I was very disappointed and saddened to hear that Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) will be retiring from Congress in 2022. He’s had an amazing career and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) wishes him well in his retirement. By far, his biggest accomplishment was passing tax reform in 2017. Rep. Brady was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee when the historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in 2017. It was the first fundamental tax reform in the United States in more than 30 years, and it really jump started the economy. I remember going on talk radio and small business owners called in to say that they now had the ability to expand their businesses. The tax cuts didn’t just help small and large businesses, it helped millions of Americans who saw tax cuts and bonuses. Rep. Brady attended a press conference and briefing organized by TPA. He was generous with his time. Members of his staff were also generous with their time to make sure that TPA, and our supporters, had a voice throughout the process of getting tax reform passed. Rep. Brady’s status as a true taxpayer hero will live on long after he’s gone from Congress.
Biden’s Big Budget
Fridays are supposed to be relaxing, you know that whole T.G.I.F. mood. However, in Washington, D.C., Fridays are when bad news is delivered in attempt to avoid too much press scrutiny. Well, President Biden finally released the fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget on Friday. Considered a “skinny budget” because it doesn’t go into much detail, the document laid out $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending for FY ‘22. The budget package includes an 8.4 percent increase over current year funding and contains drastic increases to the operating budgets for the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. Yea, not so skinny. After a year marked by trillion-dollar deficits and record spending, the Biden administration kicked off the new year with trillions of dollars more in spending with COVID relief, an inflated and unnecessary ‘infrastructure’ proposal, and now a bloated budget proposal for FY ‘22. In particular, this proposal would increase spending for the Department of Education by 41 percent and the Department of Health and Human Services by 23 percent. Some agencies are receiving their highest funding level in decades. The Department of Defense (DoD) even gets an increase. Even though DoD spending will only increase 1 percent, this proposal only covers discretionary spending, meaning the Pentagon may be in for quite a pay raise under this proposal. With expensive and failing programs like the F-35 and billions of dollars worth of earmarks, the Pentagon is a prime candidate for spending cuts, not increases.
With a national debt of $28 trillion and counting, the exorbitant bill the United States has accumulated will come due very soon. It is long past time to make the difficult decisions required to move America toward a more responsible, sustainable spending system that will ensure economic security for years to come. This proposal by the Biden administration is irresponsible and should be rejected by Republicans and Democrats before it even reaches Capitol Hill.
NASA’s Sky High Budget
If I didn’t start out this section with a pun, TPA Senior Fellow Ross Marchand would be very disappointed with me. Despite the fun of the pun in the heading, this is a serious issue. In the recently released FY ‘22 president’s budget request, Biden proposes $24.7 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). If approved, Biden’s request would amount to a $1.5 billion (or 6.3 percent) increase over NASA’s 2021 funding, its largest budget in more than 30 years, despite little evidence that increased funding would serve the national interest or appreciably bolster scientific knowledge. Rather than committing an ever-expanding universe of taxpayer dollars to NASA budgets, the federal government should strive for greater fiscal accountability and encourage private industry to take flight. America can reach for the stars, but only with the “right stuff” of fiscal sanity and regulatory reform.
Despite making a dramatic break with the Trump administration in other policy areas, Biden aims to use this increased funding to embrace the same space priorities of his predecessor. The president fully supports the Artemis program, which aims to land an astronaut on the Moon by 2024. Manned missions in the works include the establishment of “Artemis Base Camp,” which would host astronauts on future lunar visits and help pave the way for a manned mission to Mars. Pegged at a $35 billion cost plus inevitable overruns, this pie in the sky mission is expensive and unnecessary. Despite bipartisan hype, manned missions to outer space are notoriously overrated. Robotic missions are a far more cost-effective way of discovering the skies above us. Cambridge Cosmology and astrophysics professor and astronomer royal Martin Rees rightly points out that, “the practical case (for human spaceflight) gets weaker and weaker with every advance in robotics and miniaturization.”
NASA is indeed well funded and has seen its (inflation-adjusted) budget increase in recent years. The problem is that the space agency isn’t transparent in how it churns through taxpayer dollars. Take, for example, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, tasked with ferrying astronauts deep into space for manned missions. NASA has spent more than $1.2 billion per year on this program – roughly 6 percent of the agency’s budget – since fiscal year 2012. And those are just the direct costs on paper. The Inspector General found, “NASA’s exclusion of more than $17 billion in Orion‐related costs has hindered the overall transparency of the vehicle’s complete costs.” Throwing more money at the problem will only result in increased program delays and excuse-making. President Biden should commit to keeping NASA’s budget under control, and demand greater accountability and transparency from the agency. Repeated cost overruns should not be rewarded by budget increases bolstering programs that are not in the best interests of the nation or science. Instead, the administration should aim to remove barriers to private space companies exploring the cosmos without further ballooning the national debt. Current rules regarding spaceports, launch liability, and overall regulatory supervision continue to make it difficult for space companies to achieve liftoff. With the right regulatory reform agenda, Biden could lower flight costs and pave the way for a bold new era of space exploration.
BLOGS:
Monday: Congressional Big Tech Hypocrisy
Tuesday: Political Games Won’t Solve Postal Woes
Thursday: NASA Needs Reform, Not an Astronomical Budget
Friday: President Biden Must Avoid Healthcare Policy Pitfalls
Media:
April 8, 2021: KSNV-TV NBC 3 (Las Vegas, Nev.) quoted TPA in their story about corporate taxes.
April 8, 2021: WCYB-TV NBC 5 ( quoted TPA in their story, “Tax experts say Biden, Democrats are playing a dangerous game with corporate tax rate hike.”
April 8, 2021: WVAH-TV Fox 11 (Charleston. W.V.) quoted TPA in their story about corporate taxes.
April 11, 2021: Inside Sources ran TPA’s op-ed, “Congressional Big Tech Hypocrisy.”
April 12, 2021: WBFF-TV Fox 45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about vaccine passports
April 12, 2021: I appeared on Rush to Reason on KLZ 560AM (Denver, Col.) to talk about H.R. 1 and taxpayer-funded campaigns.
April 13, 2021: The Dispatch ran TPA’s op-ed, “J.D. Vance Shows How the Populist Right Adopted the Logic of 'You Didn't Build That’.”
April 14, 2021: VP of Policy Patrick Hedger appeared on the Thom Hartmann Show (national) to discuss his op-ed on J.D. Vance and big tech.
April 14, 2021: The Center Square ran TPA’s op-ed, “NASA needs reform, not another astronomical budget.”
April 14, 2021: WBFF-TV Fox 45 (Baltimore, Md.) quoted TPA in their article, “Board of Estimates approves $4.5 million increase to private security contract.”
April 14, 2021: Catalyst ran TPA’s op-ed, “President Biden Must Avoid Healthcare Policy Pitfalls.”
April 14, 2021: The Epoch Times quoted TPA in their story, “Sen. Hawley’s Bill to Break Up Big Corporations Praised and Panned on Right.”
April 14, 2021: WSB-TV ABC 2 (Atlanta, Ga.) quoted TPA in their story, “Atlanta VA continues to lose medical devices despite warning 2 years ago, investigation finds.”
April 15, 2021: I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about the next COVID relief bill and unspent money from previous rounds of spending.
April 15, 2021: WBFF-TV Fox 45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about a vehicle mileage tax.
Have a great weekend!
Best,
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1401 K Street, NW
Suite 502
Washington, D.C. xxxxxx
www.protectingtaxpayers.org
