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(Photo: PBS)

When giving speeches outside the beltway, I sometimes urge people to be patient with Washington. Yes, we need fundamental tax reform and genuine entitlement reform, but there’s no way Congress can make those changes with Obama in the White House.

But there are some areas whether progress is possible, and people should be angry with politicians if they deliberately choose to make bad decisions.

For instance, the corrupt Export-Import Bank has expired and there’s nothing that Obama can do to restore this odious example of corporate welfare. It will only climb from the grave if Republicans on Capitol Hill decide that campaign cash from big corporations is more important than free markets.

Another example of a guaranteed victory – assuming Republicans don’t fumble the ball at the goal line – is that there’s no longer enough gas-tax revenue coming into the Highway Trust Fund to finance big, bloated, and pork-filled transportation spending bills. So if the GOP-controlled Congress simply does nothing, the federal government’s improper and excessive involvement in this sector will shrink.

Unfortunately, Republicans have no desire to achieve victory on this issue. It’s not that there’s a risk of them fumbling the ball on the goal line. By looking for ways to generate more revenue for the Trust Fund, they’re moving the ball in the other direction and trying to help the other team score a touchdown!

The good news is that Republicans backed away from awful proposals to increase the federal gas tax.

But the bad news is that they’re coming up with other ideas to transfer more of our income to Washington. Here’s a look at some of the revenue-generating schemes in the Senate transportation bill.

Since the House and Senate haven’t agreed on how to proceed, it’s unclear which – if any – of these proposals will be implemented.

But one thing that is clear is that the greed for more federal transportation spending is tempting Republicans into giving more power to the IRS.

Republicans and Democrats alike are looking to the IRS as they try to pass a highway bill by the end of the month. Approving stricter tax compliance measure is one of the few areas of agreement between the House and the Senate when it comes to paying for an extension of transportation funding. …the Senate and House are considering policy changes for the IRS ahead of the July 31 transportation deadline. …With little exception, the Senate bill uses the same provisions that were in a five-month, $8 billion extension the House passed earlier this month. The House highway bill, which would fund programs through mid-December, gets about 60 percent of its funding from tax compliance measures. …it’s…something of a shift for Republicans to trust the IRS enough to back the new tax compliance measures. House Republicans opposed similar proposals during a 2014 debate over highway funding, both because they didn’t want to give the IRS extra authority and because they wanted to hold the line on using new revenues to pay for additional spending.

Gee, isn’t it swell that Republicans have “grown in office” since last year.

But this isn’t just an issue of GOPers deciding that the DC cesspool is actually a hot tub. Part of the problem is the way Congress operates.

Simply stated, the congressional committee system generally encourages bad decisions. If you want to understand why there’s no push to scale back the role of the federal government in transportation, just look at the role of the committees in the House and Senate that are involved with the issue.

Both the authorizing committees (the ones that set the policy) and the appropriating committees (the ones that spend the money) are among the biggest advocates of generating more revenue in order to enable continued federal government involvement in transportation.

Why? For the simple reason that allocating transportation dollars is how the members of these committees raise campaign cash and buy votes. As such, it’s safe to assume that politicians don’t get on those committees with the goal of scaling back federal subsidies for the transportation sector.

And this isn’t unique to the committees that deal with transportation.

It’s also a safe bet that politicians that gravitate to the agriculture committees have a strong interest in maintaining the unseemly system of handouts and subsidies that line the pockets of Big Ag. The same is true for politicians that seek out committee slots dealing with NASA. Or foreign aid. Or military bases.

The bottom line is that even politicians who generally have sound views are most likely to make bad decisions on issues that are related to their committee assignments.

So what’s the solution?

Well, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a shift to random and/or rotating committee assignments, so the only real hope is to have some sort of overall cap on spending so that the various committees have to fight with each other over a (hopefully) shrinking pool of funds.

That’s why the Gramm-Rudman law in the 1980s was a step in the right direction. And it’s why the spending caps in today’s Budget Control Act also are a good idea.

Most important, it’s why we should have a limit on all spending, such as what’s imposed by the so-called Debt Brake in Switzerland.

Heck, even the crowd at the IMF has felt compelled to admit spending caps are the only effective fiscal tool.

Maybe, just maybe, a firm and enforceable spending cap will lead politicians in Washington to finally get the federal government out of areas such as transportation (and housing, agriculture, education, etc) where it doesn’t belong.

