In the runup to the passage of last year’s tax reform bill, readers may recall, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers predicted that 10,000 people would die every year as a direct result of the bill’s passage. He had in mind the bill’s provision repealing the individual insurance mandate…
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
As new economic indicators attest to the economy’s strength, Democrats continue to insist that last year’s tax law is a big failure.
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
As all doomsday cults eventually learn, you can predict the end of the world only so many times before everybody stops listening to you.
Contrary to the dire warnings of Democrats, Republican-backed tax reform has not brought about the end of the republic. Instead, most voters are discovering that their take home pay is on the rise, as the government is withholding less from working Americans.
Senator Bob Corker made headlines last October when he became the first GOP senator to announce he would not seek reelection in 2018—then quickly ignited a public spat with President Donald Trump, with the two trading barbs on Twitter. Over a period of weeks, Corker called the Trump White House “an…
Reince Priebus, Sith Lord. Vanity Fair has a delightful (profanity laced) interview with Anthony Scaramucci about his brief tenure in the White house. Mooch's take on Washington is so wrong, it's laughable:
For 37 years, efforts to open the remote Alaskan tundra known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil and natural gas got nowhere. It’s a barren, uninhabitable area that looks like the surface of an asteroid. But environmental groups and their Democratic allies treated it like a…
There's no such thing as a free gift! When I worked in Congress as an aide, I took a meeting with representatives of a foreign government about trade issues. They gave us all little business card holders as de minimis gifts. An older colleague, after the meeting ended, took all of them and threw…
I have no idea whether President Trump enjoyed the holidays. But it looks like they may have helped his approval rating, at least temporarily.
Tuesday Morning Quarterback’s Authentic Games metric tracks quality victories in high-pressure situations, and has a decent track record at predicting Super Bowl pairings. During the regular season, I employ a super-sophisticated proprietary algorithm to determine what counts as an Authentic game.
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land, pundits are trying to figure out where the voters stand—now that Republicans have passed their tax bill, Santa Trump’s gift to his adoring fans.
When President Trump and Congress come back to Washington in January, will infrastructure be first on the to-do list? My new piece for the magazine looks at the White House’s plans for building new roads and bridges. Here’s an excerpt:
This tax calculator is the most useful tool I've found online to estimate how the new tax law passed by the Republican Congress and awaiting the president's signature will affect U.S. taxpayers.
Shocked by Donald Trump’s election, Democrats adopted a strategy of resistance that’s simple and blunt: Anything Trump is for, they’re against. It’s turned out to be one of the least successful strategies a political party has ever pursued. Yet Democrats have stuck to it.
For two hours on December 19, Paul Ryan loved his job.
Fun times in Richmond! As regular readers are aware, yesterday Chris Deaton reported on the Virginia House of Delegates race that was ultimately decided by one vote. Or was it? Republican David Yancey went into the recount leading by 10 votes over Democrat Shelly Simonds. But then seemingly lost by…
If you are a fan of true-crime TV shows, you know that sometimes we don’t know why people do what they do.
There are good arguments and bad arguments, valid arguments and invalid arguments. And then, in another category, there are sadistic arguments. Unfortunately, we’ve witnessed a few of those this week on the subject of tax reform.
We didn’t think congressional Republicans could pass a major tax bill without creating something worse than the status quo. The party’s ideological confusion and fractiousness, its thin majority in the Senate, the president’s penchant for distracting tweets: We assumed the worst. And yet the tax…
Correction, 12/21/2017: The piece originally said that "If you have children under the age of seventeen, while you’re getting an additional $1,000 per child, you’re losing their personal exemption, which was worth $4,050 per child. (So you’re still short by $2,050, per child.)" It has been amended…
It was a joyous celebration on the White House lawn Wednesday afternoon, and deservedly so. Republicans in Congress passed their tax cut bill, their biggest legislative achievement all year, amid some difficult circumstances—particularly their little-room-for-dissent Senate majority. Donald Trump…
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the passage of the GOP tax bill.
Think you have heard the last of the Republican tax plan that now seems certain to become law? Think again.
A procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate means the House of Representatives will return on Wednesday to vote on a slightly modified version of the tax bill it passed Tuesday. After House speaker Paul Ryan gleefully gaveled the vote, but before the Senate parliamentarian determined three provisions…
Shame worked in Alabama. That's what Tom Nichols argues over at the Washington Post:
This post had been updated.
Today on the WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about the House vote on the tax bill.
As Republicans prepare to celebrate their tax reform victory, a potential disaster lurks right around the corner.
Santa hasn’t even begun to pack his sleigh and already an NFL head coach, two general managers, and three coordinators have been shown the door, along with numerous head coaches and athletic directors cashiered at Power Five football programs. Plus an NFL owner just agreed to give himself the boot…
Voting on the final Republican tax bill begins Tuesday, and a pledge Monday afternoon from Maine senator Susan Collins that she would support it all but sealed the deal—she’s the 50th vote in the Senate, and Vice President Mike Pence, if needed, can provide vote number 51.
Despite the best efforts of the president and the Republican National Committee, voters in Alabama didn’t elect a man credibly accused of sexual predation to the U.S. Senate.
A neighbor has parked his classic Jaguar in front of my apartment building for the last two months. Around it are a new BMW, a Mercedes, and two Audis.
Newman's Own's future depends on what happens in tax reform. I've always had a special place in my heart for the late actor Paul Newman, whose childhood home was three streets over from mine. His charity/business, however, is at risk of being put out of business if a provision isn't included in the…
One day in October, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton approached Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor to pitch the majority leader an idea: In the tax reform bill, Republicans should repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, the tax penalty most Americans lacking federally approved health insurance must pay.…
There are plenty of understandable objections to the tax bill sailing through Congress. Some people think it will increase the deficit. Others cry foul that it is being rushed through without sufficient deliberation. And there are those who like big government and frankly oppose the idea of letting…
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia joins host Eric Felten to talk about what's next in the tax reform saga.
Any Republican tax bill is bound to be hotly criticized. That’s politics and the mainstream media. We were unprepared, however, for the outpouring of hysterical denunciation we’ve witnessed over the last several days as the GOP tax plan comes closer to final passage.
It is the worst of times, it is the best of times. The worst of times if you follow American politics. All is turmoil.
Senator John McCain, a key Republican swing vote on the upper chamber’s tax reform legislation, announced Thursday morning that he will vote yes despite reservations about what he sees are the measure’s imperfections.
The GOP tax plan cleared its first major hurdle in the Senate Wednesday afternoon, after a motion to proceed to amendments passed on a 52-48 party line vote.
Will the president accept just about anything on tax reform? He seemed to suggest as much at his rally in Missouri Wednesday. “If they send it to my desk, I promise all of the people in this room, my friends, so many friends in this room—a great state—I promise you I will sign it,” Donald Trump…
Let’s hope all this talk from a small group of senators about inserting “triggers” into the tax bill triggers an outpouring of common sense among everybody else.
The Senate Budget committee voted to move forward on the Republican tax bill Tuesday afternoon, a small but substantial step forward for the GOP overhaul, which will now go before the full Senate for debate. “I think we're going to get it passed,” said President Donald Trump at a White House…
WaPo O'Keefes Project Veritas. What happens when one of the right wing's best known provocateurs gets caught? He spins. This is what happened Monday when the Washington Post kneecapped Project Veritas's James O'Keefe, posting an absolutely bombshell story alleging that O'Keefe sent an activist…
Wonder Woman isn’t the only Amazon who’s beating people up. Municipalities across the country are competing to land the second headquarters of the giant online retailer of the same name, including an offer by Chicago to give tax revenue collected from Amazon workers directly to Amazon. But…
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about the hoops and hurdles facing Republicans in their push for tax reform.
This week on the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's strategy for passing tax reform in the Senate.
Thanksgiving has come and gone, diets have been broken, and some 88 percent of us have eaten turkey, carving up some 46 million birds in the process. The hunter-gatherers are safely home from the malls—or at least most of them are. The less courageous stay-at-their-computers are resting their…
In 1986, President Reagan signed the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the New Deal. The law simplified the tax code and substantially reduced individual rates for the second time in Reagan’s presidency—the top rate coming down to 28 percent from 50 percent. When Reagan had appealed for…
In 1986, President Reagan signed the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the New Deal. The law simplified the tax code and substantially reduced individual rates for the second time in Reagan’s presidency—the top rate coming down to 28 percent from 50 percent. When Reagan had appealed for…
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about where tax reform goes now, and the senators who might be hurdles to its passage in the Senate.
