Aug. 22, 2019
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Trump should still seek a payroll tax cut – Here’s why
The President said Tuesday he was considering asking
Congress to cut the payroll tax for individuals, but then on Wednesday told
reporters that “I am not looking at a tax cut now,” adding that “we don’t need
it because we have a strong economy.” However, it would have the effect of
strengthening our nation’s economy vis-à-vis the rest of the world, giving
whoever is president in 2021 a strong hand in negotiating trade deals that are
in our national interest, while our trade partners are facing significant
economic pressures in their homelands. Ending China’s currency manipulation, as
well as that nation’s intellectual property theft, is the single most important
public policy goal for our nation. Accomplishing this is the key to having any
chance of restoring robust economic growth in America. And only a president
dealing with a strong economic hand will be able to win these game-changing
concessions from China.
Trump ends China’s monopoly on rare earths as Pentagon rapidly pushes for domestic mining and processing, invoking 1950 Defense Production Act
In a strong
boost for the U.S. position in ongoing trade negotiations with China, it looks
like Beijing’s monopoly on rare earth minerals used in smart phones, computers
and high-tech military hardware is coming to an end as the U.S. Defense
Department makes a big push for domestic processing of the sought-after
materials. Just one less thing Beijing can hold over U.S. trade negotiators’
heads, and surely strengthens the U.S. position in those talks. China had
placed a tariff on rare earths that were being shipped there for processing,
but Beijing was never going to permanently be allowed to have a monopoly on
elements essential to national security. Unlike his predecessors Bush and
Obama, the American people can thank President Trump for that.
Video: We all better hope President Trump is successful in striking a trade deal with China
Republican,
Democrat, independent, free trader or protectionist, we should all be hoping
that President Donald Trump comes to a successful conclusion in striking a trade
deal with China.
Negative interest rates are the death of capitalism
Americans for
Limited Government President Rick Manning: “Negative interest rates signal the
death of capitalism because they will mean we're in a deflationary cycle, where
it makes more sense to put money under your mattress than to invest in growing
businesses, buying bonds and creating wealth. Capitalism depends on capital
formation, and that only occurs when there is a profit to be made for
risk-taking. If we're projecting no inflation, that also means no growth, as
Japan has learned for the past 20 years. Instead of conceding to negative rates
and deflation and no growth, we need to offset what China is doing on currency
to devalue the yuan versus the dollar so that we're not destroying incentives
in our own economy. Negative rates threaten the U.S. economy, they are no
panacea. Just ask Germany and Japan about their growth rates.”
John Solomon: 10 declassified Russia collusion revelations that could rock Washington this fall
“It was in
September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV colleague Buck Sexton and
me that he would order the release of all classified documents showing what the
FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may
have done wrong in the Russia probe. But the long wait for transparency may
soon end. The foot-dragging inside the intelligence community (IC) that
occurred under now-departed DNI Dan Coats and his deputy, Sue Gordon, could
halt abruptly. That’s particularly true if Trump appoints a new IC sheriff,
such as former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.),
the current ambassador to the Netherlands, or longtime national security expert
Fred Fleitz. Likewise, the president has an opportunity to speed up and
organize the release of declassified information by simply creating an Office
of Transparency and Accountability inside his own White House, run by a staffer
empowered at the level of a formal assistant to the president. That would
prevent intelligence agencies from continuing their game of public keep-away.”
Trump should still seek a payroll tax cut – Here’s why
By Richard Manning
To cut the payroll tax, or not to cut the payroll tax? That is the question facing President Trump.
The president said Tuesday he was considering asking Congress to cut the payroll tax for individuals, but then on Wednesday told reporters that “I am not looking at a tax cut now,” adding that “we don’t need it because we have a strong economy.”
News reports said earlier that White House officials were examining the possibility of tax cuts to keep the consumer spending spree in our economy strong in the face of fears that an economic slowdown could lead to a recession and hurt the president’s reelection chances next year.
