USA News and Discussions

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Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio
https://www.americanprogress.org/articl ... ebt-ratio/

Introduction and summary

The need to increase the debt limit1 has focused attention on the size and trajectory of the federal debt. Long-term projections show2 that federal debt as a percentage of the U.S. economy is on a path to grow indefinitely, with increased noninterest spending due to demographic changes such as increasing life expectancy, declining fertility, and decreased immigration and rising health care costs permanently outstripping revenues under projections based on current law. House Republican leaders have used this fact to call for spending cuts,3 but it does not address the true cause of rising debt: Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. In fact, relative to earlier projections, spending is down, not up. But revenues are down significantly more. If not for the Bush tax cuts4 and their extensions5—as well as the Trump tax cuts6—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase.

Fiscal policy in the postwar era

In the 34 years after 1946, the federal debt declined from 106 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to just 25 percent, despite the federal government’s running deficits in 26 of those years. The debt ratio declined for two reasons. First, the government ran a “primary,” or noninterest, surplus in a large majority of those years. This means that, not counting interest payments, the budget was in surplus. Second, the economic growth rate exceeded the Treasury interest rate in a large majority of those years. These two factors—along with the starting debt ratio—are the levers that control debt ratio sustainability.7 With a primary balance, the growth rate need only match the Treasury interest rate for the debt ratio to be stable. The presence of both primary surpluses and growth rates that exceeded the Treasury interest rate created significant downward pressure on the debt ratio.8

The nation’s fiscal pictured changed in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history,9 reducing revenues by the equivalent of $19 trillion over a decade in today’s terms. Although Congress raised taxes10 in many of the subsequent years of the Reagan administration to claw back close to half the revenue loss,11 the equivalent of $10 trillion of the president’s 1981 tax cut remained.

These massive tax cuts set off more than a decade of bipartisan efforts to reduce spending and increase revenues, which, along with a booming economy, resulted in budget surpluses at the end of the Clinton administration.
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Idaho Is About To Become The First State To Restrict Interstate Travel For Abortion

[N]ow Idaho Republicans have set their sights on hindering certain residents from traveling out of state to get an abortion.

House Bill 242, which passed through the state House and is likely to move quickly through the Senate, seeks to limit minors’ ability to travel for abortion care without parental consent. The legislation would create a whole new crime — dubbed “abortion trafficking” — which is defined in the bill as an “adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for the minor. “Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation adds.

The legislation doesn’t actually say anything about crossing state lines, but Republican lawmakers are creative. Most pregnant people in Idaho are not traveling to obtain an abortion elsewhere in the state, since nearly all abortions are illegal in Idaho; they’re traveling to the border with the intent of crossing state lines, likely into Washington, Oregon or Montana, to get an abortion there.

“Technically, they’re not criminalizing people driving in Washington state with a minor. The crime is the time that someone is driving the minor in Idaho,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University whose work focuses on constitutional law and abortion policy.

“They’re going to say what they’re doing is just criminalizing actions that take place completely within Idaho, but in practice what they’re criminalizing is the person helping the minor,” Cohen, who also litigates abortion-related cases with the Women’s Law Project nonprofit, told HuffPost.

State Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), one of the sponsors of the abortion trafficking bill, said plainly that the intent of the legislation is to limit minors’ ability to travel out of state without parental consent.

“It’s already illegal to get an abortion here in the state of Idaho,” she told HuffPost. “So, it would be taking that child across the border, and if that happens without the permission of the parent, that’s where we’ll be able to hold accountable those that would subvert a parent’s right.”
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BREAKING: North Carolina repeals pistol purchase permit system after legislature overrides veto
AP News
https://apnews.com/article/pistol-permi ... 3f706b128f
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina residents can now buy a handgun without getting a permit from a local sheriff, after the Republican-controlled state legislature on Wednesday overrode the Democratic governor’s veto — a first since 2018.

The House voted 71-46 to enact the bill, which eliminates the longstanding permit system requiring sheriffs to perform character evaluations and criminal history checks of pistol applicants. The Senate overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto in a party-line vote on Tuesday.

The permit repeal takes effect immediately. Cooper and Democratic lawmakers warned it allows more dangerous people to obtain weapons through private sales, which do not require a background check, and limits law enforcement’s ability to prevent them from committing violent crimes.

But bill supporters say the sheriff screening process is no longer necessary in light of significant updates to the national background check system, and that the permit requirement didn’t serve as a crime deterrent.
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Grand Jury Votes to Indict Donald Trump in New York: Live Updates
Source: New York Times
A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation's first former president to face criminal charges.

The felony indictment, filed under seal by the Manhattan district attorney's office, will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.

Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the vote to indict now threatens to puncture. His actions surrounding his 2020 electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump's attempts to reverse the election results in that state.

But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump's presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/30 ... plications
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Judge Robert Pittman ORDERS Llano County to return "all books" to its libraries removed for content
Stephen Paulsen
@stephentpaulsen
NEW: A federal judge has ordered Llano County to return to its libraries "all books" removed for their content and viewpoint.

