The View from Right Field

If This is MAGA Tax Policy, I Don’t Want It.

The 2017 tax bill passed by the Republican Congress and signed by Donald Trump was pretty good.  It really was a reform bill.  For businesses, it lowered the tax rate from 35% to 21% and got rid of a lot of special interest deductions.  That is the definition of a good tax bill: Broadening the base and lowering the rate.

The provisions for individuals weren’t as good, but there were good changes.  The standard deduction was doubled, and deductions for state and local taxes were limited to $10,000.  The result was a boon for lots of taxpayers: The increase in the standard deduction meant they didn’t have to worry about itemizing their deductions, making filing their tax return simpler and easier.

The one thing to remember about the 2017 bill is that it was the result of years and years of work by people like Representative and House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Pat Toomey, and many others.  President Trump signed it, but it was a real Republican bill, not his bill.

Hamas Leaders “Surprised” at U.S. Response – And What That Tells Us

The Financial Times reports:

“Hamas has admitted surprise that its attack on  Israel this month promoted such a muscular response, with Washington deploying two carrier strike groups, air defense systems and thousands of troops to the region.

Ali Barakeh, a senior member of Hamas’s political leadership in exile, said the groupv ‘didn’t expect this much if a response from America.

Blinken Announces Biden’s Red-Line. Let’s Hope They Mean It.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a pretty clear red-line to Iran and its “friends”:

“The United States does not seek conflict with Iran.  We do not want this war to widen. But if Iran or its proxies attack U.S. personnel anywhere, make no mistake: We will defend our people, we will defend our security - swiftly and decisively.” 

Good.  Now, we just have to hope the Biden administration means it.  In 2012, Barack Obama famously (perhaps infamously) announced his red-line on Syria’s use of poison gas:

Gaffes, Red Lines, and Credibility

[This is a follow up and elaboration on my post of March 26, 2022.¹ ]

In the 2020 presidential election, I didn’t vote for Joe Biden even though I wanted Donald Trump to lose.  I couldn’t bring myself to vote for President Biden because, as Robert Gates said in 2014, “I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”^2,3  Fortunately, I live in Illinois, so my vote was not necessary for President Biden to win Illinois’s electoral votes. 

Which brings me to President Biden’s recent “gaffe tour” of Europe.  Michel Kinsley famously defined a gaffe as “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."  President Biden gave us two great examples of this on his trip.  First, he said, apparently unscripted, that Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal.”  That is probably true, but how is it helpful?  We need to get the war in Ukraine over.  How does making Vladimir Putin think he might be prosecuted as a war criminal help do that?⁴

Biden Has Defined Success in His Afghan Exit: Nobody Pulled Off an Embassy Roof By Helicopter

When Joe Biden was asked last week if there was any similarity between Kabul today and Saigon in 1975, he said no:

“None whatsoever.  Zero.  What you had is you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our Embassy.  Six if I’m not mistaken.  The Taliban is not the South, the North Vietnamese army.  They’re not – they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.  There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy [in Afghanistan].”

He also defended the withdrawal by asking:

The Washington 180 – Once Again

With Joe Biden being elected President and the Republicans very possibly keeping a majority in the Senate,¹ we may have another “Washington 180” coming up next year. 

After the Republicans took the House in 2010, Barack Obama couldn’t get Congress to pass his agenda.  When Congress wouldn’t pass the laws he wanted, President Obama turned to what he called his “pen and phone.”²  Sometimes, departments and agencies followed the Administrative Procedure Act and adopted formal regulations.  Other times, they just issued new interpretations of laws or prior regulations.  Or they sent so-called “Dear Colleagues” letters to state and local governments setting out new rules, with an implied threat to cut off federal funding if they didn’t follow the new rules or standards.

Foreign Policy: Are Presidents Trump and Obama All That Different?

Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce said, last Wednesday, that Hong Kong was an internal matter for Hong Kong and added: “What are we going to do – invade Hong Kong?”  In response, Edward Luce, of the Financial Times, commented: “In a few words, Mr Ross captured the degeneration of US foreign policy.”¹  Which may be true, but it didn’t start January 20, 2017.

Secretary Ross’s choice, invasion or doing nothing, sounds suspiciously like the phony choices Barack Obama used to justify his do-nothing, or at least, do-as-little-as-possible, approach to foreign policy.  For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and fomented a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, President Obama asked: “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian Army?”  In fact, the Trump administration, even though President Trump is supposedly in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, has sent the kinds of defensive weapons that President Obama refused to send.  And it has seemed to help.

President Trump’s Foreign Policy Claims Are Often Bizarre, But It’s Not the First Time We’ve Seen That

The foreign policy follies (and worse) of Donald Trump are so bad, it sometimes makes us forget bizarre positions that prior administrations have taken.  For example, in 2011, when the United States was involved in the bombing of Libya (because, inter alia, Moammar Gaddafi was threatening to massacre Libyan civilians), the question of the War Powers Act arose.  The War Powers Act was passed over President Nixon’s veto in 1973.  It provided that presidents are to get Congress’s approval or authorization within 60 days¹ after they send troops into hostilities.

The Obama administration, however, did not want to seek Congressional approval of our operations in Libya.  But it also did not want to say, as other presidents have said, that the War Powers Act was an unconstitutional limit on the President’s power.² So, the State Department legal advisor, a politically appointed position, came up with the theory that the War Powers Act did not apply to the bombing of Libya because we were not engaged in “hostilities” since the other side could not effectively shoot back at us.  (See here and here,)

Did Barack Obama Really Make America the Biggest Oil and Gas Producer?

In a speech at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston last week, former President Barack Obama said:

“You wouldn’t always know it, but it [oil production] went up every year I was president. … [S]uddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas [producer] — that was me, people."

Two comments.  First, separate from whether it’s true (it’s not, see below), could you imagine George H.W. Bush ever bragging about himself like this?  I can’t either.

“We’ll Be Coming Out of Syria, Like, Very Soon.” Not a Good Idea.

Donald Trump probably wouldn’t like being told that any of his policies are like Barack Obama’s, and former President Obama probably wouldn’t like it either.  But last Thursday, President Trump said, in what was apparently an unscripted aside, during a speech/campaign event in Ohio, that “we’re knocking the hell out of ISIS” and that “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon.  Let the other people take care of it now.”  All of which sounds an awful like President Obama’s policy in Iraq (and, especially with respect to the last part, Syria). 

President Obama never wanted to be in Iraq.¹  And so, once he got into office, he used the agreement George W. Bush signed with Iraq in 2008, which required the United States to get all of its troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, as the reason (aka excuse) for leaving.  President Obama could have tried to get the agreement changed.  In fact, the expectation probably was that the United States would do so – and that Iraq would agree.  But President Obama didn’t really try.  He wanted out.