| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #253 03/30/2021 |
| 1) Schumer’s Gambit: Senate Rules Are for Thee Not for Me “Budget reconciliation” is an arcane and long standing Senate rule allowing budget bills to pass with just 51 votes. That is how Congress was able to pass the $1.9 trillion COVID Non-Stimulus Bill this month without a single Republican vote. The rules say Congress can use budget reconciliation only one more time this year. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s aides claim to have found “a magical parliamentary trick” that Democrats could use to unlock a THIRD reconciliation bill this year. This would certainly violate the intent and spirit (if not the letter) of the Senate rules. If Schumer exploits this loophole, there will be no stopping the Democrats in their quest for a $3 trillion tax hike and another multi-trillion dollar green New Deal bill. They would have carte blanche to bankrupt the country. It would also destroy the institution that is supposed to be “the world’s most deliberative body” – converting it instead to a carbon copy of the House, where the minority party has almost no rights and no power. Who was it that used to scream President Trump was undermining key institutions in government? Oh yes, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats. https://www.vox.com/2021/3/29/22356453/chuck-schumer-budget-reconciliation-filibuster |
| 2) Biden’s Goal is another FDR-Style New Deal, But with Trillions, Not Billions If you are wondering why Joe Biden is acting like a lunatic fiscal serial killer (he now says he wants $4 trillion for the green new deal), it is because he has sought the advice of leftwing historians who have been advising him that if he wants to achieve greatness, he has to “go big” like FDR. These historians say it’s time to break the bank and emulate the New Deal spending blitz of the 1930s. But as we’ve pointed out before, that strategy didn’t work out so well for the country. The chart below shows the unemployment rate stayed at or above 15% for almost the entire first two terms of FDR’s presidency. The financial crisis deteriorated into a double dip Great Depression in 1937 after FDR’s economic team decided to pay for all the Alphabet Soup welfare and make-work programs with a “soak the rich” tax increase that raised the income tax rate to 70% in the name of fairness. Sound familiar? By the way, after this blizzard of taxing and spending, instead of a torrent of new jobs, the unemployment rate soared back up to a miserable 18%. Arguably, the single greatest historical lie in American history is the myth that has now prevailed for some 80 years that the New Deal worked. Now history seems destined to repeat itself. Every school child should be forced to read.  |
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