One can always hope.

In the meantime, since we’re on the topic of transportation decentralization, here’s a map from the Tax Foundation showing how gas taxes vary by states.

This data is useful (for instance, it shows why drivers in New York and Pennsylvania should fill up their tanks in New Jersey), but doesn’t necessarily tell us which states have the best transportation policy.

Are the gas taxes used for roads, or is some of the money siphoned off for boondoggle mass transit projects? Do the states have Project Labor Agreements and other policies that line the pockets of unions and cause needlessly high costs? Is there innovation and flexibility for greater private sector involvement in construction, maintenance, and operation?

But this is what’s good about federalism and why decentralization is so important. The states should be the laboratories of democracy. And when they have genuine responsibility for an issue, it then becomes easier to see which ones are doing a good job.

So yet another reason to shut down the Department of Transportation.

The Highway and Transportation Funding Act of

Zoey-Tur-Ben-Shapiro

Inside Edition reporter Zoey Tur, left, threatened Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro, right, on HLN’s “Dr. Drew On Call” over Caitlyn Jenner’s receipt of ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

Inside Edition reporter Zoey Tur threatened Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro during a panel on HLN discussing the merits of Bruce Jenner receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Tur, a transgender, took issue with Shapiro asserting that the transgender debate is ultimately about whether we — as a society — are willing to accept delusion and mental illness as the norm, let alone deem it worthy of celebration.

“You better cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance,” Tur said to Shapiro with a firm hand behind his neck. After the taping, Shapiro alleged that Tur further threatened him, saying, “I’ll see you in the parking lot,” which the reporter did not deny. In fact, Tur doubled down on the threat the very next day, stating he would like to “curb stomp” Shapiro.

Despite the leftwing panel’s attempt to marginalize the Breitbart News editor’s comments that sparked the downright violent reaction, Tur not only diminished her intellectual position but actually proved Mr. Shapiro correct. So, just in case Tur and others need clarification, Ben Shapiro is right: The Inside Edition reporter and other transgender men and women suffer from a mental disorder, and Tur is a textbook case.

Prior to the threats and acts of aggression, which have now been reported to the police, Tur and Dr. Drew attempted to make a quasi-scientific argument that basically holds “feelings” matter more than physical and biological realities. Tur and Drew were making what is known as a solipsistic argument based on a philosophy of subjective idealism. Solipsists believe that the self is the only existing reality and that all other reality, including the external world and other persons, are representations of that self, and have no independent existence. Empirical evidence or absolute truths, are not only irrelevant but truly non-existent.

In other words, none of you PPD readers or subscribers truly exist, you are just the result of PPD’s subjective reality. By the way, thanks for your subjective dollars to pay for our subscriptions that, in fact, really don’t exist outside the Editorial Board members’ minds.

Just to be clear, this theory is not the medical consensus on the transgendered — or any other topic for that matter — but rather a fringe one absent the support of related scientific research and aggregate understanding on the topic.

What is the scientific consensus, one which is backed by decades of research and empirical data? Who better to reference on this question than Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the author of Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind.

“This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects,” Dr. McHugh wrote in a recent and widely ignored op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”

According to Dr McHugh, who actually relies upon science and evidence, the transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” not unlike those in other, more well-known disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa. However, obviously in the case of the transgendered, the disordered “assumption” is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature — particularly one’s maleness or femaleness.

“For the transgendered, this argument holds that one’s feeling of ‘gender’ is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one’s mind, cannot be questioned by others,” the former Johns Hopkins head, author of six books and at least 125 peer-reviewed medical articles said. “The individual often seeks not just society’s tolerance of this ‘personal truth’ but affirmation of it.”

Because Shapiro challenged Tur’s own subjective reality, he solicited a violent — yet predictable — textbook reaction from an individual unable to cope with reality and truth. In reality, Tur’s own fabricated truth — and the hoped-for endgame, that is, state-sponsored and socially accepted “sex changes” — isn’t at all healthy to either the mind or the physical being of transgendered persons.

A study at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic that tracked children who reported transgender feelings who did not receive medical or surgical treatment, found 70%-80% of them “spontaneously lost those feelings.” In the 1970s, Johns Hopkins University, the first American medical center to tackle “sex-reassignment surgery,” conducted a study comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Despite most of the surgically treated patients reporting to be “satisfied” with the results, their subsequent mental conditions proved no better than those who didn’t undergo the surgery.

