Tax Reform

The Corporate tax reform should be handled with a single Bill to reduce the US Corporate Tax Rate from 35% to 15% and offer a 10% tax rate on corporate money transferred from foreign banks to US banks. These rates should be effective January 1, 2017. 

 

This is too critical to making our tax code competitive and allowing manufacturing jobs to return to the US. No attempt should be made to combine this corporate tax rate change with the Individual Income Tax rate reform. This Bill should pass immediately.

 

The current quagmire of corporate tax loopholes, tax breaks, special deals and subsidies should be eliminated for all corporations who wish to have their tax rate reduced by 20%.

 

The Individual Income Tax rate reform to enable tax filers to file their own tax forms on a single sheet of paper needs to be handled in a separate Bill that follows the enactment of the corporate rate reduction. This Bill is not as critical as the corporate rate change and needs to be done carefully. The House should publish the revised tax table for 2017 and a complete list of deductions and distribute these widely prior to passage, so that voters can fully understand what their taxes will be for 2017.  This Bill should be passed by the end of 2017 and be effective January 1, 2017.

 

It looks like the deductions for State and local taxes should be included in the new tax law to ensure “yes” votes from Republicans from those high tax States.

 

The inheritance tax needs to be abolished to ensure that large family businesses and farms are not destroyed.

 

Eligibility for the childcare CID tax rebates for low income working parents should be tightened to exclude family members not living in the US. Illegal immigrants have been committing tax fraud for decades by claiming all of the relatives.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Dunwoody GA

Dunwoody is in the North Atlanta Metro, in DeKalb County, nestled just above I-285.  Dunwoody was developed in the 1960s for single-family residential living.  By the 1970s, homes were developed in subdivisions, many with their own swim and tennis facilities. This produced a safe environment for families with children. 

 

When we moved to Wyntercreek Subdivision in July 1983, our 6 kids were greeted by dozens of neighborhood kids. They developed close friendships and we got to know their parents. Our home was one of several “hangouts”, so we got to know the kids in the neighborhood. Many of the kids attended Austin Elementary and Dunwoody high school.

 

By the 1990s, Dunwoody was almost all subdivisions, with convenient strip malls nearby. We saw the development of commercial properties and office buildings located together near Perimeter Mall. There are also a few apartment complexes that still exist today.

 

Now the Bad News

 

The population of Atlanta Metro grew from 3 million to 6 million over the past 35 years, but the road and highway system has not kept pace and is worse now than ever. Atlanta benefitted from the electronics boom in the 1980s, but most of our electronics industries moved overseas or back to their headquarters locations after 1993.

 

As manufacturing in Georgia shrank, immigrants replaced students in minimum wage jobs and the labor participation rate for working age US citizens rose to over 100 million.

 

Most new jobs created since 2008 were minimum wage jobs and most of these jobs were filled by immigrants and minorities.  Blacks who had been working in manufacturing are now working in fast food and retail.  Rural Georgia needs manufacturing to return to reestablish their economies.

 

We do need factory jobs, but we also need to reduce the population by about 1 million and expand our roads and highways. 

 

Gridlock is killing Atlanta Metro. Manufacturing operations need to return to the suburbs so put jobs, homes, schools and grocery stores are closer together.  

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

GOP Establishment

We Tea Partiers have long complained about our “one party system” with Democrats demanding socialism and Republicans pretending to be conservatives to get elected, only to vote like Democrats after these elections. We called them “Demopublicans” and that included most of the Republicans in Congress.

 

The GOP “Establishment” is undergoing a slow transformation. The “Trump Agenda” is becoming the official plan for the Republican Party. I like to reference the CR Scores from Conservative Review to identify our RINOs. They have racked up a record of voting to support unconstitutional Bills to allow the federal government to assume powers that exceed its “enumerated powers” imposed by the US Constitution (as written).  Most of the federal programs we have been saddled with were started without the required passage of Amendments by the States. This includes all the programs from national parks, which now comprise 30% of the US landmass and all the wealth transfer programs we are choking on today.

 

Voter support of the Trump Agenda is resulting in the swamp draining itself.  Republicans are now faced with the decision to either leave or repent.

 

Attrition

 

Orrin Hatch, UT, CR Score 37% has announced that he will not seek reelection in 2018. He has been in Congress for 40 years.  Orrin joins Jeff Flake AZ 53% and Bob Corker TN, 47%.

 

John McCain 33% s not up for reelection until 2022, but his brain cancer diagnosis makes it more likely that he won’t serve his current term.

 

Contrition

 

Lindsey Graham, SC, CR Score 33% has endorsed the Trump Agenda and that says he may be converting into becoming a real Republican. Other RINOs are sure to follow.

 

Objection

 

The 20 GOP House Reps from New York, California, Illinois and other high tax States, who voted against the Budget were objecting to the removal of their excessive State and local tax deductions.

 

RINOs

 

The lowest scores for GOP Establishment folks in the House starts with Susan Collins ME 12%, Lamar Alexander TN 17%, David Reichert, WA 28%, Mimi Walters, CA, 28%, Will Hurd, TX  28%, John Katko, NY 28%, Chris Collins NY 28%,

Barbara Comstock VA 28%, Rodney Frelinghuysen, NJ 29%, Daniel Donovan NY 29%,

 

Of the 216 Republicans in the US House, only 30 score over 90%. Another 24 score from 80% to 89%.