Donald Trump’s predictable unpredictability on Twitter has gone from a frustration to a mere annoyance for Capitol Hill, his cabinet, and his White House staff. Amazingly enough, Washington seems to have factored Trump’s tweets into the complex equation of how government works. But the president…
President Trump was understandably thrilled by the House’s passage of its tax-cut bill Thursday. On Twitter he called the vote a “a big step toward fulfilling our promise to deliver historic TAX CUTS for the American people by the end of the year.” Trump did not celebrate in the Rose Garden with…
A moderate paid leave policy made quiet progress this week, as a popular proposal authored by Nebraska senator Deb Fischer found its way into Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch’s tax reform markup.
The House of Representatives passed its tax reform bill on Thursday on a 227-205 vote. All Democrats present and 13 Republicans voted against it.
President Trump came home from his Asia trip with a significant political conundrum on his hands: What to do about Roy Moore. For days, the White House has been publicly cautious in rendering any judgment on the credible sexual misconduct allegations against Moore, even as Republican senators and…
There are, in essence, three things wrong with the federal tax code. They are, in descending order of importance, that corporations pay an absurdly high rate; that the code is a labyrinthine mess that turns the work of paying one’s taxes into a nightmare; and that marginal individual rates have in…
Having failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, congressional Republicans have turned their attention to tax reform. Given the disappointing track record of the 115th Congress, a victory on taxes is a political must-win. However, the history of tax reform is mostly one of failure and suggests that…
Tax reform looked like it was in peril. Influential business groups, including real estate agents and homebuilders, opposed it. Lobbyists were working feverishly against it. Opinion polls showed the public was as unenthusiastic as many members of Congress.
House Republicans reversed course Thursday on their plans to scrap the adoption tax credit. Kevin Brady, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, issued a statement that an amendment to the committee's bill would restore the adoption credit and make other tweaks to the bill. The…
More Election Day Fallout—The White House pushed back Wednesday on the conventional assessment that the Democratic wave election in Virginia and elsewhere reflected poorly on Donald Trump: The president’s party always faces “headwinds” in elections in the first year; Virginia was trending…
More Election Day Fallout—The White House pushed back Wednesday on the conventional assessment that the Democratic wave election in Virginia and elsewhere reflected poorly on Donald Trump: The president’s party always faces “headwinds” in elections in the first year; Virginia was trending…
As the House Ways and Means committee proceeds with the markup of its landmark tax reform proposal, one change that seems inevitable is the curtailment of the modest reforms of the myriad home ownership tax breaks contained in the original legislation. These included capping the deduction for…
What have we learned from the first day of marking up the House Republicans’ big tax reform bill? There’s a long way to go, with lots of tweaks and alterations to be made to the bill House Ways and Means chairman Kevin Brady released last week. There are plenty of factions in the House GOP…
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
In case you haven’t finished reading the 429-page House Republicans tax bill, go to pages 427 and 428 to see what it proposes to do regarding the Johnson Amendment. Passed in 1954 and named for its chief sponsor, Senator Lyndon Johnson, the amendment prohibits politicking by tax-exempt nonprofits,…
Consider this imaginary situation: A new chief of staff can organize President Trump’s harum-scarum White House operation into a crack, disciplined, and loyal team, or he can stop the president from tweeting. eThe catch is he can do one of these but not both. Which should he choose?
There was a noticeable absence of anyone from the Trump administration on the five main Sunday talk shows. President Donald Trump himself was just two days into his marathon foreign trip to Asia, but there seemed to be no eagerness on the part of the White House or the rest of the administration to…
The federal adoption tax credit is a tiny sliver of federal spending—the $300 million spent annually equals less than 0.01 percent of the federal budget. But the House GOP's proposal to scrap this little tax credit as part of their overhaul of the tax code is already receiving a lot of pushback.
This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, Weekly Standard editor at large Bill Kristol talks with host Eric Felten about Mueller investigation indictments, the GOP's tax bills, and the worthy World Series.
