It was a bipartisan project put into effect by two Senate appropriators, Republican Arlen Specter and Democrat Tom Harkin, with the support of the Clinton and Bush administrations — and during years when, except for one 18-month interval, Republicans had majorities in both houses of Congress.

At the time, I thought this was a good idea. Hadn’t health research produced cures and improved treatments for many diseases and conditions? Wasn’t health research the best thing for the government to spend money on after national defense? […]

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In the course of a detailed review of the Employee Retention Credit, “the IRS identified between 10% and 20% of claims fall was offered to businesses that were shut down by government COVID-19 orders in 2020 or the first three quarters of 2021, experienced a required decline in gross receipts during that period, or qualified as a recovery startup business at the end of 2021. But it was clear early on that scammers were taking advantage of giveaways of taxpayer money, either to claim it for themselves or to pose as middlemen helping unwitting business owners file claims.

In March of 2023, the tax agency warned of “blatant attempts by promoters to con ineligible people to claim the credit.” In September of that year, it stopped processing claims amidst growing evidence that vast numbers of applications were “improper,” as the IRS delicately puts it. In March 2024, the agency announced that its Voluntary Disclosure Program had recovered $1 billion (since raised to over $2 billion) in improper payouts from participants who got to keep 20 percent of the take.Ultimately, only “between 10% and 20% of the ERC claims show a low risk” for fraud, even by generous federal standards for throwing other people’s money at problems largely of government creation. […]

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But the change taking place among young voters is even more dramatic.

In the elections in 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump was soundly defeated among voters 18-29.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump among voters ages 18-29, 55% to 37%.In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump in this same youth demographic, 60% to 36%.However, a new Quinnipiac poll shows Trump leading Biden by one point among voters 18-34.Per Gallup favorability/non-favorability ratings, in October 2020, prior to the election, 58% of those 18-34 rated Biden “favorable” against 38% who rated Trump “favorable.”However, in the same polling done by Gallup last month, Biden’s favorability among those 18-34 was down to 33% and Trump’s was up to 46%.In early May, a New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll was done in six battleground […]

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