There are good arguments both for and against cutting the payroll tax, which funds the Social Security program. Individuals and employers each pay 6.2 percent of an employee’s earnings up to $132,900 in income this year. Self-employed people pay the full 12.4 percent. The earnings ceiling typically rises each year to keep pace with inflation.
While it’s impossible to repeal the business cycle, I’m in favor of cutting the payroll tax temporarily to keep our economy from unnecessarily slowing and most importantly to give our nation’s leader a strong hand in negotiations aimed at ending currency manipulation, which is a major threat to our economy over the long haul.
In 2010 the Obama administration cut the individual payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent in response to the Great Recession to boost consumer spending and stimulate the economy. The temporary cut ended in 2013.
Some advocates of tax cuts argue that it’s always a good time to let people keep more of the money they’ve earned. With the median annual household income now above $60,000, a 2 percent cut would be work out to at least $1,200 a year – amounting to an additional $100 in the average working family’s after-tax payday each month.
Obviously, the payroll tax cut only benefits those who pay Social Security taxes, so those who are retired and not working, unemployed or exempt from the payroll tax will not receive the benefit.
So why would anyone oppose putting more money into the pockets of about three-quarters of American families?
One answer might be the approximately $150 billion in lost revenue to the federal government that a one-year payroll tax holiday would likely create.
The ugly truth is that our nation’s national debt is like a hungry wolf crouched in the shadows waiting to consume its prey.
We know almost as certainly as the sun will rise that Congress will not cut spending to offset the fiscal impact of a payroll tax cut on our nation’s budget deficit. So a temporary payroll tax cut simply means that we will once again put another charge on the tab of our children, grandchildren and generations yet unborn.
In 2018 alone, overall interest payments on the nation’s $22 trillion debt amounted to $522 billion, with the net interest that was paid to debt purchasers like China, Japan, banks, pension funds and others totaling $325 billion.
To put $325 billion into perspective, even with historically low interest rates, the Office of Management and Budget reports that America paid more on interest payments on the debt to outside entities in one year than we spend on the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and State combined.
And in this Congress as well as the last one, a bipartisan consensus developed that our nation could continue to spend almost $1 trillion more than it received in revenue without consequences.
The problem is that – as Greece discovered earlier this decade – eventually the chickens come home to roost and interest rates go up. What was once an interest payment of about 10 percent of the nation’s revenues and 12 percent of expenditures spirals out of control, forcing lawmakers to choose between two bad alternatives: repay borrowed funds or make draconian cuts in government spending, while raising taxes precipitously.
Or the result could be what happened in Japan: with negative interest rates on government debt, more than 200 percent debt to Gross Domestic Product, almost no growth for two decades, and stagnation and deflation.
So why do I believe President Trump and Congress should nevertheless cut the payroll tax temporarily?
The answer lies in the real reason why our economy still has failed to grow at a robust rate even with tax cuts and regulatory relief: China and other countries’ currency manipulation, which always makes that nation’s products and services less expensive than America’s.
A payroll tax cut would likely increase the deficit by between 10 and 15 percent in 2020. However, it would also have the effect of strengthening our nation’s economy vis-à-vis the rest of the world, giving whoever is president in 2021 a strong hand in negotiating trade deals that are in our national interest, while our trade partners are facing significant economic pressures in their homelands.
Currency manipulation allows China to devalue the yuan to offset the impacts of U.S. business tax cuts, tariffs and regulatory relief, while keeping the prices of goods made in China stable here in America.
While this is a good thing for consumers in the short-term, it is horrible for the U.S. in the long haul because it puts American exporters and domestic manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage. Maximizing the opportunity to solve this much more significant problem makes the decision to support the payroll tax cut a no-brainer, in spite of the short-term deficit costs.
Ending China’s currency manipulation, as well as that nation’s intellectual property theft, is the single most important public policy goal for our nation. Accomplishing this is the key to having any chance of restoring robust economic growth in America.
And only a president dealing with a strong economic hand will be able to win these game-changing concessions from China. To get such concessions, our president will need the ability negotiate a trade deal with China that ends that country’s pernicious effort to dominate the rest of the 21st century.