The House Republican tax reform package met immediate resistance after it was unveiled Thursday. Some blue-state GOP reps were wary of the measure’s treatment of state and local sales taxes. Sens. Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker expressed their own concerns. The National…
Republicans finally released a full working draft of their mammoth tax reform plan on Thursday. The 400-page Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doesn’t deliver the full Christmas list of tax priorities the White House requested in April, but it’s still a massive reorganization of the tax code that includes huge…
“How will [insert bizarre news events from the past week] change Trump’s approval rating?”
Vice President Mike Pence made a relatively quiet visit to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday. According to the White House schedule, the visit consisted a series of briefings with CIA officials, but Pence also delivered prepared remarks to agents and employees there.
President Trump proposed axing Obamacare’s individual mandate in a tax reform bill late Wednesday morning, to help offset the cost of reducing rates. To meet this year’s budget, an overhaul cannot increase the deficit by more than a projected $1.5 trillion over the next decade, and Republican…
Wednesday was supposed to be a big day in Washington for Republicans still searching for a big legislative accomplishment for Donald Trump’s first year in the White House. GOP leaders in the House of Representatives had planned to release their legislation Wednesday, which the White House is saying…
House Republicans are set to release the text of their tax-reform bill on Wednesday, a move that will for the first time provide details of the effort to cut taxes and streamline the tax code.
The White House is walking a tightrope in its attempt to distance the president and his campaign from Monday’s big developments in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference. “Today's announcement has nothing to do with the president, has nothing to do with the president's campaign…
This week on the Confab, executive editor Fred Barnes talks with host Eric Felten about the outsized claims of the man who would remake the GOP. Senior writer Michael Warren handicaps Republican chances at passing tax cuts.
The House of Representatives narrowly approved a Senate budget proposal on Thursday, paving the way for the long-anticipated tax reform package Republicans hope to pass by the end of the year.
The head of the House’s Ways and Means Committee isn’t disputing that tax reform will be harder now that President Donald Trump is at war with two members of the rickety GOP Senate majority. But he does want you to know that he and Trump are doing just fine.
I am an admirer of Larry Summers. And of Kevin Hassett. Which is why I mourn Larry’s descent from civility into dismissive name-calling, and Kevin’s ill-considered attack on the Tax Policy Center, an organization with which I often disagree but is staffed by what Larry calls “highly respected…
After two weeks of dormancy, President Donald Trump’s ugly spat with Tennessee senator Bob Corker flared up again Tuesday after Corker insulted the president on the morning news, saying Trump was “unable to rise to the occasion” of his office and that he should “step aside” on tax reform and…
It was just last September, in rural Pennsylvania, that Ivanka Trump first introduced supporters to her father’s promises of six weeks’ paid maternity leave and tax relief for child-care costs. These were policies she hoped to shepherd. A year later and an hour away in Bucks County, she held a town…
With the Senate passing a revised budget resolution last week, President Trump and his administration are kicking off this week with a renewed pitch for tax reform. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence joined the GOP House conference call Sunday, and the president encouraged House Republicans to…
This week on the Kristol Clear Podcast, editor at large William Kristol discusses the GOP's tax reform plan, and whether it'll fare better than GOP efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Jennifer MacMillan is a tax preparer. Her business ebbs and flows with the season. In the months before April 15, she talks with clients and pores over the records of their financial lives. She deciphers statements from their brokerages, determines how much they can claim for their home offices,…
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell making peace with each other to work on tax reform.
Jennifer MacMillan is a tax preparer. Her business ebbs and flows with the season. In the months before April 15, she talks with clients and pores over the records of their financial lives. She deciphers statements from their brokerages, determines how much they can claim for their home offices,…
The Republican party is divided into two groups these days. There’s the Trump faction and its rival, the elected leaders, GOP officials, and rank-and-file antagonists of Trump. The split is not ideological. For the most part, the two sides agree on cutting taxes, killing Obamacare, and building up…
In a speech championing Republican tax reform efforts on Wednesday, President Donald Trump attempted to deflect criticism that the GOP tax plan disproportionately favors the wealthy with a novel argument: The rich don’t even want a tax cut.
