The Grand Illusion
The new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, has unveiled his proposal for providing aid to Israel, and it definitely meets the far-right’s approval. The bill would provide $14.3 billion for Israel and obtain the funding by cutting $14.3 billion from funds already provided to modernize the IRS and to provide staff to go after wealthy tax evaders. It also doesn’t deal with aid to Ukraine.
The House passed this proposed legislation late on Thursday, despite opposition from the Senate and the President’s statement that he’d veto that bill if it ever reached him, because it will cost more than a clean bill and because aid to Ukraine is important.
In point of fact, aid to Ukraine is likely more critical to U.S. interests than is aid to Israel, given that Ukraine is the tipping point for stopping Russian efforts to recreate a larger Russian “empire” and one that will most certainly take over smaller nations on its periphery if not stopped in Ukraine. Failure to address Ukrainian aid in a timely and uncomplicated way will likely cost both the U.S. and Ukraine a great deal more in the future, but “Magic Mike” has already indicated he’ll tie other right-wing priorities to Ukraine aid.
Practically speaking, the proposal as Johnson has presented and as passed by the House may well be politically appealing to the far right, but it represents partisanship carried to an extreme that’s not only totally against U.S. interests, but counter to the professed goals of the far-right.
How can that be?
The far-right claims it’s against higher taxes and wants to balance the federal budget, but it’s hard to balance the budget when the people who have the most money are avoiding paying what they owe and the IRS doesn’t have the resources and the staff to pursue them.
But then, the far-right not only doesn’t understand international problems, it also can’t count, or won’t, despite Johnson’s rhetoric about fiscal soundness. Allowing tax cheating to continue and having taxpayers wait for hours or days to get answers from the IRS because of outdated equipment, inadequate funding, and overworked and insufficient staff is hardly a recipe for fiscal responsibility.
Recent reports indicate that for every dollar spent by the IRS toward tax code enforcement, the return is 6 dollars. I’m not sure there is any other ‘profit center’ in the entire government – but readers please correct me. So….to ‘balance the budget’ one would assume that one needs to take in money to offset that spent. Hmmmm?
But that’s really not the point is it? It’s more about where those funds come from as long as it’s NOT from certain pocket books.
The Interior Dept. used to generate a profit because of fees for usage of national parks. I vaguely remember that the Commerce Dept. might make a profit but I’m not sure what their revenue source is.
Be nice if the far right would realize that “far” and “majority” are pretty much opposite. They keep acting like they have a mandate…!
Recalling: “It is insufficient to plan on the past alone; the plan must be examined in the light of ‘all possible future developments.” Perhaps the New Republicans Ideology is not so stupid. The BBC had an interesting analysis – https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67272569
Goebbels and his new ministry centralized Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural, mass media, and intellectual life, for Hitler; with their background and experience Miller, Lotter and Lanza could make it work for Trump 2024. They may have lost some TV advertising but have a nationwide Radio Network including Rush Limbaugh’s role taken over by Bannon which is probably the main feeder for Trump’s followers.