Based upon these results, Hopkins stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery. And as Dr. McHugh noted, considering follow-up research, it “now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one.” He cites the new results of a long-term study conducted at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. The Institute, which followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery, revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, “the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties,” including but not limited to a suicide mortality that rose roughly 20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population.

We always find the abundance of “progressive” causes that ironically ignore science, mildly humorous. Religiosity is strongly associated with mental health, physical health, self-reliance and general behavioral characteristics most conducive to a free, self-governing society? We better ignore, or better yet, bury that little tidbit. Babies feel pain after 20 weeks when Planned Parenthood kills them to harvest their organs? Let’s not circulate that unfortunate piece of news.

And never, ever, face reality and admit you’re wrong even if the science says otherwise, particularly when it goes against the philosophies and interests of relative statism. Better yet, it’s best to double- or triple-down on your ignorance and attack it, just as Tur did during a radio interview with KFI AM 640’s Bill Carroll on Tuesday.

“He comes from a very misogynistic cult anyway, where women are treated differently, they’re not allowed to touch men,” Tur mocked. “So maybe that’s the battery. Maybe a woman touched him, and put her hand on his shoulder or the back of his neck, and that’s prescribed in the ultra-Orthodox religion, maybe that’s the battery he’s talking about.”

Except, with all undo respect for Tur, it was a man — not just in his mind but in reality — who inappropriately grabbed Mr. Shapiro on the back of his neck, not a women. Therefore, decency and generally accepted societal norms, not his religion, serve as the foundation of his understandable insult.

“At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. ‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible,” Dr. McHugh warns. “People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

Ben Shapiro was right. Zoey Tur and

Hillary-Clinton-Bernie-Sanders

Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right. (Photo: AP)

I’ve had several reporters ask me to comment on the philosophical and policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I’m always happy to oblige, yet I don’t think any of them have included my comments in their stories because I always give what seems to be a very unsatisfactory response. My standard line is that Sanders and Clinton are two peas in a statist pod.

Yes, I realize that Sanders has a more aggressive us-vs-them approach, while Hillary is calculated and cautious, but those are merely differences in rhetoric and style.

What matters is action. And if you look at the Senate voting records of Sanders and Clinton, there’s almost no difference between them (or, for that matter, between them and Obama).

Let’s look at some of their policy proposals. Here are some excerpts from a Townhall column on Sanders’ statist agenda.

According to Bernienomics, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would prevent greedy capitalists from exploiting their workers and paying below a “living wage.” …Sanders…is…fighting for European style “free college”…Sanders supports the Environmental Protection Agency’s CO2 emission standards, even though these will raise the costs of energy and manufacturing. Sanders also supported allowing the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the internet as public utility… Sanders wants to raise taxes on the rich as much as possible…he has stated his desire to tax the rich at more than a 50 percent income tax rate. Sanders also recently proposed a massive increase in the estate tax… Sanders believes that Social Security is the “most successful government programs in American history,” so it only makes sense that he wants to expand it. …Sanders is also a major proponent of a single-payer health care system.

In other words, a typical statist agenda.

What about Hillary? Well, she’s must more guarded in what she says, but you can get a sense for her ideological mindset by looking at her new scheme to boost the capital gains tax.

Here’s some of what Ryan Ellis wrote for Americans for Tax Reform.

Hillary Clinton today proposed the most complex and Byzantine capital gains tax rate regime in history. …Under the Clinton plan, there would be six – yes, six — capital gains tax rates for those whose total taxable income puts them in the top 39.6 percent bracket. …or taxpayers not in the 39.6 percent bracket, we already have a graduated capital gains structure on assets held longer than a year. For taxpayers in this range, the rates could be 0, 15, 18.8, 20, or 23.8 percent. …her plan actually creates 10 different tax rates on capital gains, not counting those gains taxed as ordinary income due to their shorter duration of ownership. By anyone’s definition that’s really stupid tax policy. It will only serve to distort capital markets as investors will buy and sell not based on rational market signals, but on exogenous, arbitrary tax holding period considerations.

Not to mention that higher tax rates on investment will discourage risk-taking and entrepreneurship. And let’s not forget that it’s not a smart idea, from the perspective of competitiveness, to have the world’s highest capital gains tax rate. Or to pursue policies that will depress capital formation and thus lead to lower wages.

