1. The school funding hoax that's really a tax cut scheme by Vos-Republicans deserved some attention today.
After a suffering a year long pandemic, that's all school districts need right now is to work through a punishing defunding scam.
The best and simplest explanation for this insult to every referendum voting parent in their school district was neatly compiled in this string of tweets from Wisconsin Budget Project's Tamarine Cornelius:
When tax cut policy continues to fail, it would seem logical not to keep making those same tax cut mistakes over and over again? Not for Republicans, or their blissful low information voters.
Tax Cut Obsession got old in the 1900's, But can it possibly get lower still? Is there a bottom limit?
Let's deep-six this 1900's way of thinking forever. You can only cut taxes just so much before our civilized society can't support itself anymore, can't progress, and can't pay forward money needed to help upcoming generations. Also interesting and true:
"The link between taxes and economic growth and development, however, has been widely challenged by economists. Historically, the states with the highest taxes also tend to be the highest income, while states with the lowest taxes also tend to be the poorest." - UW Extension
List of Walker/Vos-Republican Failures...
1. Manufacturing Tax Credit: No jobs requirements or pay increases...
Tax savings to business owners of the manufacturing and agriculture tax credit has totaled $1.4 billion since 2011, and in 2019 alone totaled $334 million, meaning other taxpayers must make up that amount to help pay for services such as education, health care, public safety, and road repairs. Figures from September 2019 show state manufacturers employed 6,800 fewer workers in that month compared to one year earlier, continuing a trend of losses in that sector.
The relocation will help K-C work more with marketing, digital, and technology businesses in the Chicago area.Kimberly-Clark also got a major tax break from the recent Piece of Shit tax bill that was jammed through by Republicans in Washington DC. In fact, Kimberly-Clark cited those tax cuts as a reason for the layoffs, because it allowed to begin a wide-scale restructuring in 2018, letting them reap the benefits of the "cost-cuts" by being taxed less.This prompted Wisconsin US Senator Tammy Baldwin to ask why state and federal governments was giving so many breaks to a company that would cut so many Wisconsin jobs.
Foxconn Technology Group is in breach of contract for failing to construct a high-tech screen plant in Mount Pleasant, while local governments spent hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare for the project, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a real estate development company … the state agreed to provide up to $2.85 billion of tax incentives if Foxconn met certain hiring and capital investment thresholds. The state has yet to award the company tax credits for those purposes; however, millions of taxpayer dollars have gone toward infrastructure upgrades.
Madison.com: The Department of Revenue said the push would decrease state sales tax collections by an anticipated $159 million and county sales tax revenue by $13.3 million. But it wouldn't allocate money to counties or the state make up for the anticipated loss of dollars — a point some Democratic critics homed in on as they floated an amendment to backfill local governments (it was dismissed as not germane to the bill).In other words, the results aren't accidental when you consider who funds Republican candidates:
Wisconsin was projected to have a $818 million surplus, with half of that going into the rainy day fund. Republicans immediate reaction? Give most of the $409 billion back as a tax cut, because it's not the governments money, it's yours...blah, blah, blah. 
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a major $250 million Republican-led tax-cut package that would have used unanticipated revenues to reduce the average taxpayer’s income tax bill by $106. The veto came one year and a week after Evers' first veto, which was of a similar income tax cut passed by Republicans.
Another question is how much the coronavirus, paired with a national economic slowdown, could affect the state budget — A recession would likely erase the surplus.
“That’s definitely on our minds,” Republican Sen. Scott Fitzgerald said. “Hindsight is 20-20, but that projection could change dramatically, and as a result of that, things could be a lot tighter than where we thought they were.”
The Senate plans to come in once more in March, when Republicans may try to override Evers’ veto. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said his chamber will also likely return in May to attempt to override gubernatorial vetoes.
Just hours before one of the worst mass shootings in state history ... Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, made clear that the state's gun laws would not change under a Republican-controlled Legislature despite a call for a review from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers:
"We’re going to have that discussion about the Second Amendment forever," Sen. Scott Fitzgerald told reporters in Franklin, about an hour before the shooting at the Molson Coors brewery. "A lot of the provisions that are in place already, people are satisfied with."
