CBO Says IRS Will Audit Americans Making Under $400K

Despite claims from Biden administration officials that new funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will not increase the auditing burden on individuals and small businesses, a Friday letter from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reveals new auditing activity targeting taxpayers who report less than $400,000 per year will be expected to contribute to about $4 billion in revenue.

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Commentary: Reducing Patient Access to New Medications Is Progressives’ Latest Medicare Price Fixing Scheme

pharmacy

As negotiations on their tax and spending bill continue, Senate Democrats are working on a legislative proposal to have the government fix the prices of Medicare prescription medications.  Though the details of the 190-page amendment differ in certain respects from earlier versions, the indisputable result would be the same: Reduced patient access to prescription drugs.

Like most giant regulatory schemes, the draft proposal is characteristically complex with numerous provisions, including detailed data collection, new mandates, tax penalties on drug manufacturers, free vaccines, and a cap on out-of-pocket costs. But the heart of the bill is the creation of a Drug Price Negotiation Program administered by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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Tennessee Sen. Hagerty Prevents Hastened Passage of Infrastructure Bill

Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty (R) on Thursday night halted a move by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to expedite advancement of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. 

The spending package is not dead yet, but it will not have the accelerated path to passage it would have enjoyed had all 100 senators consented to quickly moving through over a dozen amendment votes Thursday evening and sending the bill to the House of Representatives. 

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The Congressional Budget Office Says the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Will Increase Deficits by $256 Billion over 10 Years

The Congressional Budget Office estimated Thursday that the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill will add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade, undercutting its backers’ claims the spending had been offset.

In FY2020, the deficit hit a record $3.1 trillion. So far in FY2021, the deficit is $2.2 trillion. The national debt is climbing to $29 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.

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Analysis: Maximum Facts About the Minimum Wage

At 2:00 AM on Saturday, February 27, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a “COVID relief and economic support“ bill at a cost to taxpayers of $1.9 trillion. The next Saturday, Senate Democrats passed a very similar bill, and President Biden stated he will sign it. This will be the sixth “COVID relief” law and swell the tab for such legislation to a total of $5.3 trillion. The combined cost of these laws to every household in the United States will be an average of $41,036.

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Nine Years After Obamacare Passed, Agency Finds Numbers Were Wildly Off

by Jarrett Stepman   Democrats defeated Republicans in the Obamacare repeal fight by warning that 22 million Americans would be thrown off their health insurance. They pointed to data leaked from the Congressional Budget Office. Well, it turns out that data was completely wrong. According to a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office wildly overestimated the number of people who would lose their health insurance with the repeal of the individual mandate penalty. Initial estimates from the Congressional Budget Office said 14 million would drop off their health insurance coverage due to the elimination of the individual mandate. Then, during the height of the 2017 debate over repeal, progressives touted a leaked number from the Congressional Budget Office claiming that 22 million people would “lose” their insurance if Congress repealed the law. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] However, as health care analyst Avik Roy pointed out, what made this number so high was the inflated number of people expected to lose their insurance due to repeal of the mandate – about 73 percent to…

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Three Common Ways Governments Misuse Statistics and What You Can Do About It

US Capitol at night

by Andrew Berryhill   Government agencies and researchers produce endless reams of statistics. While statistics can be valuable, they can be easily misrepresented. A 2017 study on the use of statistics in news characterized the problem as such: “The constant supply of data produced by think tanks, government agencies, independent researchers, academics and others is a significant and a potentially healthy democratic resource. But the time constraints that characterize modern news production put considerable pressure on journalists, who have to interpret the sometimes highly complex methods and meanings behind statistics, reporting data even-handedly and with clarity.” Without critical and educated evaluation of statistics, the public could be misled by information that’s misused, incomplete, or manipulated. Unfortunately, it seems that manipulation of statistics to further an agenda is becoming more common throughout society. Bad information propagated by government agencies especially is affecting policy decisions and harming the public when news outlets report it with insufficient examination. Here are three common ways governments and modern society in general misuse statistics. 1. “Predicting” the Long-Term Effects of Complicated Legislation: Obamacare When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tried to predict the effects of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as “Obamacare”), it was utterly wrong on numerous points. The CBO released…

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Commentary: Can Republicans Resist Mass Political Suicide, or Can They Take ‘Yes’ For an Answer?

By CHQ Staff   In its blind failure to recognize its dire peril, Capitol Hill’s Republican establishment is beginning to look a lot like the unfortunate souls at Jonestown who “drank the Kool-Aid” and committed mass suicide as the authorities closed in on the cult at its remote compound in Guyana. However, in a rare moment of lucidity, Senator Lindsey Graham spelled out for CNN’s Dana Bash that failure to pass tax reform means political death for the GOP establishment: For every Republican senator, the fate of the party is in our hands, as well as that of the economy. The economy needs a tax cut, and the Republican Party needs to deliver. Yet, with this imperative two Republican Senators have already come out in opposition to the bill and between six and eight others have expressed reservations about the House-passed plan. Sen Steve Daines (R-MT) joins Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in publicly rejecting the current version of the bill. According to reporting by The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda, the two senators are pushing for lawmakers to do more to help “pass-through” businesses whose income is taxed through the individual tax code. Pass-throughs can take the form of sole proprietorships and…

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White House Responds to the Predictably Dour CBO Score of the American Healthcare Act

Tennessee Star

  Within an hour of the ‘non-partisan’ Congressional Budget Office’s report showing, among other things, that over 22 million Americans would lose their insurance coverage over the next decade, President Trump issued the following statement: The CBO has consistently proven it cannot accurately predict how healthcare legislation will impact insurance coverage. This history of inaccuracy, as demonstrated by its flawed report on coverage, premiums, and predicted deficit arising out of Obamacare, reminds us that its analysis must not be trusted blindly.  In 2013, the CBO estimated that 24 million people would have coverage under Obamacare by 2016.  It was off by an astounding 13 million people – more than half—as less than 11 million were actually covered.  Then, CBO estimated that 30 million fewer people would be uninsured in 2016, but then it had to reduce its estimate to 22 million, further illustrating its inability to present reliable healthcare predictions. We know the facts.  To date, we have seen average individual market premiums more than double and insurers across the country opting out of healthcare exchanges.  As more and more people continue to lose coverage and face fewer healthcare choices, President Trump is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, which…

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