Category Legislation
Taxation Tuesday: What Is Even Happening Here
The current tax reform plan is complicated and earth-shaking in a downstream kind of way. It’s doing a lot from a monetary perspective, but it’s not fundamentally changing the way federal taxes work. It’s a familiar reform story: the entrenched status quo turns out to be made of concrete, so the reformers have to dig […]
Justice Don Willett’s Uncontroversial Commitment to the Constitution
The 1905 Supreme Court case Lochner v. New York has long been a lightning rod for the claim that unelected judges have no place in our Constitutional system striking down laws purporting to ensure public health and safety. The periled precedent played its part this week as UT Law student Noah Horwitz dutifully deployed it against […]
Taxation Tuesday: Don’t Try to Pass a Wealth Tax
Good morning; let’s talk about tax policy! One of the ways Senator Bernie Sanders has offered to finance his suggested health care plan is a wealth tax. A wealth tax does what it says on the box: taxes assets, as opposed to our current tax structure, which taxes income. This is far from the first […]
Fine, Build the Wall, If…
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the administration will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative begun by its predecessor. DACA provided otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens brought here by their parents some relief from the fear of deportation, along with work permits and sundry other benefits. Much of the controversy so far focused […]
The Proposed “Ad Tax” Would be Unconstitutional Under Central Hudson
[This post originally appeared here on The Hill’s Opinion Blog on August 4, 2017.] Fox News and CNN have something in common: they both rely on advertising to promote their journalistic messages and to help generate revenue needed to carry out their missions. Historically, the expenses associated with such advertising have not been subject to […]
Least Dangerous Blog 