“Today, our high taxes fund a surplus. The surplus is not the government's money. The surplus is the people's money.”
Who needs to pay for transportation, new youth prisons, replacing lead water pipes, dairy farm support, broadband fiber optics in all rural communities for job creation, provide affordable health care, return schools to 2/3rds funding, fund the UW again, provide expanded public transportation, affordable housing, ask manufacturers to help pay for schools that educate their future employees by repealing their tax credit, and finally, wiping out our structural debt.Assembly "Leader" Robin Vos repeated W's nonsensical deficit growing logic:
Democrats want to eliminate some or all of TABOR’s spending restrictions to enable public spending to keep up with Colorado’s rapid growth. Colorado currently ranks between 40th and 45th nationwide for per-pupil K–12 spending and 48th for higher ed spending. Republicans counter that TABOR provides an effective restraint on Democratic overreach.Maybe Democrats could call for a tax cut freeze until we study what the real costs are in the future? It's called budgeting?
Using Federal Reserve data to compare how generations fared financially at different points of their life cycles ... What people own: their assets minus their debts; it gives families a safety net during hard economic times and is intertwined with such milestones of adult life as buying a home, starting a business or retiring comfortably.
As the chart above shows, baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — collectively owned 21 percent of the nation’s wealth by the time their generation hit a median age of 35 in 1990.
1. It illustrates the size of the financial hole today’s young adults are in relative to their parents. It’s a hole they’ll never truly be able to dig out of: The less money you start out with, the less you’ll make during the rest of your life ... some will instead require their heirs to care for them, putting further strains on the budgets of young households.
2. Some of the generational gap will eventually close as boomers age out of the population and pass their riches on to their heirs.
Though the long-term political and economic implications of these shifts remain unclear, at present it seems apparent that these harsh financial realities drive many young Americans’ disgruntlement with the country’s economic system.
(Republicans want to) pass an income tax cut that the governor has all but promised to veto. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said passing the tax cut now would make sure it would happen. "We've got to continue to nip away at Wisconsin's high taxes."Concept vs Reality: So what's at stake when Republicans push the concept of cutting "high taxes" when reality continues to rack up higher bills that support change and social/business progress? The main section of today's Sunday Wisconsin State Journal should have given everyone a strong reality check on this tax cut lie:
As health care becomes more complicated — and as patients pay a larger share of their bills and adult children take care of a growing elderly population, often from far away — private patient advocates are helping people manage the system. Many health care organizations, insurance companies and government agencies employ patient representatives or navigators ... The health care system “is designed to get health care widgets at a profit, not to get health,” she said. “It’s not so intuitive. It requires more people to get help.”2. Regional Youth Prison Costs: The state might have to make sure localized youth prisons are funded in the future, jeopardizing their typically irresponsible calls for more tax cuts:
Two counties, La Crosse and Fond du Lac, have backed out of plans to build and operate regional youth prisons, intended to replace Wisconsin’s only youth prison in Irma, citing uncertainties about the cost of operating the facilities without more state support ... “There needs to be a vehicle by which counties can access funds if there’s an operations deficit.” Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, said “That is is not something the state’s going to pick up.” If losses were fully covered by the state, he said, they would feel no need to rein in costs ... where’s the skin in the game for the counties?” Schraa said.3. Republicans Ignore Venture Capital Funding, Push Tax Cuts: Conservative business columnist Tom Still's sudden realization that everything he once opposed is now the greatest thing since sliced bread continues. Pathetic but welcome. Yet Republicans would rather cut taxes than spend on a new high tech economy that will create new jobs and businesses:
For reasons that range from the region’s share of U.S. economic clout to the talent produced by the region’s colleges and universities, more investors are discovering the Midwest. The only question is whether Wisconsin policy-makers will be late to the party.
Some have been aggressive about underwriting state funds, matched by private dollars, that co-invest in young companies and other funds. Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and, most recently, Indiana’s Next Level Fund, have followed that approach in the belief a rising investment tide will lift all states in the region.
