Top individual income rate would climb to 39.6% for wealthiest individuals, families
House Democrats on Monday unveiled a proposal to raise taxes on the top sliver of U.S. households, part of a sweeping plan to overhaul the nation’s tax code in order to fund President Biden‘s ambitious $3.5 trillion family and climate plan.
Under the plan released by the House Ways and Means Committee, the top individual income rate would climb to 39.6% for the wealthiest individuals and families. The proposal rolls back a key part of Republicans’ 2017 tax overhaul, which lowered the top individual income rate to 37%.
The new rate would apply to single individuals with taxable income of more than $400,000, according to a copy of the legislative outline. It would also apply to married individuals filing jointly whose taxable income tops $450,000; to heads of households with income topping $425,000; to married individuals filing separate returns over $225,000; and to estates and trusts over $12,500.
Still, the proposed brackets seemingly contradict Biden’s campaign promise that no one earning less than $400,000 would pay higher taxes if he were elected. For instance, under those proposed brackets, a hypothetical couple that earns $450,000 combined each year would be required to pay the higher taxes, even if the spouses individually made less than $400,000.
This would apply if the couple filed jointly.
“Anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase,” Biden told ABC News earlier this year. “If you make less than $400,000, you won’t see one single penny in additional federal tax.”
Assuming the proposal becomes law – which hinges on a deeply divided Congress – the new tax rate would start to apply during the 2022 tax year. It would generate an estimated $170 billion over the next decade, according to an estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Even if Democrats fail to raise the top tax rate as part of their massive spending package – which they plan to pass along party-line votes using the procedural tool known as budget reconciliation – it will still revert to 39.6% in 2026. That’s because although the 2017 tax law temporarily lowered the individual rate, it’s poised to sunset in five years.
The top rate is currently paid by single individuals earning more than $518,401 and married individuals filing jointly who earn more than $622,051.
The Ways and Means Committee’s provisional proposal also includes a 3% surcharge on individual income above $5 million and increases the top tax rate for capital gains – the proceeds from selling an asset – to 25%, up from 20%.
Separately, the House Democrats announced a bevy of other tax hikes to fund their partisan spending package, including raising the corporate tax rate to 26.5% for businesses earning more than $5 million in income. The corporate rate would be lowered to 18% for small businesses earning less than $400,000; all other businesses would continue to pay the current rate of 21%.
The Constitution of the United States represents the classic solution to one of humankind’s greatest political problems: that is, how does a small group of states combine into a strong union without the states losing their individual powers and surrendering their control over local affairs?
Although the Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, a “bill of rights” was demanded and became an eventuality in order to protect the citizenry’s fundamental rights or “first liberties” against usurpation by the newly created federal government.
Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments of the Constitution—was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, post-9/11 and in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone. Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the US Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against SWAT team raids and government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise) and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal governmentthat sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.
As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.
If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
Yet those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”
In other words, we have the power to make and break the government. We are the masters and they are the servants. We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
The United States has promised to send about $64 million more in aid to Afghanistan, pledging to respect sanctions on the Taliban terrorist group that now controls the country.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of State are sending the aid through independent organizations like United Nations agencies and non-governmental groups to “provide life-saving support directly to Afghans facing the compounding effects of insecurity, conflict, recurring natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic,” USAID said in a statement on Monday.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan in mid-May, routing the U.S.-backed Afghan forces in a series of fights.
U.S. troops rushed back to the country to secure Kabul’s airport and allow the evacuation of some 120,000 people, but withdrew on Aug. 30.
Sanctions on the Taliban will be respected when apportioning the aid, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told lawmakers in Washington on Monday.
“We have seen a terrible drought, growing nutrition problems. It is one of the reasons that we think it is so important to make sure that regardless of anything else, we and other countries find ways to continue humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan,” he said.
“We can and will do that consistent with the sanctions in our laws by directing assistance through NGOs and United Nations agencies, not through the government. We need to do everything we can to make sure the people of Afghanistan do not suffer anymore,” he added.
The State Department declined to name the non-governmental groups. USAID did not respond to a request for comment.
A State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that “Our partners have extensive experience working in challenging environments, and have strong risk management procedures in place for their operations, with the objective of ensuring that humanitarian assistance reaches its intended recipients.”
“We have not taken steps to reduce sanctions pressure on sanctioned Taliban leaders or the significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system,” the spokesperson added.
The United States is the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, according to USAID. The financial support this year alone is up to nearly $330 million.
United Nations member states announced Monday $1.2 billion in aid to Afghan nationals, United Nations officials said. The funds will help nearly 11 million people over the next four months, Morgan Griffiths, a United Nations relief official, told the organization’s General Assembly in Geneva.
