| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #29 Written By Stephen Moore 1) Pelosi Goes Hog Wild House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised her donors and liberal activists that she would “go big” in the Phase 4 round of coronavirus spending. She wasn’t kidding. Yesterday the “Rooseveltian” moment arrived as the Speaker unveiled a $3 trillion spending plan that pays off nearly every imaginable left wing interest group – teacher unions, arts groups, immigrant right advocates, postal employees and especially the super-rich leftwing donors. To the left, crises like corona are terrible things to waste, and she seized the moment. The bill would add $3 trillion to the $2.5 trillion already spent, making this multiple times larger than any spending blitz by the left in the history of Congress. The particulars of the “Heroes Act” are spinning heads around. The list includes: * Some $1 trillion for blue state budget repairs and pension bailouts. * Restoration of the state and local tax deduction for blue state millionaires and billionaires. This would be the biggest tax cut in history for the top 1 percent in income; * $10 million for the National Endowment for the Arts; * $10 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities; * A SIX MONTH extension (through January 31, 2021) of the $600 per week unemployment insurance plus-up, on top of full state benefits, which makes unemployment pay more than work for about half of all American workers. * $100 million for OSHA funding – we should be deregulating not increasing regulation; * A postal service bailout. Almost none of these things have anything to do with coronavirus. This is a cynical ploy by the Pelosi gang to capitalize on a health emergency to lard up the budget. This is a declaration of fiscal war by the congressional Democrats and Republicans in Congress and President Trump need to unambiguously and loudly denounce this New New Deal scam. No negotiating with Pelosi. Americans will be disgusted by this scheme to capitalize on a public health pandemic to pad the wallets of those who run programs that have zero to do with the virus itself. Corona didn’t create the $100 billion Illinois and New Jersey pension deficits. President Trump and congressional Republicans should endorse a strategy that grows private enterprise – not government. As Larry Kudlow would say: free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. 2) Why doesn’t Trump just go around Pelosi and cut taxes himself? Getting a real tax cut bill past Nancy’s desk always looked hard, but with her latest stunt it might prove near impossible. We still like the idea of a bold pitch directly to the American people on a payroll tax holiday, with a unified Republican Party behind the president. But the president should be aggressive in using executive authority to cut taxes. We’ve long thought he should index capital gains tax basis for inflation, and we would love to see some tariffs indefinitely suspended. Our friends at National Taxpayers Union recently noted: “IRC Section 7508A states that in the case of a federal disaster declaration, the Secretary may delay ‘in respect of any tax liability…the amount of any interest, penalty, additional amount’ of tax for up to 12 months. The Secretary can also delay filing requirements for 12 months too. And 7508A is broad in its application. The statute applies to “income, estate, gift, employment, or excise tax[es].'” That seems like an excellent statutory hook to enact broad additional tax relief without Congress. One popular and easy thing to do to help Americans survive lockdown might be to delay excise taxes to cut the cost of beer, wine, and liquor. But if Trump really wants to be bold, he could suspend collection of the payroll tax and demand Congress convert the delay into a holiday. 3) Doug Ducey is Really Working for the A We moved him up from a C to a B when he accelerated the openings of retailers and restaurants this week, and yesterday he announced that pools and gyms would open today. Great job governor. Keep pushing.  4) La La Lockdown Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next THREE MONTHS, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavirus-beaches-reopen-los-angeles-county-move-toward-new-normal 5) Even the UN admits… that the lockdown-caused economic collapse could cause harms that will dwarf the coronavirus. The Los Angeles Times reports that a UN report released on Monday found that the global recession brought on by the lockdowns “could ultimately kill more people than the virus itself.” https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-11/more-than-a-billion-people-escaped-poverty-in-the-last-20-years-the-coronavirus-could-erase-those-gains Economists consulted by the UN forecast that up to 420 million people plunging into extreme poverty, which is.defined as making less than $2 a day. The Times quoted the UN report as predicting the economic devastation caused by the lockdowns would threaten 130 million more people with starvation by the end of 2020. “I feel like we’re watching a slow-motion train wreck as it moves through the world’s most fragile countries,” Nancy Lindborg, the president of the nonprofit U.S. Institute of Peace, reported. 