Tag: Omnibus

Three Martini Lunch

Omnibus Disgrace, 3 Martini Lunch Tax Break, ‘Die Hard’ Capitalists

16 5
Hosted by Greg Corombos, Jim Geraghty

Join Jim and Greg as they fume over the obscene process by which Congress shoveled a lot of wasteful spending into the combined omnibus and COVID relief spending bill that will do some good for small businesses. But while disgusted with the process, they are excited about the doubled tax deduction for three martini lunches! And they address comments from Die Hard director John McTiernan that the film is anti-capitalist, but they just might veer off into other aspects of this cinematic masterpiece.

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Three Martini Lunch

Bolton Replaces McMaster, GOP’s Ugly Omnibus, Millennials Love Doing Taxes

0 0
Hosted by Greg Corombos

Teddy Kupfer of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer President Trump’s selection of John Bolton as National Security Adviser and look forward to his tough stance on North Korean nukes and the Iran nuclear deal while liberals fear that Bolton will start bombing everyone. They also unload on the bloated $1.3 trillion omnibus that the majority of Republican representatives and senators approved, much to the delight of Democrats and the fury of fiscal conservatives. Teddy and Greg understand the desire of Republicans to rebuild the military but find the reckless spending in other areas unacceptable. They scratch their heads trying to figure out why more than half of millennials actually enjoy doing their taxes. And they offer a champagne toast to the late Democratic Georgia Gov. and Sen. Zell Miller and reflect upon his memorable keynote address at the Republican convention in 2004.

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Three Martini Lunch

Austin Bomber Dead, Fiscal Conservatism is Dead, Congratulate-Gate

1 0
Hosted by Greg Corombos, Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America briefly grouse about D.C.area drivers in inclement weather before sipping their martinis. Then, they welcome the end of the Austin mail bombing horrors as the suspect apparently blows himself up as police close in on him. They also fume as the GOP-led Congress pursues yet another omnibus spending bill with virtually no fiscal restraint in sight, leading Jim to declare that “fiscal conservatism is dead.” And they sigh as President Trump defies his staff to congratulate Vladimir Putin on “winning” his election and because a disgruntled Trump staffer then leaked classified information to the media.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Congress Should Have Let the Sun Go Down on Solar Subsidies

David Williams
David Williams
16 9
 

shutterstock_79128529And in one fell swoop through the 2,000-page omnibus spending bill, Congress again saddled American taxpayers with billions in handouts to the perpetually foolish and failing solar industry. In what is sure to foster the very same practices that led to the infamous Solyndra debacle, renewable energy handouts through the Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) are now guaranteed until at least 2022. In other words, don’t expect ITC or its cohorts to vanish any time soon.

While solar stocks soared after the news broke of Congress’s ill-advised extension of the ITC, taxpayers should remain skeptical of the industry’s so-called success. Despite gargantuan subsidies over the past five decades, the solar industry has yet to make a convincing case for itself. In fact, there is little evidence of success. The fact is that a coddled solar industry simply can’t make it on its own.

There are many egregious recent failures of the American solar policy. As part of the Obama Administration’s solar loan program through the Department of Energy (DOE), a Spain-based solar company has received $2.7 billion in taxpayer funds since 2010. Counted among President Obama’s favorite solar companies, Abengoa solar plants across the US have massively underperformed.

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Member Post

FredösphereJoined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member
Fredösphere
14 8
 

I don’t know about you, but I’m still steaming about the Omnibus. Today I read “The Omnibus Dilemma” by Liam Donovan which blames the debacle on factors other than dark conspiracies among “the Establishment”. He mentions the failure of the spending hawks in the House to engage the negotiation process, but he puts the main […]

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David Deeble
David Deeble
12 8
 

How safe are your investments? Experts say the market is due for huge correction at any moment. The warning signs are everywhere: an unprecedented 18 trillion dollars in debt, loose-as-a-goose fiscal policy. And thanks to solar subsidies, politicians are now charging us for the sun. Preview Open

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. New Budget Deal Puts National Debt Back on the Rise

James Pethokoukis
James Pethokoukis
10 7
 

Washington in action! From the New York Times:

The House on Friday morning overwhelmingly approved a $1.15 trillion spending measure, as part of a sweeping, year-end fiscal deal that also includes a package of tax breaks worth more than $620 billion for businesses and low-income workers. The Senate was also set to approve the legislation, bundled into a single bill, in a fast-track series of votes later Friday morning. …

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Promoted from the Ricochet Member Feed by Editors Created with Sketch. Mike Lee Knows the Score

HeartofFLA
HeartofFLA
60 27
 

393px-Mike_Lee_113th_CongressAlthough he’s not my senator, I follow Mike Lee on Facebook. He posted this comment regarding the Omnibus bill. It’s dead-on. We know the system is broken. It’s going to take the people to fix it.

Here we are again: another year of legislative dysfunction capped by an undemocratic, un-republican process that uses the threat of another manufactured crisis to impose on an unwilling country the same broken government policies that have repeatedly failed the people they are supposed to serve. The bill moving through Congress today and tomorrow – made up of the omnibus spending bill and tax extenders package – and the process that produced it are an affront to the Constitution and an insult to the American people. I’m not even talking about the substance of the bill, which is bad enough. I’m talking about the way it was produced. A small handful of leaders from the two parties got together behind closed doors to decide what the nation’s taxing and spending policies would be for the next year. And then, after several weeks, the negotiators emerged – grand bargain in hand – confident that the people they deliberately excluded from the policymaking process would now support all 2,242 pages of the legislative leviathan that they cooked up. This is not how a self-governing – or self-respecting – institution operates, and everyone here knows it.

He continues:

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