Now let’s get back to the main question. Is there a difference between Sanders and Clinton?

One could argue that Sanders has a more robust left-wing agenda. But that doesn’t make Clinton a moderate. Indeed, I challenge anyone to identify a single position she holds that would result in smaller government or less intervention.

The bottom line, as illustrated by this cartoon prepared by Jonathan Babington-Heina, is that Sanders and Clinton only differ in how fast they want to travel in the wrong direction.

P.S. This is the second cartoon from Jonathan I’ve shared. He also put together a superb cartoon that depicts the senseless damage caused by double taxation.

P.P.S. You also can get a sense of Hillary’s leftist mindest by looking at some of the crazy things she’s said over the years.

And to be balanced, Bernie also says crazy things. Let’s close with this example of political humor I saw on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/PoliticalLaughs/status/616357756157730816/photo/1

 

And here’s some more Hillary humor if you still haven’t received your recommended daily allowance.

I’ve had reporters ask me to comment

Marion-County-Sheriff

Photo: Marion County Sheriff’s Office

MICANOPY — The suspect who fired at a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) trooper on Interstate 75 in Alachua County was shot and killed in the nearby woods Saturday.

UPDATE: SUSPECT IDENTIFIED

“The Interstate has now opened northbound and traffic is no longer being diverted at the 374 mile marker,” the Alachua County Sheriff said. “The Trooper had arrived to assist a disabled vehicle when an unknown black male began firing at him, and then fled into the woods.”

The disabled vehicle was on northbound I-75 south of Gainesville in Micanopy. According to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, who assisted the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, the man was found dead after law enforcement officials made contact with the suspect. A confrontation occurred and the suspect is dead.

“The Marion County Sheriff’s Office, along with multiple other agencies, was called in to assist the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office in response to an armed subject in the area of Interstate 75 near Micanopy, where FHP reported that shots were fired. Law enforcement contained and searched the area to locate the suspect,” the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said. “After law enforcement made contact with the suspect, a confrontation did occur and the suspect is deceased. No law enforcement officers were injured. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has responded to take over the investigation.”

The interstate was closed while the search was conducted. At 2:30 p.m., only the southbound lanes were open.

Alachua County Sheriff spokesman Art Forgey said the unidentified black male shooter was associated with the broken down vehicle, but did not know whether he was the driver or a passenger. A motive for the shooting was not immediately known.

ALACHUA The suspect who fired at a

hillary-clinton-united-nations-march-10-2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters, Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Clinton conceded that she should have used a government email to conduct business as secretary of state, saying her decision was simply a matter of “convenience.” (Photo: AP/Seth Wenig)

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will appear in October before the Benghazi select committee investigating the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Libya, Clinton’s presidential campaign confirmed on Saturday.

“Earlier this week we were pleased for Secretary Clinton to receive an offer from Congressman (Trey) Gowdy to appear before the committee in a public hearing in October, and yesterday accepted his invitation,” campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said.

The development comes as reports surfaced that two inspector generals at the State Department have requested that the Department of Justice open a criminal probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server after finding reason to believe it was used for transmitting “hundreds of potentially classified e-mails.” The memo was notably written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.

“Committee Members on both sides have been aware of concerns about classified emails within the self-selected records turned over by Secretary Clinton. The Committee appreciates that Inspectors General appointed by President Obama have confirmed this is a serious and nonpartisan national security matter by any objective measure,” Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said in a statement following the reports. “The number of questions surrounding Secretary Clinton’s unusual email arrangement continues to grow. The best—the only way—to resolve these important factual questions is for her to turn over her server to the proper authorities for independent forensic evaluation.”

Mrs. Clinton claimed she used the one email account because it was more convenient, a claim that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. While sitting for an interview at the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women in Santa Clara, California, Hillary Clinton said that she uses at least two cell phones — an iPhone and a Blackberry.

The practice — which violated President Obama’s rules on record keeping, and likely the Federal Records Act — also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests. Clinton has faced tremendous backlash, and it has begun to show in the polls. Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, is now trailing the top Republican candidates in several key swing states, including Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. According to a new Quinnipiac University Poll, the former secretary of state can no longer dismiss her abysmal favorability and trustworthy numbers, while underscoring her leadership numbers and overall lead.

