Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss President Trump’s firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refused to defend his executive order. They also groan as former President Obama injects himself into politics just 10 days after leaving office. And they defend Tom Brady against the SJW sports media demanding Brady explain where he supports and opposes Trump.
President Trump has floated the idea of a border tax or border “adjustability” with Mexico to raise the revenues needed to fund construction of a border wall along America’s southern border, but the leader of the nation’s largest grassroots taxpayers group says the president must be careful not to punish American consumers.
“This is a very confusing and intricate issue, probably the most complex aspect of the tax reform discussion right now,” said National Taxpayers Union President Peter Sepp.
Among his first actions as president, Trump authorized construction of the border wall and once again vowed that Mexico would pay for it. After the Mexican president dismissed the idea, Trump and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer have both discussed the idea of a border tax on Mexican imports as high as 20 percent.
But Sepp says it is unclear whether they are referring to an actual border tax or a concept known as border adjustability.
“What we’re really doing here is reading tea leaves. This is a tea cup that goes very deep. We’re having a difficult time telling exactly what the administration wants to do here,” said Sepp.
The answer it critical because Sepp says the difference between a straight tax and border adjustability is significant. He says an actual border tax would not be good news for working Americans, since Mexico can simply pass along their higher costs to the people who buy its products.
“Taken in isolation, a border tax, where you have a trade deficit with a given country, you slap a tax on its goods coming into the country that’s aimed specifically at them, that could result in consumers having to pay more out of their own pockets here in the United States,” said Sepp.
Border adjustability is different.
“What (adjustability) tries to achieve is if you send something out of the United States for export and sell it abroad, it is not subject to U.S. tax. If you are bringing in goods, either finely finished goods or raw materials, to make something in the United States, you’re not allowed to deduct it anymore under border adjustability. It’s supposed to be a border-neutral way of handling economic activities,” said Sepp.
Sepp says that concept along with fundamental tax reform involving lower tax rates, full expensing of investments and allowing companies to be taxes only by the countries where they earn their money, could have some benefit.
“If you take an entire reformed system like that with border adjustability in it, you might be able to minimize some of the impacts on consumers,” said Sepp.
Trump critics allege that any such move to draw more money out of Mexico could trigger a trade war with one of our top trading partners. Sepp says that is unlikely unless Trump goes ever further and slaps new tariffs on Mexican goods.
“Those kinds of things always tend to invite some kind of retaliatory action. We need to be careful about how these kinds of policies are pursued. Sometimes a tariff might be justified if another country initiates a tariff against us. But for us to do that unilaterally from the start can complicate matters to a great degree,” said Sepp.
Trump’s first executive action on trade was the formal withdrawal of the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. Sepp says that decision is understandable.
“That treaty did have its flaws, a multi-lateral agreement involving something like a dozen nations, is going to be pretty complex by its very nature,” said Sepp.
But Sepp says existing and prospective trade partners would have a better idea of where Trump wants to lead on TPP if he listed reasons for the U.S. withdrawal.
“The problem is, by simply walking away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and saying, ‘Well, we’ll try bilateral approaches,’ that creates a great deal of uncertainty about U.S. trade policy going forward,” said Sepp.
“To be more specific about the flaws in TPP would have been helpful in sending signals around the world that the U.S. is still committed to free trade, but these are the particular problems that we have with an agreement like TPP,” said Sepp.
While Sepp says border adjustability is the thorniest issue, he wants to see Congress get moving on substantive tax reform while the opportunity is available.
“I think the momentum is still there. What needs to happen going forward is the tax writing committees – House Ways & Means and Senate Finance – need to have hearings on these specific aspects of tax reform. Answer some of the questions are causing a lot of fear and speculation, and then start to build a legislative consensus around a particular bill,” said Sepp.
“Right now, we have a blueprint for tax reform. That is not legislation. We need to get to the legislative part as quickly as possible,” said Sepp.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review discuss President Trump’s orders seeking to reduce federal regulations. They also say Trump is on the right track with his refugee policy but did not implement it well, and they unload on the hysterical left-wing reaction to the policy. And they practice their shocked faces as Iran defies the United Nations and tests a ballistic missile – the ones that carry nuclear warheads.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review cheer the many thousands of Americans marching for life and against abortion Friday in Washington. They also shake their heads at President Trump’s suggestion that a 20 percent border tax on Mexican imports might be a good way to pay for a border wall. And they discuss all the humiliating concessions and retractions Atlantic magazine has to make following its story suggesting ultrasound is used to deceive women into believing their unborn babies are people with heartbeats who can feel pain.
