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☆ Congress Enacts a Tax Nobody Can Understand
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Travis Nix | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

For a tax system to be fair and efficient, taxpayers must, at a minimum, be able to determine what they owe by consulting published codes. In the U.S., however, a new tax—the book minimum tax, also known as the corporate alternative minimum tax—went into effect at the beginning of 2023. The legislation establishing the levy is vague, and the Internal Revenue Service hasn’t issued clear rules. The lack of clear tax rules allows the IRS to write new rules during audits. It may even be unconstitutional: The lack of clear rules deprives taxpayers of due process, and delegating the definition of the tax to executive-branch agencies is a dereliction of Congress’s duty to write tax laws.

☆ In praise of American finance’s regulatory mess
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( John Foley | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters Breakingviews) - There are many issues on which China and the United States are far apart. The People’s Republic this week proposed combining financial regulatory functions into a new super watchdog to govern its financial sector more effectively. China’s proposed new National Financial Regulatory Administration is roughly in this mold. Since 2008, officials in Beijing have criticized the United States’ financial excesses and its “warped conception” of financial discipline. The new National Financial Regulatory Administration would sit directly under the State Council, which serves as China’s cabinet.

☆ CIA future will be defined by US technology race with China, director says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency is shown at the entrance of the CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, U.S., September 24, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn HocksteinWASHINGTON, March 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s future will be defined by America's ongoing technology race with China, agency director William Burns said on Wednesday during a Senate hearing. Burns’ remarks followed the release of the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, which pointed to China as the biggest national security threat facing America. “It's also the main determinant of our future as an intelligence service as well.”The CIA director was speaking during Congress’s so-called Worldwide Threats hearing, also featuring other heads of the U.S. intelligence community, including National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray. Gen. Nakasone, the NSA director, testified China's cyber operations have grown more aggressive recently.

☆ Student-Loan Forgiveness: What to Know About Biden’s Plan and the Supreme Court Case
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Gabriel T. Rubin | Julia Carpenter | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

President Biden’s student-loan plan would reduce or wipe out the debt of millions of borrowers. But legal challenges might imperil the program moving forward. On Nov. 10, a federal judge in Texas struck down the debt-relief plan, calling it “an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power.” The Supreme Court has now taken up appeals in that case and a related one, and is expected to decide the fate of the program, among other far-reaching implications, by the end of its term in late June.

☆ The King, Student-Loan Forgiveness, and the Supreme Court
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Supreme Court hears one of the most consequential separation-of-powers cases in American history on Tuesday when it considers President Biden’s unilateral student loan write-off. The question is nothing less than whether the President can steal Congress’s power of the purse and act like a King. Mr. Biden’s claim of unilateral power to cancel $400 billion in debt is truly breathtaking, and he knew it. A month before taking office, Mr. Biden said it was “pretty questionable,” whether he had the power to cancel student debt. Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted in July 2021 that “it would take an act of Congress, not an executive order, to cancel student loan debt.” Now the Administration is arguing otherwise in court.

The U.S. is looking to sell 40 new F-16s to Turkey, officials said. The Biden administration is preparing to seek congressional approval for a $20 billion sale of new F-16 jet fighters to Turkey along with a separate sale of next-generation F-35 warplanes to Greece, in what would be among the largest foreign weapons sales in recent years, according to U.S. officials. Congress’s approval is contingent on Turkey’s signoff on Finland and Sweden’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the officials said. Turkey has blocked the two countries’ applications over objections to their ties to Kurdish separatist groups. Both countries ended decades of neutrality by deciding to join NATO last year in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

☆ Biden’s Back Door Tesla Subsidy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Tesla ’s stock market value has plunged by some $850 billion this year amid investor worries over Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and slumping demand for its electric vehicles. But lo, the Biden Administration is coming to Mr. Musk’s aid with a new plan to use the renewable fuel program in a way that subsidizes Teslas and other already subsidized EVs. Congress’s ethanol mandate offers a case study in the political difficulty of weaning industries off government support—and how regulators can revamp programs to serve new political ends. Politicians of both parties rallied around the renewable fuel standard (RFS) in 2005 as a way to boost U.S. energy independence and reduce CO2 emissions. It has done the opposite.

