Pushback on VP Kamala Harris’ Tax Proposal Plan Grows as Costs Are Counted

Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris’s tax proposal plan is getting significant pushback from Congress members and others as the costs of tax hikes on the American people across the political spectrum are being examined.

Upon a closer look at Harris’s tax proposals, an economist, a New York Times reporter, a small business owner advocate, and members of Congress all voiced their concerns over what the plan entails. Most of them note how the economy will be negatively impacted by her plan and the real-world implications for everyday Americans.

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Fact Checker Dings Sen. Bob Casey for ‘Mostly False’ Claim ‘Greedflation’ Caused Higher Prices in Pennsylvania

Bob Casey

Fact checking website PolitiFact on Wednesday issued a “Mostly False” rating for the claim by Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) that higher prices paid by Pennsylvanians are caused by “greedflation,” or corporate greed.

The fact checker reported that while prices have sometimes increased higher than inflation since 2019, “most economists” told it “rising costs for goods and labor have been inflation’s primary drivers” of higher costs, while Federal Reserve regional banks have published studies which “cast doubt on the role of corporate greed in driving inflation.”

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Dave McCormick Campaign Launches ‘Bobflation’ Calculator to Show Inflated Costs Under Biden-Harris, Sen. Bob Casey

Bob Casey

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick on Wednesday released its Casey Inflation Calculator, a website known as Bobflation.com that charts price increases for popular Pennsylvania purchases and everyday necessities.

“Pennsylvania’s iconic food and experiences are becoming increasingly unaffordable because of Kamala Harris and Bob Casey’s reckless spending,” said McCormick in a statement. “See for yourself just how much prices have increased with our Casey Cost Calculator.”

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China Poised to Cut Off US Military from Key Mineral as America’s Own Reserves Lay Buried Under Red Tape

Mineral mining

China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Chinese government announced on August 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has been navigating red tape for years to develop a mine in Valley County, Idaho,  that could decrease reliance on the Chinese supply of antimony, but the slow permitting process is getting in the way, energy experts told the DCNF.

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Credit Card Debt Hits Record $1.14 Trillion

Credit Card

More Americans are struggling financially as savings are significantly down and debt and delinquencies are up compared to four years ago.

Savings and disposable income are significantly down when comparing federal data under the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.

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One in Three Jobs Biden Admin Announced over Course of a Year Didn’t Actually Exist, Revisions Show

Work Meeting

Over a third of the more than 3 million jobs the Biden administration announced were added in initial reports between April 2023 and March 2024 did not actually exist, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Including monthly revisions, the Biden administration overstated the number of jobs in the U.S. economy by 1.18 million in the year through March, accounting for approximately 36% of the 3.24 million jobs initially claimed, according to data from the BLS calculated by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The massive revision, along with a disappointing July jobs report that showed the U.S. economy adding 61,000 fewer nonfarm payroll jobs than economists anticipated, has heightened fears of a recession.

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Taxpayer-Funded Group Offers $30,000 to Illegal Aliens to Buy Homes

Home Buyers

A far-left organization that has received funding from taxpayer dollars is offering up to $30,000 to illegal aliens so that they can purchase homes in the United States.

As the Daily Caller reports, the Hacienda Community Development Corp. (Hacienda CDC) is participating in a down payment assistance program in Oregon called “Camino a Casa.” The initiative is explicitly only available for non-citizens, while American citizens are ineligible. The $30,000 handouts are branded as down payment assistance for illegals who are attempting to purchase new homes.

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Pennsylvania’s Gambling Habit Costs More than Just Money

People Gambling

Continuing its usual trend, gambling revenues in Pennsylvania keep climbing year over year.

Along with dozens of other states that have legalized more forms of betting, however, so has a financial problem for residents.

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Commentary: Solar Company Benefiting from IRA Has Forced Labor Problem

Solar Panel Installation

Vice President Kamala Harris was “proud to cast the tie-breaking vote” for the Inflation Reduction Act. Would she be proud if her administration’s solar subsidies fund supported forced labor in China?

That may be the case with Hanwha Qcells, a South Korean solar company operating in Georgia. Bloomberg recently reported that two Chinese suppliers of the company obtained polysilicon for solar panel components from companies sanctioned by the U.S. government for employing forced Uyghur labor. Hanwha and their Qcells plant leadership deny these allegations, but Bloomberg reports “that the company offers assurances but no public details of its polysilicon sourcing.”