As pro-life activists take part in the annual March for Life in Washington, they are more optimistic than any time in recent memory as a Republican Congress and a pro-life president get to work and more and more younger Americans join the cause thanks to modern science.
Leaders in the movement, like Susan B. Anthony List Vice President for Government Affairs Marilyn Musgrave, expect President Trump to make good on all his pro-life campaign promises.
“He made a pledge to work to defund Planned Parenthood, to support the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, to make the Hyde Amendment permanent, to nominate pro-life justices to the Supreme Court. I might add that that’s the big one. That is the big one,” stressed Musgrave.
There’s already been action on two of those promises. On Monday, President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which forbids U.S. tax dollars from going to any organization performing or advocating for abortion in foreign countries. In addition, the House of Representatives passed legislation to make the Hyde Amendment permanent. The Hyde Amendment prohibits taxpayer dollars from funding abortions in the U.S.
Musgrave applauds Trump and the House. She notes that every Republican who voted was in favor of the bill, along with three Democrats.
“It is very good times for us because we have hope that we can actually make gains for life,” said Musgrave.
She also says there is no reason Republicans can’t defund Planned Parenthood.
“I believe defunding Planned Parenthood, redirecting those dollars to other health care providers that don’t do abortion, I think that’s the one that’s most quickly attainable by the House and Senate through the reconciliation process,” said Musgrave.
Reconciliation is a budgeting process that skirts the possibility of a filibuster, meaning a simple majority in the Senate could defund Planned Parenthood.
Musgrave says accomplishing the Trump promises would save countless lives.
“The Hyde Amendment has saved over two million lives since 1976. It’s my prayer that at this time in history, we will look back on our efforts, our marching, our support for women and their babies, the acts of this Congress and this president, we will look back and know that many, many lives have been saved,” said Musgrave.
In addition to favorable political winds at the moment, Musgrave says the future of the pro-life movement is bright because of the thousands of young people who are actively part of the effoet to protect the unborn.
“The March for Life, with now the faces of many young people, is an incredible encouragement to me,” said Musgrave. “We are seeing the new face of the pro-life movement and that is incredibly encouraging as we see millennials speaking up for life.”
She says one reason for the youth infusion is that science keeps showing the humanity of the unborn.
“I can remember the day when they said it was just a blob of tissue. That’s what they would tell a pregnant woman. Now we know that those precious little babies are operated on in utero. We know that they can feel pain after the fifth month of pregnancy,” said Musgrave.
“We know these things. It’s not disputable anymore. So the preciousness of that unborn child, the humanness is ever more an more evident, especially to the millennials that are marching,” said Musgrave.
Musgrave says the real scientific game-changer is the sonogram or ultrasound. And while some recently claimed ultrasounds give women false evidence of their baby’s humanity, Musgrave says those images are very powerful to mothers dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
“When women see the image, they know that that is a child. That is their baby. So there is a reason that the pro-choice crowd doesn’t want women to see the ultrasound. The humanness of that child is very evident right there for the mother to see,” said Musgrave.
She says many ministries are centered around giving women the chance to see their babies.
“It’s just precious to me when you see local communities, pro-life people supporting mobile ultrasound units. And I love it when a pastor gets up in a church and saying, ‘Because of your donations for this mobile ultrasound, you have saved many lives,” said Musgrave.
Musgrave says the ultrasound had a profound impact in her family.
“I remember the day I saw the picture of my grandson, Isaac. It was an ultrasound picture. I knew even then that he was going to look just like his daddy. And by the way, he does. That ultrasound speaks volumes. That’s the image that we see, that people are sharing with their family and friends. Science is on our side,” said Musgrave.
The March for Life will be the second for Musgrave in less than a week. She scoped out the Women’s March on January 21. In addition to missing any consistent message among the demonstrators, Musgrave was especially bothered by the number of men carrying signs in support of Planned Parenthood.
“Does that in any way relieve you of your responsibility for your sexual actions? If children are produced by that, do you just want them aborted? Do you not want them supported and taken care of? It was an interesting emotional time for me to be among those marches,” said Musgrave.
However, Musgrave firmly believes the pro-life side is advancing and that the combination of science, young activists and allies in Congress and the White House means the future is very bright.
“Now we have the opportunity to do things in the pro-life movement that I’ve not seen in my lifetime. It’s a very encouraging time,” said Musgrave.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are encouraged by President Trump’s vow to enforce existing immigration laws. They also rip Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for her Syria trip and going easy on Assad in her analysis. They unload on disingenuous Democrats upset about Trump looking to end sanctuary cities, and they note the rise of Canada’s Trump – and it’s someone you may well be aware of.
