Part 8: Scripture on Taxes and Government Spending

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Examining the Presidential candidates in light of biblical teachings

By Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, retired emeritus

“A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.” − Leviticus 27:30

“Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce.” Proverbs 3:9

“Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the LORD. The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than the half shekel, when you give the contribution to the LORD to make atonement for yourselves. You shall take the atonement money [silver] from the sons of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting.” – Exodus 30:14-16

“If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” – 2 Thessalonians 3:10

“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” − 2 Corinthians 9:7

“Let the thief steal no more, but rather let him be industrious, making an honest living with his own hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need.” – Ephesians 4:28

“Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Matthew 16:6

God blessed his people with civil leaders who are God’s servants and given the primary role of carrying out God’s wrath on wrongdoers, protecting the people from crime and evil enemies within its borders and beyond. A second role of rulers in scripture is to collect taxes to pay for its God-ordained work on our behalf, but not to acquire wealth for themselves (Deuteronomy 17:16-17).

Jesus taught that we are to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God” (Mark 12:13-17). And while we are to pay taxes, Jesus also specifically warned his people to be wary of the gifts and benefits that civil leaders will try to seduce them with (the “leaven”) to follow the wrong path. These perks lead people to become more dependent on the State, not on Jesus.

The average working American is taxed 24% of their income by the Federal government and up to another 13.3% by the State; and on top of that are local taxes, licenses and fees, property and sales taxes, taxes on savings accounts and investments, etc. People can keep only the leftovers of their labor, to tithe to the church, support their families, and do God’s work. Taxes have grown well beyond the 10% for government services, as in Numbers 18:21-28, and many times more than the Lord’s tithing.

The Bible says the first fruits of our labor are God’s and are holy to the Lord. But today, governments seize taxes far beyond Biblical tithing and for functions that God did not authorize civil governments to do. In doing so, the State is put ahead of God and is assuming God’s authority. Our difficult role as Christians is to support rulers who most follow God’s teachings and account for people’s money wisely and honorably.

Key Administrative Role in Federal Taxes and Spending Regulations

In examining Ms. Harris, I learned she has personally held the key to federal taxes and spending regulations during her term as Vice President.

The Vice President of the United States also serves as the president of the Senate and casts the deciding vote anytime there is a tie. VP Harris has cast the most tie-breaking votes of any VP in the history of our country, according to Ballotpedia.

She was the deciding tie-breaking vote and personally accountable for the largest federal spending, largest federal deficit and inflation in our country’s history … and did it through falsehoods.

On February 5, 2021, her vote resulted in the passage of the $1.9 Trillion Covid-19 economic relief bill. But that paled compared to the tie-breaking vote she cast for the “Inflation Reduction Act” on August 7, 2022. The Act was intentionally deceptively named. It wasn’t about reducing inflation. It actually was the biggest climate change legislation in history.

The Act gave massive subsidies to the green energy industry and for 22 consumer “tax credits” for green energy technologies associated with zero-carbon goals, while also mandating climate agenda items like electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar-wind and battery plants, and consumer products down to what light bulbs, washing machines and stoves people will be allowed to use. The regulations cover 30% of new home construction. The Congressional Budget Office had falsely claimed the Act she saw approved would reduce the deficit by an estimated $90 Billion through 2031.

The Biden-Harris White House sold the Act to Americans with promises it “will lower costs for families…reduce the deficit and ask the largest corporations to pay their fair share.” Seniors on Medicare were promised their prescription drug costs would go down because drug companies will be required to negotiate prices, and their drugs costs under Medicare Part D would cap at $2,000 per year.

The Act included $80 billion in additional funding to the IRS over ten years, which the Biden-Harris White House told the public was about “fairness” and enforcing tax compliance among the wealthiest tax evaders. The Act also imposed complicated new tax regulations and tax increases on companies and investors. Ms. Harris failed to reveal that the Act included a new IRS program to monitor workers’ tips so they could be taxed.