☆ Senate Passes $858 Billion Defense-Policy Bill and Stopgap Spending Fix
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Katy Stech Ferek | Natalie Andrews | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON—The Senate passed a bipartisan $858 billion defense-policy bill on Thursday that authorizes U.S. military leaders to purchase new weapons, increases pay for service members and ends the Pentagon’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate, checking a major item off Congress’s year-end to-do list. Lawmakers voted 83-11 to pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which would increase America’s total national security budget by roughly 10% from last year’s $778 billion authorization bill. The proposal, which typically draws strong bipartisan support, needed at least 60 votes to pass the Senate.

☆ Senate Passes $858 Billion Defense-Policy Bill
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Katy Stech Ferek | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON—The Senate passed an $858 billion defense-policy bill on Thursday that authorizes U.S. military leaders to purchase new weapons and would increase pay for service members, checking a major item off Congress’s year-end to-do list. Lawmakers voted 83-11 to pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which would increase America’s total national security budget by roughly 10% from last year’s $778 billion authorization bill. The proposal, which typically draws strong bipartisan support, needed at least 60 votes to pass the Senate.

☆ Congress approves removing statue of Supreme Court chief justice who wrote Dred Scott decision
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Zoë Richards | Zoë Richards Is The Evening Politics Reporter For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

The House passed a bill Wednesday that would remove from public display at the U.S. Capitol a statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that defended slavery and denied the citizenship of Black Americans. Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), former chief justice of the Supreme Court. The House overwhelmingly passed the measure a few months later in a 305-113 vote, but it did not advance in the Senate. A statue of Taney, who lived in Maryland, was removed from Maryland's State House grounds in 2017. Congress in recent years has taken similar actions to remove other statues from the Civil War era.

☆ Police officers to receive Congressional Gold Medals for Jan. 6
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

To recognize the hundreds of officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the medals will be placed in four locations — at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution. Awarding the medals will be among House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s last ceremonial acts as she prepares to step down from leadership. Officers suffered physical wounds, including brain injuries and other lifelong effects, and many struggled to work afterward because they were so traumatized. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that immediately followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after one of the rioters sprayed him with a chemical. The Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow, has been handed out by the legislative branch since 1776.

☆ Democrats Want a Lame-Duck Spending Blowout
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

When is $5 trillion still not enough? Answer: When you’re a progressive about to lose your grip on total power. That’s how to read Democrats’ attempt to jam Republicans into one last, lame-duck, spending hurrah. Democrats want to stuff all 12 of Congress’s annual, overdue spending bills into a giant “omnibus” to finance government through September 2023. According to their media note-takers, the failure to pass an omnibus bill will result in one of two apocalyptic scenarios: a government shutdown, or the ruin of federal agencies forced to maintain spending at current levels.

☆ Tax Breaks for Retirement, Corporate Research on Congress’s Lame-Duck Agenda
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Richard Rubin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A lame-duck session can often be an opportunity for the current Congress to push through final priorities. WASHINGTON—The House and Senate returned for a postelection session of Congress this week with tax breaks for retirement savings and corporate research on the agenda. Lawmakers are hopeful that some of these tax measures with bipartisan support can get through Congress before the end of the year. But short deadlines and postelection uncertainty could impede those efforts.

☆ Federal judge declares Biden's student debt relief plan unlawful
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ruled that President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful and must be vacated, delivering a victory to conservative opponents of the program. The debt relief plan had already been temporarily blocked by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. About 26 million Americans have applied for student loan forgiveness, and the U.S. Department of Education has already approved requests from 16 million. The plan, announced in August, calls for forgiving up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in September calculated the debt forgiveness would eliminate about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and that over 40 million people were eligible to benefit.

