A new gold rush -- on STATELINE Aug. 11, 2017

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Economic Anxiety, Distrust of Government Fuel Gold Rush

• August 11, 2017
 
• By Marsha Mercer

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Thirty-one states have eliminated part or all state sales taxes on transactions involving silver and gold coins, giving them the same tax status as transactions in dollars.

© The Associated Press

By the end of the year, Texas plans to open the nation’s first state-supervised gold and silver depository, allowing ordinary Texans, as well as businesses, banks and others, to store their precious metals, and use the holdings in their account to make electronic payments.

“The idea of a Texas Ranger on horseback guarding the gold conjures up the sense that whatever happens, Texas will look out for your treasure,” said Chris Bryan, spokesman for the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

The whole scene may sound like something from an earlier era. But it’s part of a growing, modern movement across the United States, brought on by economic anxiety and distrust of the Federal Reserve, to make gold and silver legal tender.

Since 2003, lawmakers in 27 states have considered bills to recognize gold or silver coins issued by the federal government as legal tender or to authorize a precious metals bullion depository in the state, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. So far only Utah in 2011, Oklahoma in 2014 and Arizona this year have recognized gold and silver coins as legal tender, while Texas in 2015 and Tennessee last year approved measures allowing bullion depositories.

The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 appears to have spurred interest in such “sound money” legislation, according to William L. Greene, an assistant professor of political science at South Texas College. Greene, who has studied the bills, pushed a proposal in Georgia that would have bound the state to Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution, which states that “No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

States have taken other steps that may encourage people and businesses to think of precious metals as a viable alternative to the paper dollars issued by the Federal Reserve and not just as a collector’s item. Thirty-one states have eliminated part or all state sales taxes on transactions involving silver and gold coins, giving them the same tax status as transactions in dollars, according to the Industry Council for Tangible Assets, which works with coin dealers to pass exemption laws.

Illinois, California and Washington state began lowering sales taxes on coins and precious metals in the late 1970s. The trend has picked up steam since 2010, said Kathy McFadden, executive director of the tangible assets group. Louisiana reinstated almost all of its sales tax exemption this year, while Minnesota and North Carolina approved exemptions, and Virginia expanded its exemption.

In Utah and Oklahoma, people can now transact business with like-minded gold enthusiasts. Anyone in any state can open a self-directed IRA with physical gold, but proponents believe more people will do so in states that put gold and silver coins on a par with paper money. Gold-backed trading accounts are available in Utah, and gold-backed debit cards will become commonplace, proponents say.

But even in those states, you can’t necessarily buy a steak dinner with a couple of American Eagle gold coins, because the state doesn’t compel merchants to accept gold or silver coins instead of dollars.

In Utah and Oklahoma, the tax collector doesn’t want them either. A Utah man tried to pay his taxes with silver soon after the law went into effect, but, said State Treasurer David Damschen, “That’s not how it works. If you owe $500 in taxes and you walk in here with two sheep you say are worth $500, we aren’t going to take them either.”

But over time, Greene said, as residents use both bank notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than paper dollars “will drive out ‘bad’ money.”

In Utah, Jonathan Johnson, the chairman of Overstock.com and a 2016 Republican gubernatorial candidate, in 2015 said his company had stockpiled enough small coins in gold and silver to pay employees for several months in case of bank failures or currency problems.

Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky and Tennessee were among the states that considered tax exemption bills this year. A bill in Utah proposed requiring the state to hold physical gold reserves in a state repository, and one in New Hampshire would have mandated that state legislators receive their annual $100 payment in silver dollar coins. The state treasury noted that while the face value of a silver dollar was $1, the spot value of the coins varies and was $16.47 in January.

A Fringe Issue

Gold as legal tender has long been regarded as a fringe issue, championed by former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. But dedicated lobbyists, Tea Party activists and businesspeople have persevered.

Coin dealers in Ohio worked for nine years to get a sales tax exemption, Coin Worldreported. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, signed the bill last year after vetoing a similar bill three years earlier.

In 2013 Kasich said, “There is no reason to provide preferential treatment to one class of items and not others that could possibly increase in value, such as art, sports cards, or antiques. Therefore, this veto is in the public interest.”

A spokesman for Kasich said the bill he signed was more narrowly drawn and had widespread support in the Legislature.

The measure is expected to cost Ohio from $4.3 million to $5.7 million in lost sales tax revenue this year.

In Indiana last year, then-Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, also signed a bill eliminating sales taxes for silver and gold coins and bullion. That measure was estimated to cost the state about $1.5 million in revenue a year, although the estimate could be low, budget analysts said.

Some states were unprepared to assess how much the measures will cost.

Oklahoma previously lumped together gold jewelry and coins in reporting sales tax revenue and couldn’t separate the two to estimate the cost of the 2014 law that exempted gold and silver bars and coins from sales tax, said Tony Mastin, executive director of the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

Oklahoma plans a review of all the tax exemptions next year, but Mastin does not expect the revenue lost because of the gold and silver tax break to be consequential.