One of the leading election fraud experts says there is virtually no way to determine how many fraudulent votes were cast in 2016 but is applauding President Trump’s call for an investigation, saying the U.S. is long overdue in taking important steps to ensure more accurate elections.
Trump has said repeatedly that he believes the votes of illegal aliens across the United States are responsible for Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote. The issue flared again, both at a White House press briefing and in a pair of Trump tweets that announce his call for a formal probe.
Former Federal Elections Commission member Hans von Spakovsky now manages the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation. While not weighing on Trump’s specific assertions, Von Spakovsky says a thorough federal investigation into voting laws is clearly warranted.
“I think it’s long overdue. There’s never been any systematic, organized effort by the federal government to try to improve and check on the election integrity of the United States. I think this is a great idea,” said von Spakovsky.
He says Trump’s call is a radical departure from the Obama administration’s position.
“It’s a complete turnaround from the Obama administration, which for the past eight years has done everything it can to try to stop improvements in election integrity: things like Voter ID, things like verifying the citizenship of people who are registered to vote. The Obama administration has tried to stop that and has minimized or basically said, ‘There’s no fraud to worry about anywhere,'” said von Spakovsky.
While the media point out that Trump has provided no evidence of his assertions that millions of illegal aliens cast ballots last year, von Spakovsky says the same press corps had no problem with President Obama’s collision with the facts on this same issue earlier in the month.
“President Obama told a whopper of a lie in his last press release, when he said that when he got out of office he would continue to oppose Voter ID and other efforts to try to keep people out of the polls and then claimed that we were the only western democracy that does that, when in fact we are one of the only western democracies that does not require photo ID when you go vote,” said von Spakovsky.
Von Spakovsky says no one knows how much voter fraud occurs, but he says the system is ripe for exploitation for several reasons. Some of the biggest vulnerabilities lie in outdated voter rolls.
“There’s almost three million people who are registered in more than one state. How many of those are actually voting in more than one state at the same time, which is of course illegal? We don’t know because nobody’s actually checked that out to look at it,” said von Spakovsky.
Also on the rolls are many people who couldn’t possibly show up to vote.
“There are almost two million people that are dead who are still on voter rolls across the country. How many of those are just an error and how many are actually still voting because someone’s using their name. Again, we don’t know because there’s never been any systematic check of that,” said von Spakovsky.
He says there is concrete evidence of dead people voting in some locales.
“Right before the election, a CBS TV station in Los Angeles actually started checking that. They found several hundred people just in Los Angeles who had been dead for years but had continued to vote in multiple elections,” said von Spakovsky.
The problem, says von Spakovsky, is that proving voter fraud in past elections is very difficult.
“It’s very difficult to investigate voter fraud cases. It’s like the cases I just mentioned in California, several hundred people casting ballots after they died. Obviously. somebody forged their signature, somebody forged their ballot. Trying to find out who that was is going to be pretty difficult,” said von Spakovsky.
So what can be done to strengthen election integrity in the future? Von Spakovsky says the first step is to get the most accurate voter rolls possible.
“The Justice Department has the ability to file suit because there is a federal law that requires state and local election officials to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls, to clean them up, to take off people who have died and moved away. Many folks haven’t been complying with that law and the Obama administration knowingly and intentionally refused to enforce that provision,” said von Spakovsky.
The next step, he says, is to confirm who is actually eligible to vote.
“The Department of Homeland Security needs to start sharing it’s database on non-citizens in the country with election officials all over the country, so they can check it and find people who shouldn’t be on the rolls because they’re not U.S. citizens,” said von Spakovsky.
He says rooting out ineligible voters should also take place at the time they register.
“The other step that has to be taken because of the fact that illegal aliens are being given driver’s licenses is that states have to put in requirements that you provide proof of citizenship when you register to vote,” said von Spakovsky.
And he has one more idea.
“Juries are drawn from voter registration lists. One thing that is not done consistently around the country is when people are excused from jury duty because they’re not a U.S. citizen, that information needs to be given by the local courts to local election officials so they can take those people off the rolls. That’s not being done in many, many states,” he said.
Von Spakovsky would like to see all states adopt provisions requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls and he would extend that requirement to absentee voters as well, something he says most states with Voter ID laws have not done.
And von Spakovsky says Trump could get the ball rolling on almost all of this without running it by Congress.
“A lot of it can be done administratively through the executive branch, which the Trump administration now controls, particularly the Department of Justice and the Department of homeland Security,” said von Spakovsky.
