The Senate and House Republicans valiantly opposed the rat‑race‑losing malcontents who enacted President Biden’s broad rescue package over their opposition, and are similarly adamant about the Administration’s public investment package. But, as has been the case in such diverse areas as health care, climate change, immigration, gun violence, infrastructure, deficit reduction, and insurrection, their opposition does not instruct us as to what they are for.
This “what are you for” conundrum dovetails with the party’s search for direction. While their views on transgendered woman’s place in sports and migrants interceded at the border address urgent national emergencies, the party continues to search for new ideas. But they are hampered not just by a lack of will and wit but, as one close source put it, “a profound distrust of anything substantive. Substantive ideas reek of the arrogance of elites who have had an ‘education’ and ‘experience’ and use them to ‘think.’ Two plus two equaling four doesn’t have the same caché it once did.”
So, do the Republicans have new ideas? In fact, they do, and here are some of them.
The Equipment That Doesn't Work Tax Credit. According to the Commerce Department’s economic statistics, albethey contorted by deep state Rumpelstiltskins, American business investment -- everything from lathes to computers to blast furnaces – fell for five straight quarters in 2019 and 2020. “This was one of the great successes of the Trump Administration tax program,” said former Treasury Secretary and producer of the new feature film, Me You Madness: The Sequel, Steve Mnuchin. “Instead of wasting time making risky investments in actual, but unneeded, things, our corporations used the tax cut we couldn’t afford but passed anyway to buy back their stock and to pay their shareholders dividends, which made American great again. Certainly for them.”
But given the plunge in investment, much of the private sector’s equipment is now aging and no longer works. The solution? “We need to pass a tax credit for businesses that donate their equipment that doesn't work to local community colleges or other educational institutions. Our economy's equipment that doesn't work is a hidden national treasure," says Cuthbert J. Twillie, Executive Director of the Business Coalition For The Best Economy We Could Imgine. "A tax credit for companies that donate equipment that no longer works to community colleges would give those companies an added incentive to buy new and better equipment that probably does work, while they would be giving our community colleges equipment that might once again be fully operational if they whack it on the side a little or take it to the repair shop run by those two Palestinian guys over by the industrial park. It's a classic win‑win situation."
The "Negative Income Tax". Fifty years ago, erstwhile Presidential candidate and Communist sympathizer George McGovern proposed a "negative income tax" – a tax that gave rather than took money to people below a certain level of income. Today’s populists have revived that proposal, albeit with a twist.
"Our proposal is different," explains Presidential economics advisor and Medal of Freedom winner Larson Whipsnade. "We intend to tax negative income. That is, if people go broke – or, technically, make outrageous levels negative income – we intend to tax them."
Heartless? Not according to leading conservative practitioners of the dismal science. "People who go broke represent a staggering waste of human and financial resources. So long as we encourage going broke with favorable tax treatment, we'll get more of it. We stand for letting people keep their positive income, but taxing their negative income. It’s a classic win-win situation, except for those who don’t win." They see the government’s response to the COVID pandemic as making their point. “We spent a fortune in taxpayer money to avoid business bankruptcies, and even though it prevented substantial numbers of them, it cost hundreds of billions of dollars we could have used to cut taxes for the rich and the dead. If people who went broke faced a substantial tax penalty, there’d be less whining and idleness and more going to work, even if it’s not obvious where,” said Ambrose Wolfinger, an analyst at the Uriah Heep Institute for Social Change. “It’s essential that we get this proposal into law before immigrants bring the next pandemic to our country.”
COVID State ”Service Charge.” “Too many armchair quarterbacks are criticizing former-President Trump’s reaction to the COVID-19 crisis,” says Eustace McGargle at the Lester Maddox Institute for the Study of Federalism. “His reaction to the pandemic was a stunning victory for our federalism system, in which the federal and state governments are equal partners, even if one of those partners can print twenty dollar bills at will and the other has to balance the books each year, come hell or high water. Had President Trump not forced the states to bid against each other for supplies and equipment on their own dime, there’s no telling what kind of anarchy and ineffectiveness we would have experienced.”
At the top of this list of accomplishments are the various vaccines now being distributed under President Biden. “Consider what the situation would have been if each state were responsible to develop and test its own vaccine,” McGargle argues. “There would be utter confusion. But President Trump had the wisdom to avoid that. So, when you look at it in the clear light of day, the states owe the federal government a debt of gratitude for promoting vaccine innovation, and it’s time to repay it.”
Their proposal calls for the states to repay the costs of vaccine development by imposing a “COVID service fee” on them. “We’ve already established they were responsible for masks, respirators, and a host of other equipment, so it’s illogical to let them off the hook for the vaccine itself. After all, everybody who gets the vaccine lives in a state, or a territory if they’re not white. Let the states pay the federal government a ‘COVID service fee’ for each vaccine they administer. Everybody who gets a shot in their arm not only acquires immunity, but reduces the deficit. It’s a classic win-win situation.”
The “Impeachment User Fee.” Perhaps Senator Marco Rubio said it best. “Only in the Third World do you see this habitual use of prosecutions of former leaders. You go through Latin America; virtually every immediate past president is under indictment or in jail.” Rubio mansplained his remark in The Washington Post. “It is pretty typical in the Third World that, after someone’s out of office, they lose, they leave, the party that takes power then prosecutes them. It happens all over the world. And that’s the precedent we’re creating here now,” the impish legislator remarked, explaining his vote to condone treasonous misconduct.
This insightful remark inspired economists at the prestigious Caligula Institute. Their response is a proposal for an “impeachment user fee,” akin to the fees charged for using highways or ports. “They’re really very similar,” said Edgar Sousé, a Caligula staffer said. “When people use the services the government provides, there’s broad consensus we have the right to make them pay for what they consume. Impeachment is no different. A simple fee imposed on any Member of Congress who votes to impeach a President would roll back this dangerous wave of accountability, particularly in the face of multiple impeachments, which is obvious evidence of abuse. I’m sure we can all agree with Senator Susan Collins, who pointed out after President Trump’s first impeachment, ‘I believe that the President has learned from this case. The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson. And there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call (to the Ukrainian President). I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.’ As she made clear in this insightful statement, a second impeachment would be a waste of time and resources for which those who voted for it should repay the nation, starting with her.”
A Personal Income Tax Deduction to the Unborn. "Everybody except the Supreme Court, the Chinese Communist Party, and the tax code recognizes the unborn are people,” argues T. Frothingill Bellows, chief economist of the Center for Faith-Based Revenue Policy. Under his proposal, families reporting unborn children would receive the same standard deduction of $2,000 as do “post-unborn” children. “Maybe extending this treatment to the unborn will eliminate the widespread practice of jumping up and down to induce labor before the tax year ends in order to gain the extra deduction for autonomously aerobicizing fetuses, or as the mainstream media calls them, babies. It’s a classic win-win situation."
But not all Republicans agree. Economists at the Torquemada Institute for Public Confession express caution regarding the proposal's interaction with other features of tax policy. "It's a fine idea," argues economist and Elmer Prettywillie, "and we support the idea that any inadvertent, helpless product of conception has the right to be brought to term, citizenship, and jury duty. But what many overlook is this -- the standard deduction is phased out at the upper income brackets, which means this proposal would give a greater incentive to poorer people to have more babies than rich people. And since we know that poor people aren't as smart or hard‑working, or for that matter attractive, as rich people, we'll just be creating a greater burden for our economy down the line."
But will the idea work? “I can only hope so,” said Charles Bogle, a seven-week fetus in Waltham, Massachusetts. “My taxes are too high already.”
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