“As of February 19, 2021, there are at least 1,544 publicly reported cases of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, and other violent assaults against asylum seekers and migrants forced to return to Mexico by the Trump Administration”
…
“These figures are likely only the tip of the iceberg, as the vast majority of the more than 68,000 individuals already returned to Mexico have not been interviewed by reporters or human rights researchers, let alone spoken to an attorney.”
“robust as the response was, the crisis exposed the fragility of the UI system. Technically, America’s process for handling unemployment claims was built on antiquated computer systems (some written in COBOL, a language largely abandoned in the 1980s), and millions of workers endured weeks of delays in getting their benefits.
So a major priority for Congress in 2021 has to be reforming the UI system: improving its functionality and making it more generous.”
“Thanks to the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which mandates that all infrastructure projects receiving federal funding pay “prevailing” (generally union) wages, organized labor has been getting a piece of the action for nearly a century. This requirement raises labor costs by as much as 22 percent, according to an analysis by Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute.
The president’s insistence that he’ll sign off on a contract only if it’s with “an American company with American products all the way down the line and American workers” will raise costs even further. Existing “Buy American” provisions are a well-established driver of transportation project costs.
A 2019 report from the Congressional Research Service found that buying American steel costs around twice as much as importing it from China. Requiring road builders to use pricier domestic steel raised the cost of highway construction by about $2 billion from 2009 to 2011, back when then–Vice President Biden was overseeing the spending of stimulus dollars on infrastructure projects.
If the president’s goal were truly to “build, baby, build,” he would be making every effort to pare back regulations that raise the labor and material costs of federal infrastructure projects. Instead, Biden wants to double down on those rules.”
“The party has changed and would much rather talk about the border than the budget, and cancellations than Congressional Budget Office scores. Of course, no Republicans will vote for Biden’s proposals and all will strenuously object, but that his plans won’t engender the fierce reaction they would have 10 years ago is yet another way in which the Overton window has shifted on deficit spending.
What happened to the GOP? The short answer is Donald Trump.
Beginning in the 2016 primaries, he demonstrated in vivid fashion that as the GOP coalition had become older and more working class, it didn’t care as much about spending restraint or entitlement reform as the party’s leaders had presumed.”
“In their 2017 tax bill, Republicans partially closed a tax loophole that mainly affected higher-income people in high-tax areas — i.e., relatively well-off people in blue states. They capped the state and local tax deduction (SALT) people can take when calculating their federal income tax at $10,000. People can still deduct state and local taxes from their federal tax bill, but only up to that point.
Many Democrats — namely, those from states such as New York, New Jersey, and California — want to repeal the SALT deduction cap and go back to the old regime, where people could deduct all (or at least more) of their state and local taxes. They argue the cap unfairly drives up their constituents’ tax bills, might keep their states from implementing more progressive tax regimes on high-income people, and was a vindictive move by the GOP in the first place.”
…
“But some Democrats, Republicans, and economists are saying hold the phone.
“The vast majority of the benefits of repealing the SALT cap would go to the people at the very top. It would also be costly — and for that amount, we could finance much more worthy efforts to support American families and workers. We can say we are for a progressive tax code and for fighting inequality, or we can support the SALT deduction, but it is really hard to do both,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) in a statement to Vox. When the Senate took up a vote on whether to repeal the SALT cap in December 2019, he was the only Democrat to vote against it.”
“A corporation’s book profits are actually an unhelpful metric when it comes to assessing what its tax liability should be. While the tax code is far from perfect, many deductions and credits that reduce liabilities serve an important purpose and help make the tax code fairer. Calculating a corporation’s income before factoring these in makes as much sense as complaining that a kid with a summer job gets to avoid paying regular income taxes because of the “standard deduction loophole.”
For example, consider net operating loss (NOL) carryforwards and carrybacks, one of the most common culprits behind these sensational headlines. These are normal features of a smart policy that allows corporations to pay taxes based on a realistic view of their cash flow over time.
Imagine a start-up business that spends two years developing its feature product, only to release it in the next year. If that business ran a deficit of $2 million the previous two years, then made a $1 million profit the third year, it has not actually made a profit in the long term. Disallowing NOL deductions from being carried forward would mean that the business would face corporate income tax liability despite having, thus far, lost money.”
…
“NOL carryforwards were one reason Amazon had no federal tax liability when those articles appeared a couple years back. Another was the research and development (R&D) tax credit, long a bipartisan favorite. The Obama administration in 2012 identified the R&D credit as a crucial element of business tax reform, claiming that businesses undervalue R&D in the absence of the credit as the social benefit is far greater. It’s deeply disingenuous to incentivize R&D, then wag your finger when businesses respond to the incentives the R&D credit provides.
Then there’s accelerated depreciation. One of the most positive changes in the 2017 tax reform law was the introduction of full expensing of capital investments, which allowed businesses to bypass the complicated system of asset depreciation that requires them to recoup the value of capital investments over timelines as long as decades. Huffing and puffing that businesses use full expensing to zero out their tax liabilities is absurd, because it merely accelerates tax deductions businesses would receive anyway. In other words, the long-term “cost” of accelerated depreciation in terms of revenue reduction is zero. The difference is that businesses, which prefer cash on hand to cash down the line, are then able to reinvest the value of the deduction immediately rather than waiting years to receive the tax benefit.”
“The vaccines that millions of Americans receive every day are the result of a global system of research, development, manufacturing, and trade. Forcing those networks to be concentrated within the United States wouldn’t make those supply chains more robust, but would leave Americans vulnerable to the accountability problems that seem endemic to federal government contracting.”
…
” It’s true, of course, that the federal government paid billions of dollars to Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers in the form of advance-purchase agreements last year. But that’s a different situation—one that effectively promised prize money but still put the onus on private companies to deliver vaccines that worked. While certainly not an ideal arrangement from a libertarian point of view, it’s far better than an industrial policy that directs public funds to companies that hire the best lobbyists.”
“this problem of an overcomplicated system that makes it hard for people to access benefits isn’t limited to the stimulus checks. For many government benefits, lots of people who are eligible don’t get it — often because they have no idea how to sign up.”
…
“the federal government needs to make its assistance programs simpler and more accessible. Some headway was actually made on this issue in the recent stimulus plan — Biden’s child allowance converted the existing child tax credit into a near-universal benefit sent to eligible recipients every month, making the program both more generous and accessible. But that’s a one-year fix, and there’s much more work to be done on this front.”
…
“it’s not enough to pass programs that help them in principle; the government actually has to build the infrastructure to get that help into their hands.
For example, the IRS was made responsible for sending out the stimulus checks and publicizing eligibility, but it doesn’t have a budget for public outreach or marketing. It could easily have been given one along with the responsibility of sending the checks out.”
…
“Some policy thinkers favor giving every American a federal bank account, which would simultaneously solve the problem of underbanking — where poor people, who aren’t profitable for the banking system to seek out as customers, struggle with access to basic financial services — and the problem of sending out stimulus checks and benefits. In principle, the government could respond to recessions, pandemics, and disasters of every kind by just dropping some money in our Fed Accounts.”