Tops on House Democrats’ to-do list: Try to end shutdown

WASHINGTON — House Democrats are sweeping into power this week on a campaign promise of improving government for ordinary Americans. But first, they’ll have to get government reopened from the partial shutdown.

As the Congress gavels in for the 116th session the early votes will be the usual ones — establishing the House rules and electing the House speaker, presumably California Democrat Nancy Pelosi. But the new majority will quickly pivot Thursday to a pair of bills to fund the parts of the government that have been shuttered in the dispute over money for President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico.

It’s a cold opening for the new majority, setting up an early confrontation with the Republican-led Senate and the White House and testing the House Democrats’ ability to make good on their campaign pledge to focus on kitchen-table issues in the new era of divided government.

“Our first order of business will be to end the reckless Trump shutdown and reopen the government,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the incoming caucus chairman, said in an interview. Then, he said, “we will turn our attention to bringing our democracy to life and returning our government to the people.”

So far, House Democrats appear largely unified in their plan to vote to reopen government without the money Trump is demanding to build the border wall.

Jeffries said that while Trump wants to “waste millions in taxpayer dollars on a medieval border wall,” Democrats are drawing “a line in the stand” against the spending they say won’t make the border any safer.

“The partisanship, rancour and dysfunction of the Trump shutdown is exactly what voters rebuked in November,” said Rep.-elect Joe Neguse of Colorado, a new leader of the freshmen class, in the Democrats’ weekly address. “And that is why on Jan. 3rd, when the new Democratic House majority arrives, we will bring the hope, vision and goals of effective governance back to the forefront.”

But with Trump dug in over the $5 billion he wants to build the wall, the shutdown could drag on. Senate Republicans are reluctant to consider the House bills unless they know the president is on board.

The first signal Trump has given that he may be willing to talk about the wall impasse came Tuesday, when he tweeted, “Let’s make a deal?” He’s invited Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to a White House meeting Wednesday on border security.

Democrats are eager to move forward in the House on multiple fronts.

They’re set to approve a rules package on Thursday that sets a new tone for governing. For example, it requires that legislation first be considered in committees before bills are brought to the floor for votes. It bans lawmakers from serving on corporate boards. And it recognizes the diversity of the new freshmen class by easing a century-old rule against wearing hats on the chamber floor to allow Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar, a Muslim-American from Minnesota, to wear a head scarf.

By early next week, House Democrats are expected to consider a resolution to defend the Affordable Care Act in legal proceedings after a Texas judge ruled it largely unconstitutional in a legal challenge brought by Republican attorneys general from several states.

H.R. 1, the first bill of the new House majority, is a good-government package that tackles campaign finance reforms and other issues. It will begin making its way through the newly bolstered committee process.

And they will continue their oversight of the Trump administration and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Incoming Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., insists the new majority can “walk and chew gum” at the same time.

Still, corralling a large House majority has never been easy, and Democrats are ushering in the largest class since the Watergate era. Republicans under retiring Speaker Paul Ryan all but gave up trying to the muscle the conservative House Freedom Caucus in line. It was the Freedom Caucus leaders who urged Trump to fight for the border wall money and reject legislation that would have prevented the shutdown days before Christmas.

Pelosi is expected to regain the gavel Thursday, securing the votes to become speaker even after some new and returning lawmakers signalled they wanted new leadership. She would be the first woman to hold, then return, to the office.

But divisions remain, rearing up even before the newly elected members are sworn into office, as many are eager for change and ready to confront Trump.

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has been critical of the leader’s plans to create a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. She prefers a panel that focuses on renewable energy investments and whose members refuse campaign donations from oil and other fossil fuel industries.

“Our ultimate end goal isn’t a Select Committee,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted as the panel was being formed. “Our goal is to treat Climate Change like the serious, existential threat it is by drafting an ambitious solution on the scale necessary – aka a Green New Deal – to get it done. A weak committee misses the point & endangers people.”

Trump and Republicans have been eager to widen those divisions, especially as the shutdown stretches into its second week.

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the incoming minority leader, panned the Democratic effort to reopen government without wall money.

Democrats vow to stay united as they work to reopen government, and press on with the priorities.

“As my mother used to say, ‘This too shall pass,'” Jeffries said. “We will get past this shutdown and there will be ample opportunity for us to communicate with the American people and get things done on their behalf.”

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Follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lisamascaro

Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press

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Taxpayers Federation calling on BC Government to scrap failed Carbon Tax

Published on January 16, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Carson Binda

BC Government promised carbon tax would reduce CO2 by 33%. It has done nothing.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the British Columbia government to scrap the carbon tax as new data shows the province’s carbon emissions have continued to rise, despite the oldest carbon tax in the country.

“The carbon tax isn’t reducing carbon emissions like the politicians promised,” said Carson Binda, B.C. Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Premier David Eby needs to axe the tax now to save British Columbians money.”