At the same time, our president will need to put more money into the pockets of Americans, which will help extend low unemployment and wage growth that we currently enjoy.
So my advice to President Trump is to ask Congress for a temporary payroll tax cut. The benefits outweigh the costs.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
Video: We all better hope President Trump is successful in striking a trade deal with China
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_TTJ9p7WdA
Trump ends China’s monopoly on rare earths as Pentagon rapidly pushes for domestic mining and processing, invoking 1950 Defense Production Act
By Robert Romano
In a strong boost for the U.S. position in ongoing trade negotiations with China, it looks like Beijing’s monopoly on rare earth minerals used in smart phones, computers and high-tech military hardware is coming to an end as the U.S. Defense Department makes a big push for domestic processing of the sought-after materials.
The Pentagon began asking miners to submit plans to develop more U.S. mines and processing facilities on June 27, with comments that were due by July 31. “The overall goal is to secure and assure a viable, domestic supplier (of rare earths) for the long-term,” according the Pentagon paper sent to the miners.
According to Talkingmedianews.com, “Pentagon officials told TMN they are also in the process of lining up processing plants in Australia and Great Britain… [but] [t]he primary goal of the Pentagon, working with other federal agencies, is to develop processing facilities in the United States, as well as improve the actual mining of rare farther minerals.”
One official said, “while it is fine to have plants in allies it is better to have some here.”
To that end, President Donald Trump invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act on July 22 in a proclamation, writing, “the domestic production capability for Samarium Cobalt Rare Earth Permanent Magnets is essential to the national defense. Without Presidential action under section 303 of the Act, United States industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the production capability for Samarium Cobalt Rare Earth Permanent Magnets adequately and in a timely manner.”
The proclamation added, “Further, purchases, purchase commitments, or other action pursuant to section 303 of the Act are the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical alternative method for meeting the need for this critical capability.”
By invoking the law, the Defense Department can go ahead and fund directly the construction of rare earth processing facilities in the U.S. and expand mining operations by working with private contractors.
The U.S. consumed about 9,500 metric tons of rare earths in 2018, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and we are 100 percent reliant on imports of rare earth metals, 80 percent of which comes from China.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “The estimated value of rare-earth compounds and metals imported by the United States in 2018 was $160 million, an increase from $137 million in 2017.” But these numbers do not account for rare earths used in manufacturing in China and then exported, which President Trump recently delayed additional 10 percent tariffs on until December.
Despite being in a commanding position for years, the good news is that China has been losing global market share, from 95 percent of global production in 2010 down to 80 percent global market share now, largely because Australia ramped up production, which is now the number two producer in the world at 20,000 metric tons in 2018. Australia also has all of the elements we would be looking for, according to Geoscience Australia.
In addition, a new discovery of 16 million tons of rare earth oxides off the coast of Japan last year could supply the minerals for the entire world for centuries.
We have about 1.4 million metric tons of reserves in the U.S., and after years of not mining rare earths, in 2018 the U.S. ramped up production to 15,000 tons of compounds according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
MP Materials, which runs the Mountain Pass site in California’s San Bernardino County, the nation’s only operational rare earth facility, is currently exporting to China for processing but plans to have its own domestic processing facilities running in 2020. No word yet on if MP Materials will be participating in the Defense Department program, but expects they would be a prime candidate.
Unlike his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who allowed domestic production to disappear, Trump takes the threat seriously with the newly sought domestic rare earths being promoted by Pentagon.
