The Razor Blade Platform of Republicans

Reflecting on the recent Virginia gubernatorial election and the repeated failures of the replacement of a decent Health Care Bill, Republicans have reason to worry about their foothold in D.C. The foremost Republican figure, President Trump, has a looming influence, direct or indirect, that plays a role in many elections. This was especially true with the election in Virginia and it will be entirely applicable wit

h the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate up for re-election next year. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, Ed Gillespie, lost the election by an 8.9% margin and received 231,715 less votes than his Democratic opponent, Ralph Northam. Stephen Farnsworth, a political analyst for the University of Mary Washington, commented on Gillespie’s strategies by saying that he “campaigned like Donald Trump and was punished by the voters of Virginia for doing so.”

As Farnsworth points out, Gillespie chose an interesting campaign strategy that ultimately helped and hurt his race. On one hand, he benefitted from not accepting the endorsement of Donald Trump, most likely out of fear that an endorsement of the President would sink his campaign. Ironically, Gillespie hurt his campaign by acting much like President Trump which Virginians did not like, as they already had distaste for the President. Because of this interesting concoction of poorly chosen ingredients, Gillespie fell behind significantly and gave into Northam.

 

In our unit on Parties and Elections, we noted that the main goal of political parties is to win elections so that the party can take control and then create their own legislation. If we keep this notion in mind, the Virginia election could foreshadow a turn in the tide against Republicans. Virginia is a well-known swing state for Presidential elections and for the past ten elections, since 1980, Virginia has voted for the winning candidate seven times. While this information may not have as much correlation as the Democrats would like, nor as much importance as the Republicans ought to pay attention to, the results could signify a retaliation against Republicans. Furthermore, it is not only retaliation against Republicans but as well against Trump who, in the eyes of some people, has tainted the image of the Right. If this gubernatorial election holds any influence over future elections, then the Republicans ought to keep their wits about them. Once again, Ralph Northam won by a significant margin and left Gillespie in the dust, so to speak. As of now the Republicans are balanced precariously in the eyes of the people. If they fall out of favor, then the doors are left wide open for Democrats to rush into the Legislative branch and gain majority.

 

 

In speaking about approval of the people and parties, President Trump’s approval rating currently sits at 38.3% while his disapproval rating stands at 56.5%; that’s a margin of 18.2%. This steady decline of approval of the President shows an increasing frustration of the people in the shortcomings of the executive branch. The frustration then trickles down from the President to the Republican Party and that is where the uncertainty and trouble of the future arises. If the Republicans, including Trump, cannot construct a passable Healthcare bill, among other items on their agenda, then the trend that we observed in Virginia is likely a fair predictor of America’s future and surely a blow to Republicans everywhere.

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Your Money is Your Money

The Republicans in the Senate are pushing for a tax reform to lower federal income taxes, and most of them ran their election on this promise to lower taxes. Both Democrats and Republicans have their argument for why they should stay the same, be higher, or be lower. I am for lowering of the federal income taxes. Democrats complain about how the rich do not pay enough in taxes even though they 45% in taxes, but they pay less through tax write offs and loopholes. More people in the United States would pay taxes if we lowered taxes andchanged the tax bracket since right now 45 percent of Americans don’t pay their taxes.

Lowering taxes to get more people to pay them could allow the US to receive more tax money to help public education, the poor, and many other things that we rely on the government to provide for us. The way we could lower taxes without actually getting rid of the percentages we have now would be to add more brackets into the existing tax bracket. This would allow someone to only have to pay 15% instead of 25% in taxes when they barely make more than the 15% bracket maximum. The max for the 15% bracket is 37,950 for a single person. By doing this, more of the lower income people would be more inclined to pay taxes which means more money for the government. Also, by taking less of the people’s money, they could spend that money on other things like tutoring, private school, and other things to boost our economy, but if everybody in America paid taxes, then we wouldn’t need the crazy amount of private schools we have. We could fix multiple problems by doing something pretty simple.

The lower and middle class would really benefit from lower taxes since less of their income would go to taxes and more towards basic necessities. The lower income class would be able to improve their living conditions and health if they could keep more of their money. Also, the tax forms are so complicated and confusing that most people have to pay someone to do their taxes which means less money for those people. People from these two classes also refuse to pay taxes which is around 45% of Americans because they are displeased and that the government needs to provide more for them. That is ironic since the government needs money to provide for us. The people chose have control of their own money since they earned not the government, and they should not tell me how I should spend my money.

Changes to the tax bracket need to be made. Right now there are 7 brackets with 10% being the lowest and 39.60% being the highest. The other ones are 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent.They need to add more brackets between 15 and 25 to make the gap between the two not as big and one between 10 and 15 at many around 12%. Adding more brackets could be mean the difference between living pay check to pay check for some families and more money for other things that they might need. Making the tax system more simplified could get more people to pay taxes since 59% of Americans think Congress needs to fix the tax system. Theses changes could help get America to the next level in countries that pay the majority of their taxes. This could also take away people relying the wealthy to make for everyone else lack of participation and that the wealthy don’t pay enough in taxes.

