Proposed Airline Merger Would Bring More Competition and Lower Fares
- By Stephen Moore
If you want to see a classic case of how President Joe Biden's regulatory tendencies are strangling the U.S. economy and raising prices, look no further than the latest Justice Department efforts to kill an airline merger that is pro-consumer.
JetBlue has its sights on merging with a smaller and financially ailing airline, Spirit.
JetBlue's management believes the synergies between the two airlines will save over $300 million in costs. Spirit's shareholders (i.e., the airline's owners) have voted to approve the merger.
It's Official: Trump's Tax Cuts Paid for Themselves
- By Stephen Moore
How many times have you heard President Joe Biden or Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) berate the Trump tax cuts as "a giveaway to the rich"?
Biden and congressional Democrats now want to let expire major planks of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, former President Donald Trump's signature domestic achievement, particularly the incentives for American businesses to invest more here at home.
Biden's ESG Investment Rules Threaten Your Retirement Savings
- By Stephen Moore
President Joe Biden's Labor Department recently announced a new rule that will permit money managers to play politics with trillions of dollars of people's retirement savings.
The administration is pushing environmental, social and governance investing, which allows retirement fund managers to select stocks of companies based on their positions on social and environmental issues.
Put simply, retirement savings will be used as leverage to force companies to reduce their carbon emissions and establish racial and gender quotas and other social justice fads completely unrelated to securing a high return on workers' lifetime savings.
US Big Three Auto Companies Commit to Making Cars That People Don't Want
- By Stephen Moore
I grew up in a household with parents who were of the Greatest Generation. They lived and shouldered through the Great Depression, and then their lives and families were thrown into turmoil on Dec. 7, 1941. My grandfather worked for the War Department in Washington, D.C., and during World War II, my father served in the Pacific Theater.
Both my mother and father made a solemn vow that as long as they lived, they would never buy a German or a Japanese car. No matter how well they were made. They were the enemies. They were the ones who killed nearly half a million Americans. Period.
Republicans Should Just Say No to Any Budget That Funds 87,000 New IRS Agents
- By Stephen Moore
One of the biggest promises by Republicans in the 2022 election season was that if they won a majority in the House, they would defund the $80 billion that Biden wants to hire 87,000 new IRS agents.
But now they are about to agree to a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending deal with President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year. That includes the full funding for the IRS expansion.
Even Republicans Are All in on Washington's End-of-Year Spending Spree
- By Stephen Moore
The federal government is running annual $1 trillion to $2 trillion budget deficits, which is more than the entire gross domestic product of most nations. But if you believed that Republicans would take a chainsaw to the budget (figuratively) and slash the waste from the federal budget, then to paraphrase the "Oliver Twist" character of Fagin, the miser, "I think you had better think it out again."
So far, since the midterm elections, the Republicans in Congress seem to be doing just the opposite. The first decision by House Republicans when they learned they had won a slim majority of 222 to 213 was to bring back earmarks. These are bridges to nowhere, peanut subsidies and sports arenas for local professional teams paid for by federal taxpayers.
The Night the Lights Went Out in Europe
- By Stephen Moore
Politico Europe, a publication marinated in green politics, has named Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of its "power players of the year" -- for, in the publication's words, "advancing Europe's green agenda."
"By invading Ukraine and manipulating energy supplies to undermine European support for Kyiv, Putin has achieved something generations of green campaigners could not -- clean energy is now a fundamental matter of European security," the news outlet explained approvingly.
No, America Does Not Owe the World Climate 'Reparations'
- By Stephen Moore
I've made the case in previous columns that the climate change movement is mostly a climate change hustle. Let's be real. None of this is about changing the temperature of the Earth. Even the most naive environmental activist can't really believe that building windmills and driving Teslas is going to cool the planet.
This is all about money. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of government handouts.
Can Republicans Make Congress Great Again?
- By Stephen Moore
There's no sugarcoating the disappointing results of the midterm elections.
Even with one of the worst-performing presidents in modern times, Joe Biden, and even with 2 out of 3 voters saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, Republicans couldn't make the sale to independent voters.
