Former Rep. David McIntosh, the club’s president, said the House GOP was wrong to chase after the goal of revenue-neutral tax policy. “Instead of trading one tax for another, the GOP needs to focus on cutting rates, and cutting spending and the size of government to match,”
.. Make no mistake, the BAT will inflict American working families – the very people critical for Donald Trump’s election – a whole lot of hurt … The BAT is absolutely unnecessary to attract businesses and capital to our shores. Cutting the profits tax to 15 percent and minimally taxing – or not taxing at all – overseas earnings would lead to a flood of money pouring into the U.S. Countless foreign companies would be eager to set up shop here
.. Former Reagan Economic Advisor Arthur Laffer:
I think the border tax adjustment is a major mistake to put into legislation. It’s a huge bureaucratic mess to be honest with you. If it’s done ideally, Maria, which would be a tax on imports matched by a subsidy on exports of the equal size, it would have the same effect as devaluing the currency which would lead to domestic inflation. But if you look at it, there will be all sorts of nuances, all sorts of political grab bags going in the process and I just think they should just do tax rate reductions, get rid of this pay-for notion and don’t touch a border tax adjustment. It just makes no sense.
The Overlooked Menace of ‘Gangster Islam’
.. The sections I found most eye-opening were how the jihadist movement is flourishing not among the particularly religious but among the angry young men who are looking for a justification for their preexisting violent and aggressive impulses.
[Former Brussels Mayor Philippe} Moureaux told me, “we never had any evidence that the trouble eminates from the mosques.” Geraldine, mother of Anis, said that her son never attended mosques but was radicalized by people “on the street.” Her opinion was echoed by almost everybody I met in Molenbeek. “The people that do this,” one source told me, “are more familiar with a bar stool than a prayer mat.”
.. The networks responsible, he said, are dominated by a Tunisian mafia.
Can the Club for Growth Survive Donald Trump?
The free-market group spent big to defeat Trump, but he proved its supporters weren’t quite as faithful as once thought.
In the early Obama years, the group helped achieve its longstanding goal—the virtual annihilation of moderate Republicanism—by bankrolling Tea Party candidates. By 2015, it had become, arguably, the most influential anti-establishment interest group in politics and was closely aligned with the ascendant House Freedom Caucus. But in 2016, the Club for Growth watched in horror as millions of its ostensible supporters flocked to a candidate who shared few of its most cherished beliefs. Worse yet, Trump had won them over by co-opting the Club’s most reliable tactic—channeling anarchic rage at establishment politicians.
.. “The Club for Growth is both anti-Trump and anti-establishment,” Walsh says. “They’re seeing their slice of the GOP pie shrink.”
.. The Club was founded in 1999 by the banker/activists Richard Gilder and Thomas Rhodes, and the economic pundit Stephen Moore. All three were supply-siders in an era of moderate Republicanism. The group’s mission was to rid Washington of tax-and-spenders and replace them with extreme fiscal hawks.
.. Their darlings included incoming Sens. Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey, a former Club for Growth president.
.. Suddenly, any sitting Republican to the left of Ayn Rand—the group wields scorecards—risked getting primaried by a Club-sponsored insurgent.
.. Indeed, the group’s super PAC has historically been funded by a handful of super-rich white men, including financiers Jackson and Warren Stephens of Little Rock, New York hedge fund baron Robert Mercer and PayPal founder/Gawker Media bête noire Peter Thiel.
.. “When Ted Cruz … ‘shut the government down,’ people would ask, ‘What do you think of the guy now?’” says Chocola, “I’d say, ‘I love the guy. Tell me one thing he advocates that’s not in the GOP platform. The difference is he would actually fight for it.’”
.. May, Club President David McIntosh met with the candidate at Trump Tower. Accounts of the event differ, but the result was that McIntosh wrote Trump a letter asking him for a donation of $1 million. He refused, the Club began airing attack ads, and a Twitter war broke out.
.. Finally, in July, the Club for Growth received some welcome news, when Trump selected Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate. During his congressional career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, nobody donated more to Pence than the Club.
.. In fact, as POLITICO reported last month, there is a widespread feeling in Washington that the Club has become little more than a fundraiser for the Freedom Caucus, at the expense of any other agenda.
.. “If the [Club for Growth] makes their top priority to increase the size of the House Freedom Caucus, what does that get?” asks a Republican strategist working with one such group. “On Nov. 9, you’re going to have a smaller House majority and possibly a larger House Freedom Caucus. That strikes me as a strange goal to have.”
How One Family’s Deep Pockets Helped Reshape Donald Trump’s Campaign
New York investor Robert Mercer, has carved an idiosyncratic path through conservative politics, spending tens of millions of dollars to outflank his own party’s consultant class and unnerve its established powers. His fortune has financed think tanks and insurgent candidates, super PACs and media watchdogs, lobbying groups and grass-roots organizations.
.. Kellyanne Conway, is a veteran Republican pollster who previously oversaw a super PAC financed by the Mercers.
.. Mr. Mercer reportedly invested $10 million in Breitbart several years ago
.. Mr. Trump is also relying on Cambridge Analytica, a voter data firm backed by Mr. Mercer
.. A Mercer-backed super PAC supporting Mr. Trump is now being shepherded by David Bossie, a conservative activist whose own projects have been funded in part by the Mercers’ family foundation, according to tax documents.
.. Mr. Mercer, 70, a mathematician and competitive poker player who spent his early career at I.B.M., joined Renaissance in the 1990s and rose to become the co-chief executive, earning hundreds of millions of dollars along the way. Today, he and his wife, Diana, live on a sprawling estate on Long Island’s North Shore where
.. They have given to libertarian organizations, such as the Cato Institute, and political organizations like the Club for Growth
.. Mercers were deeply involved in the Republican nominating battle this year
.. During the early phase of the campaign, Mr. Mercer donated $13 million to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cruz.
.. They were helped in part, according to a person who asked for anonymity to describe the family’s thinking, by Mr. Trump’s growing emphasis on traditional conservative ideas, such as tax cuts.
.. the family broke with Mr. Cruz in highly public fashion after his speech at the Republican convention, when the Texas senator refused to endorse Mr. Trump