The stock market rockets ever-upward, as well it should, what with the president’s tax package destined to make corporate America great again. Sure thing.
Massacre in Vegas. When tragedy strikes, there's a lot of misinformation out there. It's always best to sit back and wait (usually not very long) until the truth is reported. Here are three things to read today (if you're up to it) about the mass shooting in Las Vegas:
Before we get into a brawl over whose tax cut is better than whose, wouldn’t it be wise to ask: Should we cut taxes at all? And if so, why?
If the president’s tax plan is enacted, it will go down in history as the Trump Tax Cut of 2017. And it should, for both the tax reductions and the strategy for enacting them reflect his personal intervention and desires.
The last time Republicans advanced a serious plan to overhaul the tax code, Madonna had a No. 1 hit and Back to the Future had just been released on VHS. The new Republican tax plan harkens back to Ronald Reagan’s 1986 reform package, promising a future of stronger growth with less economic…
President Trump announced on Wednesday the broad outlines of a sweeping tax reform package that would simplify and cut taxes. He praised the framework as “a middle-class miracle” and “a tax code to put American jobs first.”
Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Tony Mecia talks with host Eric Felten about the details in the tax reform bill that is supposed to be announced later today.
Republican leaders plan to unveil a tax plan today that dramatically cuts taxes on businesses, eliminates many deductions and credits, and drops tax rates for most individual taxpayers, a senior Republican source told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
The Republican tax reform gets its big introduction on Wednesday by way of a presidential speech in Indiana. President Donald Trump will deliver an afternoon address in Indianapolis, joined by, among others, the state’s Democratic senator, Joe Donnelly.
This week on the Confab, Gordon Chang talks with host Eric Felten about the new US sanctions on North Korea and the prospects for military action on the peninsula. Tony Mecia talks about the tax reform bill being worked up on Capitol Hill.
If you think monetary policy is getting boring, think again. True, Fed chair Janet Yellen had no surprises for us earlier this week. To contain the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed printed more than one trillion new dollars to finance its purchase of the assets that it now plans to sell. That took…
As they devise a strategy to place a tax bill on President Trump’s desk, Republicans in Congress are grappling with thorny issues: What can pass the Senate? How much should they add to the deficit? How will tax changes play with voters in 2018?
For months, GOP leadership from both houses of Congress along with Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and NEC director Gary Cohn have huddled over Republican plans for tax reform, laying the groundwork for a plan each group could support.
Despite a packed legislative calendar, House Speaker Paul Ryan says he’s still confident that Congress will have tax reform legislation on President Donald Trump’s desk before the end of 2017.
Is cutting the corporate tax rate merely a sop to the wealthy, as a report recently published by the Institute for Policy Studies alleges? It's an important question, since a corporate rate cut is a prominent feature of every tax reform proposal currently on the table.
The president’s effort to help get tax reform passed by the end of this year is in full swing. Tuesday night Donald Trump held a bipartisan dinner at the White House with three Republican senators on the Senate Finance committee and three moderate Democrats up for reelection next year in swing…
Even before the Senate failed to pass a weak health care reform bill in mid-July, congressional Republicans were rationalizing their failure: Health care wasn’t their issue, they reasoned. But tax reform—now there was something they could win with.
In tax reform, the negotiators from the Trump administration and Congress who are thought to be in charge are called the Big 6 by Washington insiders. But there’s also a Big 4, a group of supply-side economists who are playing an influential role.
Even before the Senate failed to pass a weak health care reform bill in mid-July, congressional Republicans were rationalizing their failure: Health care wasn’t their issue, they reasoned. But tax reform—now there was something they could win with.
In tax reform, the negotiators from the Trump administration and Congress who are thought to be in charge are called the Big 6 by Washington insiders. But there’s also a Big 4, a group of supply-side economists who are playing an influential role.
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday voiced his disagreement with President Donald Trump’s decision to adopt the short-term timetable Democrats have advocated to raise the federal debt limit, a plan he called a “ridiculous idea” on Wednesday—but stopped short of criticizing the president himself.