6) The Facts On School Reopenings Kudos to North Dakota governor Doug Burgum for announcing normal, in-classroom summer school will start on schedule on June 1. They join Idaho and Montana as the first back-to-school states — which is a huge relief to children and to parents trying to get back to work. Contrary to irresponsible media coverage, Dr. Anthony Fauci didn’t tell the Senate Health Committee yesterday that schools shouldn’t be reopened in the fall.Senator Lamar Alexander asked Fauci about school starting in August and said “Let’s start with treatments and vaccines first.” Fauci replied to that: “Having treatments available, or a vaccine, to facilitate the re-entry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far.” He continued: “What they really want is to know if they are safe. That’s the question that’ll have to be due with what we discussed earlier about testing.” A feeling of safety is important, and certainly the ability of point-of-care tests available to anyone who is worried about being infected will help. But given that 20 million Americans attend colleges and 50 million go to K-12 public schools, we should not wait until they have all been tested, because most are at exceptionally low risk themselves and of passing the virus on to others. Students in France, Switzerland, Norway, and the Netherlands are all back in class and will be joined by Germany and other countries later this month. Denmark reopened schools a month ago and there is no evidence of any school outbreaks. Iceland, which never closed its schools, on a per-capita basis ranks at the very top of testing for the virus. Kai Stefansson, an advisor to Iceland’s health ministry, reports the tests show children are extremely unlikely to be infected or transmit the virus to others. “We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents,” he said. https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/hunting-down-covid-19/ 7) Wisconsin Legislators Blow Whistle on Illinois Pension Raid It’s unusual for state legislators in one state to issue warnings about their neighbors. But that’s what 43 Republican Wisconsin lawmakers have done by writing their state’s Congressional delegation to argue against any bail out of neighboring Illinois and other states with a history of “reckless budgeting.” The legislators noted the “unprecedented challenges” states face in paying bills caused by COVID-19. But they said “Wisconsin has spent eight years making the tough choices to get our fiscal house in order. We do know that our neighbors to the south have spent decades spending and borrowing recklessly.” The letter is a direct rejoinder to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposal this week to transfer $500 billion of federal money to the states. Wisconsin’s legislators note that in the case of Illinois that money would likely be propping up the state’s worst-in-the-nation pension debt. Indeed, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon has made a direct appeal for $41 billion in federal funding, of which $10 billion would go to pensions. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/05/09/gop-state-lawmakers-bash-illinois-urge-rejection-federal-bailout/3104096001/ 8) Is Boris in his right mind? Sadly, Britain appears to be following exactly the wrong economic course in its virus policy. After the country was locked down in March, Boris Johnson’s government covered up to 80 percent of all employee wages as a temporary measure. Today, Britain’s lockdown remains largely in place, and so too are the wage subsides. They will remain in place until late October. They are being justified in part because social distancing rules will lead to layoffs in offices which won’t be able to fit in the same number of people as before. Starting in August, employers will be required to “start sharing” the cost of wage subsidies, with details to be announced later. Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says the bill for all this could top $120 billion. Leading Conservative MP’s privately call the plan a massive disincentive to work. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-extends-the-generous-furlough-scheme 9) Hero Of The Day: Not My Mother! The chair of the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus is pushing back against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order requiring seniors with COVID-19 to be transferred to “regional hubs.” Rep. Leslie Love of Detroit says there is clear evidence that patients in long-term care facilities have been a majority of virus patients. Until last week, Michigan was putting long-term care patients recovering from the virus in facilities with non-infected seniors. A Sterling Heights facility recently saw a spike in virus cases after accepting some of COVID patients. Governor Whitmer insists her new policy will put patients in “regional hubs” – nursing homes where there will be a strict separation between those who are sick and the well. Rep. Love doesn’t think that makes sense when field hospitals treating virus patients are closing and traditional hospitals are laying off staff. Love also worries that many nursing homes will not meet the state’s standards. Noting that she has an 86-year-old mother in a long-term care facility, Love says “That would break my heart because I’ve been on the front lines of this, trying to make sure our seniors — my mother, your mother, anybody else’s mother — does not get sick and die from this, particularly if they’re in a nursing home.” https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/11/detroit-lawmaker-critical-of-gov-whitmers-nursing-home-executive-order/ 10) Quote of the Day “So far, the authorities who have locked us in have yet to figure out how to get us out. If they don’t figure it out soon, the public is going to find a way to get out on its own…In the meantime, we’re headed over the economic cliff and facing unemployment numbers the likes of which we have never seen before.” Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle  |