“Hillary Clinton’s numbers have dropped among voters in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. She has lost ground in the horserace and on key questions about her honesty and leadership,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “On being a strong leader, a key metric in presidential campaigns, she has dropped four to 10 points depending on the state and she is barely above 50 percent in each of the three states.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will

Planned-Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Federation of America HQ.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kty., a physician by profession, vowed to defund Planned Parenthood by any means necessary after two shocking videos were released. Friday, Sen. Paul fast-tracked his defund Planned Parenthood legislation by invoking Rule 14, which could allow for a Senate vote as early as next week.

“Since the inhumane acts of Planned Parenthood have surfaced, I have vowed to defeat and defund this taxpayer-funded organization. I am more appalled than ever by Planned Parenthood’s complete disregard for the sanctity of human life,” Sen. Paul said. “Today, I implemented Rule 14 and fast-tracked legislation to strip every dollar of Planned Parenthood funding. I will continue to lead this charge in defense of the unborn.”

A recent video released by the Center for Medical Progress captured PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact parts, while slurping down large glasses of wine and chopping down a salad. Nucatola is shown suggesting a price range of $30 to $100 per specimen, even though federal law prohibits altering the timing or method of abortion for the purposes of fetal tissue collection (42 U.S.C. 289g-1).

A second undercover video shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, haggling over payments for intact baby parts. Further, and more disturbing, Dr. Gatter offers to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body parts during a practice the group has repeatedly claimed they do not engage in.

Seven State Governments and three House committees have opened investigations into Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal body parts. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has called PPFA’s Senior Director of Medical Services to testify this month about the organization’s fetal tissue harvesting.

 

Rule 14 allows the legislation to “skip the committee process and be placed on the Senate calendar so it can be brought up for a floor vote

 

 

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kty., a physician by

florida-highway-patrol

UPDATE: (ALACHUA) — The suspect who fired at a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) trooper on Interstate 75 in Alachua County was found dead in the nearby woods Saturday.

READ FULL STORY

ORIGINAL STORY

A massive manhunt is underway for a black male after shots were fired at a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper on the stretch of I-75 near Micanopy, Florida. I-75 has been shutdown from Williston Road to County Road 234 while authorities search for the suspect, who fled into nearby woods off of the interstate.

“The closure is due to an armed suspect that fired several rounds from a handgun at a FHP Trooper,” Florida Highway Patrol said. “The Trooper had arrived to assist a disabled vehicle when an unknown black male began firing at him, and then fled into the woods.”

The officer was not hurt in the attack.

“A perimeter has been established and it is believed the suspect is contained within,” FHP added. “ASO [Alachua County] SWAT has been deployed to the location & are in the process of searching & attempting to locate the suspect. The Interstate northbound at the location will be closed an undetermined time. Stay tuned for the latest updates.”

A massive manhunt is underway for a

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of telling a “flat-out lie” about allowing an amendment to push through Ex-Im reauthorization. Cruz rose to deliver his remarks moments after McConnell had lined up a vote to reauthorize funding for the Export-Import Bank in the coming days, which expired on June 30.

READ ALSO — Cruz is Right, McConnell Did “Flat-Out Lie” About Ex-Im Bank Vote

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a 2016 Republican

ted-cruz-accuses-mitch-mcconnell-of-lying

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kty, on the senate floor for telling a “flat-out lie” to him and other Republican senators.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of telling a “flat-out lie” about allowing an amendment to push through Ex-Im reauthorization. Cruz rose to deliver his remarks moments after McConnell had lined up a vote to reauthorize funding for the Export-Import Bank in the coming days, which expired on June 30.

“It saddens me to say this. I sat in my office, I told my staff the majority leader looked me in the eye and looked 54 Republicans in the eye. I cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie, and I voted based on those assurances that he made to each and every one of us,” Cruz said. “What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie.”

However, while the media drones on-and-on about how Cruz’s comments are “an extraordinary departure from the norms of Senate behavior,” it is apparently lost on them that he is correct. As PPD previously reported, a source close to McConnell told PPD that the majority leader was not telling us the truth when confronted about the allegations.

Big business has been pushing hard for Ex-Im Bank reauthorization after its charter expired for the first time in more than 81 years of existence. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Boeing, GE, Business Roundtable and National Association of Manufacturers spent a combined $46.9 million on lobbying in the period between April 1 and June 30.