Funding could go to the Taliban. Griffiths noted that the group asked for international support to reconstruct Afghanistan as well as build a counter-narcotics program.
Some U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern about keeping aid out of the hands of the Taliban, including on Monday.
“I would like to see, if we’re going to help Afghanistan with food and aid, that we extract certain commitments from them before we just give them food,” Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) said.
Blinken began to respond, but Sires interrupted him and moved on to another topic.
According to a new book “Peril” written by Bob Woodward, Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, told China in a secret phone call that he would give advance warning if the US was ever going to attack.
“In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the PLA, that the U.S. would not strike, according to the new book written by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political editor Robert Costa.
One call took place on Oct 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege carried out by his supporters in a quest to cancel the vote.
The first call was prompted by Milley’s review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believed the United States was preparing to attack.
“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a US attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Milley told China in secret phone call that he would give advance warning if U.S. was ever going to attack!!!
"If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” https://t.co/bIYO1HFuVi
On January 8, 2021, the same day Milley reportedly spoke to China in a secret phone call, CNN ran a story claiming Pelosi had gotten assurances from Milley there are safeguards in place in the event President Trump wants to launch a nuclear weapon.
“This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” Pelosi wrote in a letter. “The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.”
After speaking with Milley Friday, Pelosi told her caucus that she has gotten assurances there are safeguards in place in the event Trump wants to launch a nuclear weapon, according to multiple sources on a caucus call.
“Speaker Pelosi initiated a call with the Chairman. He answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority,” Colonel Dave Butler said in a statement.
From January 8, 2021:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told House Democrats that she has gotten assurances there are safeguards in place in the event President Trump wants to launch a nuclear weapon, according to multiple sources. https://t.co/E8YnKAToRg
The muting of the president continued Monday as White House staffers ensured no one heard a question rattling around in President Joe Biden’s head during a briefing on western wildfires.
During a visit to Boise, Idaho, according to Fox News, Biden spoke about the wildfires, gave prepared remarks and heard from George Geissler, a Washington state forester and leading member in the National Association of State Foresters.
So far, so good.
Then Biden appeared to go off-script as he said, “Can I ask you a question?”.
“Of course,” Geissler replied.
“One of the things that I’ve been working on with some others is … ” Biden said before the video feed cut off.
@PressSec Hi Jen. I hope this tweet finds you well. I was just wondering if maybe you can help me understand exactly why it is that when President Biden speaks that oftentimes his microphone is abruptly muted or cutoff completely. This makes us Americans very untrusting.
A recent report from Politico said that some in the White House cannot bear to hear a carefully crafted message blunted by the messenger, and either mute their televisions or turn Biden off, unable to bear the suspense of what will go wrong this time.
Chief on the list of things that make White House aides tremble is that Biden might say an unscripted word in response to an unwelcome question, undoing all the work that went into his prepared remarks.
“I know people who habitually don’t watch it live for that reason,” the Politico report quoted what it said was “one current official” whom it did not name.
As reported by Fox News, Biden has made it clear he sometimes comes out to speak publicly after being told what to do.
“Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O’Donnell from NBC,” Biden said at a news conference in June, after his first presidential summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.
Writing on Fox, media reporter Brian Flood noted that Biden has “implied that his handlers set the rules” and that the president’s conduct is “leading observers to ponder who is actually calling the shots behind the scenes.”
Cite times when White House staff cut president’s feed, suggest mysterious person making decisions
A top Senate Republican on Tuesday accused the White House of perpetrating a “puppeteer act” on the American people and suggested that President Biden isn’t the one making decisions on key policy matters such as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday examining that withdrawal, Sen. James Risch zeroed in on recent instances in which it appears administration staff cut off Mr. Biden’s microphone or live video feed while he was still speaking.
The most recent incident took place Monday, when the president was involved in a question-and-answer session with foresters in Idaho. The White House live video feed of the event stopped in the middle of the president’s sentence.
Mr. Risch, Idaho Republican, tied those instances to the disastrous U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.
In questions directed at Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who appeared before the committee Tuesday, Mr. Risch suggested that other officials, not the president himself, may have been making decisions on Afghanistan.
“As recently as yesterday, in mid-sentence, he was cut off by someone in the White House who makes the decision that the president of the United States is not speaking correctly. I would like to know who this person is. This is a puppeteer act, if you would,” the senator said. “We need to know who is in charge and who is making these decisions.”
Mr. Risch and Mr. Blinken later engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth over the identity of the mysterious individual and whether he or she has any power over foreign policy in the Biden administration.
