Personal Economics 101

Given the recent events in the Middle East, how dangerous is this Biden energy policy? Biden abused his power when he drained our Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an attempt to lower oil and gas prices, so his popularity wouldn't wane. While that didn't work, he has placed this country in a perilous position. As if his open borders wasn't threat enough. And it's also worth remembering that Chuck Schumer blocked Trump's request to buy 77 million barrels in March 2020, when lockdowns had pushed the spot price close to zero:

Eagle Pass is the latest Texas town to be overwhelmed by our border crisis. It has 28,000 residents, two hospitals, and a police force of 100 people. Thousands of migrants are arriving in the town every day. Mayor Rolando Salinas issued a disaster declaration. Over just three days of this crisis, three migrants died near the crossing, including a three-year-old. Migrants are overwhelming the border because the Biden administration dismantled the web of executive orders and the remain-in-Mexico policy that successfully stopped the crisis under the last administration. The new amnesty for Venezuelans will not improve matters. This humanitarian disaster is a choice Biden made. (National Review, Sept 28, 2023) Eagle Pass, Texas Joe Biden's Intentional Crisis The continuing incursion of illegal border crossers into the United States is the most astonishing story in American politics. There have been days recently in which 10,000 people crossed illegally into the country -- and remember,...

By Victor Davis Hanson Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 million and 8 million illegal entries across the now-nonexistent southern border of the U.S. The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist. But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it? The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it finally had secured the border by early 2020. Yet almost all the Trump administration’s successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021. Construction of the wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory canceled. The disastrous Obama-era “ catch and release ” policy of immigration...

American Has Fallen, And Can't Get Up ...There’s no denying the crisis. In some areas, the border between Texas and Mexico looks like a refugee camp in sub-Saharan Africa. There are thousands of African and Latin American migrants coming through daily. More than two million came last year, over 5,000 per day, and nearly as many will come this year. ...That hardly means we’re helpless to stop the flow. This year, for the first time, US Border Control is encountering more migrants from outside Latin America than from within it. That means people are flying from Africa to Latin America and entering through Mexico. Is this part of a plan by Democratic leaders to expand the voting rolls? Some Republicans say so. And in California, some progressive politicians want to give undocumented immigrants the right to vote. They already provide official California state driver’s licenses and IDs. But if that was the plan, it’s turning the nation against them The migrants are overwhelming not ju...

from Gary D. Halbert's "Between the Lines " President Joe Biden officially kicked off his 2024 re-election campaign in August, and he has been crisscrossing the country with campaign stops since then. His main re-election pitch is that the US economy is surging as a result of his economic policies. On that subject, the president repeatedly touts that the US economy has added almost  13.5 million new jobs  since he took office in January 2021. If true, that would be more jobs than created by any previous president over four years. The question is:  Is it true?  The answer is a little complicated but I’ll sort it out for you below. The fact is, nearly 13.5 million jobs have been gained since Mr. Biden took office. But what is critical to realize is that the vast majority of those new jobs were simply  businesses which shut down during Covid and are now reopening  – and calling back their laid-off workers. The issue when it comes to President Biden claiming he...

Opinion By the Washington Examiner The decision of Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) to bus immigrants from Texas to New York City is putting a squeeze on President Joe Biden , who refuses to enforce immigration laws. It has made every community in the nation a border community, and Democrats are starting to squeal. This Wednesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivered his strongest condemnation of Biden’s border policies yet, telling a crowd of wealthy Upper West Side Manhattans, “I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.” “We have to feed, clothe, house, educate their children, wash their laundry sheets, give them everything they need,” Adams continued. “One time, we were just getting Venezuela. Now we’re getting Ecuador. Now we’re getting Russian-speaking coming through Mexico. Now we’re getting western Africa.” “Every community in this city is going to be impacted,” Adams said. “We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut — every service i...

Jack Spencer, The Daily Signal Just last month, President Joe Biden took a major swipe at America’s energy independence when he declared nearly a million acres of uranium-rich land outside of Grand Canyon National Park off limits to energy development . Turns out that was just the setup jab. The knockout punch is on its way. According to reports, Biden wants to cancel drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, which would deny Americans access to around a total of 11 billion barrels of oil (though it could be much more). That is a lot of oil. Canceling drilling when Saudi Arabia continues to cut production makes even less sense. That’s because this decision will continue to chill gas and oil development in the United States, meaning that Americans will not only lose this oil but the oil production that is forgone because of the political environment Biden has created . No company, after all, will risk the massive amounts of capital necessary to develop new ene...