Library patrons have shown that "content-based restrictions" were likely unconstitutional, he ruled.
https://courthousenews.com/wp-content/u ... nction.pdf
A group had previously complained of "pornographic filth" and "CRT and LGBTQ books" at the libraries.

Among the books that will return to shelves for now: "Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen" by @JazzJennings__
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Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts

Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently.

AUTHOR: Bobby Kogan

https://www.americanprogress.org/articl ... ebt-ratio/

"SNIP.......

Introduction and summary
The need to increase the debt limit1 has focused attention on the size and trajectory of the federal debt. Long-term projections show2 that federal debt as a percentage of the U.S. economy is on a path to grow indefinitely, with increased noninterest spending due to demographic changes such as increasing life expectancy, declining fertility, and decreased immigration and rising health care costs permanently outstripping revenues under projections based on current law. House Republican leaders have used this fact to call for spending cuts,3 but it does not address the true cause of rising debt: Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. In fact, relative to earlier projections, spending is down, not up. But revenues are down significantly more. If not for the Bush tax cuts4 and their extensions5—as well as the Trump tax cuts6—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase.

........SNIP"
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TN Dem state reps stripped of committees and may be expelled over gun protest


https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/pol ... 076763007/
"The Republican leadership of Tennessee's House of Representative stripped state Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, of her committee assignments April 3 in retaliation for her peaceful participation in last week’s demonstration for gun reform that spilled over to the House floor March 30, Knox News has learned.
...
Hundreds of demonstrators came to the Capitol in Nashville in response to what they said was lawmakers’ inaction after a gunman killed six people, including three 9-year-old students, at The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27.

After a Nashville news conference with Gov. Bill Lee and other lawmakers, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, confirmed that Johnson and Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, had been stripped of their committee assignments. A third member, Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, did not serve on any committees.
Other sanctions, including expulsion, will be considered, Sexton said.
....
Johnson stood with freshmen Jones and Pearson when they took over the well of the House chamber and began chanting through a megaphone.

The demonstration remained peaceful throughout – there was no property damage or arrests made, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

Monday, hundreds of demonstrators came back to the Capitol. In one clip, posted on Twitter by Johnson, the demonstrators chanted "thoughts and prayers are not enough."
...
Sexton and other House Republicans have taken to the airwaves and social media to inaccurately compare the event to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, which left scores of police officers injured and resulted in millions of dollars of damage, even though the Tennessee Highway Patrol there was no damage or injuries of a result of the demonstration." (More)
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Gov. Whitmer signs repeal of Michigan abortion ban
Source: WNDU

BIRMINGHAM, Mich. (WNDU) - Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has signed a bill repealing the state’s 1931 abortion ban.

Michigan had a law from 1931 on the books banning abortion without exceptions for rape or incest. It also allowed doctors and nurses who offer reproductive care to be prosecuted.

The bill signing comes after Michiganders turned out in record numbers to get Proposal 3 on the ballot and voted to enshrine reproductive freedom into the state constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Whitmer was joined by doctors, reproductive rights advocates, and lawmakers on Wednesday morning in Birmingham for the historic bill signing.
Read more: https://www.wndu.com/2023/04/05/gov-whi ... rtion-ban/
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Tennessee GOP expels first Democratic lawmaker over gun violence protests
Republican lawmakers in Tennessee voted Thursday to expel the first of three Democratic legislators from the state House over their protests on the chamber floor against gun violence.

The rare move drew attention across the nation to the partisan divisions that have rankled the Tennessee Legislature in recent months.

Over the cacophony of protesters outside the state House, Republican legislators began expulsion proceedings against Democratic Reps. Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson.

Republicans first moved to expel on Jones, with votes on the other two Democrats expected later in the day.

“What is happening here today is a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict,” Jones said during a speech he was granted to defend himself ahead of the vote. “A lynch mob assembled to not lynch me, but our democratic process.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politi ... -rcna78531
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Tennessee House Expels 2 Democrats Over Gun Reform Protest
Source: Forbes

Tennessee’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted Thursday to expel two Democratic members for participating in a contentious gun reform protest in the State House last week, but failed to expel a third Democrat—marking the chamber’s first expulsions in years.

Tennessee’s House voted 72-25 to expel Democratic Rep. Justin Jones, and voted 73-23 to expel Rep. Justin Pearson, after the three lawmakers faced scrutiny from their peers after protesting for gun reform on the floor of the House chamber.

A vote to expel Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson was just one vote shy of meeting the two-thirds majority needed to expel a representative, with 65 representatives voting in favor of the measure and 30 voting against it—Johnson, who is white, later told reporters she believes the difference in the vote count “might have to do with the color of our skin” (Jones and Johnson are Black).

A special election will be held to fill the empty House seats, though the expelled representatives can also run and return to office.
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush ... m-protest/
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