President Trump sat at the inflection point of a horseshoe with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell on either side of him and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi just to McConnell’s left. A reporter asked him if he would support Congress bunching aid money for Hurricane Harvey relief with a three-month…
After the healthcare debacle, can GOP lawmakers regroup to pass tax reform? Senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about the Republicans' top legislative priority for the fall.
The flooding and rain continues in Texas (and now Louisiana, too), but the White House is already talking about getting an emergency relief spending package through Congress next week. The Washington Post reports the funding “is expected to only be a partial down payment and serve in part to…
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans mixed it up the first several months of 2017, concocting a doozy of four parts discord and one part accomplishment. Candidate Trump made antagonism with the GOP establishment a selling point of his campaign. While that approach earned votes at…
President Donald Trump kicked off his party’s major push for tax reform with a speech in Springfield, Missouri, Wednesday, pledging to reduce the burden of taxation on America’s companies and workers and calling for Democratic support.
The president travels to Springfield, Missouri, on Wednesday to deliver a speech about tax reform. Congress will take up this next legislative agenda item when it returns from its August recess after Labor Day. But don’t expect Donald Trump to roll out a detailed set of proposed reforms and changes…
Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said on Thursday said that the Trump administration “can and must do better” in addressing America’s racial divisions.
After months of private deliberations, GOP leadership and the White House announced Thursday that they are ready to move forward on tax reform.
John McCain’s unexpected retreat to Arizona for eye surgery and the defections of Mike Lee and Jerry Moran have added yet another delay to the Senate’s health-care reform slog. But even as the most recent Senate health-care bill dies, Republicans are charging ahead to lay plans for their next…
The Republican party—the party of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts, the Laffer curve, the George W. Bush tax cuts, and the Obama-era extension of nearly all of those Bush tax cuts—currently controls both houses of Congress and the presidency. That means the GOP has its best chance in more than a generation…
President Trump urged the Senate to eliminate its 60-vote threshold for ending debate on most legislative matters Tuesday morning, though his reasoning appears to be garbled.
Today on the Daily Standard podcast, executive editor Fred Barnes shares his outlook for President Trump and the GOP's agenda: what's possible, and what isn't.
I leave it to others to sort out who said what to whom about Russia, loyalty oaths, secrets, and other matters now roiling Washington. Instead, here is an attempt to sort out the economic consequences of the doings of our political class.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
President Trump and the boys from Goldman Sachs have put together a dazzling tax reform plan. It has enough pro-growth incentives to energize the economy even after Congress eliminates some of them. But there's a problem: paying for it.
Whether it happens before or after health care reform—the White House has been sending mixed signals—President Trump has consist-ently promised "massive" tax cuts for the middle class and businesses. He told an interviewer a few weeks ago, "It will be the biggest tax cut since Reagan, and probably…
I had an economics teacher who liked telling his classes he had a deal with the local grocery store: He doesn’t produce his own food and it doesn't teach economics.
In two weeks Donald Trump will serve his one-hundredth day as President of the United States of America. He approaches that milestone with an approval rating of 40 percent, the lowest of any modern-day president at this stage of his tenure. The man who made his reputation, and part of any fortune…
While the Trump administration's second attempt at repealing Obamacare sits in a holding pattern as Congress is in recess, attention has turned to the other major legislative goal for Republicans in Washington: tax reform. Except, the Associated Press reported Monday, Trump has "scrapped" his tax…
Comprehensive tax reform, done right, would accomplish many things: It should boost investment, productivity, and employment, and along with these economic growth. That is the intent, anyway.
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes tells host Eric Felten why President Trump and Congressional Republicans need to focus on a simplified tax-cutting agenda after the fiasco of an over-complicated health care attempt. With a scandal-ridden president out of office, shaky…
Nothing erodes the power of a bully as much as a victory by those he threatens. Nothing erodes the reputation of a negotiator as much as a failure to succeed in cutting a deal he dearly wants to complete. Which is why President Trump enters negotiations over tax reform in a seriously weakened…
The late columnist Robert Novak had a favorite saying about the GOP: “The only reason God created Republicans was to cut taxes." And the 1980s were a perfect world for doing so.
Comprehensive tax reform, done right, would accomplish many things: It should boost investment, productivity, and employment, and along with these economic growth. That is the intent, anyway.