Now, they may have found an ally in the man who just recently assumed control of the Senate on the promise to end corporate welfare, among other conservative agenda items. PPD can confirm McConnell did in fact give assurances to Cruz and other GOP senators that there was no deal to allow a vote to renew the federal Export-Import Bank.

“Now the Republican leader is behaving like the senior senator from Nevada,” Cruz said. “We keep winning elections and then we keep getting leaders who don’t do anything they promised.”

The Export-Import Bank, which was established in 1934 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, supposedly exists to “facilitate exports and imports and the exchange of commodities between the United States and other Nations.” Proponents of the Ex-Im Bank argue that the loans, which are funded by money borrowed from the U.S. Treasury, are necessary to gain a competitive advantage in the global economy.

However, as PPD has repeated investigated and reported, the Ex-Im Bank perpetuates corporate welfare, corruption and crime at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. Last summer, big business Democrats led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is widely expected to take over for the soon-to-be retired Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, began kicking up lobbying and legislative efforts to save their crony cash cow. This year, big business spent more than ever to protect their interests, which are outlined below.

In 2013, Boeing received a whopping 30.3 percent of the share doled out by Ex-Im. During the second quarter of 2015, Boeing nearly tripled its spending on lobbying efforts from the previous quarter. Here’s a list of the top 10 spenders, according to Politico Influence (Ex-Im supporters in bold):

  1. U.S. Chamber of Commerce, $17.9 million
  2. American Medical Association, $12.4 million
  3. Boeing Co., $9.3 million
  4. General Electric Co., $8.5 million
  5. National Association of Realtors, $8.2 million
  6. Business Roundtable, $6.4 million
  7. U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, $5.1 million
  8. National Association of Manufacturers, $4.8 million
  9. PhRMA, $4.8 million
  10. American Hospital Association, $4.7 million

The list, unsurprisingly, is filled with the usual K-Street to Wall Street Ex-Im suspects, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce remained at the top of the list. The Chamber increased its spending by more than $4 million from the first quarter, when it spent $13.8 million. The Chamber continues to run TV ads in support of the bank, and continues to use fear tactics to make unsupported claims. A video posted on its website claims that the bank “supported 1.3 million American jobs over the past six years.” The claim simply does not hold up to scrutiny.

“McConnell will not allow conservatives to offer an amendment that prevents taxpayer money from funding Planned Parenthood, which was recently caught on video trying to sell the organs of aborted babies,” said Senate Conservatives Fund President Ken Cuccinelli. “If the Senate’s liberals get to bring the Ex-Im Bank back to life, Senate conservatives should be allowed to defund Planned Parenthood. They should also get votes to repeal ObamaCare, stop executive amnesty, force Iran to recognize Israel, and permanently ban Internet taxes.”

READ ALSO — WATCH: Cruz Accuses Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Lying on Senate Floor

Sen. Ted Cruz, a 2016 Republican presidential

irs-building-dc

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters building in Washington D.C. (Photo: AP)

Remember Sleepless in Seattle, the 1993 romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? Well, there should be a remake of that film entitled Clueless in Washington. But it wouldn’t be romantic and it wouldn’t be a comedy.

Though there would be a laughable aspect to this film, because it would be about an editorial writer at the Washington Post trying to convince people to feel sorry for the IRS. Here’s some of what Stephen Stromberg wrote on Wednesday.

Congress has done some dumb things. One of the dumbest is the GOP’s penny-wise-pound-foolish campaign to defund the Internal Revenue Service. …its mindless tantrum against the IRS has produced for taxpayers: a tax season that was “by far the worst in memory,” according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an agency watchdog.

Before I share any more of the article, I should point out that the “Taxpayer Advocate Service” isn’t a watchdog. It should be renamed the “Government Advocate Service” since its main goal is to increase the IRS’s budget.

But I’m digressing. Let’s continue with Mr. Stromberg’s love letter to tax collectors.

The underlying problem is that Congress has asked the IRS to do a lot more, such as administering a critical piece of Obamacare, but the GOP Congress won’t give the agency the funding it needs to do its work. …But good luck convincing Republicans to fix the IRS’s entirely predictable and avoidable problems. Not when that would mean restraining the impulse to act on anti-tax orthodoxy, blind populist anger and scandal-mongering about the IRS mistreating conservatives. In fact, Republicans want to double down on their nonsense budgeting, proposing deep cuts to the IRS last month.

