The CR Is Out And It's Bad

The CR Is Out And It's Bad

5

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Dec 18, 2024

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So, the CR is out. And the reactions are predictable. It's a 1,500 page monstrosity, with some nakedly-unpopular stuff included like a pay raise for lawmakers (even though that's good policy!), and legislators are put under the gun because the Federal government turns into a pumpkin on Midnight Friday night and also it's Christmas right after that.

First, let's talk about the timing of the bill. It's a three-month CR. The reason, we reported back in September, is to essentially hamstring the Trump Administration in its first months by setting its spending priorities for them, and doing so in the lame duck to avoid political blowback for handcuffing a new President with a popular mandate and the leader of the Party.

Then: appropriately for Christmas, it's a Christmas tree. It's trying to thread a thin needle. A large omnibus bill would be too unpopular with conservatives. But in order to buy support, all sorts of extraneous stuff had to be added to the CR. Leading to a 1500 page monstrosity with a narrow timing, we're told: the House is expected to vote on it tomorrow so the Senate can vote on it Friday.

What are the messiest parts of the bill? Knock yourself out, it's all over Twitter.

The biggest item is the provisions concerning pharmacy benefit managers. The bill contains money to transfers an Air National Guard fighter squadron from D.C. to Maryland. It contains the above-mentioned pay increase (which is really a return to the inflation adjustment of members' pay which was frozen in 2009), as well as a provision allowing members to opt out of Obamacare. It includes funding for the much-hated "Global Engagement Center" which Mike Benz alleges credibly is a State Department online censorship bureau. It includes something called the American Music Tourism Act of 2024. It contains $100 billion for hurricane-stricken regions and $30 billion in aid for farmers.

What's most frustrating is the seeming inevitability. The gears lock into each other, producing this sense that this is the only way. Nobody wants a shut down right before a new Administration. In many ways, this approach was locked in months ago. So it is what it is.

So let's talk about something else…

Policy News You Need To Know

#FamilyPolicy — At American Compass, EPPC's Patrick T. Brown makes the case for a greatly-expanded child tax credit.

OF NOTE: We discuss all things CTC with Patrick T. Brown in episode 4 of the Sphere Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube)

You can subscribe to the Sphere Podcast here: Subscribe to the Sphere Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.

#FamilyPolicy — Speaking of, Sen. Hawley is calling for an expansion of the CTC to $5,000 per child. Refundable, with an employment mandate.

#FreeSpeech — Alliance Defending Freedom, a well-known conservative public-interest law firm, is launching a new litigation team called the Center for Free Speech, Daily Wire reports.

#DEI #FreeSpeech — Speaking of free speech, Penn's persecution of Amy Wax is a bit of a canary in a coalmine, since nobody is pretending that she is punished for anything other than speech. Mountains of investigation have turned up no wrongdoing in her teaching, grading, or scholarship. The only grounds Penn have to go after one of their professors is that she has said things they don't like. Which is why we were glad to see this headline: Amy Wax Threatens To Sue Penn for Race Discrimination, Breach of Contract.

#Crime — Brookings' Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris have a big new study out that claims to show that the 2020 crime wave was due to the pandemic closures and not what's been called the "Floyd Effect", ie a drop in police enforcement caused by the "racial reckoning" or whatever you want to call the Cultural Revolution-like bout of insanity that seized America that Summer. Here's the key bit: "In this report, we analyze thousands of police records and compare them to changes that occurred in U.S. cities just before homicides started to surge. This showed that the spike in murders during 2020 was directly connected to local unemployment and school closures in low-income areas. Cities with larger numbers of young men forced out of work and teen boys pushed out of school in low-income neighborhoods during March and early April, had greater increases in homicide from May to December that year, on average. The persistence of these changes can also explain why murders remained high in 2021 and 2022 and then fell in late 2023 and 2024." Well, ok. Interestingly, the study never mentions the words "car fatalities." The most convincing piece of evidence provided (until this study) was very cleverly found by Steve Sailer, looking at car fatalities. Why are car fatalities important? Because they're an indication of whether cops are enforcing traffic laws or not. And because we have numbers on car fatalities by race: "Let’s compare the era of the Floyd Effect—June 2020 to December 2023—to the same 43 months a decade earlier—June 2010 to December 2013—which was before either the Ferguson or Floyd Effects. Total motor vehicle deaths among non-Hispanic whites went up 9 percent. That’s bad. Car crash carnage should be falling steadily. But traffic fatalities among African Americans grew an appalling 78 percent." This provides strong evidence for the proposition that what happened in the Summer of 2020 is that cops, either on their own to avoid being a new Derek Chauvin, or on orders from superiors arm-twisted by BLM, stopped enforcing laws on all kinds, specifically on African Americans. One consequence of this was more car fatalities, among African Americans specifically, as road rules were less enforced on them specifically. Another consequence of this was more crime. The fact that the Brookings study doesn't address this pretty strong argument is cause for skepticism.

#VibeShift — After nine years, Bret Stephens is done with NeverTrump.

#AI — The Bipartisan House Task Force on AI has released its report, and it's full of good things. We will have more to say about it soon.

#Entitlements — The Senate is considering the Social Security Fairness Act. This would change the formula by which government workers' Social Security benefits are calculated, to benefit them, of course. Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum explains why that's bad.

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