1) Did You Know that Without the EPA “Many of Us Would Be Dead by Now”?
The Washington Swamp is filled with self-important people who think that the world revolves on its axis around their agencies and bureaus.
But this article from a union website took the arrogance of the Deep State in Washington to new heights:
I bet you didn’t know that: “without the EPA, we wouldn’t have clean air and water. Contaminated lands and oil spills wouldn’t have been cleaned up. There would have been more illnesses and deaths caused by all kinds of chemicals and toxins such as lead and radon in our homes.”
There’s more. “EPA has been taking care of us,” and without this army of bureaucrats, “many of us we dead.”
Ironically, all of this self-congratulations came out while the EPA and its 17,000(!) employees completely fumbled the football in dealing with the toxic chemical spill in East Palatine, Ohio.
We are not against an EPA, but it is worth noting that as our friends at the Cato Institute have long pointed out, states were cleaning the air and water long before the federal EPA was set up in the early 1970s.
As for the union’s plea for more money, the Congressional Research Service reports that: “The total of EPA FY2022 regular and supplemental appropriations is $23.62 billion, $14.38 billion (155.7%) more than the $9.24 billion in FY2021.”
Raise your hand if your family budget rose by 155% last year.
2) Watch Laffer and Team Remind Us Why Taxes Matter
On Sunday CSPAN aired our CTUP book chat with Arthur Laffer and Jeanne Sinquefeld discussing their new history of the impact of tax policy on growth and prosperity. It’s a lively and educational discussion and we urge you to watch it - and have your kids watch it.
It’s simple: a broad tax base and low tax rates are the optimal tax system - as Coolidge, JFK, Reagan and Trump taught us.
3) Biden Administration Endorses "Gain of Function" Research
This is a pretty big surprise in a week where discussion of whether the coronavirus leaked from a lab where NIH-funded, gain-of-function research may have been taking place in violation of United States policy:
When RealClearPolitics asked Monday if President Biden thought gain of function was “prudent,” John Kirby, the president’s National Security Council spokesman, replied that he did.
“He believes that it’s important to help prevent future pandemics, which means he understands that there has to be legitimate scientific research into the sources or potential sources of pandemics so that we understand it so that we can prevent them and we prevent them from happening obviously,” Kirby said.
He added that the president believed any such research “must be done in a safe and secure manner and as transparent as possible to the rest of the world.”
To sum up, Kirby then told RCP, “I think that’s a fancy way of saying ‘yes.’”
This is either a blunder or a cynical attempt to lean hard into lab leak in order to draw attention away from today's hearing on COVID policy blunders in the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus.
4) Biden Student Loan Bailout Goes to the Supreme Court Today
Congratulations and best of luck to our friends at the Job Creators Network as well as the six conservative states (Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina) that sued to block Biden's $400+ billion dollar dumping of student loans onto taxpayers.
If a president can commit hundreds of billions of dollars without a vote of Congress (and we sure hope he can't) then the Constitution’s separation of powers have been ripped to shreds. And if the Supreme Court were to uphold this abuse of power - and we are confident they won’t - then we have lots of unilateral tax cut ideas for the next Republican president.
5) The Case for Free Markets in Education and Health Care in One Chart
This is an updated version of a chart we have shown before from economist Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute:
Where do prices rise the fastest? Health care and education. These are the two industries most run and regulated by government. Why? Because we are told the government will make them more affordable. They are doing a wonderful job.
