America's Talking - Episode 4: Supreme Court rulings and a backlog at the IRS

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

For many Americans still waiting to receive their tax refund, it appears the wait could be far from over. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus, powered by thecenter square.com. I'm John Spittaro, and this is the 26th week of 2021. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from thecenter square.com. And later, executive editor of the center square, Dan McAulip, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week, including a new poll on President Biden's immigration policy, a busy week for the Supreme Court, including a ruling on donor privacy, and new data on the

effect federal benefits might be having on unemployment. Coming up right after this on America and Focus, powered by thecentersquare.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at thecenter.com, the country's fastest growing, non-profit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site. We deliver essential information with a taxpayer sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at thecentersquare.com.

That's thecenter square.com. Thecenter square.com. Welcome back. Here are the top stories of the past week on the center square.com. On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law that bans ballot harvesting and disallows votes from being counted that were cast in the wrong precinct. The ruling was heralded as a major victory for Republican-led states that have passed several laws restricting controversial voting practices such as ballot harvesting. The court was split on ideological lines in the 6-3 decision with conservative justices in the majority. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, found that the state of Arizona's voting laws had no intent of discrimination and did not violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan expressed disappointment with the majority's opinion, arguing this ruling severely weakened the law. President Joe Biden criticized the ruling in a statement and called for the passing of legislation like the For the People Act, which was filibustered last week in the Senate. the act would federalize several aspects of election law, which have typically been left to the state and local governments. To read more about this story and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now for a closer look, over to Dan McAulb and Casey Harper. Thank you, John, and welcome to American Focus, powered by the center square and the center square.com. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. It's Friday, July 2nd, and we're heading into the Independence Day.

holiday weekend. Joining me today from the nation's capital to analyze the news from inside the Beltway is Casey Harper, the Center Square's D.C. Bureau Chief. Hey, Casey, any big Fourth of July plans this weekend? Hey, Dan, I'm just going to be slaving away like you told me here at the Center Square. There's no days off, so. I'm glad to hear it. Glad to beat that into you.

Yeah. Seriously, though, are you a fireworks person, not a fireworks person? I'm actually going to be probably out of town for Fourth of July when I go to Kansas City with some family or anything. But I'm a big fireworks guy. I think there might still be some shows. I know a lot of friends are going to be on the National Mall for the Fourth of July and watch the fireworks show, which I've seen.

I've seen the DC fireworks show from rooftops and things, and it's pretty amazing. I'm sure it's pretty impressive. I'll have to get there one of these years and see it for myself. Well, glad to hear that you're able to get some time away. Why don't we jump into the headlines this week? As usual, not a lack of things to talk about. Immigration has been in front of mind for many Americans and, of course, D.C. politicians. There's a new poll coming out that shows that President Joe Biden might have lost the public support on his new immigration policies. Can you tell us about that?

I sure can. And just to clarify, this is a Harvard-Harris poll. So we're not, this is not, you know, Republican polls.com where we try not to cover anything that's too partisan. We want to have something that's accurate. And I think that is the case with this poll. Now, if you've been following the news, you've seen that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, you know, President Biden and Vice President Harris have been taking a lot of heat for what's going on at the southern border. We've, you know, on this podcast and on our website, the center square.com, covered a lot about the, the surge in illegal immigration, which is much higher than it was at the same time last year.

We are, you know, upwards around 180,000 illegal immigrants a month being caught by border patrol. And so that's got into the public consciousness. And Biden has been really pressured by Republicans and even moderates to do something about this. And so what he did a few months ago was tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the border immigration issue. I'm trying to fight it. She's kind of resist to go to the border and she eventually did. But what we saw on this poll is that 80% of voters see immigration as a very serious or serious issue. So that's number one.