Nothing about The Act was biblical, reasoned or true. Americans certainly have not seen the U.S. debt falling on the Debt Clock! Federal spending, the budget deficit and national debt are all soaring upward so fast, it’s hard to see the numbers. Even NPR reported the Federal deficit had nearly tripled in the first nine months of 2023 and was nearly double that of a year earlier. President of the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget questioned how anyone could possibly think this was sustainable.

Inflation is solely the creation of government and no one else, explained the famous economist Professor Milton Friedman. Only government can print money and create money out of nothing, has control over the money supply, and can excessively spend public money that it doesn’t have.

By every objective measure, Americans have been hurt by higher inflation. Everything costs more and money isn’t worth what it once was:

Average monthly expenses for American households, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, increased 9.1% between 2021-2022. Inflation increased the living costs for the average couple $7,800 and for the average family $9,339 more, in that single year alone.
American households are increasingly falling behind in bills and total debt is at an all-time high, according to the Federal Reserve. The average unpaid balance on each credit card, alone, is $6,501.
The job market has been poor under her Administration. U.S. companies added the fewest number of jobs since 2021, according to August ADP Research Institute job reports. Wage growth also saw the lowest levels since 2021.
The percentage of adults 25-54 not in the workforce are historic highs, with142 million more people without jobs in August compared to the year before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (Table A-1).
New jobs and employment growth primarily went to immigrants, about 75% of all job growth in the U.S. since 2019 has gone to foreign workers. S. born employment declined and is lower than five years ago, according to BLS Employment Situation Report and Center for Immigration Studies.

By March 24, 2023, Goldman Sach reported the tax credits in Harris’ Act alone will cost about $1.2 Trillion − three-times more than had been claimed. It found Democrats had used “accounting gimmicks” and that the Act “may go down as one of the greatest confidence tricks on taxpayers in history.”

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The Tax Foundation’s report of the Act’s first year found the new complexities in the tax code were so hopelessly convoluted, complicated and unworkable, payments for both the minimum tax and stock buyback tax are on hold until the IRS issues can be figured out. It found that the Act is leading to skyrocketing budgetary costs, approaching $1 trillion the next decade. By May, energy credit costs were already double original estimates. Worse, the manufacturing production credit, modified energy credit and electric vehicle costs had all more than quadrupled! The Tax Foundation said recently proposed mandates by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will push cost estimates even higher, and add another $210 billion in tax revenue losses, $136 billion from EV credits and $74 billion from battery production. The Act can only worsen deficits.

The Tax Foundation concluded that the problems with the Act are so daunting and inflation reduction “most clearly off course,” it’s unclear it can even be salvaged.

I want to point out an insidious part of the Act that was specifically aimed towards seniors. The Act actually gutted Medicare to fund electric vehicles and other green deal subsidies. The new mandate, called the Drug Price Negotiation Program, is really a price-fixing scheme on prescription drugs. Its legality and Constitutionality have resulted in at least nine lawsuits, while support for the price-fixing scheme comes from progressive academic and nonprofit foundations. Under this controversial program, the government will select drugs from a list of drugs in Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D to apply price controls, with the number of drugs increasing each year (ten drugs targeted in 2023, another 15 in 2025, etc.).

The Tax Foundation explained that compulsory lower government payments for drugs provided through Medicare will reduce investments by the pharmaceutical industry in research and development, meaning fewer new drugs will come on the market. But that’s not the full story.

The Act promised to keep Medicare drug premiums low for seniors, but it only gave the appearance of the government not raising drug prices. In actuality, it simply shifted the costs to the insurance companies managing Medicare Part D benefits, who will have to find a way to absorb or pass those higher costs on to seniors. According to the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, the Act was designed to hide huge increases in monthly premiums for Part D plans until after the election, which are expected to triple by 2025.