But the overall dismal number of House seats captured by Republicans wasn't as bad as the overall national vote count. Out of roughly 100 million ballots cast for House races, the Republicans won 51%, and the Democrats won 47%. Overall, more than 4 million more voters chose a Republican for Congress over a Democrat.
Can Republicans Make Congress Great Again?
- By Stephen Moore
There's no sugarcoating the disappointing results of the midterm elections.
Even with one of the worst-performing presidents in modern times, Joe Biden, and even with 2 out of 3 voters saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, Republicans couldn't make the sale to independent voters.
But the overall dismal number of House seats captured by Republicans wasn't as bad as the overall national vote count. Out of roughly 100 million ballots cast for House races, the Republicans won 51%, and the Democrats won 47%. Overall, more than 4 million more voters chose a Republican for Congress over a Democrat.
America Was Built on Coal. Now Biden Wants to Abolish It
- By Stephen Moore
The one promise that President Joe Biden has faithfully kept is his pledge to "close down" fossil fuels. We get two-thirds of our energy in America from fossil fuels, and almost one-third of our power comes from coal. That's quadruple the amount of energy we get from wind and solar, which are niche forms of energy.
But Biden doesn't see it that way. He recently reiterated his pledge to end coal production altogether.
"No one is building new coal plants because they can't rely on it," Biden said on Nov. 4 while in California. "We're going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar."
Joe Biden Is the King of Debt and Deficits
- By Stephen Moore
Imagine someone close to you has a drinking problem. Night after night, he goes out to the bars on wild binges, chugging down 10 to 12 beers a night. But then, in a supreme effort to reform himself, the drunkard cuts his consumption down to a six-pack every night.
He starts boasting of his amazing self-control and good behavior.
That's analogous to President Joe Biden's tall tale that he's one of the greatest paragons of fiscal responsibility in modern times. Here's Biden on Oct. 21 discussing his budgetary record at a White House event.
Who Really Shut Down Our Businesses and Schools?
- By Stephen Moore
A big issue that has emerged in the final days of the midterm election campaigns is the lockdowns of our schools and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The public saw with the abysmal test scores of our children the severe and lasting damage done. Voters are angry, and they should be. Lockdowns were a tragic mistake with very small health benefits but giant costs to society.
So, who's responsible for the abuse of our children? We are in the midst of historical revisionism about what happened and who did it.
Biden's Destroying the Economy. Is It Intentional?
- By Stephen Moore
Everywhere I go, people are mystified about President Joe Biden's economic agenda. So few of the policies comport with basic common sense that I'm asked the same question over and over: Is Biden intentionally trying to take a wrecking ball to the economy?
Is this all part of some diabolical plan, the "great reset," to end our system of free market capitalism and replace it with some form of big government socialism?
Biden keeps saying that he wants to be a historic president who will "transition" the country into a new worker's paradise where no one uses fossil fuels or electricity or cars and equality is paramount, ahead of growth and prosperity. Is he taking us there with no regard for the collateral damage to America?
The Left Is Using Science 'Consensus' To Shut Down Free Speech in America
- By Stephen Moore
It was about eight to 10 years ago that the Left made a unilateral decision to shut down all opposition and any skepticism about climate change by pronouncing that the debate was over.
The "scientific consensus" had been reached, as if sent down on tablets from God, that mankind was causing the rapid warming of the planet. Period. End of argument. Doubters will be denounced as science deniers and stripped of their science credentials and muzzled by the speech police.
The New Global Virus Is Runaway Government Spending and Debt
- By Stephen Moore
When new British Prime Minister Liz Truss suggested lowering the United Kingdom's highest tax rate from 45% to 40%, along with a 1% reduction in the income tax rate for all taxpayers, the bond markets and the central bankers around the world went stark raving mad.
The academic pinheads at the International Monetary Fund trashed the tax cut as irresponsible. The bond vigilantes started selling Britain's bonds. And the Bank of England, which had also savaged the tax cut idea, stepped in to buy bonds to stop the bleeding.
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Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy." To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