Wisconsin has a toehold called the Badger Fund of Funds ... a $25-million investment. However, investments in funds established in other Midwest states average hundreds of millions of dollars per state and those dollars are magnets for much more in private investment ... the paybacks are significant in tax dollars, economic growth and good-paying tech jobs. Is Wisconsin primed to step up? Yes, but it will require political will to build upon a tech economy infrastructure that is already growing.
Citylab: Timothy Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, who is perhaps the leading student of incentives and economic development, has a new report that provides the most detailed assessment of incentives across states and their effects on economic development. His database contributes a useful tool for state and local economic developers and others to take a hard look at incentives, what they cost, and whether they are worth it or not ... thanks to Bartik’s tool, you don’t have to take my word for it.
“Incentives do not have a large correlation with a state’s current or past unemployment or income levels or with future economic growth,” Bartik writes. Incentives are not the result of economic or fiscal conditions but reflect state politics and past practices. In other words, some states like to give away more money to business than others—for no obvious economic reasons.
A 2002 study of some 350 companies that received incentives found a negative effect on their ability to create jobs. Companies that received incentives expanded more slowly than others, and the overall effect of incentives was a reduction of 10.5 jobs per establishment.
My own research published on this site found virtually no association between business incentives and any measure of economic performance, including wages, incomes, and unemployment. As I wrote here in 2012:Companies typically select locations based on factors such as workforce, proximity to markets, and access to qualified suppliers, and then pit jurisdictions against one another to extract tax benefits and other incentives.
A 2011 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy study found property tax incentives to be counterproductive, being all too frequently given to companies that would have chosen the same location anyway. So instead of creating new jobs or spurring employment, the main effect of incentives is simply to deplete a community's tax base. Since poorer states and communities are more likely to use incentives in the first place, the end result is to undermine the resources and revenues of the places that can least afford it.
Bartik's tool can also be used his to assess the savings that would come from eliminating or reforming incentives. For example, limiting incentives to just one year would reduce the overall cost of incentives by roughly two-thirds. Getting rid of refundability—the ability of businesses to receive incentives even if they have no state corporate income tax liability—would reduce the costs of incentives by a third.
New Republic: There are better ways to jump-start local economies. Aaron K. Chatterji of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has proposed creating a Main Street Fund to support states that invest in choices that are smarter than incentives. Those could be seed money for startups, services to help businesses scale up, or a focus on attracting particular kinds of businesses, as Amy Liu of the Brookings Institution has suggested. But first, cities and states would have to cease offering big bucks to big business.Walker's Foxconn Dream Extreme defied Historical Warnings embedded in our State Constitution:
The Hill: State officials, who pledged big subsidies to Foxconn to land the project, are realizing they struck a bad bargain. The bitter irony is that the entire situation might have been avoided if Wisconsin policymakers had paid heed to sensible constraints embedded in the state constitution's "gift clause," which says that, with some exceptions, "the credit of the state shall never be given, or loaned, in aid of any individual, association or corporation." The state can "contract public debt and pledges to the payment" of its credit for "public purposes." Most states have similar gift clauses, passed to ... restrict the type of public-private partnerships that lead to the government risking money for the private benefit of a corporation.
Many states added gift clauses to their constitutions in the mid-to-late 19th century. The impetus for these clauses stemmed from the states' bad experiences in using their resources to promote private economic development. In the early 19th century, many state governments began borrowing funds, supplying working capital or issuing bonds in support of transportation corporations. This led to a rat race between state governments, as officials competed to make bigger and bigger promises to companies to lure business to their states....but wait...
As Rutgers University professor G. Alan Tarr has described it: "Particularly influential in promoting the states' often-reckless promotional efforts were the hope of economic windfalls ... as other states courted prosperity with speculative ventures." Predictably, the bidding war, using public resources, led to ruin. In 1837, nine states defaulted on their debts, leading officials to question their methods of promoting economic development. As a result, many states adopted gift clauses to prevent the problems associated with promising state resources to private companies. One of those states was Wisconsin, which included its gift clause in the original 1848 constitution.
Unfortunately, since 1848, Wisconsin's gift clause has been weakened. It was amended to allow gifts or loans for "public purposes." Wisconsin courts have interpreted "public purpose" broadly, deferring to the legislature's determination of what is or is not a public purpose. The result is a clause that has no meaning and provides no limits on public spending.
