth accumulation, padding diapers with debt will only lead to taxpayer tears and a cradle of red ink. Future generations deserve a better and more fiscally sustainable approach. While too many lawmakers fell in (party) line and supported the OBBB, a courageous few members of Congress warned of the dire consequences of not getting the $37 trillion debt under control. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the fiscally responsible
representative from Kentucky posted on X after the vote: “Although there were some conservative wins in the budget reconciliation bill (OBBBA), I voted No on final passage because it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates." This statement from Rep. Massie was on point: every dollar added to the debt and deficit is a threat to America and a repudiation of promises made by President Trump.

Taxpayer-funded handouts aside, the concept of tax-advantaged accounts isn’t a bad one or particularly new. After all, encouraging individuals to start investing for their children at a young age, and watching the money grow tax-free is a great way to build wealth. None other than the great Albert Einstein pointed out, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” Warren Buffett has been caught uttering similar sentiments: "Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy. Take advantage of compound interest and don't be captivated by the siren song of the market." The problem with Trump Accounts is not the concept of investing tax-free over a long-time horizon, but that taxpayers are left holding the bag for the accounts. While $3.5 billion per year in direct costs seems small compared to nearly $2 trillion in annual deficits, these expenses add up. And, critically, any taxpayer costs will inevitably be borne by the Trump
Account recipients when they are all grown up. It’s an endless Ferris wheel of handouts and high taxes, and America’s children and grandchildren will have to pay the price—plus interest. Simply put, centrally planning financial independence isn’t the right solution.

There are also significant logistical issues with the accounts. For example, individuals may not be aware that they have been assigned the accounts or that their names are associated with them, which can lead to numerous problems, including fraud, abuse, and inadequate oversight of the accounts. The accounts are also conveniently only available to babies born during the Trump administration. Yet another issue with the accounts is their duplicative nature. Their structure is similar to Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which allow for tax-exempt savings for future education expenses, or Uniform Gifts to Minors Act (UGMA) accounts, which enable parents to save and invest for their children albeit without the tax advantages. To simplify the number of savings accounts with specific restrictions and tax advantages offered in the U.S., lawmakers should consider consolidating these myriad account options and create one universal savings account that would allow all individuals to save a
particular amount of dollars tax-free each year. This would encourage long-term savings without handouts and future bailouts and tax hikes. It’s long past time for a rebirth of fiscal responsibility and pro-growth reforms.

Reject European Censorship

There is an online meme, hewing loosely to this format: “We fought a war so we wouldn’t have to deal with …” Insert, as the punchline, reasons for which the American Revolution was in fact fought (e.g., kings and oppressive taxation); or, more comically, reasons for which it certainly was not, such as the metric system, organ-dominant meat dishes and the widespread enjoyment of soccer. Free speech stands squarely in the former category. The First Amendment secured all Americans against federal trespasses on the freedom of speech. A little more than a year away from her semiquincentennial birthday, America seems to be developing an interest in importing European speech regulation. Lawmakers stateside aren’t keen on criminalizing public prayer or blasphemy. Yet continental laws controlling online platforms and online speech seem more tantalizing. An odd phenomenon plagues tech-policy debates: What’s unthinkable censorship in the physical world is often rebranded “common sense” in the digital
one.

Considering tech-policy proposals, lawmakers and pundits seem to assume that, online, ordinary constraints ought not apply. For example, the Kids Online Safety Act. As reported by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Jessica Melugin, this bill, now before Congress, shares source material with the European Union’s Digital Services Act and the United Kingdom’s Online Harms Act. The DSA deputizes (read: coerces) online platforms to repress disfavored speech. Under that law, EU authorities have pursued Elon Musk’s X for, among other things, the supposed crime of permitting disinformation — that is, for permitting speech to be too free on his platform for the taste of the European Commission.

Free speech has flourished on the internet, but communication over online platforms provides new weapons to censorial politicians. The blessing presented is more and freer information than ever before; the curse is that information conveyed on vulnerable platforms can readily be stifled and manipulated by small-minded governments. Technology liberates, but if misused by the state it threatens and enables authoritarianism. As Winston Churchill noted, the utter tyrannies of the ancient world could not be equaled until would-be tyrants had at their disposal the technologies of the modern world. As The Economist put it, “The root cause can be found in the country’s speech laws, which are a mess and ill-suited to the digital age: Brits are prosecuted for the sorts of conversations they would have had in the pub.” Policemen cannot hear every conversation between friends, yet with heavy-handed online regulation, they can snoop on nearly everything friends say to one another in the digital domain.
In the online age, America must recommit itself to its heritage. It must buttress its fortifications of free speech, not suffer them to decay. The European model must be spurned.

BLOGS:

Monday: Congress Gave Credit Card Rewards a Lifeline—But the Fight Isn’t Over ([link removed])

Tuesday: Trump’s Little Bundle of Debt ([link removed])

Wednesday: FDA’s Delay in Approving Vaping Products Has Backfired ([link removed])

Thursday: OBBB Taxes Gamblers Out of the Pot ([link removed])

Friday: New York Set to Battle Inflation with More Inflation ([link removed])

MEDIA:

July 3, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Gov. Moore: Federal spending bill will hurt families; critics say state policies will too.”
July 3, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their story on Maryland’s budget deficit.
July 3, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their news segment on Governor Moore’s advocacy against the One Big Beautiful Bill.
July 5, 2025: The Daily Dodge (Beaver Dam, Wisc.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Grothman Reintroduces Enforce The Caps Act”
July 5, 2025: WZTA radio (West Palm Beach, Fl.) interviewed me for their story on the One Big Beautiful Bill.
July 6, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their news segment on Governor Moore’s advocacy against the One Big Beautiful Bill.
July 7, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their story on the $1,000 baby bonus program included in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
July 7, 2025: WSAU 550 AM radio (Wausau, Wisc..) interviewed Christina Smith about Wisconsin vape policy.
July 7, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Baltimore's $2.2M website scandal: Taxpayer advocate demands refund, contract ban.”
July 8, 2025: WCBM radio (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their news segment on Baltimore City’s $2.2M website scandal.
July 8, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Mayor Scott defends $2.2M website contract amid delays; admits city had issues to fix.”
July 9, 2025: The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Mayor Scott defends $2.2M website contract amid delays.”
July 9, 2025: The Hill ran TPA’s op-ed, “Allowing bigger freight trucks would be a highway disaster.”
July 9, 2025: Yahoo News ran TPA’s op-ed, “Allowing bigger freight trucks would be a highway disaster.”
July 9, 2025: Contify Life Science News mentioned TPA in their story, “Groups Join the Biosimilars Council and AAM Letter of Support for Interchangeability Legislation.”
July 9, 2025: Newser mentioned TPA in their story, “America's Highways, Bridges Can't Handle Heavier Trucks
July 9, 2025: WJLA News Channel 8 WJLA (Washington, D.C.) interviewed me for their news segment on former Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans being back on DC’s payroll.
July 10, 2025: RealClearMarkets ran TPA's op-ed, “'Show Your Papers' Threatens Life on the Internet”
July 10, 2025: WBOB-AM (Jacksonville, Fl.) TPA interviewed me about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
July 10, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about Baltimore City’s $2.2M website scandal.
July 10, 2025: WMAL 105.9 FMradio (Washington, D.C.) mentioned me in their news segment on the their news segment on former Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans being back on DC’s payroll.

Have a great weekend!

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1101 14^th Street, NW
Suite 500
Washington, D.C.
Office: (202) 930-1716
Mobile: (202) 258-6527
www.protectingtaxpayers.org

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