Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”

The other day Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the refusal by Republicans in Congress to raise the debt ceiling would cause a “constitutional crisis” that might cripple the economy and financial system as the government ran out of money and defaulted on some of its bonds.

Nonsense. Because it retains the power of money creation, the federal government can never run out of money. It can create money to infinity. The government prefers not to create money so frankly, since it might be inflationary, but the government has the power.

● Read in Journal Inquirer - 2nd of two-part column

● Read here on The Red Line

President Biden portrays House Republicans as hostage-takers for demanding that deficit savings accompany any debt limit increase. He maintains that “clean” debt limit bills reflect typical Washington practice.

The president's position is the one that actually represents the departure from Washington norms and precedents.

For decades, the debt limit served as a legitimate tool for both Republicans and Democrats to address budget deficits. Indeed, of the eight largest deficit-reduction laws since 1985, all eight were attached to debt limit bills.

● Read in Daily Beast

● Read here on The Red Line

If Connecticut had even average annual investment performance from its underwhelming pension funds, our tax burden would dramatically decrease.

Connecticut’s previous treasurers provided this state, consistently, with one of the single worst investment track records of all 50 states, as our Yale research team found through an original, comparative 50-state analysis of state pension fund investment performance.

● Read in CT Insider

● Read here on The Red Line

Last year, President Biden presided over a record crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico. This year, by every conceivable metric, that crisis got far worse.

In the 2021 fiscal year, we had more than 1.7 million encounters at the Southern border. That was a record … until this fiscal year, when it rose to almost 2.4 million. And the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October, has already seen more than 500,000 encounters — putting us on track to exceed this year’s record.

That’s not all. In 2021, there were nearly 390,000 known “gotaways” — migrants we know evaded U.S. Customs and Border Protection and slipped into the country; this year, the number of gotaways grew to more than 600,000. In 2021, there were 15 terrorism watch list arrests at the border; this year, that grew to 98 (and who knows how many violent criminals were among the gotaways).

As bad as that is, things are about to get worse when Title 42 — the Trump-era public health order that has allowed border officials to turn away hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to prevent the spread of covid-19 — expires on Dec. 21. When migrants can no longer be expelled under this order, even more will try illegal crossings — and the floodgates will truly open. Yet the Biden administration is pushing for a cut in funding for detention beds in the omnibus spending bill from the current level of 34,000 to 25,000 just as the need for these beds will dramatically increase.

● Read in Washington Post

● Read here on The Red Line

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been taking a beating over his company’s coziness with Beijing. It comes amid protests across China against the government’s strict Covid-19 lockdowns, including at a factory in Zhengzhou where most of the world’s iPhones are made. Hillary Vaughn of Fox News perfectly captured Mr. Cook’s embarrassment on Capitol Hill Thursday when she peppered him with questions.

“Do you support the Chinese people’s right to protest? Do you have any reaction to the factory workers that were beaten and detained for protesting Covid lockdowns? Do you regret restricting AirDrop access that protesters used to evade surveillance from the Chinese government? Do you think it’s problematic to do business with the Communist Chinese Party when they suppress human rights?”

A stone-faced Mr. Cook responded with silence.

● Read in The Wall Street Journal

● Read on The Red Line

When is $5 trillion still not enough? Answer: When you’re a progressive about to lose your grip on total power. That’s how to read Democrats’ attempt to jam Republicans into one last, lame-duck, spending hurrah.

Congress is marching toward a Dec. 16 expiration of government funding. Democrats want to stuff all 12 of Congress’s annual, overdue spending bills into a giant “omnibus” to finance government through September 2023. According to their media note-takers, the failure to pass an omnibus bill will result in one of two apocalyptic scenarios: a government shutdown, or the ruin of federal agencies forced to maintain spending at current levels.

● Read in The Wall Street Journal

● Read here on The Red Line