Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) released its 25th annual compilation of the hair-raising, harrowing, and horrifying Taxpayer Tricks and Treats. 2024 has again been a spooky year for taxpayers, but there have been some treats mixed in for folks to enjoy.

Trick: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan’s Scary Ban on Non-compete Agreements

FTC Chair Lina Khan, perhaps the most chilling chair of any federal agency, has once again climbed down the beanstalk in her efforts to turn the FTC into a major rulemaking giant by banning non-compete agreements in employment contracts across all industries. The April 2024 rule was allegedly written to help service industry workers, but they were instead a scary threat to intellectual property rights and investments in training new personnel.

Treat: The Court Strikes Back and Overturns the FTC’s Non-compete Rulemaking

Thankfully for taxpayers, in August 2024 a federal district court found that Chair Khan had overstepped her authority and struck down the roughish non-compete rule before it could take effect, protecting investments and intellectual property rights. But this could still prove to be tricky, as Chair Khan appealed the court’s ruling on October 22, 2024.

Trick: Student Loan Forgiveness Keeps Rising from the Grave

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in June 2023 against his original student loan forgiveness plan, President Biden resurrected the idea from the dead with a new SAVE plan in March 2024 that would forgive loans after 10 years for those who borrowed less than $12,000 and cover shortfalls in payments by other borrowers based on their incomes.

Treat: Student Loan Forgiveness Dies Another Death

In August 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Education did not have the authority to implement President Biden’s SAVE plan. Student loan forgiveness is a petrifying proposal that would force all taxpayers to pay the frightening bill whether they paid off their own loans or never went to college.

Trick: Taxes on Phantom Unrealized Capital Gains Introduced in Congress

Taxing the increase in value of an investment even if it is not sold, while not reducing the tax if the investment declines in value should send shivers down the spines of everyone who has a retirement account, small business, or wants to leave their lifetime savings to their children. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) introduced a bill to tax unrealized capital gains, which would disincentivize investment and would have disastrous effects on the economy and Americans’ retirement plans. This idea earned Rep. Jayapal the dubious distinction of being picked as CAGW’s September 2024 Porker of the Month.

Treat: House Budget Committee Passes Budget Resolution to Balance the Fantastically Large Federal Budget

The House Budget Committee led by Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) gave taxpayers a massive treat when it passed a budget resolution on March 7, 2024, that would balance the federal budget in 10 years. The budget resolution would rein in runaway spending, eliminate waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy. This is the first step to help Americans be able to hand out full-size candy bars on Halloween.

Trick: Earmarks Continue to Suck the Blood of Taxpayers

The 2024 Congressional Pig Book exposed 8,222 egregious earmarks, 11.2 percent more than the 7,396 in fiscal year (FY) 2023, costing $22.7 billion, 13 percent less than the $26.1 billion in FY 2023. While the lower cost is moving horrific earmark spending in the right direction, the $22.7 billion in FY 2024 is the fifth highest total since CAGW released the first Pig Book in 1991. Since FY 1991, CAGW has identified 132,434 earmarks costing $460.3 billion.

In FY 2024, the shameful 90 members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, making up only 17 percent of Congress, were responsible for 42.2 percent of the earmarks and 35.2 percent of the money. Three of the top five repellent recipients by dollar amount serve on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and a fourth was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Treat: Alternate Engine for the F-35 Remains Sealed in its Crypt

Members of Congress attempted to bring the alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter back from dead, adding $588.4 million to the House version of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.

Like it was in 2011, when it was thought to be buried forever, the unnecessary second engine was opposed by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the White House. The DOD’s FY 2024 budget request included $462 million for an upgrade for the F-35’s existing engine and shuttered the alternate engine. Congress ultimately rejected funding for the alternate engine, a logical and cost-saving decision that should hopefully bury it for good this time. While the DOD again requested zero funding for the alternate engine in FY 2025, it has proven to be a hard-to-kill zombie.

Trick: Net Neutrality Rises from the Dead

On April 25, 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on a party-line vote, adopted new, more stringent rules to give the government more control over the internet. Resurrecting harmful, innovation-killing, and ghoulish net neutrality regulations will harm broadband deployment and undermine the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program that is supposed to reach unserved areas of the country. And this time the rules are even worse, with the specter of rate regulation and government-imposed content moderation online hanging like a noose over taxpayers’ heads. This trick should frighten anyone who uses the internet.

Treat: Federal Court Saves the Day and Stays the Start of Net Neutrality

On August 1, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit extended a stay on implementation of the FCC’s new net neutrality rules until it could fully review the petitions on the case, noting that “[t]he petitioners are likely to success on the merits because the final rule implicates a major question, and the Commission has failed to satisfy the high bar for imposing such regulations.” Putting a temporary stay of execution on the latest iteration of net neutrality rules is a special treat for consumers waiting for broadband to come to their community.