In a flash, Washington changed. With the collapse of their health care plan, the political power of President Trump and congressional Republicans took a hit. And since power is a zero-sum game, Democrats, the bureaucracy, liberal interest groups, and the media were big winners.
Kudos to the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins for proposing a new corollary to public choice theory: namely, that actions objected to by special interests are motivated by a desire to raise campaign money from special interests.
Writing good policy is very much like seeing a skilled internist. First, the doctor decides that you really are sick. Next, he determines exactly what's wrong. Only then does he choose an appropriate prescription. Too much of policymaking ignores these steps, opting instead to focus on what the…
If some sort of fundamental tax reform does occur this year—and the odds of its happening are looking good—the politicians, economists, tax lawyers, congressional staffers, trade associations, think tanks, academics, corporations, and others claiming credit for having influenced the legislation…
Sometimes, if you are quiet enough in Washington, D.C., you can hear the distinct sound of supple Gucci leather creaking its way around town. And with the Trump administration now in office, and tax reform again on the horizon, the quiet sound has become a roar. The shoe polish smell alone can be…
In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD Confab, Fred Barnes joins host Eric Felten to tell why Republicans should take up tax reform first, before getting bogged down in Obamacare; Michael Warren reports on how the White House agenda got slowed down this week; and Ethan Epstein peers behind the mask…
If some sort of fundamental tax reform does occur this year—and the odds of its happening are looking good—the politicians, economists, tax lawyers, congressional staffers, trade associations, think tanks, academics, corporations, and others claiming credit for having influenced the legislation…
In 1993, the vast health care plan of the Clinton administration died without a vote being taken in Congress. Known as Hillarycare after its champion, the president’s wife, it left its mark on the new administration. In the midterm election of 1994, Democrats lost control of the House for the first…
Writing good policy is very much like seeing a skilled internist. First, the doctor decides that you really are sick. Next, he determines exactly what's wrong. Only then does he choose an appropriate prescription. Too much of policymaking ignores these steps, opting instead to focus on what the…
Back in October, congressman Devin Nunes met with a group of executives from major corporations to talk business. “I was trying to sell them on" the House GOP's tax plan, Nunes says, "explain how it would work and how the economy would grow." There was only one problem: None of the business…
A week from Monday, when the post-inauguration revelries, which include a "Deplorables Ball", are no more, Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth President of the United States of America, will for the first time become fully aware of the 115th Congress of the United States of America. Although he has…
There's an old saying that "personnel is policy" in filling the top positions in an administration. More precisely, if you want a policy to be pursued and protected, hire those most committed to it.
Writing at City Journal, Clifford Asness notes that neither candidate on the debate stage Monday night seemed willing or able to defend free enterprise or conservative economic ideas. "There were many frustrating examples in the first debate of Donald Trump failing even to challenge Hillary…
This year, the tax plans offered by various Republican candidates were all over the map in terms of the proposals being made. And most tax plans failed to avoid certain pitfalls, such as finding ways to cut taxes without increasing the debt and ensuring that cuts weren't disproportionately skewed…
Jeffrey H. Anderson writes the Wall Street Journal about his new tax plan -- the Main Street Tax Plan -- and how it compares to that of the remaining candidates:
The main goal for any tax reform that merits being called a reform is to boost economic growth. The way to do that, most economists whose last name isn’t Krugman aver, is to reduce marginal tax rates on businesses both large and small and make up the lost revenue by eliminating various tax…
Earlier today in Saraosta, Florida, Marco Rubio gave a speech to supporters outlining his views on economic policy, and contrasting himself with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Were you thinking that corporate tax reform seemed like a potentially bipartisan issue that could actually get accomplished in the last year of the Obama administration? Elizabeth Warren is here to scuttle that dream.
The only word to describe Friday’s job report is ugly. The private sector created only 118,000 new jobs in September, early estimates of job creation in July and August were lowered, average hourly earnings dropped a tiny bit, the labor force participation rate dropped to its lowest level since…
Some Republican presidential candidate was sure to come along with a credible tax reform plan to erase tax loopholes, preferences, and special breaks, broaden the tax base, and lower rates. Now Jeb Bush has done it. This marks a departure point in the GOP race.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush laid out details of his economic plan in North Carolina Wednesday, focusing primarily on how he would reform the tax code as president. The proposal, Bush said, would help achieve his stated goal of four-percent annual economic growth.