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Report Challenges Harris’ Assertion That Higher Food Prices Equal Corporate Greed

Grocery Shopping

Rising grocery store prices over the last few years aren’t the fault of farmers or “greedy” corporations, a conservative North Carolina research organization concludes in a new documentary series and report.

Instead, higher energy prices and more regulations are the culprit, according to the John Locke Foundation documentary series Sowing Resilience.

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Biden Admin Overcounted Job Growth Estimates by Nearly a Million

People working in an office

The federal government overestimated the number of jobs in the U.S. economy by 818,000 between April 2023 and March 2024, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday, stoking fears of a slowdown in the U.S. economy.

Economists at Goldman Sachs (GS) and Wells Fargo anticipated the government had overestimated job growth by at least 600,000 in that span, while economists at JPMorgan Chase had predicted a lesser decline of 360,000, according to Bloomberg. The downward revision follows a trend of the BLS overestimating the number of nonfarm payroll jobs added, with the cumulative number of new jobs reported in 2023 roughly 1.3 million less than previously thought as of February 2024.

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Ford Ditching Plans for Electric Vehicle SUV as Market Struggles Continue

Ford EV plant

Ford said Wednesday that it is canceling its plans to build a three-row electric SUV as the wider U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market continues to struggle.

The company announced that it expects to take up to $1.9 billion in write downs and other special charges related to its decision after losing billions of dollars on its EV product line in 2023. In addition to canceling its three-row electric SUV, Ford is also pushing back its plans to roll out an electric pickup truck model until 2027, a one-year setback.

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Commentary: Two Years On, the IRA Is Exactly What Its Critics Said It Would Become

Joe Biden

In a recent interview, World Energy Council Secretary General Angela Wilkinson told me that one of the main impediments to the energy transition today is a lack of what she calls “systems thinking.”

“Energy transitions are a change in the organization of society,” she pointed out. “They’re not a simple case of swapping out one technology for another and everything else stays the same. Yet, we have this very simplistic narrative that we can take the oil system, we can put renewables in, it’s going to happen immediately, and nothing else will change. It’s like saying we’re going to take your thighbone out, but we’d like you to run a marathon.”

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Commentary: With Food Costs and Price Controls Bread Lines May Be Ahead

Kamala Harris

Even the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post could not stomach the new proposal from Kamala Harris to place price controls on food. The headline of the opinion piece from Catherine Rampell read:

“When your opponent calls you a ‘communist,’ maybe don’t try price controls?”

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Food Stamp Costs Are on the Way Down but Still Far Higher than Pre-Pandemic Days

Grocery Shopping

The cost of food assistance in the U.S. has dropped from its peak during the pandemic, but is still 23% higher than it was during pre-pandemic times, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what used to be called food stamps, peaked in costs December 2022 at $11.07 billion that month. That monthly cost dropped to $7.51 billion as of April 2024. There were about 41.6 million people collecting SNAP benefits as of April 2024.

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Tim Walz Gave Almost $100K in COVID-19 Funds to ‘Abortion Doula’ Trainers

Tim Walz

Presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz directed almost $100,000 in COVID-19 relief funds to an organization specializing in “abortion doula” services, state contracts show.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, spent almost $2 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds without the approval of the state Legislature, using his emergency powers, according to the Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News.

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Housing Costs Surge in July, Accounting for 90 Percent of Total Inflation

Home for sale

The cost of housing surged in July, accounting for nearly 90 percent of total inflation, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released Wednesday.

Shelter costs rose 5.1 percent year-over-year and 0.4 percent month-over-month, after rising 0.2 percent in June, the BLS showed. The 0.4 percent monthly increase was greater than Bank of America economists’ expectations of 0.3 percent, according to investment research firm Morningstar.

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Kamala Harris to Roll Out First Major Economic Policy: ‘Price Controls’ for Food and Groceries

Family at grocery store

Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to roll out a proposal to impose a federal ban on supposed corporate “price-gouging” on food and groceries, according to The Hill.

Harris will announce the plan during a Friday speech detailing her economic agenda in North Carolina, where she will blame corporate consolidation and greed for the increased prices Americans are paying for their food and groceries, according to The Hill. The proposal to attribute inflation to corporate greed echoes a common refrain from the Biden administration, which has consistently tried to pin responsibility for inflation on price gouging instead of its massive spending agenda.

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Consumer Prices Rise in Latest Federal Inflation Data

Consumer prices rose again last month after dipping in June, according to newly released federal inflation data.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday released its Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation, which showed that consumer prices rose 0.2% in July, part of a 2.9% increase over the past 12 months.