The lowering of taxes and adding more brackets to the tax could help America and Americans in general. There are many benefits to doing this, but it is only going to help America if everybody pays their taxes. More tax brackets are needed in order more Americans to pay taxes and allow the government to have more money to spend on education and everywhere they feel its necessary. Lower taxes and more brackets could help this country move to closer to a more well rounded country that takes care of the basic things that we rely on a government to provide for us.

http://www.ri.gop/lowering_taxes

 

The End of an Era

The ending of DACA is a historical moment in the US which is causing the two political parties to rage war. Trump ended the DACA program which his conservatives’ partners praised him for since he based most of his campaign on immigration. It took him a while to do this even though he pledged to do so at the beginning of his presidential reign. The ending of DACA was coming at some time, which I have a mixed view about. In many ways it could be negative, but we need to look at what we can do to help our students first, not immigrant students. American students are at a disadvantage since we cater to the immigrants and not our own. In order for this country to keep growing, we must educate our citizens first and make the priority above the illegal immigrants.

It seems inhumane for rejecting immigrants that were already in America, but how do you think the average hard working American kid feels when they can not get a scholarship or the same education as an illegal immigrant? Republicans sped up the process of ending DACA since “nine Republicans state attorneys general had threatened to sue to halt the program immediately if Mr. Trump did not act” (NY Times). Republicans were furious about the DACA program that Obama enacted which Trump said it led to a ‘“massive surge” of immigrants from Central America, some of whom went on to to become members of violent gangs like MS-13′”(NY Times). The Republicans see this as the first step in Immigration Reform and ending the influx of undocumented children in to this country.

While ending DACA right now is the smart thing, people who have DACA can renew their permits if it expires in the next six months. Trump told reporters, “he feels compassion for those affected, but ‘long term it’s going to be the right solution” (CNN) which is ironic of him to say since he pushed deporting immigrants so hard during his campaign. He might have ended people from being able to become a DACA recipient, but he gave Congress six months to try to fix DACA and is even setting up meeting with Democrats as well about this issue.

This controversial decision to end DACA has more than to do with just education and immigration, but also with peoples’ views especially the view of anti-immigration. For the Republicans, this is a win for them by ending a form immigration, but on the other hand, the democrats feel that this is the most inhumane thing ever. We must look at this from both sides along with the positives and negatives. We do not really know the negative affects, yet besides the fact we are denying people an education, which we promised them. The one positive is less immigration for six months while DACA is suspended. We do not fully know what this could to the economy in the future, or how much money it will cost to deport all of these people on DACA. This is a battle over political views and beliefs, and it is the morally right thing to do.

I personally do not know if this a good or bad thing completely, yet. I think that we should try to fix it, but at the same time, we must focus on our citizens first. We push our citizens away sometimes and do not take care of them enough. The Washington Post explains that Trump was for the Dreamers and praised them, but then all of sudden, he is against them. He tweeted, “Make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST! The forgotten men & women will no longer be forgotten” (Washington Post), which contradicts things he had said previously. I agree with him that we must take care of our citizens first, but what is he going to do to help us more. I am not sure if he even believes in this decision or if he is just doing this to get the Republicans praise back. Either way the DACA program is just a platform the two political parties use to fight over their drastic views over immigration.

Sequester: Here We Go Again…

A chart showing specific government cuts.

A repeat of the fiscal cliff is dawning upon us. By the first of March, $85 billion will have to automatically be cut. Known as the sequester, these cuts will mainly affect federal workers. An approximate 800,000 workers are to expected to face 22 unpaid days, spread out, but end up being very close to about 20% in pay cuts. Congress needs to make a solution to the problem they already created. This solution must not hurt the economy in anyway. From the executive branch, POTUS is still pushing for a combination of tax increases on the rich and increase in spending cuts. It is now Congress’s turn. Congress must either choose raising taxes or increase spending cuts. As Secretary of State John F. Kerry stated, the “price of abandoning our global efforts would be exorbitant.” He means that if the government were to continue with spending cuts, then we would lose a lot of money that were meant for monitoring terrorist activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is even more important because of the “recent rise of Al Qaeda-linked militancy in North Africa.” This is why Congress and the President can not even consider of allowing the sequester to occur.

The United States needs these government programs to protect our citizens. The solution must be based on the middle class. Assuming that this solution will not make anyone happy, politicians must look at the benefits versus the costs. Congress must find a way to pull large amounts of money from the 1% of Americans and from large corporations and put that sum back into the middle class. The obvious solution is to raise taxes on the rich. However, after the fiscal cliff, raising taxes on the rich couldn’t even solve the budget crisis for one year. In his State of the Union address, President Obama stated that he wants to push the minimum wage to $9.00. This is a very necessary step to put more money into the pockets of the middle class and reduce the incomes of monopolistic companies. These are actions that Congress and the President could take to help rise the middle class without imposing spending cuts.