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Desperately Seeking a Pro-Growth Democrat
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- By Stephen Moore
The most recent Wall Street Journal political poll shows that Democrats have swerved into a deep ditch.
Only three of 10 voters have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, and that is the lowest this number has been for Democrats since Bill Clinton's first term in office. Republicans aren't very popular either -- but they have a big lead over the donkeys.
I'm not a cheerleader for the Republicans, and it's clear the GOP is not the solution to all our nation's problems. Republicans have been coconspirators in the runaway spending and debt crisis in Washington.
Trump Should Index the Capital Gains Tax for Inflation
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- By Stephen Moore
President Donald Trump should follow up on his historic "big, beautiful" tax bill with an extra booster shot for the economy by immediately indexing the capital gains taxes for inflation.
There is a reasonable chance he can do this without having to go through Congress. And our sources in the administration tell us Trump is interested in doing just that.
The tax on inflationary gains is patently unfair.
Consider a middle-class investor who bought a stock at the start of the Biden presidency for $10,000 and sold it off four years later at a valuation of $12,200. The investor would pay a tax of about $400 on the "gain" of $2,200. But over that time period, prices of everything rose on average by 22%, thanks to Bidenflation, so the investor didn't really gain anything.
The Biggest Conservative Victory in 30 Years
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- By Stephen Moore
Everyone knows that the "big, beautiful" tax bill signed into law on the Fourth of July lowers tax burdens for families and businesses. It also averts a $4 trillion tax increase starting next year. That's enough reason to heartily celebrate.
But what isn't well known is that this new law doesn't just change tax policy. It includes dozens of other long-sought policy goals -- what I call "hidden gems." Here is a list of some of the major policy victories:
The law is the most aggressive federal advancement of school choice by allowing low-income parents to direct education dollars to private, charter or Catholic schools that are better for their kids.
For America to Win the AI Race, Keep Government's Hands Off
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- By Stephen Moore
At the birth of the internet age in the early 1990s, the U.S. and Europe took opposite approaches to advancing this new economy-changing technology.
Europe tried the approach of industrial policy: They allowed government to regulate, subsidize and then tax the swarm of new tech companies that emerged.
Here in the U.S., Congress and the Clinton administration made a wiser choice. We passed laws that kept internet startups regulation-, tax- and lawsuit-free. It was the Wild West of startup technology companies. A Darwinian race to excellence and survival. Some of the big initial companies like AOL, Netscape and MySpace gave way to superior competitors like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
Congress Should Just Say No to a Remittance Tax
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- By Stephen Moore
The House-passed "big, beautiful" tax bill is a tremendous achievement and a giant sparkplug for growth. The bill extends all the Trump tax cuts of 2017, thus heading off a $4 trillion tax INCREASE next year. It expands health savings accounts, includes expensing of major capital and research expenditures by businesses, allows more money for school choice, and includes "no tax on tips" and no tax on overtime pay. And that's just for starters.
But there were also a few bad tax policy changes. One of the worst is the 3.5% tax on noncommercial "remittances" -- payments typically made by foreigners from U.S. financial institutions to parties outside the United States. Certainly, we need to tighten rules to make sure that money stored in the U.S. does not find its way into the hands of criminal syndicates, drug cartels or other bad actors.
Why the CBO Almost Always Gets It Wrong
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- By Stephen Moore
These days it seems that a mysterious group called "the CBO" rules the world, or at least Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, it's not very good at predicting things, and its bad calls can lead to bad policy results.
The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation predict what will happen with spending, tax revenues and deficits from new bills and congressional budgets.
They have made headlines with their absurd warning that the Trump tax bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts and other reforms like eliminating taxes on tips would add trillions to the debt over 10 years.
Trump's Own Regulators Declare War on Coal and Its Investors
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- By Stephen Moore
In one of the most convoluted lawsuits of all time, a cabal of state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission are now accusing financial firms BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard of monopolistic behavior. The complaint asserts that these firms bought coal stocks and then helped impose radical environmental restrictions on the companies they partially own so that coal output would fall and the price of coal would rise. The lawsuit alleges that this strategy generated "supra-competitive" profits for those investors.
Yes, Let's Attract the Best and the Brightest
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- By Stephen Moore
Situated on the outskirts of Sacramento is California's largest master-planned community, McClellan Park. It has homes, offices, restaurants, a hotel and even a 2-mile-long runway that serves jets. But 30 years ago, the location was a starkly different story: an Air Force base that had just been shuttered, costing 11,600 jobs.
Fundamental to this remarkable transformation was a federal program that incentivizes investment -- and stimulates job creation -- throughout the United States. That program, the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, still exists today. And amid uncertainty across the economy and in the financial markets, Republicans and Democrats alike should come together to support the program's expansion.