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey’s (R-Pa.) handout ... added up to more than $2.5 trillion over a decade. (Repealing the ACA mandate) would generate revenue that would solve major budgetary issues … the Joint Committee on Taxation implied that low-income Americans would be subject to drastic tax increases.
Toomey: “This is absolutely not a tax increase, and you guys know that,” he bellowed at Democrats. “It is not a tax increase if a person decides they don’t want to buy an Obamacare plan and, as a result, we don’t send a payment to an insurance company.”NOTE: I thought this also exemplified the GOP's irresponsible tax cut behavior beyond a reasonable doubt:
GOP played a strong game of kick the can: Republicans avoided the most pressing problems by repeated can-kicking.
1. They failed to fund the governmen, punting a decision into January.
2. They let the vital, popular and bipartisan-supported children’s health-care program known as CHIP lapse, promising to take that up next year as well.
3. Republicans delayed an agreement to raise the nation’s debt limit until early spring.
4. Republicans also kicked the can when they failed to make individual tax cuts permanent. Instead, benefits to the middle class will expire in 2025, letting a future Congress handle that issue.
5. By reforming taxes in a way that increased the deficit, Republicans put future Congresses in a difficult position if an economic downturn requires new fiscal stimulus. Increasing debt levels and interest rates complicate an inevitable reckoning over national finances.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn on the individual mandate: “Arguably, doing away with the individual mandate makes the Affordable Care Act unworkable ― not that it was particularly great beforehand,” Cornyn said.This was a conscious decision by Republicans. Period.
Including macroeconomic effects and interest costs, the legislation is projected to increase debt as a share of GDP over 5 percentage points in 2027 to 97 percent of GDP, and almost 4 percentage points in 2037 to 117 percent of GDP.Those are scary projections. But that's why Paul Ryan is so happy, there are no downsides; a little social unrest and resentment; and a reason to cut social safety nets. But it also supports the GOP's anti-government agenda and increases their voter turnout.
It could mollify future Democratic leaders’ fear of deficits, thereby removing a contrast on progressive policy. The spectacle of the GOP adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade — to finance a supply-side stimulus in the middle of an economic expansion — should prevent future Democrats from replicating Obama’s mistake … budget reconciliation puts no limit on how much a given bill can add to the debt in the first decade after it’s passed. The next time a Democratic president needs to choose between the better policy — or the less eye-popping price tag — chances are, he or she will pick the former.
For example, Republican Gov. Scott Walker mindlessly turned down high-speed rail, that SURPRISE, now would have made commuting to tech giant Foxconn from Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago a breeze. Walker once focused on old manufacturing jobs like welding, purged scientists at the DNR over climate science witchcraft, and continues to defunded the great university system. Now that Foxconn is coming, we've got to teach tech, tech, tech all the way.Millennials should be Afraid: Before we get to how Republicans are screwing over Millennials, lets define who they are. Here's a generational video description from Esquire:
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| The final tax rate cuts expire...? |
On the K-12 side, cuts that impact the source of public school funding are coming hand in hand with special tax benefits for families with means to put aside money for private school tuition.
On the higher education side, Stephen Moore, a conservative economist and adviser to the Trump campaign, told Bloomberg that Republicans are going after university endowments because "universities have become playpens of the left." A recent Pew poll showed 58 percent of Republicans say colleges have a negative effect on the country, while 72 percent of Democrats say they have a positive impact.
1. Taxpayers can currently save money for college through a 529 plan, where earnings grow tax-free. Republicans want to let taxpayers use 529s to pay for K-12 tuition at private and religious schools, too. Families can already do that; Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, but these have low contribution limits and aren't open to high-income Americans. "I think the only taxpayers who will be in a position to benefit from the 529 change are very rich people," says Nora Gordon, an economist.
2. Republicans are proposing another change that could hurt funding for the nation's public schools ... getting rid of the income and sales tax deductions ... "make it more painful for residents to increase local property taxes to pay for public schools." Nora Gordon of Georgetown said, "They're states with higher cost of living, higher property values, and states that spend more on their state and local government."