For his part, Mr. Blinken denied that the individual exists.
“There is no such person. Again, the president speaks for himself,” the secretary of state said.
A visibly exasperated Mr. Risch questioned how Mr. Blinken could make such an assertion in the face of video footage clearly showing the president’s feed being cut in the middle of a sentence.
“Are you unaware this is actually happening?” Mr. Risch said. “This didn’t happen yesterday? Or on the other occasions the media showed the American people that his sentence was cut off mid-sentence? Are you saying that didn’t happen?”
Mr. Blinken again offered a flat denial, even seemingly struggling to hold back a smile as he responded to the charges.
“Senator, I really don’t know what you’re referring to,” he said. “I’m telling you based on my experience with the president over the last 20 years, anyone who tried to stop him from saying what he wanted to say, from speaking his mind, probably would not be long for their job.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was urged by at least three Congressmen on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to resign on Monday as he testified on the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last month.
The botched withdrawal resulted in a still-unknown number of Americans being left behind, and a terrorist attack that killed 13 American service members.
Republicans on the committee did not hold back as they blasted Blinken, who has faced calls to resign and to be impeached.
Joe Biden and Antony Blinken empowered the Taliban and made America is less safe.
They must be held accountable for their deadly Afghanistan withdrawal.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) blamed Blinken and the Biden administration for allowing the Taliban to retake control of the country and “turn it into a safe haven for murderous terrorists.”
Wilson was just warming up, saying that America is at greater risk for attack than ever before.
“In American history, American families have never been at a greater risk of attack at home than today. The global war on terrorism is not over, it has been moved from abroad to American homes. As the grateful father of an Afghanistan veteran, I especially see your actions as indefensible.”
Wilson added, “Your bizarre abandoning of Bagram Airfield led directly to 13 Marines murdered at Kabul. You should resign.”
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) also took Blinken to task for the bungled situation in Afghanistan and urged him to step down.
“We have an administration that does not know how to confront an adversary, understanding that they do not respect weakness, they only respect strength. And it is so greatly unfortunate, the consequences, and I believe that you, sir, should resign. That would be leadership.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) also urged Blinken to resign.
Three Republican congressmen told Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he should resign over the deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. https://t.co/qT2tKakt5L
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was blunt and to the point about other administration officials, such as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for refusing to voluntarily testify. He has threatened to subpoena those who have not come before the committee.
Menendez stated to Sec. Blinken, “Mr. Secretary, the execution of the U.S. withdrawal was clearly and fatally flawed.” He also assured there would be accountability to 20 years of administrations of both parties who he said “lied” about the stability of the Afghan government.
Blinken lauded Joe Biden for ending the Afghan war as “righteous,” and the evacuation as “extraordinary.” He has also stated that there are roughly 100 U.S. citizens and thousands of green card holders that could remain in Afghanistan.
Yikes. @ChrisMurphyCT’s questioning of @ABlinken makes it clear that the Biden Administration was chased out by the Taliban.
Sec. Blinken tried to place blame on the Trump administration, saying to the committee, “We inherited a deadline. We did not inherit a plan.”
Blinken also spoke to claims that Biden ignored intelligence reports, stating that the outcome in Afghanistan was one that “no one predicted.” That claim has also been disputed. Weeks before the fall of the Afghan government, CIA reports began warning of the exact scenario that took place.
Whether the Democrat-controlled Congress will actually hold Blinken accountable remains to be seen.
Antony Blinken blames former President Trump for his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.@SchmittNYC: "That deadline was pushed back 3 months, so huge holes in that argument." pic.twitter.com/nDXbXhvwLS
One Squad member, Jamaal Brown, reportedly requested a special police detail to guard his home after the Capitol Hill riots, despite suggesting that cops are agents of “white supremacy.”
While members of a group of Democratic House representatives known as The Squad push to defund police departments in the United States, it appears that these very same people are “among the biggest spenders on personal security”, claims retired MTA-Metro North Railroad Police captain Dorothy Moses Schulz, an emerita professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY.
As Schulz pointed out in an article on posted on City Journal, Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush all support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, with Bush sponsoring the BREATHE Act, which “calls for total elimination of federal law enforcement agencies.”
Bush, between 15 April and 28 June, spent nearly $70,000 in campaign funds on personal security, with Schulz claiming that the figure is “almost $20,000 above the median household income for residents in her district.”
In an interview with CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers last month, Bush remarked that she has private security because her body “is worth being on this planet right now.”