Joe Biden signed into law the horrific Inflation Acceleration Act – which, as you know, increases government taxes and spending by roughly ANOTHER $750 billion. One of the groups that betrayed taxpayers and fiscal sanity in this fight was the inaptly named Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. To believe this bill will lead to a “responsible federal budget” is about as divorced from reality as to believe that this is an “inflation reduction act.” Yet here is the statement that Maya McGuineas of CFRB put out to the press: This legislation focuses on lowering health care and energy costs, raising revenue, and reducing deficits and is exactly what the doctor ordered. Senator Manchin deserves tremendous credit for pushing this fiscally responsible reconciliation bill. I'm speechless. The Heritage Foundation reports that the bill will INCREASE the deficit by “at least $110 billion through 2031.” The bill raises $300 billion for corporate give-always for the climate change industri...

Families earning less than $400,000, according to Joe Biden were not going to pay even “a dime of new taxes” under his tax plan.  This was Joe Biden’s signature promise. It was the 2020 campaign’s equivalent to George H W Bush’s “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge back in 1988.  Anyone who believed Joe probably deserves to pay more taxes.  Anyway, here are the facts. Congress’s official budget and tax scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation, finds taxes rising in every income bracket. It’s a $17 billion a year whack at the lower and middle-class Americans.   

More than half of all Americans weren’t even alive the last time prices rose at this pace of 9.1%. Yet Democrats say dam the torpedoes and full speed ahead with another $1 trillion tax and spend bill. Stimulus is a large part of what caused this runaway inflation to begin with. I wonder why they don't get it.  Biden remarked that the data was backward looking, that June's numbers didn't reflect the drop in oil prices in July. Nothing to worry about. These aren't the droids you're looking for. OMG. All data is backward looking; otherwise, its a projection or prediction, or just a wild ass guess. Even the Carter administration didn't have this level of incompetence.  This is a scary bunch ruling Washington these days. November can’t get here soon enough . 

 This plan would actually benefit the wealthy more than the poor.  It might be the biggest giveaway in American history and goes much further than anything Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have proposed. Biden now wants to cancel more than $1 trillion dollars in student loans – he's already let college graduates delay repayments for years. This plan makes suckers out of the millions of Americans who have felt honor bound to pay off their debts. Even more lavishly subsidizing higher education will only push tuition even higher and making the next round of student debt even higher. But who would ever pay off a student loan after this blanket forgiveness program. Who would benefit? The most recent Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances found that only 22% of families had student loan debt and "student debt has consistently been disproportionately held by higher-income families." Canceling all student loans is supported by 19% of voters according to the latest poll – ...

Remember the good old days when liberals demanded: “Keep the government out of the bedroom!” Well now they want the government in the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, your outdoor pool… Biden just rescinded a popular 2020 Trump order that increased how much water you can use in the shower. Capping the flow from a shower head to 2.5 gallons per minute doesn’t save much water, it simply makes you stand longer under the water as it drips and drips and drips. (It reminds us of those obnoxious low flush toilets the feds mandated to save the planet, but they didn’t because you had to flush twice.) Now Biden is pushing a spate of additional energy conservation measures restricting the power that can flow to power air conditioning units, gas-fire places and electric pool heaters. Sounds like Uncle Sam is turning into Big Brother. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-department-targets-pool-heaters-and-ac-units-with-new-efficiency-rules

Massive spending increases for various bureaucracies is the most offensive part of Biden’s new budget. These huge budgetary increases (well above the rate of inflation, unlike what’s happening to incomes for American families) were not the most economically harmful feature of Biden’s plan. That dubious honor belongs to either his massive expansion of the welfare state or his big tax increases. The Wall Street Journal editorialized a couple of days ago about what the president is proposing. A President’s budget is a declaration of priorities, so it’s worth underscoring that President Biden’s new budget for fiscal 2023 proposes $2.5 trillion in tax increases over 10 years. His priority is taking money from the private economy and giving it to politicians to spend. …Raising the top income-tax rate to 39.6% from 37% would raise $187 billion. Raising capital-gains taxes, including taxing gains like ordinary income for taxpayers earning more than $1 million would snatch $174 billion. Raisin...

1. Biden Budget Would Raise Income Tax Rates to Highest in the Developed World Sensible message, not so sound policy: President Biden’s budget came out this week with a sensible message about the need for stronger economic growth and sound fiscal policy. Unfortunately, the actual policies laid out in the budget would reduce economic growth and create unsound fiscal policy, with no real evidence provided to support claims to the contrary. Not good to be number one: The budget proposes several new tax increases on high-income individuals and businesses, which in combination with the Build Back Better Act would give the U.S. the highest top tax rates on individual and corporate income in the developed world. Several questions also remain about the OECD global tax deal’s prospects, implementation, and effectiveness, which could affect the administration's tax plans for U.S. multinational companies doing business abroad. On the spending side: The budget proposes increased spending for ...