3. NOTE: According to a recent analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, after adjusting for inflation, "twenty-nine states provided less overall state funding per student in the 2015 school year than in the 2008 school year, before the recession took hold."
And you can thank Dumb Ron Johnson, who New York Magazine named specifically:While Republicans were manically outlining their plans to take from the poor to give to the Trumps, they also, accidentally, nullified all of their corporate donors’ favorite deductions. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate.
Last Thursday, the Senate tax bill already cost about that sum, and then McConnell started making expensive promises to his few holdouts. Susan Collins wanted a $10,000 property tax deduction for Americans in high-tax states; Ron Johnson wanted a 23 percent business-income deduction for the company that his family owns. This left the Senate Majority Leader searching under the tax code’s couch cushions for new sources of revenue.There's a reason Republicans don't like government; they can't manage their way out of a paper bag and they're ruled by anecdotes and wildly fanciful theories that have failed over and over.
Eventually, he came upon the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT). The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out — and money running short — Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower the AMT after doing so (AMT prevents companies from paying any less than 20 percent on their profits).
Senate Republicans rewrote the American tax code over lunch — and passed their (partially handwritten) legislation around 2 a.m. the following morning. Mitch McConnell never subjected his blueprint for restructuring the world’s largest economy to a single hearing. His caucus never invited experts to offer insight into the bill’s implications for housing, health care, higher education, outsourcing, or tax evasion.GOP Sinks Future Economy by discouraging major research and development:
This haste had an upside for the Senate GOP: It allowed the party to pass deeply unpopular changes to the tax code before the public had time to learn about them. But approaching major legislation like an Adderall-addled sophomore approaches an overdue term paper came with a minor drawback: It forced the party to pass a tax bill before they had time to read it.
As The Wall Street Journal reports: The biggest consequence could be the research credit, often used by manufacturers, technology firms and pharmaceutical companies ... Under the credit, companies get money back from the government for what they spend on innovation, often for wages of scientists and engineers.
… Robert Murray, of Murray Energy Corp., an Ohio-based firm and the largest privately held U.S. coal-mining company, complained ... the Senate tax plan would raise his company’s tax bill by $60 million. “What the Senate did, in their befuddled mess, is drove me out of business and then bragged about the fact that they got some tax reform passed,” Mr. Murray said in an interview Sunday. “This is not job creation. This is not stimulating income. This is driving a whole sector of our community into nonexistence.”
NPR's Steve Inskeep: So that was your goal, was a middle-class tax cut. But what does it say that — in practice according to independent analyses, I mean you do have winners and losers, not everybody gains, businesses gain, people with large estates to leave to their heirs gain, high-income people gain — but a lot of middle-income people do not gain in terms of money.________________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ryan: I disagree with that. The average tax cut for a middle-class family is going to be $1,182.
NPR's Steve Inskeep: Average, meaning not everybody.
NPR's Steve Inskeep: At the same time, a lot of deductions go away and it's not necessarily what you'd think of as a special interest deduction. We've reported that 9 million people or so use a deduction for medical expenses, excessive medical expenses, and that deduction goes away. A lot of them are ordinary people with kids who have severe trouble.________________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ryan: But it's typically a higher income person ... the whole point of this is, and the analysis is very clear, this is an average tax cut for every taxpayer on average. You can't run a number for every single 330 million people in America. But it's designed to provide tax relief across the board.
NPR's Steve Inskeep: 'Lily Batchelder of New York University took some numbers from the Joint Committee of Taxation, bipartisan part of Congress as you know very well, and concluded that something like 100 million households in this country under the House bill, and even more under the Senate bill, would either get no tax cut or would get a tax increase. Does that sound right to you?"
Paul Ryan: "No, it doesn't sound right unless it's a person that's not paying taxes already. I haven't seen this analysis so it's hard for me to go into it. But because of the Senate budget rules, there are some sunsets in the law, in the later part of the decade where some of that tax relief goes away."
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "It gets worse in later years, that's true."
Paul Ryan: "...if history is any guide, Congress has a very strong practice in history of not removing a middle-class tax relief like we didn't in 2010."
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "But help me understand that ... trusting that a later Congress would fix it, which means the deficit gets worse or it doesn't get fixed. Why does that make sense?"