To continue under drug price fixing, most insurance companies are increasing “prior authorization” requirements to push patients to cheaper therapies and away from medications that can be most effective or safe for them. Other companies are stopping offering Part D altogether − 100 plans disappeared in 2023 and fewer than half survived this year. Mutual of Omaha was planning on dropping its Medicare Prescription Drug Plan next year, which could leave another 200,000 seniors to fend for themselves.

Since Obamacare, Medicare benefit coverages have been continually cut and capped, as designed. Seniors are forced onto government-managed Medicare at age 65, only able to waive Part A if they forfeit all of the Social Security benefits they’ve paid into their entire working life. And old-fashioned private PPO health insurance is illegal to offer and unavailable to anyone age 65+. So the only way to avoid Medicare Part B is to self-pay, an option only possible for the ultra-wealthy. And anyone who doesn’t enroll in Medicare Part B immediately when eligible at age 65+ is hit with a lifetime penalty.

Several years ago, the government began bundling Medicare payments, which means the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) gives a lump sum of money to pay the doctor and hospitals for a given procedure (like hip and knee replacements) or diagnosis (like cancer). Providers are incentivized to not care for the sickest patients and to cut costs and treatment options to keep their costs down and maintain profits. That leads to lower quality of care for the very people who most need medical care.

Besides massively increased government regulations, mandated clinical care guidelines, and reporting requirements for Medicare, providers are paid increasingly less under the government managed care program. Another 3.37% reduction in Medicare physician payments went into effect this year. Last month, AIER reported that Medicare has cut reimbursements to doctors by 10% just in the past decade (they aren’t adjusted for inflation, either). It’s no wonder, seniors are increasingly finding fewer doctors want to accept Medicare.

In August, Fidelity Investment Group issued its 2024 retiree healthcare cost estimates. All of the healthcare costs that Medicare doesn’t cover (premiums, drugs, dental, vision, hearing, etc.) are left to retirees to manage. Fidelity’s research reported that a 65-year-old retiring today can expect to spend $165,000 on health care in retirement, a 5% increase from last year and more than double the estimate from 2002.

Ms. Harris has supported government managed health care throughout her career. While California AG, in 2011 she filed an Amicus Brief in support of Obamacare. She established strict government conditions for California hospitals and required them to certify participation and compliance with Medicare and Medi-Cal mandates and uphold all compulsory critical services, including requiring “reproductive services …without restrictions or limitation.”

Six failing Daughters of Charity Health System hospitals in California went up for sale in 2015. Ms. Harris placed conditions on the purchase that prospective buyer, Prime Healthcare Services, said were “onerous and unprecedented.” After concluding Ms. Harris’ conditions were so burdensome and restrictive that it would be impossible for any buyer to operate and save these hospitals, they ended up backing out of the $843 million sale. Verity Health Systems, a secular nonprofit owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, agreed to operate the hospitals, but by 2018 it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection facing $175 million/year losses.

Ms. Harris personally campaigned on compulsory Medicare for all and government-managed universal health coverage. Healthcare should be a right, she has repeatedly said. Under her plan, private health insurance plans would be allowed a role, but only as providers under government-controlled Medicare guidelines. She and Biden also just announced plans to expand health coverage care for about 100,000 illegal immigrant children next year.

In doing the work of discernment, I could find no objective evidence to support Ms. Harris’ vision of government-managed healthcare for all. Nor is it found in Scripture or part of God’s covenant with his people. Government-managed health care is not a God-authorized role of civil government.

President Trump’s actions while in office were the opposite those of Ms. Harris.

On taxes, President Trump passed the largest tax reform package in history, $3.2 trillion in tax cuts, across every sector. Did it actually help regular Americans and middle class families or just the rich?

Everyone! Examining actual IRS tax data after Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the Tax Foundation found that everyone benefited with significantly lower taxes. By increasing the standard deduction, IRS returns were also simplified, slashing the numbers of people at every income level itemizing, trying to find ways to lower their tax bills.