“They would rather I die? You would rather me die? Is that what you want to see? You want to see me die? You know, because that could be the alternative,” she said. “So either I spent $70,000 on private security over the last few months, and I’m here standing now and able to speak, able to help save 11 million people from being evicted. Or – I could possibly have a death attempt on my life.”
AOC spend $4,000 on security during the second quarter of this year, with Schulz describing it as a “big drop” from more that $45,000 the representative spent in the first quarter.
Pressley’s spending on security reportedly amounted to “more than $4,000” in the first quarter and “more than $3,500” in the second quarter of this year, while Omar “reduced her security bills in the second quarter, from slightly over $3,000 to $2,800.”
It was Jamaal Bowman, however, that Schulz branded as the winner of the “chutzpah competition”, as the congressman, who has called some cops agents of “white supremacy”, asked for and received a special police detail to guard his home in Yonkers following the 6 January riots at the Capitol Hill.
“Congressman Bowman’s cry for extra policing at his home is hypocrisy at its worst,” claimed Keith Olson, president of the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, to the New York Post. “Not long ago, the Congressman called for dramatically less policing in the most violent, crime ridden neighborhoods … Asking these same police officers to protect your family while creating policies that make communities of color less safe is simply disgraceful.”
Appearing on CBS News Sunday, the former CIA Director under Obama, while Biden was Vice President, admitted that the contemptuous actions of the now president in Afghanistan has injected new inspiration into terrorists all over the globe.
“I think that the Taliban winning the war in Afghanistan, and then the way our exit happened, has absolutely inspired jihadists all over the world,” Michael Morell said on Face The Nation.
He added that the calamitous exit from the country means “there’s a celebration going on.”
“The Taliban is saying, we just didn’t defeat the United States, we defeated NATO. We defeated the world’s greatest military power, ever,” Morell urged.
“I think, not only will the jihadists be inspired, but a lot of them are going to come to Afghanistan to be part of the celebration, to be part of jihadist central,” he continued.
“We are more at risk, without a doubt,’ Morell concluded.
Watch:
Obama's Acting CIA Director Michael Morell: "The way our [Afghanistan] exit happened has absolutely inspired jihadists all over the world." pic.twitter.com/3ZHAzJXaLK
Morell’s comments come as Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted there is STILL a hostage situation going on with Americans now being held the Mazar-i-Sharif Airport in northern Afghanistan for over ten days:
Secretary Blinken just admitted that the Taliban has blocked American charter flights out of Afghanistan.
US Pledges $64 Million in Aid to Afghanistan, Promises to Respect Sanctions
The United States has promised to send about $64 million more in aid to Afghanistan, pledging to respect sanctions on the Taliban terrorist group that now controls the country.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of State are sending the aid through independent organizations like United Nations agencies and non-governmental groups to “provide life-saving support directly to Afghans facing the compounding effects of insecurity, conflict, recurring natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic,” USAID said in a statement on Monday.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan in mid-May, routing the U.S.-backed Afghan forces in a series of fights.
U.S. troops rushed back to the country to secure Kabul’s airport and allow the evacuation of some 120,000 people, but withdrew on Aug. 30.
Sanctions on the Taliban will be respected when apportioning the aid, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told lawmakers in Washington on Monday.
“We have seen a terrible drought, growing nutrition problems. It is one of the reasons that we think it is so important to make sure that regardless of anything else, we and other countries find ways to continue humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan,” he said.
“We can and will do that consistent with the sanctions in our laws by directing assistance through NGOs and United Nations agencies, not through the government. We need to do everything we can to make sure the people of Afghanistan do not suffer anymore,” he added.
The State Department declined to name the non-governmental groups. USAID did not respond to a request for comment.
A State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that “Our partners have extensive experience working in challenging environments, and have strong risk management procedures in place for their operations, with the objective of ensuring that humanitarian assistance reaches its intended recipients.”
“We have not taken steps to reduce sanctions pressure on sanctioned Taliban leaders or the significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system,” the spokesperson added.
The United States is the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, according to USAID. The financial support this year alone is up to nearly $330 million.
United Nations member states announced Monday $1.2 billion in aid to Afghan nationals, United Nations officials said. The funds will help nearly 11 million people over the next four months, Morgan Griffiths, a United Nations relief official, told the organization’s General Assembly in Geneva.
Funding could go to the Taliban. Griffiths noted that the group asked for international support to reconstruct Afghanistan as well as build a counter-narcotics program.
Some U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern about keeping aid out of the hands of the Taliban, including on Monday.
“I would like to see, if we’re going to help Afghanistan with food and aid, that we extract certain commitments from them before we just give them food,” Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) said.
Blinken began to respond, but Sires interrupted him and moved on to another topic.