Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.
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Blame Government, Not COVID-19, for Supply Chain Collapse – If Biden is serious about solving supply chains, he needs to get ports, truckers, railroads, and warehouses back to work. That means loosening union chokeholds on critical infrastructure, using the Taft-Hartley Act if needed. It means clearing out labor and environmental mandates that ban or disincentivize flexible workers and contractors. And it means draining the swamp of crony and environmental regulations that gum up supply chains with 100-year-old detritus on top of whatever activists are banning this week. Above all, Biden needs to stop making it worse. That means he must resist spreading California’s job-killing labor and environmental mandates across the country, from Environmental Protection Agency truck emission rules to congressional Democrats’ jamming nationwide anti-contractor legislation into their $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend bill. Finally, it means withdrawing Biden’s reckless vaccine mandate, which is already pulling thousands of additional critical workers off the job before it has even kicked in. Biden has a lot to do, and he’ll need to stand up to unions and radical activists if he stands a chance of actually delivering. Heritage experts: Peter St. Onge and Joel Griffith
10 Absurdly Wasteful Items Tucked Into Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Tax-and-Spend Monstrosity – House Democrats a few weeks ago released the full text of their big-government socialism $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend package. Many important elements were already clear. It would recklessly boost federal spending at a time of already high inflation, impose ruinous tax hikes when the post-pandemic economic recovery is still vulnerable, and impose an anti-work welfare state. However, due to the incredible length of the bill—2,465 pages, or about the length of two King James Bibles—there are thousands of separate provisions, far more than can be properly analyzed by legislators or the public. The following are just 10 of the ridiculous things buried in the bill. Heritage expert: David Ditch
Washington’s big spending plans promise much, but will they be worth the cost? – Families deserve to know how much big-government policies will cost them — not only in taxes, but in how those policies will affect their paychecks and the prices they pay for everything from gas and groceries to utilities and child care. Let’s start with taxes, which already consume more of Americans’ budgets than food, housing and clothing combined. President Joe Biden promised that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, but Congress’s official nonpartisan scorekeepers said that his plan would raise taxes on millions of middle-class families. Beginning in 2023, taxes would rise for nearly 6 million taxpayers that make less than $100,000. By 2027, more than half of all families earning between $75,000 and $100,000 would pay more in taxes. Taxes would even rise on hundreds of thousands of families making less than $20,000 a year. Heritage expert: Rachel Greszler
What is the NSBA, and why is it trying to shut down parents? – The NSBA’s letter to the Biden administration and Garland’s memo distract attention from the pressure that special interest groups are applying to parents. Parents, we should remind ourselves, who are simply speaking up for their children. Many state school boards disagree with the NSBA’s intimidating tactics, and all school boards should reject federal interference with local education concerns. When special interest groups use taxpayer money to tell the federal government that parents are the enemy — the indefensible stance of the NSBA — something has gone terribly wrong. Heritage expert: Jonathan Butcher
Justice Clarence Thomas’ Exemplary Service Has Deep Roots – Consistent with this view of limited government, Thomas believes in a judiciary restrained by the Constitution, not one that attempts to control it. He wrote in 1988, for example, that the Supreme Court purporting to create unenumerated constitutional rights would treat the Constitution as “a blank check. The Court could designate something to be a right and then strike down any law it thought violated that right.” This too echoed America’s Founders. Changing the meaning of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson warned, would make a “blank paper” or a “mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” Heritage expert: Tom Jipping
Biden Supreme Court commission opposes adding justices – Packing the Supreme Court is a dangerous and deeply unpopular idea. FDR was the last President to seriously consider and propose packing the Court in the 1930s. Despite his own party controlling both houses of Congress, the proposal was overwhelmingly rejected. The same should happen today. The Court is not a political branch of government and any attempts to politicize it should be rejected. Heritage experts: Zack Smith and Tom Jipping
Katie Couric Edits Ruth Bader Ginsburg Comments About National Anthem Protests to ‘Protect’ Her – Besides a few frustrated and angry tweets, Couric clearly thinks there will be no repercussions to her actions. She can just openly tell the world that she has gotten into the business of manipulating interviews to tell the right story and expects things to just roll along as if nothing happened. There appears to be an assumption that the hard left has unassailable control, that it’s better to just admit to throwing out professional standards rather than anger or offend its ideological adherents. This may keep people like Couric in positions of power under current circumstances, but it adds to the simmering discontent and distrust that now exists toward America’s most powerful institutions. The veneer of objectivity is drifting away. Democracy is stirring. Heritage expert: Jarrett Stepman
Overturn Roe? It’s Not 1973 Anymore. Justices Should Let States Follow Science. – Mississippi compellingly argues that it’s time for the high court to finally change course: Nothing in the Constitution’s text, structure, history, or tradition supports a constitutional right to abortion, and Mississippi has just as much authority to legislate on abortion as it does on other subjects, including legislation addressing abortion before viability. The so-called viability standard is arbitrary and ultimately unworkable, and until it is rejected, it will remain a barrier to states such as Mississippi being able to enact laws that reflect current—not outdated—science. Nearly half a century of abortion jurisprudence has led to a status quo that doesn’t account for advances in science. It’s not 1973 anymore, and the Supreme Court has an opportunity to make a course correction rooted in a proper understanding of the Constitution and acknowledge the humanity of children in the womb. Heritage expert: Melanie Israel
What is Behind the Left's Opposition to Funding Israel's Iron Dome? – How does removing protections for innocent civilians being showered by missiles furthers the cause of building a better future for the people of the Middle East? It doesn’t. And that raises broader questions about what the political far left is really up to. We all know who fires missiles at Israel. It’s Hamas, Hezbollah, and, potentially, their master, Iran. Not only are they committed to political violence, their political philosophies are rooted in Islamist ideologies. So here is the worry. Do the Squad and their ilk really believe the region would be better off if the Islamist voices from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Mullahs in Tehran were empowered? The short answer appears to be “yes.” Heritage expert: Jim Carafano