“Despite failing to enact blanket student loan forgiveness, Joe Biden has still managed to forgive more than $130 billion in federal student loans since taking office in 2021—and due to a series of Education Department rule changes, even more loans are set to be forgiven in the coming years.”
…
“Under the REPAYE plan, previously the most popular IDR plan, borrowers were required to make regular monthly payments of 10 percent of their discretionary income (calculated as earnings above 150 percent of the federal poverty rate) for 20 years in order to receive forgiveness. But in 2022, Biden announced the Education Department would replace the REPAYE plan.
In its place, the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan is a significantly more generous alternative, only requiring monthly payments of 5 percent of borrowers’ discretionary income (now calculated as earnings above 225 percent of the federal poverty rate), with forgiveness after just 10 years for balances less than $12,000. Late or incomplete payments would still count during the required repayment period, unlike under the REPAYE plan.”
…
“In all, the new IDR plan is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly as much as Biden’s original attempt at forgiving $475 billion over the next decade (blanket forgiveness was estimated to cost up to $519 billion). While Biden claimed that his recent forgiveness would help swaths of Americans “buy a home start a business even start a family,” it certainly isn’t typical taxpayers—the majority of whom do not have the benefits of a college degree, or the student loans to match—who will end up benefiting.”
https://reason.com/2024/03/07/biden-is-wrong-about-student-debt-forgiveness/
“Under current law, the payroll tax that funds Social Security is capped so that, for this year, only the first $168,600 in earnings are subject to it.
Raising that cap—or eliminating it—is frequently discussed as one possible solution to Social Security’s approaching insolvency. That seems to be the idea that Biden was gesturing towards in his speech.
On its face, this isn’t necessarily the worst idea. The cap is completely arbitrary, so there’s no principled reason why all earnings shouldn’t be treated equally. And there’s no doubt that raising the cap would generate more revenue to help keep Social Security afloat. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that applying payroll taxes to higher income levels could raise $1 trillion in revenues over a 10-year period (though the amount of revenue would depend on how the cap was altered, and whether benefits increased as well).”
…
“raising or eliminating the payroll tax gap doesn’t come close to solving the long-term Social Security shortfall. It might generate $1 trillion over 10 years, which is a lot of money, but it doesn’t come close to the $2.8 trillion deficit the program is expected to run over the next decade.
“Eliminating the tax cap would either raise benefits as well (reducing the proposals’ savings), or—if the accompanying benefits are canceled—turn Social Security into a true welfare program by delinking contributions and benefits,” writes Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former Senate budget staffer, in a recent piece debunking some common myths about Social Security reform. “Moreover, eliminating the cap would not bring permanent solvency or avert the need for benefit changes….The system would return to deficits by 2029. Lawmakers would still need to reform benefit levels and the eligibility age.””
https://reason.com/2024/03/07/biden-says-hell-make-the-wealthy-pay-more-to-fix-social-security-heres-why-that-wont-work/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jUettkVzyo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsHH5fi5beU
“Higher rents and home prices are a natural consequence of local and state zoning laws, labyrinthine approval processes, federal restrictions on mortgage financing, and environmental reporting laws, to name a few.
All these laws limit the supply of new housing, which drives up the price for any given level of demand. That’s a diagnosis the Biden administration itself has endorsed in various housing briefs and “action plans.”
Despite that insight, the president’s proposals to subsidize home buying will, all else equal, increase demand while leaving supply constraints in place. That will only raise prices further.”
https://reason.com/2024/03/07/bidens-plan-to-subsidize-homebuyers-wont-work/
” Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories have expanded by a record amount and risk eliminating any practical possibly of a Palestinian state, the U.N. human rights chief”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-settlements-expand-record-amount-090822106.html
““When we take administrative actions as we have done a number of times, we are challenged in court. Legislation is the enduring solution,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Dana Bash. “And by the way, we can, not, through administrative action, plus up the United States border patrol, customs and border protection by 1,500 personnel like this legislation proposes; we cannot through administrative action add 4,300 asylum officers so that we can work through the backlog and turn the system into an efficient and well working one, which it hasn’t been for more than three decades.”
Legislation seems unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, particularly after House Republicans tanked a bipartisan border bill negotiated in the Senate, with Speaker Mike Johnson declaring it dead on arrival.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/03/mayorkas-executive-orders-migrant-crisis-00144585
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47r1fZS77G0
“The measles outbreak in Florida shows the further polarization of vaccines, one area that once had overwhelming consensus across political parties and throughout the U.S. The measles vaccine is especially effective in protecting against the virus and, according to the CDC, has led to a 99 percent decrease in the virus compared to the pre-vaccine era.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/04/florida-measles-ladapo-desantis-00144561
““By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content,” Judge Britt C. Grant, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion. “And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints — the greatest First Amendment sin.”
Florida’s Republican-led Legislature passed the “anti-woke” legislation, FL HB 7 (22R), or the Individual Freedom Act, in 2022 with the backing of DeSantis. It expanded Florida’s anti-discrimination laws to prohibit schools and companies from leveling guilt or blame to students and employees based on race or sex, taking aim at lessons over issues like “white privilege” by creating new protections for students and workers, including that a person should not be instructed to “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin.”
…
“The DeSantis administration, though, pushed back on the appeals ruling, claiming that the court “has held that companies have a right to indoctrinate their employees with racist and discriminatory ideologies.” The state is “reviewing all options on appeal going forward.”
“We disagree with the Court’s opinion that employers can require employees to be taught — as a condition of employment — that one race is morally superior to another race,” Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for DeSantis, said in a statement. “The First Amendment protects no such thing, and the State of Florida should have every right to protect Floridians from racially hostile workplaces.”
Attorneys for the state and DeSantis have argued in court that the “anti-woke” law restricts no speech and only regulates that employers can’t force employees to listen to “certain speech against their will” at the risk of losing their jobs.
The appeals court disagreed, going into detail in the 22-page ruling about potential faults in the law. The panel of judges suggested that, under the proposed policies, “a government could ban riding on a parade float if it did not agree with the message on the banner.”
“We cannot agree, and we reject this latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct,” wrote Grant, who was joined by Judges Charles Wilson and Andrew Brasher. “Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/04/desantis-woke-law-court-00144801