(Updated at 2:13 PM CDT) The Biden Administration, and Democrats in general it looks like, just don't understand good governmental policy or basic economics. The Federal Reserve is no better, and may yet push us into a recession, at the least.  The Biden administration plans to release around 180M barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in what be the largest release from stockpile since it was created in 1975. WTI crude futures tumbled 6.7% to $100.53 on the news, The coming SPR decision would likely see 1M barrels released daily over the course of six months, but analysts are still debating the benefits and whether it would put a dent in the inflationary forces seen in the current environment. "Stocks of strategic oil have a limit and flows of commercial oil do not. Flows that stop are a bigger problem than strategic stocks can solve over time," said Kevin Book, energy policy analyst at ClearView Energy Partners. "Historically, SPR releases have tempo...

President Joe Biden’s budget proposal , which the president released today, calls for the federal government to collect a record $4,638,000,000,000 ($4.6 Trillion) in taxes in fiscal 2023. At the same time that the federal government is collecting those record taxes, according to Biden’s proposal , it would also spend $5,792,000,000,000 ($5.8 Trillion) —resulting in a fiscal 2023 deficit of $1,154,000,000,000 ($1.2 Trillion). According to Table S-4 in Biden’s budget proposal, the federal government will run a cumulative deficit of $14,421,000,000,000 ($14.4 Trillion) in the ten years from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2032. The $1,154,000,000,000 ($1.2 Trillion) deficit the Biden budget proposes running in fiscal 2023 is the smallest federal deficit it anticipates in any of the next ten years. In fiscal 2021, according to Table S-4 in Biden’s budget proposal, the federal deficit was $2,775,000,000,000 $2.8 Trillion). In fiscal 2022, the Biden budget proposal estimates it will drop to $1,415,00...

As the Russia-Ukraine war continues to shatter whatever hopes remained of Europe’s post-pandemic economic recovery, Brent prices are already trading near $130 per barrel. Biden's announcement of a ban on Russian energy imports, including oil, coal, and LNG, has only added to the upward pressure in oil markets.  While European powers have made it clear they will not ban Russian energy imports (the U.K. will restrict imports), European natural gas prices are at all-time highs, dragging coal along to unprecedented levels as well. Moreover, with hopes of a quick Iranian deal cooling, there is no sign of relief for the current oil price rally. In a speech on Tuesday morning, President Biden confirmed that the United States would ban Russian energy imports. In his speech, Biden confirmed that its European allies will not be joining the U.S. in this measure due to their relative lack of energy security. Oil prices and gasoline prices both climbed on the news. He also addressed the US oil ...

Buried in the Budget Reconciliation Is the End of Right-to-Work, Independent Contractors; Climate Change Among the various major provisions of the PRO Act is effective nationalization of California's AB5 law that passed in 2019. This law makes hiring independent contractors much more difficult and specifies that contractors must be reclassified by businesses that hire them as employees, unless they meet specific and rigorous standards allowing them to stay independent. Read full article... Biden on Energy Crisis: Begging Others to Save Him From Himself It is on the costs of energy where Biden’s failures are most starkly visible. On his very first day in office, Biden scrapped the Keystone XL pipeline, killing 11,000 jobs in the process and making good on his campaign promise to be hostile to the fossil fuel industry. Continuing his assault on natural resource development, Biden suspended oil and natural gas leases in Alaska. Former President Donald Trump had propelled America to en...

In a study just published by the Club for Growth Foundation, co-authored with Robert O'Quinn (former Chief Economist at the Department of Labor), they estimated the likely economic impact of President Biden's so-called Build Back Better plan to expand the welfare state. Here are the main findings: A loss of $3 trillion of economic output over the next 10 years A loss of $1.6 trillion of worker compensation over the next 10 years A loss of more than $10,000, on average, in compensation for workers over the next 10 years A lifetime drop in living standards of almost four percent for young workers What's especially noteworthy about the study is that they based their analysis on research published earlier this year by the Congressional Budget Office . In other words, a very establishment source. Biden's fiscal agenda would made the United States more like Europe and the economic data unambiguously demonstrate that Europeans suffer from significantly lower living standards...

Update Aug 16, 2021: OPEC+ sees no need to meet U.S. call for more supply (Reuters) .  While the administration begs overseas adversaries to ramp up oil production with jobs and development to the benefit of foreign citizens, Americans remain handicapped by Democrats’ zealous animosity towards fossil fuel extraction on domestic land. Just after assuming office, Biden announced last week a range of executive orders aimed at addressing climate change and starting the process of phasing out fossil fuels, a promise he made on the campaign trail. As part of the orders, all new oil and gas leasing on public lands was indefinitely paused to allow time for a “comprehensive review and reconsideration of oil and gas permitting and leasing practices.” The review will also consider adjusting royalty fees for oil and gas, which are about $2 an acre and haven’t been updated for decades. The order does not apply to tribal lands.  Underneath the tundra surface of Alaska’s North Slope sits an...