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http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19320&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
ARIZONA LAW IS HATED BECAUSE IT COULD BE EFFECTIVE
To understand the hysterical reaction to Arizona's new immigration initiative, consider the numbers, says Heather Mac Donald, a contributing editor at City Journal and a co-author of "The Immigration Solution."
For example:
"? There are 6,000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tasked with restoring the rule of law in a country that already contains between 12 and 20 million immigration law-breakers.
"? Any intending illegal immigrant knows that if he can get across the border undetected, he faces a minute risk of being apprehended on U.S. soil.
"? By comparison, the New York Police Department, with a current headcount of 35,000, feels itself greatly understaffed in a compact city of eight million residents, only a portion of whom are law-breakers.
The Arizona law, were it to be widely emulated, threatens to disrupt the calculus of illegal immigration, says Mac Donald. There are 650,000 state and local police officers in the United States. If a significant portion of those officers received the mandate of the Arizona law -- to inquire where practicable into the immigration status of an individual they have legitimately stopped, if they have a valid reason to believe he is in the country illegally -- the balance between law enforcement and law-breaking would be changed enough to likely deter illegal border crossings and to persuade many illegal immigrants already in the United States to return to their home countries rather than face arrest and deportation.
The opponents of Arizona's law -- SB 1070 -- detest it not because it will lead to racial profiling (it will not), nor because it is unconstitutional (it is not), but because it just might work, says Mac Donald. Texas is reportedly already considering a similar law. The illegal immigrant lobby knows that it has to stop SB 1070 if it wants to maintain its monopoly over border matters, a monopoly that has led to the chaos that is now engulfing Arizona.
Source: Heather Mac Donald, "Arizona law is hated because it could be effective," Washington Examiner, May 5, 2010.
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http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19320&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
ARIZONA LAW IS HATED BECAUSE IT COULD BE EFFECTIVE
To understand the hysterical reaction to Arizona's new immigration initiative, consider the numbers, says Heather Mac Donald, a contributing editor at City Journal and a co-author of "The Immigration Solution."
For example:
"? There are 6,000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tasked with restoring the rule of law in a country that already contains between 12 and 20 million immigration law-breakers.
"? Any intending illegal immigrant knows that if he can get across the border undetected, he faces a minute risk of being apprehended on U.S. soil.
"? By comparison, the New York Police Department, with a current headcount of 35,000, feels itself greatly understaffed in a compact city of eight million residents, only a portion of whom are law-breakers.
The Arizona law, were it to be widely emulated, threatens to disrupt the calculus of illegal immigration, says Mac Donald. There are 650,000 state and local police officers in the United States. If a significant portion of those officers received the mandate of the Arizona law -- to inquire where practicable into the immigration status of an individual they have legitimately stopped, if they have a valid reason to believe he is in the country illegally -- the balance between law enforcement and law-breaking would be changed enough to likely deter illegal border crossings and to persuade many illegal immigrants already in the United States to return to their home countries rather than face arrest and deportation.
The opponents of Arizona's law -- SB 1070 -- detest it not because it will lead to racial profiling (it will not), nor because it is unconstitutional (it is not), but because it just might work, says Mac Donald. Texas is reportedly already considering a similar law. The illegal immigrant lobby knows that it has to stop SB 1070 if it wants to maintain its monopoly over border matters, a monopoly that has led to the chaos that is now engulfing Arizona.
Source: Heather Mac Donald, "Arizona law is hated because it could be effective," Washington Examiner, May 5, 2010.
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http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19323&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
A RECOVERY ONLY WASHINGTON COULD LOVE
The White House may tout Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports showing their $862 billion stimulus created jobs, but the CBO has also admitted their computer simulation did not take any actual new real world data into account, says Conn Carroll, the assistant director for the Heritage Foundation's Strategic Communications.
To the contrary, an independent study of real world stimulus facts found:
"? No statistical correlation between unemployment and how the $862 billion was spent.
"? That Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones.
"? An average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created.
And what kind of jobs were created, asks Carroll. According to Gallup the federal government is hiring at a significantly faster pace than the private sector. And data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) confirms that governments are increasing public sector pay at far faster rates than the private sector. None of this should be a surprise. President Obama specifically designed his stimulus to preserve government union jobs.
What happens when big government and the big businesses best capitalized to influence it are the main drivers of economic recovery? The recovery is slower and smaller than it otherwise would have been, says Carroll:
"? A recent study by the Kaufman Foundation found that small businesses have led America out of its last seven recessions, generating about two of every three new jobs during a recovery.
"? But under this Obama recovery, not only are government jobs growing faster than private sector jobs, but jobs are rebounding faster at large employers than small businesses.
There are far more types of small businesses engaged in more kinds of economic activity than Congress can devise special policy to help. This sort of one-off, micro managing, tinkering policy may gain a headline and support, but it will not help small businesses broadly. The more Washington taxes and regulates, the harder it is for small businesses to innovate and force big businesses to be more productive and create new jobs. The more the Obama agenda is implemented, the slower our recovery will be, says Carroll.
Source: Conn Carroll, "A Recovery Only Washington Could Love," Heritage Foundation, May 7, 2010.
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http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19325&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
EXTEND THE BUSH TAX CUTS -- FOR NOW
This is not the time for a tax increase. But unless Congress acts, under current law the existing income tax rates will rise sharply at the beginning of next year. Congress should vote now to extend all of the current tax rates for two years, including the tax rates on dividends, interest and capital gains.
Limiting the resulting tax-rate cuts to two years would reduce the projected future fiscal deficits. The sooner Congress acts, the stronger our prospects for continued economic recovery, says Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, a professor at Harvard University and a member of the Wall Street Journal's board of contributors.
A tax increase next year could easily derail the current fragile expansion.
The economic upturn since last summer has been nurtured by Federal Reserve credit like the mortgage purchase program and by the fiscal incentives such as the tax credits for car buyers and first-time home buyers that are now coming to an end, says Feldstein:
"? Eighty percent of the latest quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) increase consisted of a rise in consumer spending that was the result of an unrepeatable sharp drop in the saving rate.
"? Without that decline in the saving rate, the first-quarter annual GDP growth rate would have been less than 1 percent.
"? A 2011 tax increase that reduces economic incentives and household spending would raise the risk of a new economic downturn.
President Obama proposes to increase tax rates on high income households while making the existing tax rates permanent for taxpayers below the top tax brackets. While the increase would hit only a relatively small fraction of all households, that group represents a large share of total taxes and of private spending, says Feldstein.
Raising their tax rates would be a substantial blow to overall spending and therefore to GDP growth. Small business investment and hiring would also be adversely affected because half of all profits, including most of small business income, is taxed at personal rates rather than at the corporate rate, says Feldstein.
Source: Martin Feldstein, "Extend the Bush Tax Cuts -- For Now," Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2010.