Trick: Stadium Bloodsuckers Celebrate All Saints’ Day

The vampiric proponents of taxpayer subsidies for private sports stadiums have too much to celebrate as cities from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Antonio, Texas, acquiesced to their blood-sucking demands for public dollars. And the high interest rates throughout much of 2024 contributed to a shift among investors toward interest-bearing assets, especially tax-deductible municipal bonds.

On July 18, 2024, the St. Petersburg City Council approved a $312.5 million contribution towards a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium as part of a larger $1.6 billion redevelopment project of the historic Gas Plant District, with Pinellas County contributing an additional $287.5 million, largely funded through bed taxes on hotel stays​. On September 12, 2024, the San Antonio City Council approved $126 million in tax kickbacks for the owners of the minor-league San Antonio Missions, voting to displace 381 low-income families from their affordable housing units to make way for a new downtown stadium.

The roster of city leaders seems to be made up of more sinners than saints.

Treat: National Labor Relations Board Releases Joint Employer Rule into the Abyss

In 2022, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed a rule that would have made companies that act as franchisors, like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, joint employers with their small business store owners, known as franchisees, even though the companies have no power to fire, hex, hypnotize, or otherwise reprimand those employees.

The rule faced bipartisan opposition from both chambers of Congress, along with the Chambers of Secrets and Commerce, respectively. After a Last Alliance of 58 business and taxpayer groups entreated lawmakers to place a curse upon the NLRB, the board ultimately gave up the ghost and withdrew the rule on July 19, 2024, to avoid economic calamity and zombie litigation. The current “direct control” joint employer standard remains, and thousands of franchised small businesses will be spared from the ritualized sacrifice of $33.3 billion and 376,000 jobs that the proposed NLRB rule would have consigned to oblivion.

Trick: 340B Drug Discount Program Abuse Is Frightful

There is no need to seek out ghosts, goblins, and ghouls for a fright this Halloween. Just look at the federal 340B drug discount program, which was created in 1992 to fix a problem Congress created two years earlier by establishing price controls in the Medicaid drug benefit program. As a condition to participate in Medicaid, pharmaceutical companies are required to participate in the 340B program and give discounts of between 20-50 percent to certain federally funded healthcare facilities and disproportionate share hospitals known as “covered entities” that serve large numbers of low-income and uninsured patients.

Studies have shown that abuse in the program has run rampant, with hospitals misusing the funds intended to help 340B patients being redirected to facilities in wealthier neighborhoods and capitalizing on programs intended to help low-income individuals. It is time to stop the nightmare of special interest sharks eating up the profits from 340B and fix the mess by providing a clear definition of a patient along with greater transparency and accountability.

Trick: Price Controls Are Petrifying

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included healthcare provisions that are failing to improve access to care or lower patient costs by establishing price controls, which have already had a devastating impact on medical research and development and will create an invisible graveyard of patients who will never receive life-saving cures. These deadly price controls are being cloned and proposed for broadband, groceries, and rent, as the ghastly and visible hand of government harms innovation and ignores commonsense market forces of supply and demand pricing.

Trick: Flavor Bans Create a Dangerous Black Market

The ominous bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration continue to threaten tobacco harm reduction (THR) products like vaping devices, heat-not-burn e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and snus with exorbitant excise taxes and imposing restrictive flavor bans. They are wantonly and willfully ignoring evidence that these THR products are highly effective in helping adults stop smoking harmful and deadly cigarettes and reducing the number of people who will get cancer, emphysema, and other diseases. The National Institutes of Health found that among current adult vapers, 77.3 percent prefer using flavored vaping devices. The proposed ban will drain local, state, and federal governments of tax revenue and reduce income for small businesses that sell these products, and create a dangerous and unregulated black market for these products that would threaten public health and safety.

Trick: The Attacks on PBMs are Horrific

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have nothing on the FTC, which said in 2005 that ownership of mail order pharmacies by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) did not raise prices for consumers, and then said “never mind” in 2024. The new FTC is not the same as the old FTC, as it now cannot overcome its evil urges to control and manipulate the marketplace. The release of a “study” justifying its efforts to ban these voluntary and competitive contractual arrangements that are used by more than 275 million Americans who receive their health insurance from employers, unions, governments, insurers, and other entities, saving $1,040 per patient annually and helping payers and payees save on prescription medications.

Despite several reports from federal agencies and an October 2024 study that verifies the benefits of PBMs and contravenes the FTC’s conclusions, FTC Chair Lina Khan is nightmarishly neglecting this evidence and continues to go after the industry.

CAGW is the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

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