Ohio legislators are hard at work combining the House and Senate versions of the biennial state budget. Both include some great provisions, including income tax cuts that should be prioritized.

The Senate budget features a 5% income tax cut, and the House offers a 2% income tax cut. These reductions offer needed relief for Ohio families and businesses – particularly as they recover from the pandemic.

The state legislature’s continued focus on tax relief for Ohioans is extremely important as the state features some of the highest and most numerous local taxes. These local jurisdictions add complexity on top of the cost of the taxes themselves, making it more difficult for businesses to make ends meet.

While commercial lease tax reform remains a white whale in the Buckeye State, further income tax relief would be a big help for taxpayers.

On top of the tax cuts, legislators in both chambers want to address the issue of cities trying to tax people who are working from home outside of the city where their office is based.

During the pandemic, many workers have not set foot in their offices. But the cities that are home these offices, who locked down, still want to collect income tax from these workers. While this issue has resulted in legal challenges, legislators want to allow work-from-home folks to get tax refunds from the city where their office is based.

A Senate proposal would address the wasteful, ineffective practice of local government using taxpayer dollars to try and operate broadband networks. Senators want to bar localities from starting these often ill-fated enterprises.

Legislators also may still vote on sports betting legislation before June 30th. The bill includes very competitive tax (10% tax rate on bets) and regulatory policies that will enable Ohio to compete with their neighbors in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky, all of which have legalized sports wagering.

As the House and Senate work out a final budget, they should maximize income tax relief, and protecting Ohio taxpayers from wasteful government broadband.

The House Judiciary Committee just concluded a marathon markup of six bills that would weaponize antitrust law and give Biden bureaucrats sweeping new regulatory power. 

All six of the bills limped out of the Committee and were sent to the House floor. For the most part, conservatives rejected these bills. 

One thing is clear – this half-baked antitrust package is not ready for prime time. Republican members need to continue to hold the line and vote NO on attempts to politicize antitrust law for Democrat political gain. 

Instead of holding individual hearings on each of the bills, Judiciary leadership decided to rush through the entire package to a full committee markup just a week and a half after the bills were introduced. 

The result? A markup that stretched over two days and more than 29 hours of debate. This is not surprising given the fact that some rank-and-file members first saw the bills through media leaks and had absolutely zero input while the legislation was being drafted. 

Members on both sides of the aisle had serious concerns about the package’s sloppy language and how quickly the markup occurred. Ahead of the markup, eight house Democrats called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to slow the package down. 

A bipartisan statement from California Members pointed out the serious flaws in the antitrust package spearheaded by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.): 

“The marathon markup – that started Wednesday morning, recessed as the sun came up on Thursday morning, and then reconvened for another four hours on Thursday – featured several bills that would radically change America’s leading tech companies and made crystal clear that the bill text as debated is not close to ready for Floor consideration.”

If implemented, these bills would significantly restrict targeted companies from engaging in routine business conduct. One bill bans targeted companies from acquiring smaller companies, choking off a key pathway to success for startups. Another bill would allow the government to structurally separate targeted companies that operate a line of business that an unelected bureaucrat deems to be a “conflict of interest.” Another bill effectively bans targeted companies from promoting private label goods to shoppers, which makes as much sense as banning grocery stores from selling generic cereal. 

The drafters seem to be confused about the full scope of the package’s impact. Cicilline himself admitted that he doesn’t even know if Microsoft would be a covered platform, and that the ultimate decision would rest in the hands of Biden bureaucrats to decide which companies to target with antitrust action. 

While some Republican Members offered amendments designed to improve the bills, ultimately the root problem is the same. Democrats are attempting to convince conservatives that the best way to address Big Tech censorship is to let Biden bureaucrats “fix” the problem.

In reality, these bills don't do a single thing to address legitimate conservative anger over Big Tech. Giving the Biden administration even more power would increase political abuse of conservatives and screw up the goods and services Americans use every day. 

These bills are nowhere close to being ready for prime time. Republicans should continue to reject these half-baked ideas. 

See also: 

Op-ed: The antitrust package is a Trojan horse conservatives must reject

25+ Conservative Groups and Activists Urge Congress to Reject Democrat Antitrust Power Grab

Republicans Should Reject Cicilline Mega-Regulation Antitrust Package

On a recent Saturday evening, law enforcement in Ocean City, Maryland tasered, kneed, and violently restrained teenagers for the crime of vaping in a public area. This disturbing incident is the result of efforts across the country to criminalize vaping, despite calls from Americans for Tax Reform, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and countless law enforcement agencies, that prohibitions disproportionately impact communities of color and are detrimental to criminal justice efforts because they exacerbate the over policing of minorities. 

In an opinion piece for InsideSources, ATR’s Karl Abramson explained how anti-vaping laws, such as flavor bans, bring about unequal criminal justice outcomes, all while harming public health. 

“Amidst the ongoing nationwide discussion regarding police brutality and racial equality, the Biden administration is actively taking steps to prohibit menthol cigarettes, a move that would criminalize a product used predominately among Black smokers. The move is opposed by civil rights advocates like Al Sharpton and the ACLU who claim flavor prohibitions “disproportionately impact people and communities of color,” and “instigate unconstitutional policing and other negative interactions with local law enforcement.” The Ocean City incidents perfectly illustrate the validity of these concerns. 

When 18-year-old Taizier Griffin was tased by police, he was subject to more harm than vaping could ever cause. Since 2000, more than 1,000 people have died after being tased by police. A study has found the shock from a taser can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death. There has not been a single recorded case of a vaper dying from nicotine-containing e-cigarette. Tragically, nine in 10 of those who have died from being tased by police were unarmed, just like Griffin. 

It should upset anyone who cares about criminal justice reform that the same politicians who claim to care about repairing the relationship between police and minority communities relentlessly push for restrictions on vaping. In doing so, they ignore the advice of countless medical experts, public health organizations, and civil rights advocates.” 

Click here to read the full article. 

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders' wants more money for a tax break he has described as "for rich people in blue states" than he does for roads and bridges.

Sanders' $6 trillion budget resolution is billed as the Democrats' more progressive and "economically sweeping version" of an infrastructure package compared to narrower bipartisan negotiations. Yet Sanders' "infrastructure" package would spend $20 billion more on regressive SALT cap relief than it would on roads and bridges.

According to a draft budget outline, Sanders' plan allocates $120 billion for raising the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, a tax provision which Sanders himself previously admitted "sends a terrible, terrible message" to "working families." In contrast, the plan would spend only $100 billion on roads and bridges.

Sanders' prioritization of the SALT cap over roads and bridges demonstrates what little interest Democrats have in actual infrastructure and are instead focused on a grab bag of progressive priorities designed to reward Democrat constituencies. 

The SALT deduction permits individuals to write-off some of their state and local taxes when filing at the federal level. In 2017, the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) capped the deduction at $10,000 in order to pay for much needed tax relief for working- and middle-class Americans. The change to the SALT cap left most Americans unaffected but did impact wealthy people living in high-tax, blue states like California and New York—aka the Democratic donor class. 

Despite its extreme regressively, congressional Democrats have been pushing to repeal the SALT cap from day one. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, prior to the TCJA, 91 percent of the benefit of the SALT deduction went to people making over $100,000 per year. Even the left-leaning Tax Policy Center notes 70 percent of the benefit of SALT cap repeal would go to those making more than $500,000 per year; 96 percent of middle-income households would receive no benefit at all, and the return for those who do would be vanishingly small.