Oops, time for another correction.

Stromberg is cherry picking data to imply that the IRS budget has been savaged.

If you look at the long-run data, however, you’ll see that the IRS now has almost twice as much money to run its operations as it did a few decades ago.

IRS-Budget

Federal resources historically allocated to the IRS via federal budget. Source: Dan Mitchell’s blog.

And that’s based on inflation-adjusted dollars, so we have a very fair apples-to-apples comparison.

Stromberg also wants us to sympathize with the bureaucrats because the tax code has been made more complex.

The underlying irrationality is the same: The IRS doesn’t write the tax code or health-care law, but the agency must apply these policies and engage with people affected by them, so it is an easy scapegoat.

Part of this passage is correct, and I’ve specifically pointed out that the tax code is mind-numbingly complex and that politicians deserve an overwhelming share of the blame for this sorry state of affairs.

That being said, the IRS goes beyond the law to make the system worse, as we saw when it imposed a regulation that put foreign tax law above American tax law. And when it arbitrarily rewrote the Obamacare legislation to enable additional subsidies.

In other words, it deserves to be scapegoated.

But there’s a bigger issue, one that Stromberg never even addresses. Why should we give more money to a bureaucracy that manages to find plenty of resources to do bad things?

Never forget, after all, that this is the bureaucracy that – in an odious display of bias – interfered with the electoral process by targeting the President’s opponents.

And then awarded bonuses to itself for this corrupt behavior!

Even more outrageous, the Washington Examiner reports today that the IRS still hasn’t cleaned up its act.

A series of new revelations Wednesday and Thursday put the Internal Revenue Service back under fire for its alleged efforts to curtail…conservative nonprofits. …the Government Accountability Office uncovered evidence that holes in the tax agency’s procedure for selecting nonprofit groups to be audited could allow bias to seep into the process. …lawmakers exposed the lack of safeguards that could prevent IRS officials from going after groups with which they disagreed. Meanwhile, the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch released documents Wednesday that suggested the IRS targeted the donors of certain tax-exempt organizations.

Does this sound like a bureaucracy that deserves more of our money?

If you’re still not sure how to answer, consider the fact that the IRS also somehow has enough money in its budget to engage in the disgusting “asset forfeiture” racket.

The Wall Street Journal recently opined on this scandal.

…a pair of new horror stories show why Americans dread any interaction with the vindictive tax man. Khalid Quran owns a small business in Greenville, North Carolina. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1997, opened a convenience store near a local airport, and worked long hours to give his four children more opportunity. After nearly two decades, Mr. Quran had saved $150,000 for retirement. Then in 2014 the IRS seized his bank account because he had made withdrawals that raised red flags under “structuring” laws that require banks to report transactions of more than $10,000. Mr. Quran had made transactions below that limit.

So even though Mr. Quran did nothing illegal and even though it’s legal to make deposits of less than $10,000, the IRS stole his money.

Just like money was stolen from the Dehko family.

Here’s the other example from the WSJ.

Maryland dairy farmer Randy Sowers…had $62,936.04 seized from his bank account because of the pattern of his deposits, though the money was all legally earned. …Mr. Sowers told his story to a local newspaper…a lawyer for Mr. Sowers asked…“why he is being treated differently.” Mr. Cassella replied that the other forfeiture target “did not give an interview to the press.” So much for equal treatment under the law.

Yes, you read correctly. If you have the temerity to expose the IRS’s reprehensible actions, the government will try to punish you more severely.

Even though the only wrongdoing that ever happened was the IRS’s confiscation of money in the first place!

So let’s celebrate the fact that the IRS is being subjected to some modest but long-overdue belt-tightening.

Notwithstanding Mr. Stromberg’s column, the IRS is not a praiseworthy organization. And many of the bureaucrats at the agency deserve our disdain.

The bottom line is that IRS budget cuts show that Republicans sometimes do the right thing.

And maybe if there are continued cuts and the current tax system actually does become unenforceable at some point, maybe politicians could be convinced to replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax.

P.S. Clueless in Washington won’t be the only remake out of DC if President Obama decides to go Hollywood after 2016. Indeed, I suspect his acting career would be more successful than mine.

Stephen Stromberg, an editorial writer at the

People's Pundit Daily
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