Emissions data from the provincial government shows that British Columbia’s emissions have risen since the introduction of a carbon tax.

Total emissions in 2007, the last year without a provincial carbon tax, stood at 65.5 MtCO2e, while 2022 emissions data shows an increase to 65.6 MtCO2e.

When the carbon tax was introduced, the B.C. government pledged that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent.

The Eby government plans to increase the B.C. carbon tax again on April 1, 2025. After that increase, the carbon tax will add 21 cents to the cost of a litre of natural gas, 25 cents per litre of diesel and 18 cents per cubic meter of natural gas.

“The carbon tax has cost British Columbians a lot of money, but it hasn’t helped the environment as promised,” Binda said. “Eby has a simple choice: scrap the carbon tax before April 1, or force British Columbians to pay even more to heat our homes and drive to work.”

If a family fills up the minivan once per week for a year, the carbon tax will cost them $728. The carbon tax on natural gas will add $435 to the average family’s home heating bills in the 12 months after the April 1 carbon tax hike.

Other provinces, like Saskatchewan, have unilaterally stopped collecting the carbon tax on essentials like home heating and have not faced consequences from Ottawa.

“British Columbians need real relief from the costs of the provincial carbon tax,” Binda said. “Eby needs to stop waiting for permission from the leaderless federal government and scrap the tax on British Columbians.”

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The problem with deficits and debt

Published on January 13, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Jake Fuss

This fiscal year (2024/25), the federal government and eight out of 10 provinces project a budget deficit, meaning they’re spending more than collecting in revenues. Unfortunately, this trend isn’t new. Many Canadian governments—including the federal government—have routinely ran deficits over the last decade.

But why should Canadians care? If you listen to some politicians (and even some economists), they say deficits—and the debt they produce—are no big deal. But in reality, the consequences of government debt are real and land squarely on everyday Canadians.

Budget deficits, which occur when the government spends more than it collects in revenue over the fiscal year, fuel debt accumulation. For example, since 2015, the federal government’s large and persistent deficits have more than doubled total federal debt, which will reach a projected $2.2 trillion this fiscal year. That has real world consequences. Here are a few of them:

Diverted Program Spending: Just as Canadians must pay interest on their own mortgages or car loans, taxpayers must pay interest on government debt. Each dollar spent paying interest is a dollar diverted from public programs such as health care and education, or potential tax relief. This fiscal year, federal debt interest costs will reach $53.7 billion or $1,301 per Canadian. And that number doesn’t include provincial government debt interest, which varies by province. In Ontario, for example, debt interest costs are projected to be $12.7 billion or $789 per Ontarian.

Higher Taxes in the Future: When governments run deficits, they’re borrowing to pay for today’s spending. But eventually someone (i.e. future generations of Canadians) must pay for this borrowing in the form of higher taxes. For example, if you’re a 16-year-old Canadian in 2025, you’ll pay an estimated $29,663 over your lifetime in additional personal income taxes (that you would otherwise not pay) due to Canada’s ballooning federal debt. By comparison, a 65-year-old will pay an estimated $2,433. Younger Canadians clearly bear a disproportionately large share of the government debt being accumulated currently.

Risks of rising interest rates: When governments run deficits, they increase demand for borrowing. In other words, governments compete with individuals, families and businesses for the savings available for borrowing. In response, interest rates rise, and subsequently, so does the cost of servicing government debt. Of course, the private sector also must pay these higher interest rates, which can reduce the level of private investment in the economy. In other words, private investment that would have occurred no longer does because of higher interest rates, which reduces overall economic growth—the foundation for job-creation and prosperity. Not surprisingly, as government debt has increased, business investment has declined—specifically, business investment per worker fell from $18,363 in 2014 to $14,687 in 2021 (inflation-adjusted).

Risk of Inflation: When governments increase spending, particularly with borrowed money, they add more money to the economy, which can fuel inflation. According to a 2023 report from Scotiabank, government spending contributed significantly to higher interest rates in Canada, accounting for an estimated 42 per cent of the increase in the Bank of Canada’s rate since the first quarter of 2022. As a result, many Canadians have seen the costs of their borrowing—mortgages, car loans, lines of credit—soar in recent years.

Recession Risks: The accumulation of deficits and debt, which do not enhance productivity in the economy, weaken the government’s ability to deal with future challenges including economic downturns because the government has less fiscal capacity available to take on more debt. That’s because during a recession, government spending automatically increases and government revenues decrease, even before policymakers react with any specific measures. For example, as unemployment rises, employment insurance (EI) payments automatically increase, while revenues for EI decrease. Therefore, when a downturn or recession hits, and the government wants to spend even more money beyond these automatic programs, it must go further into debt.

Government debt comes with major consequences for Canadians. To alleviate the pain of government debt on Canadians, our policymakers should work to balance their budgets in 2025.