In addition to contending there isn’t much of a voter fraud problem in the U.S., Democrats also assert that Voter ID and other provisions could disenfranchise the most vulnerable citizens, namely minorities and the poor. Von Spakovsky says it’s exactly the opposite.
“The victims (who have their votes stolen) in these cases often are the poor and minorities. An individual who was convicted of voter fraud up in Try, New York, just a couple of years ago was asked specifically why they were targeting poor minority neighborhoods. He said, ‘They’re the people least likely to notice or complain that their vote’s been stolen,” said von Spakovsky.
“This effort will actually help the poor. It will help racial minorities and ensure their vote doesn’t get stolen,” said von Spakovsky.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are very encouraged by the final two names President Trump is reportedly considering for the Supreme Court vacancy. They also cringe as Trump once again insists he lost the popular vote only through rampant voter fraud by illegal aliens. And they slam Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for claiming a lack of federal assistance is to blame for the huge number of murders in his city.
Republicans are committed to repealing and replacing President Obama’s health care law, but one of the law’s fiercest critics warned that overhauling such a huge part of the economy will take time and might be a bit messy but will hopefully show clear results within two years by taking the federal government largely out of the health care business.
Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner says President Trump and congressional leaders are smart to make repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act the top priority out of the gate in 2017.
“The individual mandate, the employer mandate, the taxes, the Medicaid expansion all are on the table for repeal. They’re going to provide a safety net. If you’re on Obamacare now, you’ll be able to continue to keep your coverage for at least two years. After that, they’re building the bridge so that people will have better options for going forward,” said Turner.
This week, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced a bill that would give the states the option of keeping the current system in place if those states’ leaders felt it was best for their citizens.
Turner says any truly effective plan would only allow the states to keep Obamacare as a transition for a couple of years.
“This whole law is not working. It’s like a house of cards. Once some parts of it start to fall, others do as well. But the money can continue to flow. That’s really the main thing states want. ‘Can you give us some money our citizens are getting through the exchanges for their subsidies and for Medicaid,” said Turner.
However, she says states may have the long term option of keeping their own exchanges in operation.
“Some of the states that have existing exchanges that they have set up may continue to use that exchange. Others may decide to do private exchanges. Others may set up a new kind of, much more flexible exchange state exchange to give people the opportunity to buy plans that are a lot more flexible,” said Turner.
She says removing power from Washington and sending it back to the states has to be a bedrock of any reform.
“It has not worked for the federal government to tell citizens of Manhattan they have to buy exactly the same coverage as somebody in rural Montana. That doesn’t work. You’ve got to have more flexibility where the states decide what kind of policies to approve that meet the needs of the citizens and the resources of the state,” said Turner.
“So the states will have a lot of leeway to use these new resources, meet goals, but not have to jump through all of these tens of thousands of pages of Obamacare regulatory hoops and instead thinking what’s the best way to solve this problem,” said Turner.
The Affordable Care Act was passed in March of 2010 but did not begin implementation until the disastrous healthcare.gov roll-out in October 2013. Turner says patience will be a virtue as Congress and the Trump administration try to turn this ship around.
“There’s a long lead time. The plans have to figure out what the states are saying are the parameters. You know, what’s considered insurance. Then they have to design their policies. Then they have to go back for approval. Then they have to start marketing them out. That can actually be an 18-month or even a two-year process,” said Turner.
Turner says hopes for much lower premiums heading into the next coverage period are not well-placed.
“They’re just not going to see any relief this year. I think that will be very hard. But they’re trying to see what they could do to speed this process up so the people have better options in 2018 at least, certainly 2019,” said Turner.
Given that Washington would have a much smaller role, Turner is confident the new policies and increased options will be available to consumers much more quickly than Obamacare was launched.
And she says the politicians can read the calendar too.
“The replace part is going to rely on markets and rely on states and make sure that people are covered in the meantime. So I don’t have that crystal ball. I wish I did, but I know that they are very motivated to show results before the 2018 elections,” said Turner.
Turner is optimistic that the states and the marketplace can turn things around. She says the creation of Health Savings Accounts in 2003 were available to consumers within weeks.
“That legislation passed in early November in 2003. On January 1, 2004, less than two months later, the first Health Savings Account was sold. That’s how quickly the market can turn around if you’re giving them new flexibility, new freedom and the ability to turn around and sell something that people actually want to buy,” said Turner.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the vast majority of President Trump’s executive orders. They also groan at the news President Obama defied Congress to send $221 million to the Palestinian Authority on his final morning as president. And they shake their heads as two-thirds of Senate Democrats even oppose Mike Pompeo to lead the CIA.