Paul Ryan: "Well first of all history, if ... But I'd also attest to the fact that this is going to produce economic growth...."
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "You cited a study finding that that economic growth can come from the business tax cut. We could also cite a study from the Institute for Policy Studies casting questions or raising questions about that. We don't want to go back and forth with studies, but you do know that it is possible that businesses will take their tax savings and simply give it to stockholders in the form of dividends, or simply hold onto it in cash or buy back stock. What if they do? Does it matter to you?"
Paul Ryan: "That's still not an excuse not to put American businesses on a more level playing field with the rest of the world.
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "Why is it okay to increase the deficit, as this tax bill will do?"
Paul Ryan: "Actually I don't think it will increase the deficit. That's my entire point. I don't think this will increase the deficit ... We need — we have far more work to do to control spending ... but if we don't pass this tax law, we will not get the kind of economic growth we can get in this country. And if you want to get the deficit and the debt under control, control spending, grow the economy. This grows the economy.
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "If you'll forgive me, Stephen Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, has also said that this will spur so much economic growth it will pay for itself. It will bring in more tax revenue."
Paul Ryan: "I think that's quite possible."
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "He said that, but the Treasury Department has been unable to produce an analysis proving that."
Paul Ryan: "Yeah, I really think we're at a global economic focal point ... if we do this and put America at the head of the pack ... we will get much faster economic growth. And that faster economic growth clearly produces more revenue, more jobs, more take-home pay. That's a good thing. That's why I feel confident this is going to make a very very positive difference in the lives of millions of Americans."
"President Donald Trump’s tax reform plan will allow entrepreneurs and small businesses more room to improve, invest and expand, propelling economic growth and creating more family-supporting careers, all while freeing up Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money. ...Nope!!! The point is, if you were one of the lucky ones to get a tax cut, you'll be spending your savings on increased fees, insurance premiums and educational costs from the rising price of every plundered program.
The (repeal of the) individual mandate raises a lot of revenue for the tax cuts ... CBO estimates it would save the federal government $338 billion over the next 10 years ... comes from people losing insurance. When fewer people have insurance there's less money the government has to spend on subsidies.
You'd see something called a death spiral; with the healthy people exiting, the rates go up and up. A few states tried to do health reform without a mandate; Washington state in the 1990's ... they had a death spiral happen, and they had no insurance companies willing to sell coverage to individuals by the end of that experiment. We know that it doesn't work very well.
A Trojan horse: It would establish the proposition that a “better” inflation measure exists and should be employed across the government. Even if this specific legislation doesn’t touch Social Security, make no mistake: It puts Social Security under threat.Repealing Discounts Charity's and Rural Hospitals got for long-term Drug purchases: Jaw-dropping:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services essentially wipe out steep and long-term drug discounts received by charity and rural hospitals ... last month’s rule change to the 340B program (cut) $1.6 billion to the federal drug discount program known as 340B. Hospital leaders also contend that the latest rulemaking adds to an already confounding regulatory arrangement.
"Marketplace," hosted by Kai Ryssdal, featured on a 11/09/2017 show the quote "That's the end of research in the United States," said by policy analyst Barmak Nassirian when he saw the tax bill. He was thinking of the graduate students who work as research assistants and take advantage of certain tax breaks to offset the cost of their education, which is one of the deductions Republicans working on the bill are looking to slash.Taxing Endowment Earnings used to fund undergraduates from low income families: In the words of conservative George Will looking out for private colleges:
A 1.4 percent excise tax on the endowment earnings of approximately 70 colleges and universities with the largest per-student endowments ... to raise less than $3 billion in a decade ... Princeton University’s endowment earnings fund more than half its annual budget and will support expansion of the student body ... They also enable “need-blind” admissions: More than 60 percent of undergraduates receive financial assistance; those from families with incomes below $65,000 pay no tuition, room or board; those from families with incomes below $160,000 pay no tuition. No loans are required. PhD candidates receive tuition and a stipend for living costs. It is astonishingly shortsighted to jeopardize all of this, and it is unseemly to do so in a scramble for resources to make a tax bill conform to the transitory arithmetic of a budget process that is a labyrinth of trickery.