It's being taken very seriously. Part of that probably is because of the surge in illegal immigration that some people are concerned about. Also, 64% said the Biden administration should issue new stricter policies to reduce the flow of people across the border. and interestingly only only 36% said Biden should continue his current policies. So what, you know, the big takeaways here is that people are really concerned about this. And almost, you know, the, a big, it's really a minority of people that think that what we're doing now is what we should keep doing. Right. Let me go back to that 80% figure. And when you talk about policy issues and politics, this country seems to it has been so divided.

over the last several years to get to 80% in agreement on a topic. That's that just doesn't happen. It doesn't seem like much anymore. So that really should be, I think, a concerning number for President Biden. And do you think polling like this? I mean, I know they do their own, the Democratic Party does their own internal polling. You think President Biden might change policy direction because of something like this? I think they're definitely

paying attention to this poll. And like I said, this is a trustworthy poll. It's not partisan. And so I think that's probably, they probably knew about this, about the sentiment from the internal polling or different things they're hearing, as you said. But I think that's

very possibly why they sent Vice President Harris to the border. She's really resisted it for months. And then, you know, we have no sourcing on this. But I would be surprised that there was some internal meeting. And it's like, look, you need to go to the border. We got to, we need to stop the bleeding on this issue. Because, you know, for some of his flaws, voters really trusted that Trump took the border seriously. Obviously, he ran on, he campaigned on it. And so I think, I really, I think this White House doesn't want the border or immigration to be a top issue. It's just not really a priority for them.

And so because of that, they're really being forced to play defense. And of course, Trump's just kind of twisting an iPhone. You know, and maybe you can speak more to this, Dan, but with his visit with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas has been really outspoken, said they're going to build their own wall because Biden won't do it. So he's taking a lot of heat from a lot of different sides on an issue that's not really even something he wants to prioritize.

What was interesting to me is the former president did visit the border this week, as you mentioned. He was accompanied by Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott last week's visit to the border by Vice President Harris. The Texas governor did not accompany her there. Now, granted, the Texas governor is a Republican, Vice President Harris is a Democrat. So there is a partisan divide there. But on a topic this serious, you would think that they'd at least like to pretend that they're on the same page, that there's a problem with illegal immigration, the spike in illegal immigration in this country. But no, that didn't happen. You pointed to the partisanship on this issue. Voters kind of see it that way too. So 68% of voters said the Biden administration's

executive actions are actually increasing the amount of illegal immigration. So 68% of voters think that Biden is actually increasing it. And 55% said he should have left Trump's immigration policies in place. So just something to chew on, I think probably transitioned, but 55% said that it was better off under Trump, which is very interesting because Trump's approval of which were rarely never that, you know, even at 55% for certain periods of time or anything. So for him to be that immigration is really interesting. Well, we have to keep track of the president's this administration's border policies, see if there is a change in direction. but let's move on.

Another big topic, essentially since COVID-19, the pandemic started, has been unemployment. Of course, unemployment surged late last March 2020 because of government shutdowns to slow the spread of COVID, to help the millions of people that hit the unemployment rolls, the federal government passed programs to add additional unemployment. unemployment benefits to supplement the state benefits that were already in place. President Joe Biden earlier this year signed off on legislation to extend those federal unemployment benefits until September. As the vaccine became widely available and the economy started reopening,

employers started looking, recruiting workers, but in many cases, workers, workers weren't returning to their jobs. There was significant concerns that these enhanced unemployment benefits were causing people to stay home. They were getting paid just as much to stay home as they were going to work. Republican governors decided, well, they were going to end this federal unemployment benefit early before September to encourage to incentivize people to get back to work. Democratic governors, most Democratic governors, decided again, that. Well, now we have some data that shows whether it worked or not. Can you tell us about that, Casey? Sure. So an analysis by Jeffrey's LLC economists found, basically analyzed the unemployment

rates in the same context that you just laid out, which is really asking the question, did taking away these federal unemployment benefits reduce unemployment? And the data really suggested the answer is yes. So it found from really the middle of May when many governors announced an end of the benefits through June 12th, the number of workers receiving state unemployment benefits in those states fell by 13.8%. So another way to say that is just once these states made an announcement that these benefits were about to end, unemployment dropped over 10%. And so, you know, and there's other factors. Unemployment is a little hard to isolate because there's so many other things that go into it. You know, some of that could just be natural and different

things in the economy, but it's such a big change in such a short period of time. And it's not, it's not as drastic in the other states that didn't pull away. So you really can make a very educated assumption that cutting these federal unemployment benefits, led to a very significant drop in unemployment. President Biden's stance seems to have been when confronted with this kind of information, when confronted with the fact that employers are having a hard time recruiting workers to come to work for them, President Biden's response has been, pay them more than, pay them more. And we have seen businesses offer incentives.

We've seen even state governments offer incentives. we've seen even state governments offer incentives for people to return to the workforce. But we have seen anecdotal evidence that businesses are starting to pay more. Could this possibly be part of the president Biden, of course, supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour? You think this is some kind of his plan? It's interesting. I'm not sure there's widespread agreement in the Democratic Party on that issue. I know that some of the more progressive members,

have been more overt in saying things along the lines of what you just said. I think that, you know, Biden doesn't want to backtrack or ever take the blame for unemployment. He's got a pretty good argument that, look, COVID happened. So all unemployment is COVID's fault. From a political messaging point of view, you know, the pandemic can be blamed for pretty much any woes in his economic woes in his first year in office. And so he supported these unemployment benefits. federally. And so I don't really see him taking the blame. Now, those are supposed to naturally end

later this year. And there will be a kind of a debate of whether they're going to be re-uped or not. Some Republicans have already fought for ending them. So that'll be really interesting to see if, once it's time to re-up those benefits or let them expire, if, well, where Biden lands. I certainly don't see Republicans agreeing to extending them. of course Democrats do control the House. They have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate. It's 50-50 with Democratic Vice President Harris casting the deciding vote there. So given all that's happened, I don't see it happening, but you never know.

Why don't we move on, Casey? It's been a busy week. It's been a busy few weeks at the U.S. Supreme Court. They finished this session on Thursday. with a couple of big decisions. Why don't we talk about one of them? It has to do with donor privacy, a case out of the state of California, which passed a law a few years ago requiring nonprofit organizations to report who their donors are to the Attorney General's office. A couple of conservative groups filed a suit against it saying it was unconstitutional,

and the Supreme Court weighed in this week. What can you tell us about it? Sure. So you're right. There are two major cases. That's because it's the end of the term. So we don't expect, you know, any more rulings to come out like this anytime soon until the next term. But the long and short of it is that California passed a law of requiring charitable organizations to release the name of, you know, major, of different donors to the state's attorney general office. Now, all charities do have to, you know, file certain, you know, disclosure documents with the federal government. But two conservative groups, Americans for Prosperity and the Thomas More Law Center, challenged the law in court. Now, you can kind of imagine why they would do this. In many states, the Attorney's General Office has become pretty politicized. And that's kind of the unspoken thing here, is that, you know, California is, of course, a very blue state. The Attorney General's Office has, in these very blue states can often be pretty partisan, you know.

And so they filed a suit and said, we shouldn't be able to do this, shouldn't have to do this because it's really a violation of the First Amendment that these donors should be able to give to charitable organizations, especially conservative ones in the case of the two challenging groups. Because in this era of cancel culture, these donors could be intimidated into not, giving. And so that's really what it comes down to is if you could somehow this list of people who

gave to various conservative groups or different groups became public, then those donors would be subject to really attack from, you know, the left or any, it could go the other way. If some company was gave to a controversial leftist group, then many Americans of riot or something could be upset. So if you found out that your favorite, that, you know, you found out Home Depot CEO is giving lots of money to an anti-gun group or something. You know, there's a lot of Home Depot shoppers. It might not appreciate that. You know, so it could go to the left as well.

And just to highlight that point, yes, it was two conservative groups that filed suit against the California law, but a number of groups that you would, that are seemingly more left joined in defense of the lawsuit, in defense of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and against the California law, the ACLU, the NWACP, PETA, and even others. So that does show that this is not necessarily a highly partisan issue. What do you think? Yeah, if you can get PETA, the ACLU, religious liberty, freedom groups, and, I mean, there's over 300 groups.