 

https://www.conservativereview.com/scorecard?chamber=&state=&party=R

 

The hallmark of the GOP Establishment is that they have had a history of voting for issues that have been pushed by their special interest campaign contributors and succumbing to extortion threats by these entities. Everything actual voters wanted has been ignored by politicians at every level forever. Trump changed the game by deciding to put all voters first. 

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Hospital Costs

Cost shifting has caused hospital costs to quadruple.  It started in the 1980s when States closed their mental hospitals and counties closed their hospitals and clinics. Then private hospitals were forced to take patients who couldn’t pay their hospital bills.  Hospitals simply shifted the cost of free care to paying patients, including illegal immigrants and welfare refugees. To lower hospital bills, this cost shifting scam needs to be reversed.  Health insurance is now unaffordable because of predatory hospital and Pharma costs.

 

The quadrupling of hospital costs began with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid In 1965, when a good family income was $10,000 per year. Up to that time, mainstream hospitals were owned by churches and charities. The daily room and board rate was $24 per day. Insurance coverage was $300 a year for a family.  It was “major medical” and required medical necessity to rescue and repair patients.  There were few specialties and less expensive test equipment. Patients who couldn’t pay for their treatment at mainstream hospitals went to county hospitals and clinics.  Many Physicians had charity practices. Private hospitals had “fundraising” to subsidize hospital expansion and operations to keep costs affordable. We need to return to that model.

 

Hospital and Pharma costs will not begin to retract until these industry gets the message that government is ready to reduce subsidies and disallow price gouging.  Healthcare providers have no incentive to reduce costs like other industries, because the government has been cowed into subsidizing their poorly managed operations. In the 1990s, the cost of a personal computer and large flat screen TV was $5000.  Now these cost $500.  Other industries have been able to reduce their costs, but healthcare has not.

 

Patients need to pay for their own healthcare in order to return healthcare to free market pricing. There are lots of ways to accomplish this.  It requires options like medical tourism where patients fly to other countries to get a lower price for serious medical treatment.  It also requires that we allow hospitals to require patients to pay their own bills and offer no-interest loans they should be able to secure and pay off. Patients need the incentive to shop for cheaper treatments or this will never get fixed.

 

Socialized medicine has failed in the US and needs to be abandoned as a national program.  Cities and counties may want to continue or resume subsidizing indigent care in county hospitals and clinics, but federal subsidies need to be rolled back.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Populist Priorities

Conservative candidates need to establish the issue of populist priorities in their campaigns. These should be based on what all voters need to be self-supporting on a daily basis, not what some voters and special interest groups want. 

 

Utilization needs to be recognized to establish these basic needs. Politicians need to recognize that their highest priorities should be where utilization is close to 100%. All voters and families need clean water, sanitation, waste disposal, food, shelter and basic infrastructure.

 

Government functions like a utility for roads, highways, bridges, reservoirs, storm water sewers, flood abatement, sanitary sewers, water treatment and water distribution.

 

Government’s first responsibility is to ensure that this basic infrastructure is functioning and maintained to avoid failure, before spending tax revenue on anything else. Most State, County and City governments fail to do this.

 

Government is also responsible for oversight of private utilities that provide electricity and natural gas for heating and cooling to ensure that prices are as low as possible.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

US Corporate Tax History

In 1913, the US Corporate Tax was 1%. It was raised to 2% in 1916 and to 6% in 1917 and to 12% in 1918 and 14% in 1926.

 

In 1936, brackets were added to the US Corporate Tax from 8% for income up to $2,000 and 15% over $40,000. In 1938, the “Top Rate” moved to 19%.

 

In 1940, the rates were set according to revenue levels, but smaller companies paid more. The rates spread from 24% to 38%. In 1941 the top rate rose to 53%.

 

Our top corporate tax rate was raised from 34% to 35% in 1993. 

 

https://taxfoundation.org/federal-corporate-income-tax-rates-income-years-1909-2012/

 

While other countries lowered their corporate taxes, the US remained at 35%. The US Corporate Tax Rate became the highest rate.  We need to ask Congress why they ignored the fact that our corporate tax rate was encouraging companies to move operations out of the US since 1993.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

RINOs Counterattack Trump

Steve Bannon’s declaration of war on the GOP “Establishment” has riled GOP Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN).  They were both up for election in 2018, did some polling and concluded they would lose.  But they were “Establishment” RINOs and resent Trump’s attacks on our “one-party system”. We can expect other RINOs to attack Trump as they determine their days are numbered with the voters.

 

To determine who are the best and worst Republicans in Congress, I rely on Conservative Review Scorecard. This scorecard records votes on Bills that are either constitutional or unconstitutional.  Those with high scores vote yes on constitutional Bills and no on unconstitutional Bills. Those with low scores don’t pay any attention to the US Constitution (as written).  

 

Jeff Flake’s score is 53% grade F. Bob Corker’s score is 47% grade F. There are other Republicans in the Senate with lower scores. Susan Collins, ME scores 12%, Lamar Alexander, TN scores 17%. There are 20 Republicans in the Senate who score lower than Corker. They score from 17% to 46% Grade F.

 

Republicans in the Senate score from 12% Grade F to 100%. Democrats in the Senate score from 0% to 18%, Grade F.

 

There are 7 Senators who score between 90% and 100%, Grade A.  All are Republicans. This group includes Rand Paul KY, Ted Cruz TX, Tim Scott SC, Ben Sasse NE, Luther Strange AL, Mike Lee UT and John Kennedy LA.  

 

https://www.conservativereview.com/scorecard?chamber=senate&state=&party=R

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader