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PRESIDENT OBAMA MEETS WITH DEMOCRATS ON CAPITOL HILL THIS WEEK IN PUSH TO PROTECT OBAMACARE
Steve Forbes: That's absolutely right. What he's doing is unprecedented. Going back to John Adams 200 years ago, did a lot of midnight appointments on judges. We've never seen a president what President Obama is doing. That's where Trump must not fall into the trap of defining, what he must do. Repealed by executive order, do it. The others congressional approval, let it wait. Move ahead on taxes; move ahead on reforming health care. Do the deregulation by executive order; don't let Obama set your timetable.
Bruce Japsen: Let's put it this way. I want my president, I want the taxpayers to get their money's worth out of their president and I think with the Affordable Care Act as one example, I mean, this is something that the Republicans want to toss out. They don't have a plan for replacement and I think he's shining a little light on all that's been accomplished and they're going to throw it out.
Rich Karlgaard: You know with the Hollywood swells and the president have in common, they're all on record as wanting higher fossil fuel prices so it's kind of irony, that the first-- the protests from the West Coast results in banning off shore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. But I think that the environmental groups want their say and that's what worries me most.
Elizabeth MacDonald: I don't know how adult that is to do things like that when you're snorkeling and playing golf in Hawaii and fulfilling your first tourist bucket list. Nearly $100 million spent on President Obama winging around the world. That's not adult to do that. Nine out of ten jobs created since 2005 or so are part-time or contract jobs, according to Princeton. Those rules, if rules were the way to go, we were already be in the promised land.
Mike Ozanian: Well, President Obama, in my view, David, has been acting recently like a contemptuous child. You know, he's still upset with the prime minister of Israel for when he came and spoke before Congress against giving Iran a pathway to nuclear bombs. President Obama, for instance, the first time in modern history where the U.S. has no ships deployed. One of our Navy is deployed. Almost saying, go ahead, world, attack us, which is crazy given everything that's happening in the world. But he's not going to be able to stop Donald Trump from overturning Obama’s legacy. It's not going to happen. Donald Trump is too smart, too strong. If he was good enough to do it, they would have stopped trump from becoming president.
John Tamny: Well, I’m not ready to tie the two together. I think part of this is incoming Trump administration has gone a little wobbly on tax cuts and good things that they actually campaigned on, but looking at President Obama more broadly, Republicans should play smart politics here. If he wants to embarrass himself by playing politics on the way out, if he wants to make the Democratic Party wear the disaster that was the Affordable Care Act, let him do this. He's handing them a great opportunity.
NEW QUESTIONS BEING RAISED ABOUT TIMING OF GOP ACTION ON PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP'S TAX PLAN
Rich Karlgaard: Absolutely, job number one, because the best thing that Trump can do in the next two years is to unleash entrepreneurs and investment in the United States and get economic growth well up over 3 percent. It's not-- we've not had one 3 percent year in Obama’s years. We've had the lackluster 2 percent growth. $3 trillion of economic activity, you know, never happened because of Obama. Growth will give trump political capital and growth will create a sweep in the senate in 2018.
Bruce Japsen: It will increase the deficit and debt and he has a problem in his own party with that. Rand Paul this week said he would not vote for a budget that included on ObamaCare repeal if it raised the debt.
John Tamny: I'm not saying that's a good thing, but 1920's, 1960's, 1980's tax cuts when you reduce the cost of work, you get more revenues. Whether or not that brings down the debt is a function of what Congress does. But this is essential. Donald Trump ran on some bad ideas and he ran on good ones. The tax cuts are the good ones, if he doesn't spend his political capital on this, big, big mistake. There is your slowdown in the stock market.
Mike Ozanian: We haven't gotten to pre-recession levels. From Obama’s failed, take home pay hasn't rebounded to where it would be. I prefer Donald Trump to get the tax cut right than by faster. By right, I mean, big, bold, incentive-based. I want marginal rates cut down and on personal income, I want the corporate rate cut to at least 15 percent. Corporate taxes should be zero anyway, David. They're nothing, but a pass-through tax.
Elizabeth Macdonald: Same thing with John f. Kennedy, the growth popped. What's happening is the government is taking money out of your pockets for what? For union workers to work at home? I'm sorry, I’m so upset with that story. Look at the trend line in job growth. The jobs created in the last month down from 250k, 240k in 2014. The wage growth is at Bill Clinton levels, mid 1995 levels.
Steve Forbes: They should go for both so you don't open up yourself to political attack. They don't have to wait until August. Lower marginal tax rates across the board. Cap deductions and get that corporate tax rate down. Don't wait. If you don't get to done quickly and make it retroactive and seeing immediate benefits from trump going in
NEW CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE
Steve Forbes: Absolutely, more and more they're relying on models that don't predict the future very well so they can't win politically, they couldn't get their energy taxes through and now they're engaging in the equivalent of the Spanish inquisition or Mao’s cultural revolution, and they can't win the argument so they try to destroy you. She's the latest victim of it.
Bruce Japsen: Well, I don't know if we need any of these academics because we have a president who believes it's a Chinese hoax. Listen, climate change is real and glaciers are melting and waters are rising and if I lived in Miami I’d head to higher ground.
John Tamny: Let's get beyond that and realize 44 percent of the world's population lives in the very coastal cities, the warmest like Bruce and other scientists say are going to go underwater in a few years. Can all of the world's combined knowledge be that slim and a few scientists that smart? The very notion is ridiculous. It's not a Chinese hoax, it's much worse than that.
Elizabeth MacDonald: Yeah and she was questioning the use -- if she questions the use of computer models or that weather is a big complex system then you're called a climate change denier. That's the same as being called a holocaust denier, very nasty.
Mike Ozanian: I'm with George Carlin that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and it survived all kind of bad weather and ice age, earthquakes. We've only about here 200,000 years, is a little co 2 going to damage the earth?
Rich Karlgaard: Yeah, news week had a cover story in the 1970's about the great global cooling threat. So that tells you everything you need to know.
STOCK PICKS
Elizabeth MacDonald: (FSELX)
Mike Ozanian: (BRSMX)
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