Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #667
12/02/2022, 12/03/2022, 12/04/2022
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1) Republicans Bring Back Earmarks
Shame. Shame. Shame.
Republicans are back up to their old tricks of bringing home the bacon. So sad. In 2010 House Republicans agreed to end earmarking – the practice of stuffing massive spending bills with pork projects in the home district - but that commitment to fiscal sanity vanished on Wednesday when the GOP caucus voted thumbs up to allowing these earmarks to resume.
Here’s what’s really depressing. Our friend Rep Matt Rosendale of Montana tells us the caucus vote was:
55 supporting the prohibition of earmarks
152 opposing prohibition
Three out of four were in favor of playing pigs at the trough.
One Republican member boasted in the caucus debate that through earmarks he brought money back to his district to buy a fire truck. These are the people that are supposed to lead us back to fiscal sanity?
Kevin McCarthy – who is in line to be the House Speaker – did not oppose the measure.
Oh, and here’s an even more pathetic development. Republicans won’t call their special projects “earmarks” anymore. Now they will use the euphemism “community development projects.”
Many Republicans we have talked to said earmarks are fiscally trivial. So wasting billions of dollars is justified because we spend trillions of dollars we can’t afford. As the late great Senator Tom Coburn often reminded us: “Earmarks are the gateway drug to out-of-control spending.” And now they are bipartisan.
2) Student Loan Bailout Case Headed To The Supreme Court
In what qualifies as lightning speed for the courts, the challenge led by Nebraska and Missouri to Biden's attempted $400+ billion unconstitutional taxpayer heist will be scheduled for oral argument in February:
This is very bad news for the Biden administration.
This is a simple and slam-dunk case against Biden. The power of the purse rests solely with Congress – not the President. And there is no “emergency” other than Biden trying to get money to young college grads who vote for him.
3) California Prepares To Pay One-Half Trillion Dollars Of Reparations
This is not a spoof.
Last week, we noted that the real news out of the “COP 27” climate conference in Egypt was that Biden agreed that the U.S. owes poor nations billions of dollars of “climate reparations.” In other words, COP 27 was a shake-down operation rather than a climate conference.
Now even states are getting into the act. California may be ready to hand out checks to 2.5 million “descendants of slaves” in the state. The state’s “reparations commission” suggests that the state compensate black victims of housing discrimination between 1933 and 1988 with a payment of up to $223,200. Ready for this? The estimated price tag to the taxpayers of California would be $569 billion.
That’s more than California's entire state budget in 2021.
Reparations focused on housing policy are only the beginning. California’s task force has also identified four other causes for reparations: Mass incarceration, unjust property seizures, devaluation of black businesses, and health care.
The Chicago Tribune reports that “hundreds of communities and organizations across the country are considering providing reparations.” Don’t be surprised if this loony shakedown operation arrives in a neighborhood near you soon.
Speaking of Republicans and debt, look at what has happened to the gross debt burden relative to the economy. In 2022 Covid was over and we STILL recorded an all-time high level of debt relative to the size of the U.S. economy. Time to take out the chainsaws in every agency.
