It’s fair to ask the candidates if they would raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare benefits, or what other specific changes they would make to entitlement programs. It’s also fair — and realistic — for them to answer, as Chris Christie did, that the details would inevitably require negotiation with Congress, and that they’re not going to put out any specifics when the final details would have to be hashed out with Congress.
Raising the retirement age during a time of falling life expectancy seems tricky.
I’d be sympathetic to eliminating the federal gas tax if it also meant eliminating all federal funding for highways. Highways should be a state responsibility, and they have their own gas taxes, most of them higher than the federal gas tax. But as long as we’re going to have federal highway funding, the gas tax is a good way to raise that revenue.
Chris Christie is right to call for raising the retirement age to Social Security, but he also calls for denying benefits to wealthier Americans, which would fundamentally change the program into a pure welfare program.
Chopping the federal gas and diesel taxes would cut $0.18 and $0.24 per gallon respectively. Thoughts, Dominic?
Source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=5
There is SOMEthing about the CERtain FORward-accent SPOKen rhythm that VIVek adds to all his SENTENCES that makes him impossibly jagged and over-caffeinated to listen to. It’s like he was the first guy out the door at the end of the local Hilton Inn’s “enunciation seminar” for aspiring executive vice-presidents.
Agree with Vivek about increasing supply, but not necessarily in labor. That way leads to giving work permits to illegal entrants as we have been doing under Biden. Running on lowering wages is not going to be a winner.
Update. Vivek didn’t suggest increasing immigration, only cutting welfare or payments to do those who don’t work. But again, the principle that wages are too high seems like a dangerous one for Republicans to embrace.
U.S. crude oil production is basically the highest it has ever been, at 405 million barrels per month. Biden doesn’t want to make a big deal of it because it would make environmentalists upset, but U.S. oil companies are producing at a very high level.
Lester Holt insisted that increasing energy supplies do not affect prices immediately, to which Scott responded with a pitch-perfect answer explaining why Holt was wrong. Energy markets are futures markets. They respond to signals indicating more supply will come online in the future, which has an immediate effect on prices. Bringing on supply or, indeed, even telegraphing that intention can put negative pressure on energy prices.
Scott cites Proverbs to make an anti-debt point: Now that’s fusionism.