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Inflation Ticks Up in New Federal Data

Corn Farm

Newly released federal inflation data shows that the Producer Price Index, a leading marker of inflation, rose last month.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the data, which showed a 0.1 percent increase in July, part of a 2.2 percent increase in the previous 12 months.

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Federal Government Borrowed $5 Billion a Day in Fiscal Year 2024

Congress Spending

So far in the fiscal year 2024, the federal government has had to borrow about $5 billion every day.

The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday the federal budget deficit was $1.5 trillion for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2024, which covers October through July.

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Proposal Suggests Fully Funding Veterans Affairs to Avoid Missing October Distributions

Veterans

With a looming deadline to fund benefits to about 7 million veterans in October, and Congress out until Sept. 9, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and six colleagues have filed legislation to get full funding.

A Republican and independent are among the six. Veterans Affairs is facing a deficit of about $15 billion the remainder of this year and next – a deficit larger than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, says one senator.

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Commentary: Forced Abortion Is Part of Dark World of Surrogacy

Brittney Pearson was a mother of four and 24 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer—a tragic enough situation. To make a bad situation worse, though, the Sacramento native was pregnant as a surrogate mother for a gay couple.

Upon being informed of the cancer diagnosis, the two men demanded that Pearson abort the child.

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Electric Vehicle Owners Getting Hit with Negative Equity as Depreciation Crushes Used Electric Vehicle Values

Tesla Showroom

Between safety and reliability issues, as well as a dearth of charging stations, electric vehicle owners have been having quite a bit of buyer’s remorse, and now they may have another reason to go back to gas cars — EVs are rapidly depreciating.

Rental company Hertz announced in 2021 it would buy 100,000 EVs from Tesla, only to find lackluster interest from renters. In January, the Hertz announced it was selling off 20,000 of the vehicles, with prices as low as $25,000. Vehicle depreciation cost the company $588 million in the first quarter of this year compared to the last quarter of 2023.

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Analysis: June Unemployment 352,000 Under Biden-Harris, 1.47 Million Unemployed Since 2023

The U.S. unemployment rate once again ticked up in the month of June to 4.3 percent as another 352,000 Americans said they were unemployed, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Markets are crashing in response.

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LGBT Nonprofit Director Reportedly Used Donor Money to Fund Lavish Lifestyle

Sarah Kate Ellis

The executive director of a large LGBT nonprofit allegedly spent the organization’s money on a lavish personal lifestyle, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Sarah Kate Ellis, chief executive of GLAAD, an LGBT advocacy group, spent large sums of donor’s money on expenses such as remodeling her home office with a chandelier, renting a Cape Cod property, first class flights and luxury hotels, according to the NYT’s review of expense reports from January 2022 to June 2023. The expenses may be in violation of both the organization’s guidelines and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules, legal experts told the NYT.

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Shoplifting Rose Twenty-Four Percent This Year, No End in Sight

Macy's department store entrance

Shoplifting has soared in the U.S. in 2024, forcing many stores to leave cities and continuing a trend in recent years.

Shoplifting has risen 24 percent in the first half of 2024 alone, according to newly released data from the Council on Criminal Justice.

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House Judiciary Requests Evidence from over 40 Advertisers Accused of ‘Collusive’ Activities

Jim Jordan leading House Judiciary Committee GARM hearing

The House Judiciary Committee has sent letters to over 40 American and foreign companies asking for documents related to what it claims are “collusive” activities as part of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). 

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National Debt Reaches $35 Trillion for First Time in U.S. History

National Debt

The national debt surpassed $35 trillion on Monday for the first time in U.S. history as exorbitant federal spending continues under President Joe Biden.

Since Biden was inaugurated, the national debt has increased by over $7 trillion, from $27.7 trillion on January 20, 2021 to now over $35 trillion as of July 29, 2024. If the debt were to be divided among the roughly 258.3 million adults in the U.S., each adult would have roughly $135,500.

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Commentary: Kamala Harris Is a Threat to Entry-Level Jobs

Waiter

The American job market has significantly downshifted as consumers, who drive the economy, are tapped out from the ongoing cost-of-living crisis under the Biden-Harris administration.

According to Friday’s employment report, only 115,000 jobs were created in July (67,000 using the more accurate household survey).

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U.S. Job Growth Slows to a Crawl as Unemployment Rises

Business Meeting

The U.S. added 114,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July as the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.