President Trump followed the Biblical and anti-Marxist concept of helping people gain independence and work to enable them to elevate themselves out of poverty and dependency on the government. During his first term, media condemnation was relentless against his efforts, such as his HUD Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson’s attempts to clean up and reform social programs, such as Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulations. His launch of a new Envision Center Initiative, to try and help bring Blacks and minorities up out of poverty and help HUD-assisted households become self-sufficient, was labeled racist.

As Wall Street Journal reported, President Trump inherited a slowing economy with widespread recession concerns. Yet, his tax cuts and reductions in regulations resulted in hundreds of companies increasing wages, salaries and benefits; while gross domestic product nearly doubled within the first two years. In 2017 alone, he “rolled back twenty-two regulations for every one new regulation, saving taxpayers over $8 billion and liberating America’s economy from the grip of bloated government,” said his press secretary Sarah Sanders. The economic boom and lower corporate taxes most benefited low- and middle-class households, including a disproportionate number of Blacks whose incomes grew more than whites, according to the WSJ.

Everything he did was labeled by media and his opponents as racist. So, it was surprising to learn that President Trump had worked closely with black leaders, like Scott Turner at the America First Policy Institute, to develop policies that would help minority communities realize their dreams. Mr. Turner described a few examples in Capital Matters of how blacks benefited: record low poverty rates; 1 million lifted out of poverty between 2016-2019, and black home ownership increased 47%. President Trump’s agenda included:

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act that created nearly 9,000 opportunity zones with zero capital gains taxes on long-term investments, and raised $75 billion for underserved communities in the first two years enough to create about 500,000 jobs.
Criminal justice reforms and the First Step Act that gave nonviolent offenders chances to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens.
Historical Black Colleges and Universities Initiative which gave faith-based educational institutions equal access to federal support, and the Future Act for Pell Grant program, and other legislation for academic scholarships.

Were blacks really better off during President Trump’s Administration? I ran the numbers.

During the first three years of Biden-Harris’ administration (2021-2023), median incomes for blacks (alone or mixed race) households went from $54,660 to $56,880. Adjusted for inflation, black households saw their real incomes DROP $4,585.00 during the first three years of Biden-Harris Administration.

In contrast, during the first three years of President Trumps Administration (2017-2019), median incomes for these same black households went from $48,930 to $54,460. Adjusted for inflation, black households saw their real income INCREASE $3,427.00 the first three years of his Administration.

That’s a difference of $8,011.

On healthcare, President Trump took a hard stand against Medicare-for All, saying:

“We have to reject the socialist model that rations care, restricts access, slashes quality, and forces patients onto endless waitlists. Instead, we believe in freedom. We believe in choice. We believe in the highest standard of care in the world — anywhere in the world.”

President Trump appears to have realized that the universal socialized-like model of healthcare and the massive bureaucracy will take time to redirect and do in a way that protects and cares for the truly needy, widows, children, disabled and elderly. Every powerful corporation and stakeholder, from Pharma to healthcare management companies to public health agencies, fought him on any changes, as was wildly evident in professional and consumer publications throughout his administration and to this day.

Still, he eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate and signed the first-ever executive order making it a federal policy to protect patients from pre-existing conditions denials of coverage.

He promoted more choices for individual health insurance, helped employers offer less expensive plans, and allowed the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.

The other changes in health insurance, Medicare Advantage and Part D plans, and health savings accounts, tweaked government regulations, but in a single term of office were unable to significantly lessen the federal government’s grip on healthcare.

Healthcare policies are inordinately complicated. Some of his greatest weaknesses were in medical science and health decisions; the advisors he placed his trust in; and the agency bureaucrats he empowered. But objectively, on balance, his weaknesses pale compared to the consequences seen in the enormous expansion and continuation and doubling down of government health mandates that followed under Ms. Harris.

Part 9 examines the candidates’ actions on God’s creation, our world. Did their energy policies follow and honor Jesus’ teachings?