☆ Federal Judge in Texas Strikes Down Biden Student-Loan Forgiveness Program
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Gabriel T. Rubin | Andrew Restuccia | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Biden administration is seeking to implement a program that would forgive student debt for millions of borrowers. A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down the Biden administration’s student-debt forgiveness plan, imperiling a key administration priority that would have canceled up to $20,000 in student loans for tens of millions of borrowers. The Biden administration’s plan is an “unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power” that also failed to go through normal regulatory processes, Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas wrote in a 26-page opinion.

☆ Another Supreme Court Clean-Up Job
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Supreme Court on Tuesday is being asked to correct another misconceived decision that has let individuals sue states under a Reconstruction Era law for not complying with federal spending rules. This sleeper case hasn’t generated headlines but has major constitutional implications. Congress typically sets conditions on money distributed to states for programs such as Medicaid. The question in Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County v. Talevski is whether individuals can enforce Congress’s rules in federal court and receive damages for state violations.

☆ Trump hopes a judge will save him from January 6 subpoenas
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Allen Sumrall | Josh Chafetz | Allen Sumrall Is A Ph.D. Student In The Department Of Government At The University Of Texas At Austin. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

It is hard to imagine anything more central to the House’s constitutional role than thoroughly investigating an attempt to overthrow the government by force. The Trump subpoena clearly aids that function. In other words, simply by going to court, Trump can most likely ensure that he never has to comply. If Trump is allowed to sue to quash the subpoena, the courts in effect substitute their judgment for Congress's. That is not their constitutional role.

☆ No Sympathy for Steve Bannon
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-22 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Steve Bannon was sentenced on Friday to four months in prison, and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that he earned it. Mr. Bannon, a private citizen who left White House employment in summer 2017, did not have a plausible claim of executive privilege when he received a subpoena last year from the House Jan. 6 inquiry. Mr. Bannon will remain free while his case is on appeal, but if Congressional oversight by either party is going to mean anything, then potential witnesses can’t be permitted to flout lawful subpoenas with impunity. Those who don’t want to answer Congress’s questions can show up, cite the Fifth Amendment, and decline to reply. That’s what other allies of President Trump did before the Jan. 6 committee.

But the Inflation Reduction Act, which represents about a third of the spending, was passed by Democrats alone. The White House is still pushing a more expansive child tax credit that was not included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Here’s a detailed look at what Mr. Biden wanted and what he got:Climate and Environment Proposed $722 billion Passed $509 billionOn climate, the Biden administration got much of what it wanted. Health Care Proposed $563 billion Passed $412 billionOn health care, there were some victories for the president — and much trimming. The family programs were eliminated largely because of concerns from Mr. Manchin about the overall size of what became the Inflation Reduction Act.

Trying to salvage his summit at Doral, Trump himself phoned the group at Camp David, and the moderates gave the president an earful as well. That fall, Bade and Demirjian write, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and House GOP Whip Steve Scalise had desperately tried to hold the line and keep Republicans unified against Democrats' first impeachment probe into Trump. That weekend at Camp David, Bade and Demirjian write, moderate Republicans "charged the president’s chief of staff like a pack of wolves." Mulvaney had suggested to his boss inviting a group of wavering Republicans to Camp David. “We don’t want to have to defend you on this,” Wagner told him, suggesting that he host the G-7 at Camp David.

☆ Liz Cheney’s Electoral Count Act Bill to Stop a Jan. 6 Repeat
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The good news is that the House now has a bill to update the 1887 Electoral Count Act, the antiquated law implicated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Even better, the legislation unveiled this week by Republican Liz Cheney and Democrat Zoe Lofgren reads like it’s an improvement, in some respects, of the Senate version. The House plan says the Vice President’s role when Congress tallies the Electoral College “is ministerial.” The VP can’t on his own “order any delay in counting.” This responds to President Trump’s claim in 2020 that Mike Pence could seize control of the joint session. Mr. Trump’s legal argument relied on a lack of clarity in the 12th Amendment, which can’t be fixed by statute. Still, it would be helpful to have Mr. Trump’s theory contradicted by the law and Congress’s explicit procedure.

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