Economists anticipated that the country would add 175,000 jobs in July compared to the 206,000 added in initial estimates for June, and that the unemployment rate would remain stable at 4.1%, according to U.S. News and World Report. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell noted in a press conference on Wednesday that a continued slowdown in the labor market could be a sign of further softening in the economy and contribute to a possible cut to the federal funds rate and an easing in harsh credit conditions that have weighed on Americans.

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Analysis: Federal Fiscal Burden Consumes 93 Percent of America’s Wealth

Based on data from a U.S. Treasury report, the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. This staggering figure equals 93% of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion.

Unlike other measures of federal red ink that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government resources, the figure of $142 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and includes the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the financial burden that today’s Americans are leaving to their children and future generations.

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Hurricane Beryl to Cost Americans Nationwide Nearly $32 Billion

Destruction of Hurricane Beryl

The devastation Hurricane Beryl left in its wake is estimated to cost taxpayers nationwide between $28 billion and $32 billion, according to an AccuWeather analysis. The losses to Texas, which was hardest hit, are estimated to be several billion.

Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas, on July 8 as a Category 1 storm. It then made its way northeast, fueling tornadoes in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, up into Arkansas and Missouri. The storm turned into a tropical rainstorm moving into the Midwest and New England, causing flooding, localized tornadoes and strong winds.

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Janet Yellen Calls for $78 Trillion to Tackle Climate Change

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a speech in Belem, Brazil, on Saturday that the price tag for a global transition to a low-carbon economy amounts to $78 trillion in financing through 2050.

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National Study Finds Giving Americans $1,000 per Month Results in Less Productivity

People Getting Money

Giving Americans $1,000 per month in taxpayer-funded guaranteed income makes them worse off, says a new three-year, 3000-participant study. The National Bureau of Economic Research’s massive study found recipients and their partners work and earn less, with the negative effect on wages and earnings getting worse over time.

While proponents of universal basic income theorized such programs would improve non-economic metrics for recipients, the study surprisingly showed leisure time only increased as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self improvement. Transfers also reduced recipients’ non-transfer incomes significantly, with the study finding “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”

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U.S. Oil, Gas Hit Record Production Despite Opposition from OPEC, Activists, and Biden Administration

Oil Rig

The United States is producing more oil now than any nation in the world has ever produced. In 2008, the U.S. produced only 5 million barrels of oil a day. Last year, the country produced 13 million barrels daily.

The United States’ record-breaking production is often used to knock back the argument President Joe Biden’s energy policy aims to minimize domestic fuel fuel production – to cut carbon emission and make way for more renewable energy.

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Woke 2.0: ESG Critics Say the Same Movement Marches on, Only with a New Name

BlackRock began renaming environmental, social and governance (ESG) earlier this year. It’s now calling it “transition investing.”

The company recently updated its climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines. The document makes no mention of ESG, but it shows in many ways, the world’s largest investment manager with $10 trillion in assets under management is still pursuing many of the same goals.

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Kamala Harris’ Direct Connection to Bidenflation: a Tie-Breaking Senate Vote for Stimulus Package

Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the first COVID-19 stimulus package in 2021 which led to inflation, in what critics call a sign of what’s to come in a possible Harris administration.

Harris, who is the President of the Senate, has cast the most tie-breaking votes in the Senate of any vice president, a total of 33 thus far. Her second tie-breaker was for the stimulus package at the beginning of the Biden administration, which has significantly impacted the economy, as inflation has skyrocketed.

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U.S. Economic Growth Beats Expectations in Second Quarter

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.8 percent in the second quarter of 2024, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday.

Higher growth in the second quarter follows poor growth in the first quarter of 2024, which measured 1.4 percent after being revised down from an initial estimate of 1.6 percent, according to the BEA. Economists expected that GDP would increase by around 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2024, in line with typical U.S economic growth rates.

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Chinese-Owned EV Company Showered Dems with Campaign Contributions

BYD Car

The U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer and its top executive have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to Democrats in recent years.

Stella Li, a top executive for BYD Americas, and the company itself have given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to Democratic candidates and organizations in California and beyond over the past decade, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of federal and state political spending records. Based in China, BYD is the biggest EV producer in the world, and Congress moved in January to ban the Pentagon from buying its batteries due to security risks, according to Bloomberg News.

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Commentary: New Paper Finds Childcare Regulations May Be Stifling Fertility

Family Photo

The population bust has made its way into popular discussion about the looming issues we face as a country and a world. After centuries with a growing population, humanity is finally projected to begin to shrink by the end of this century.
The realization of the downsides of fewer brains has dawned on many, including Elon Musk, who views it as a major problem:

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