China’s monopoly on rare earth mineral production is coming to an end as its market share continues to plummet going forward. Just one less thing Beijing can hold over U.S. trade negotiators’ heads, and surely strengthens the U.S. position in those talks. China had placed a tariff on rare earths that were being shipped there for processing, but Beijing was never going to permanently be allowed to have a monopoly on elements essential to national security. And the American people can thank President Trump.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Negative interest rates are the death of capitalism
Aug. 21, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to President Donald Trump's tweet on negative interest rates writing "So Germany is paying Zero interest and is actually being paid to borrow money, while the U.S., a far stronger and more important credit, is paying interest and just stopped (I hope!) Quantitative Tightening. Strongest Dollar in History, very tough on exports. No Inflation!.........WHERE IS THE FEDERAL RESERVE?":
“Negative interest rates signal the death of capitalism because they will mean we're in a deflationary cycle, where it makes more sense to put money under your mattress than to invest in growing businesses, buying bonds and creating wealth. Capitalism depends on capital formation, and that only occurs when there is a profit to be made for risk-taking. If we're projecting no inflation, that also means no growth, as Japan has learned for the past 20 years. Instead of conceding to negative rates and deflation and no growth, we need to offset what China is doing on currency to devalue the yuan versus the dollar so that we're not destroying incentives in our own economy. Negative rates threaten the U.S. economy, they are no panacea. Just ask Germany and Japan about their growth rates."
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/08/negative-interest-rates-are-the-death-of-capitalism/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured report from The Hill’s John Solomon, an oncoming torrent of declassified documents that will reveal abuses by the FBI and foreign and domestic intelligence agencies against the Trump campaign in 2016 is set to rock Washington, D.C. in the fall:
10 declassified Russia collusion revelations that could rock Washington this fall
By John Solomon
Behind the scenes, some major events were set in motion last autumn that could soon change the tenor in Washington, at least as it relates to the debunked Russia collusion narrative that distracted America for nearly three years.
It was in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may have done wrong in the Russia probe.
About the same time, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, under then-Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), voted unanimously to send 53 nonpublic transcripts of witnesses in its Russia review to the director of national intelligence (DNI) for declassification. The transcripts were officially delivered in November.
Now, nearly a year later, neither release has happened.
To put that into perspective, it took just a couple of months in 2004 to declassify the final report on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks after a presidential commission finished its work, which contained some of the nation’s most secretive intelligence revelations.
But the long wait for transparency may soon end.
The foot-dragging inside the intelligence community (IC) that occurred under now-departed DNI Dan Coats and his deputy, Sue Gordon, could halt abruptly. That’s particularly true if Trump appoints a new IC sheriff, such as former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the current ambassador to the Netherlands, or longtime national security expert Fred Fleitz.
Likewise, the president has an opportunity to speed up and organize the release of declassified information by simply creating an Office of Transparency and Accountability inside his own White House, run by a staffer empowered at the level of a formal assistant to the president. That would prevent intelligence agencies from continuing their game of public keep-away.
Nunes, who helped to unravel the Russia collusion farce, has identified five buckets of information he’d like to see released. One of those buckets, the FBI's interview reports on Bruce Ohr’s cooperation, was released last week — not through a Trump declassification order but, rather, through litigation brought by Judicial Watch, and with heavy redactions.
My reporting, including interviews with four dozen U.S. officials over the last several months, actually identifies a much larger collection of documents — about a dozen all together — that, when declassified, would show more completely how a routine counterintelligence probe was hijacked to turn the most awesome spy powers in America against a presidential nominee in what was essentially a political dirty trick orchestrated by Democrats.
Here are the documents that have the greatest chance of rocking Washington, if declassified:
1.) Christopher Steele’s confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with Steele, such as the existence of the classified Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.
2.) The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I’m told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA.
3.) The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources. We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working his way to the top of Trump's transition and administration, eventually reaching senior advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government’s Russia probe.
4.) The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and discussed with DOJ about using Steele’s dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If those concerns weren’t shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major repercussions.
5.) Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes’s five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.
6.) The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren’t initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI irregularities.
7.) The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. Given Steele’s own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI’s final analysis of his credibility. A document I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele’s information as only “minimally corroborated” and the bureau’s confidence in him as “medium.”
8.) The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton’s opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump, had a political deadline to make his dirt public, was working for the DNC/Clinton campaign and was leaking to the news media. If he told that to the FBI and it wasn’t disclosed to the FISA court, there could be serious repercussions.
9.) The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe had started and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I’m told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump’s orbit.
10.) Records of allies’ assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas — possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy — were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence. My sources say these documents might help explain Attorney General William Barr’s recent comments that “the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed.”
