RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3615803-next-up-bidens-energy-crisis/

We’ve had Biden’s inflation and Biden’s recession; now we face Biden’s energy crisis. It didn’t have to be this way.

Twenty million Americans are behind on their utility bills, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

Who is surprised? Even as real wages tumbled 3.6 percent over the past year, electricity prices increased 16 percent, squeezing consumers. Unhappily, things are about to get worse.

Natural gas, used to create power and to heat almost half of America’s homes, is trading at prices nearly double those of last year, and the winter heating season promises to bring even higher prices.

The price of natural gas today is the highest since 2008, before the fracking revolution unleashed almost unlimited gas deposits trapped in tight formations that were previously inaccessible.

Why should the United States suffer a giant increase in costs if we have so much gas? In part, because President Biden pledged this year to double our exports of liquified natural gas (LNG), which means less natural gas available to American consumers.

Biden made that grand gesture to help our allies, who are increasingly cut off from Russian oil and gas because of the war in Ukraine. But he made that promise to send more U.S. natural gas overseas even though the price was already soaring and inventories were low.

But barring an adverse court ruling, young Americans with student debt are now set to receive a five-figure handout. And everyone else is set to pay for it.

https://www.city-journal.org/biden-cancellation-of-student-debt-indefensible

After months of will-he-or-won’t-he suspense, President Biden has announced his executive actions on student debt. The administration plans to cancel up to $10,000 for borrowers currently earning up to $125,000 annually ($250,000 for married couples)—with the maximum forgiveness doubled for the students who, based on their parents’ finances, received Pell Grants when they attended college. Biden will also extend the pause on payments “for one final time” through the end of the year and allow those with undergraduate loans to cap their payments at 5 percent of their discretionary income, as opposed to 10 percent under current policy. Because the “cancellation” is really a transfer, the combined changes will cost taxpayers something like $500 billion—about $1,500 for every person in the United States.

Forgiving student debt may be a savvy way for Biden to appeal to young, left-leaning voters, but it’s indefensible as policy. Beyond the baseline question of whether the government should ever wipe out the willfully assumed debts of a preferred class of Americans at the expense of everyone else, the program is a poorly targeted use of taxpayer funds, rewards the dysfunctions of the higher-ed sector, and is likely illegal.

Yes, the limits placed on the program make it less of a bonanza for the upper-middle class than it could have been. The largest debt loads are typically held by those with advanced, not just undergraduate, degrees, so blanket forgiveness would have been a massive windfall for young lawyers. But the $125,000 income threshold doesn’t come close to targeting the most sympathetic cases: those who were preyed upon by low-quality colleges, often didn’t even earn a degree, and wound up working at the proverbial Starbucks. The median earnings for a U.S. female working full-time and year-round were about $50,000 in 2020; for a male, the number was roughly $60,000. Yet the White House set its cutoff for five-figure handouts at more than twice those amounts—and, citing numbers prepared by its own Department of Education, boasts that 87 percent of the debt relief announced yesterday will go to those earning less than $75,000 in individual income. Even that would be an odd threshold for taxpayer largesse, as it’s above the 2020 median household income and more than triple the 2022 Federal Poverty Level for a family of three. But rest assured: “only” about $65 billion will go to individuals earning even more than that by themselves, at a cost of $200 per U.S. resident.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/under-biden-youre-4-times-more-likely-face-irs-daniel-greenfield/

“I direct that any additional resources… shall not be used to increase the share of small businesses or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Treasury Secretary Yellen wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.

That directive has been used by media “fact checkers” to deny that the massive increase in IRS personnel under Biden’s Inflation Increase Act will also increase audits of the middle class.

Yellen’s statement initially seems reassuring until you look closely at its curious language.

Treasury Department spokeswoman Julia Krieger used the same phrasing when claiming that “audit rates relative to historical norms for people earning under $400,000 each year” would not increase.

“Historical” is an interesting term. Media fact checkers act as if it means current rates. But if it means current rates, Yellen and the Treasury spokeswoman could have just said so. The specific use of “historical norms” by both women is not an accident: it’s policy.

What’s the difference between “current rates” and “historical levels”?

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted that from 2010 to 2019, audit rates dropped from “0.9 percent to 0.25 percent” due to “reduced staffing as a result of decreased funding”. Audit rates for taxpayers earning from $25,000 to $500,000 were even lower at 0.17%.

Would “historical norms” cover 2010? It’s hard to believe that they would not. Even the most generous interpretation of Yellen’s language is that IRS audit rates would significantly increase.