Trump's FTC Is Putting American Companies Last
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- By Stephen Moore
President Donald Trump's record as the deregulation president is nearly unparalleled. In his first 100 days in office, he has already identified hundreds of billions of dollars of potential deregulation savings in the areas of energy, education and housing.
Hooray.
But some of his new regulators in the Justice Department and at the Federal Trade Commission apparently didn't get the memo. The new FTC chairman, Andrew Ferguson, is pushing forward with lawsuits -- some left over from the Biden administration -- that could hobble U.S. businesses.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Former President Joe Biden's antitrust warriors, led by the notorious super-regulator Lina Khan saw a monopoly in any business that dared make a healthy profit.
Sorry, Fannie Mae: We Won't Get Fooled Again
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- By Stephen Moore
Anyone remember back in 2008 when the housing market collapsed and the stock market crashed, with many tens of millions of Americans seeing their lifetime savings nearly wiped out?
Apparently the politicians in Washington are suffering amnesia -- even though it was the worst crash since the Great Depression.
What else has been conveniently forgotten inside the swamp is that the institution that lost the most money and required the biggest tax bailout wasn't any of the major banks that teetered on the verge of bankruptcy but Fannie Mae -- the government-guaranteed enterprise that insures federal mortgages and was supposed to NEVER fail. Fanny received nearly $200 billion of taxpayer rescue funds.
Washington's Latest Tax Assault on Economic Success
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- By Stephen Moore
What is it about politicians in Washington that they just can't stand progress or the thought of anyone getting rich?
That's the attitude of many Democrats in Congress as they try to cripple the private equity and venture capital industries with higher tax rates. These financers are some of the most dynamic risk-takers on the economic playing field. They are disrupting the old stodgy banking and Wall Street financing networks.
The PE and VC track records in funding small businesses and turning them into the future gazelles is almost a uniquely American success story.
Big, Beautiful Tax Cuts Should Offset Any Tariff Increases
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- By Stephen Moore
President Donald Trump has predicted that his tariffs could raise as much as $6 trillion over the next decade in federal tax collections. These include up to 104% tariffs on China, plus the combination of reciprocal tariffs -- we charge them whatever they charge us. Also, don't forget the protectionist tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos, lumber, etc.
The tariff rates put on the table by Trump are higher than those at any other time in the last century, so it is no wonder we've seen a painful stock selloff, reducing asset values by well over $7 trillion.
But what the markets are missing is that Trump has also announced that money raised from the tariffs will be offset by other tax cuts. If that is the case, then the net impact of the tariffs could end up being a positive for the economy.
Why Democrats Hate DOGE and Love Waste
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- By Stephen Moore
If you haven't watched the Bret Baier interviews on Fox News with Elon Musk and the other executives who have given their time and expertise to exposing the rampant fraud and inefficiency of our federal government, I urge you to do so.
It will infuriate you -- and that's what we need right now.
These Department of Government Efficiency volunteers are on a patriotic mission to repair our ship of state. They are hunting down the rats and scoundrels who have played us (we the taxpayers) for fools for so many years. It's the greatest robbery -- more than $1 trillion of fraud and corruption -- in world history.
The FDA Can Save Lives by Keeping Copycat Drugs Off the Market
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- By Stephen Moore
For decades, the United States has led the world in pharmaceutical innovation -- developing drugs that combat cancer, heart disease, AIDS, diabetes and other killer diseases. One recent study found that "in health-sciences output in the Nature Index, the United States' Share is almost 8,500, higher than the next 10 leading countries combined."
The industry's research and development has saved and improved tens of millions of lives in the U.S. alone and perhaps 10 times that number around the world. Yet somehow Washington has come to regard the industry as a villain.
Want to Soak the Rich? Tax University Endowments.
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- By Stephen Moore
Republicans are searching for ways to "pay for" their tax cuts. Democrats want the rich to pay more tax. Here's a solution that should make everyone happy.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith is suggesting a tax on the $840 billion college endowments. These endowments will soon eclipse $1 trillion in size -- more money than the entire GDP of many countries.
It's high time that bloated and entitled universities pay their fair share for the government services they use.
For Whom the Zelle Tolls
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- By Stephen Moore
One of the more baffling lawsuits in the final days of the Biden administration was the complaint against Zelle, the popular money transfer network. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau argued that, despite Zelle's service being free, the network's users were being ripped off.
Now that the Trump administration has all but closed the CFPB down, this is the first of many lingering lawsuits that should be tossed out.
In its short, inglorious history, the CFPB harassed businesses with hundreds of millions of dollars of frivolous complaints that enriched trial lawyers, while doing nothing of consequence to actually help consumers.
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.
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