If you can get them all on the same page, Americans for Prosperity, which is a conservative group, if they all agree in something, it does kind of get you to pay attention. And I believe there are 300 groups opposing this California role because, you know, they don't want to have to expose their donors and they don't want donors to face intimidation and all that things. And so you made the point earlier that, you know, 80% of Americans agreeing on anything is pretty unusual in this time. And I would echo that point in this case, which is, you know, groups from the far, far left to the far right agreeing against this California law. is pretty unique. And in this case, they won with a 6-3 decision in their favor. All right. Thank you, Casey. Moving on. Another big story this week, particularly for Americans who have filed their federal income tax returns and are expecting a refund back. It turns out that the IRS

is back logged on millions of these tax returns. What can you tell us about this? This is a really interesting story. Even I had experienced this personally. but so the national taxpayer advocate is, you know, mandated by the federal government to do these reports analyzing the IRS and sending it to Congress. So this is a, you know, official report and they studied, you know, how the IRS has been performing. And what they called it was the definition of a perfect storm. So they pointed to the pandemic as a big cause for this backlog. And they also pointed to the COVID stimulus checks and the new. upcoming monthly child tax credit payments.

But basically 35.3 million unprocessed returns were left behind at the end of the filing season, which is four times more than, say, you know, two years ago or so, you know, four times more. So it's a huge increase. Millions of Americans, if you're listening to this and you haven't got your tax refund yet, you know, you may not, you may have to keep waiting because there's a lot of other people just like you right now. Yeah, that's kind of crazy, particularly I know people, and I'm sure this is across the country. I know people who use their income tax return dollars, whether it be a couple thousand dollars, a few thousand dollars or whatever, on summer vacation plans and things like that. So those people are going to be, unfortunately, waiting.

Of course, those checks also provide a boost to the economy because when you get a nice little, a paycheck that's above your regular income. Many people tend to spend it. Some people save it, sure, but that helps the economy. So do they have a time frame, Casey, as to when they think they'll get caught up? No, they haven't released anything of that kind. I think they're just working through it as fast as they can.

Also, I'm not one to really trust federal timelines. But, I mean, I can just say personally that, you know, We filed our taxes in March of this year and just got our refund last week. So, you know, that's a great example. I think my story is probably similar to others. One reason for a lot of people's delay is that they were filing, they're filing retroactively to get their stimulus checks. So the stimulus checks were originally sent out based on your previous year's income.

But if for some reason your income was actually lower, in 2020 than it was in 2019, and you actually qualified for a stimulus check, but you didn't receive it because of, you know, your income had changed. All those people were filing retroactively and get the stimulus checks. And so that's another thing.

So a lot of these returns are, it's just over, it's been much more complicated by the stimulus checks. Plus, you know, COVID people aren't going in the office. And another little interesting thing to point out, though, is that, you know, people can, you know, I don't know if you know if you know this, you can call the IRS and ask for help.

And they had, according to this report, a historically low level of service. Oh, wow. And the federal, you know, the IRS responded to less than 10% of its 167 million calls for help. So, you know, 67 million. Wow. That's right. Yeah. And I'm sure some of those people were, you know, it's the same person calling back.

But even still, I mean, to have over 150 million calls and only, you know, respond to 10% of it. But this is the kind of thing that we're used to reading about with other government agencies. You know, this sounds like a report you'd have from the VA or something. So it's interesting to see it come from the IRS,

which usually runs a little smoother. But they're chalking up to COVID, which, you know, of course, to have such a big agency hit by COVID is definitely, would be, you know, pretty difficult. So it'll really, time will tell in the next couple of years

if this was just kind of a COVID year mishap or if there's kind of more going on here. Thank you, Casey. We are running out of time. Now, my understanding is Congress is going into its holiday recess. We're going to have anything to talk about next week? We're going to have plenty to talk about. There's a lot going on with teachers unions that we're going to be following. We're going to have, I think there's still going to be things coming out from people on the Senate in the House. We're going to be talking, even if there's not major legislation being passed. Another thing to keep in keeping your focus is the infrastructure bill, which is really struggling. It's, I'd say it's a coin toss on whether Biden's going to be able to get this through. He's had his negotiations fall through. They've come back around.

He's got a bipartisan group. But then he quickly had a lot of drama because of some debates over whether reconciliation is going to be used for part two of the infrastructure bill. So there's so many moving pieces with infrastructure. I would say that's really the story to watch because so much of it's going on in negotiations. Some people in the House are kind of rankled by the way the Senate is handling things. So that's a big thing to watch and just see if Biden's infrastructure bill is going to grow or start to fall apart. We'll keep an eye on that. We'll probably talk about that again next week.

Casey, thank you. Enjoy your holiday weekend. Enjoy family in Kansas City. And we'll talk to you next week. Thank you.