Economy & Budget

The “Gang of Eight” senators working on an immigration reform bill say they are near agreement on a bill. But not until four of them, Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), tour the Arizona-Mexico border this week and hold a press conference. 
 
I’m not sure why they need this excursion to the border — especially Sens. McCain and Flake who are both from Arizona (I imagine they’ve seen it before). Sens. Schumer and Bennet will find a high tech, impenetrable fence which traverses most of the Southwest United States and does a pretty good job of keeping out migrants.

The Senate’s passage of a budget that calls for limits or caps to itemized tax deductions — including the charitable tax deduction — seems to confirm a growing concern among many nonprofit leaders: Elected officials really don’t understand how vital the century-old incentive for charitable contributions is for the survival of nonprofit organizations.

Changing the existing provision in any way is tantamount to taking vital funds away from the private sector and redirecting them to federal coffers. This would have profound consequences for local communities and people in need.

The recent reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was an event to be celebrated, not just because it reaffirmed the importance of the act itself, but also because in the course of the media clamor, countless Americans heard of VAWA for the first time, and learned just how vital it is in the lives of American women.
 
Yet just as VAWA and other critical programs such as the federal Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) are transforming American communities’ responses to gender-based violence, sequestration is threatening to undo the advances we’ve made, as well as stopping any forward movement.

For me and my colleagues in the Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform coalition, we want to see a fair, pragmatic, and just immigration reform that respects the rule of law; secures our borders, our businesses, and our visa process; ensures fairness to taxpayers; protects the unity of the immediate family; and especially respects the God­given dignity of every person. Furthermore, we strongly feel that our nation has a moral imperative to assure that any immigration reform establishes a path toward earned legalization and eventual citizenship for those that are currently undocumented, and can qualify for this program. However, at the end of the day, we also want to see a reform of our legal immigration system that will actually work to solve the problems inherent in the broken immigration system that have led us to the dysfunctional situation that America is mired in today.

The European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund have made a good compromise use of market forces to have the owners and uninsured depositors take a loss for their misjudgments in risky investments and thus avoided imposing a deposit levy totally rejected by the people and the Cypriot parliament.

Over the last few weeks, several budget proposals that would set federal spending for the next fiscal year vied for support in both Houses of Congress.  Voting wrapped up last week with the approval of two very different proposals. Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to approve Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, while the Senate passed Senator Patty Murray’s budget plan on Saturday. Though these documents are only blueprints, they are more than just numbers or multiple billions adding up to trillions: they are fundamental reflections of national priorities and the values of the American people. It is these latter criteria, and not green eyeshade accounting techniques, that should guide our financial and fiscal choices over the next few months as Congress works to reconcile the disparate visions of these two budgets.

It’s hard to disagree with former Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s belief that small and large businesses alike can mutually benefit from a decrease in regulatory burdens. However, when accessing just who is truly advocating for small businesses, we must always take a second look.
 
Year after year, the SBA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has named the diversion of small business contracts to large corporations as the top management challenge facing the SBA. In 2005, the OIG’s report 5-15 stated this problem as “one of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal Government.”

In the past few years, broadband providers have begun shifting toward tiered service plans (sometimes known as usage-based pricing) that offer customers a fixed amount of data each month for a fee. On average, less than 2 percent of users exceed the most commonly-used tier of 300 GB; nearly 80% of consumers never exceed even 50 GB per month.

Nevertheless, some critics such as Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation are concerned that this trend may bring higher prices and reduced service. Most recently, NAF analyst Benjamin Lennett asked whether tiered service plans are a plot by cable companies to eliminate Internet-based competitors such as Netflix, which alone generates one-third of all North American download traffic.

For years American companies interested in doing business in Europe have faced various barriers to enter and operate in the EU market. Astronomical tariffs were to blame in some cases, but a major impediment has certainly been the different and complex regulatory regime.

For all those U.S. firms that have encountered a difficult regulatory environment in Europe, but also those that were previously deterred as a result of the tariff and non-tariff barriers, the news that the United States and the European Union would formally launch free trade negotiations this year should be ’music to their ears’ and  ’a wake up call’.



Lakers don’t go out of their way to help Celtics. Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t run ads for Starbucks. And Ford doesn’t suggest that potential buyers should consider GM trucks instead. These are just a few examples of friendly competition in the marketplace. When it comes to Washington, there are several examples of government agencies that do an incredible job working with their various constituencies and few are better at serving theirs that the Small Business Administration (SBA).  


Unfortunately, last week during a Congressional hearing, two organizations  launched an all-out assault on one of the small business community’s top government advocates, the SBA. In congressional testimony, the two lobbying groups accused SBA of straying from its core mission of advocating for small businesses, and instead fighting for the interests of corporate behemoths.