Kentucky senator Rand Paul has introduced a tax reform proposal that promises to "blow up the tax code" and replace it with a flat tax on individual and business income. Here's Paul introducing his proposal in the Wall Street Journal:
Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan has an unusual decoration on the wall of his Capitol Hill office: a framed Laffer curve. This totem of supply-siders everywhere is drawn on a napkin and signed by the economist Art Laffer himself. “To my friend, Paul Ryan,” reads the note.
The ice is finally melting. Not the Arctic ice, although that might be melting too. I mean the frozen position critics of the global warming hysterics have been taking. They disagree with Obama’s contention that the science of climate change is settled, and prefer reading actual temperatures…
Almost exactly 20 years ago, a gawky conservative renegade magazine publisher named Steve Forbes threw his hat in the ring for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination. Forbes’s run was first seen as a joke. But he wound up rocking the Republican establishment by injecting fresh and bold reform ideas…
Ohio governor John Kasich, who may run for the Republican nomination for president, said he is in talks with publisher and conservative activist Steve Forbes to develop a flat tax reform proposal.
While Hillary Clinton was meeting with voters in Iowa on her second full day as a presidential candidate, Marco Rubio spent part of his discussing a tax policy white paper at a Washington think tank. The newly declared candidate joined with Utah Republican Mike Lee at the Heritage Foundation to…
Republican senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah have returned to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to tout their latest tax reform proposal. The Republicans call their plan both "pro-growth" and "pro-family," and say it addresses inequities in the tax code for businesses and…
The taxman has stepped in at the eleventh hour to modify a little-known tax law change that is (still) set to impact most businesses across the country.
Big ideas sometimes play a role in political campaigns, but not in this year’s midterm elections. Republican candidates concentrate on linking their opponents to President Obama and his policies. That’s it. Democrats are understandably wary of defending Obama. They go after Republicans on minor or…
When House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, introduced a major tax reform proposal at the end of February, the entire tax policy world in Washington was set into motion. I have friends who lobby on tax issues who claim they did not sleep the two days after the…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer John McCormack on the latest in the government shutdown and debt ceiling talks:
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer Jay Cost on the government shutdown and whether the GOP has a strategy to end it with a policy victory.
Republicans these days are eager to replay the Reagan revolution. It is not hard to see why: In the 1980s, the GOP was the party of ideas, and the vision that Ronald Reagan and his supporters brought to Washington proved immensely popular with voters and profoundly improved American life. But in…
Tax reform is dead. President Obama killed it, with an assist from Senate majority leader Harry Reid.
Seems K Street and Max Baucus were looking forward to a fun year of fixing up the tax code and making it stand up and salute. But now the IRS has gone and muddied the waters. As Erik Wasson and Peter Schroeder write at The Hill:
Veteran Michigan congressman Dave Camp has all but ruled out running for an open Senate seat next year. The Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means committee told reporters Thursday morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor that he is focused on getting Congress to…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Fred Barnes. Hosted by Michael Graham.
Argentina hasn’t always been a basket case: In the early 1990s the country embarked on a radical privatization of government assets, with the result being a decade of strong growth and foreign investment. Much of the successes of that time have been reversed, but the story of how the statist…
John Engler, the former three-term governor of Michigan and current president of the Business Roundtable, calls the House Republican budget proposal a "courageous exercise" and says it has "intriguing ideas" regarding tax and entitlement reforms.
About halfway through his 1984 State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan laid out the need for major tax reform. “There’s a better way,” he said. “Let us go forward with a historic reform for fairness, simplicity, and incentives for growth.” Reagan then proceeded to lay out an ambitious agenda:…
President Obama is increasing government spending even faster than the budget numbers imply. That’s because some of his increased spending is disguised as cuts in taxes.
At his speech at AEI this afternoon, House Budget chairman Paul Ryan acknowledged that Senate Democrats and President Obama will likely choose not to adopt the House Republican 2012 budget, which offers sweeping, comprehensive reforms to Medicare and the federal tax code and pledges to cut over $5…