“There are not a lot of sellers of gold coins and bars in the state,” he said.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, vetoed two gold-related bills and his predecessor, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, vetoed one before Ducey signed a scaled down version in May. Arizona’s law eliminates state capital gains taxes on gold and silver coins.

“Arizona law now recognizes that, in the state, U.S. Mint coins are legal tender that can be exchanged for Federal Reserve notes,” said state Rep. Mark Finchem, the Republican who sponsored the bill.

“If a housekeeper chooses to receive silver instead of Federal Reserve notes, that’s her choice,” Finchem said. “The note is disconnected from anything of real value.”

‘A Giveaway’

But Arizona state Sen. Steve Farley, a Democrat who’s running for governor, called the tax break a giveaway to coin collectors. “It disadvantages all other forms of investment — and only coin collectors benefit.”

Republicans have long wished for a return to the gold standard, which fixed the price of the dollar to a specific amount of gold. President Richard Nixon ended the final vestiges of the gold standard in 1971. President Ronald Reagan had a commission to study the issue but decided against a return. He signed legislation authorizing the mint to produce gold and silver coins starting in 1986.

The Republican Party’s 2012 and 2016 platforms called for a commission to investigate returning to the gold standard. Before he became president, Donald Trump told GQ that returning to the gold standard would be very hard to do, “But, boy, would it be wonderful.”

Gold enthusiasts argue that gold holds its value when the dollar is buffeted and the economy tanks, although its price can and has dropped. The mint’s coins vary in price weekly.

“Gold is the most stable thing in the economic world right now,” said Keith Weiner, president of a precious metals firm and of the Gold Standard Institute, which promotes the use of gold as currency. “Some way, somehow, someday we will have a gold standard.”

Barking dog? There's an audiobook for that -- Aug. 10, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

With all the saber-rattling between the United States and North Korea, I almost couldn’t hear the dogs next door barking. Almost.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Americans should sleep well at night, untroubled by the escalating rhetoric over nukes, but I doubt he’s ever tried to relax to the noise of yapping dogs.  

My neighbor Paul has two sweet dogs, three if you count the long-term lodger, but they bark a lot, especially when he’s out.

Naturally, I was more than a little interested in the news this week from Amazon.  

Amazon-owned Audible – a digital book-listening service whose slogan is “You don’t just listen to an Audible book, you feel it” -- launched an audiobooks for dogs service, Audible for Dogs. It more accurately could be called Guilt Begone.

“I’m always looking for ways where people don’t feel guilty, worried or stressed when they leave their dogs alone,” dog behaviorist Cesar Millan told USA Today. Millan, known as the “Dog Whisperer,” “curated” a list of human audiobooks he says will help calm a pup who’s left home alone.

Among the titles: Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” and Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” They’re not all classics, though. The bestseller “Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood” by Trevor Noah is also on the list.

All this may seem preposterous to cat owners, but separation anxiety is no laughing matter for dog owners. Stressed pups may bark excessively, howl, tear up furniture, relieve themselves in the house and become depressed.

Many dog owners just switch on the radio when they leave home and hope for the best, but Audible cites an academic study from the United Kingdom that found dogs actually prefer an audio book to music. Really?

The 2015 paper from Hartbury College in the west of England titled, “The effects of audiobooks on the behaviour of dogs at rehoming kennels,” studied the reactions of 31 dogs at a pet shelter to an audiobook, classical, pop and “psychoacoustically designed dog music” and a control condition with no special auditory sounds.

Researchers played two hours of auditory stimulation at normal conversational volume from 10 a.m. to noon one day with two days between treatments to avoid overstimulation. Dogs were also exposed to normal kennel sounds of dogs barking and staff talking.

The audiobook was C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” book two of the children’s classic fantasy “Chronicles of Narnia.” The British researchers deemed it “popular amongst humans and appropriate for all ages, therefore is suitable for a range of environments.”

Video cameras recorded the dogs’ behavior in the various settings every five minutes.

The result: “Audiobooks resulted in dogs spending more of their time resting or sleeping than any of the other auditory conditions. Dogs also spent less time sitting or standing when exposed to audiobooks compared to all other conditions,” the report said.

What about barking? There was no difference between dogs in the control situation – with no special auditory stimulation at all – and those listening to audiobooks.  

But among auditory stimulants, the audiobook was the most effective, even better than classical music, in reducing barking. This was surprising because earlier tests showed classical music effective in calming a variety of creatures, including chickens, dogs in kennels, elephants and gorillas.

At his dog behavior center in Los Angeles, Millan also tested audiobooks on 100 volunteer dogs for 30 days and wrote “Cesar Millan’s Guide to Audiobooks for Dogs.” 

Gender, energy and consistency are important in choosing audiobooks for dogs, he says. For example, audiobooks seem more effective if the reader is the same gender as the primary owner. 

Leslie, a dog owner who participated in Millan’s study with her 9-year-old dog Buddy, said when she had to leave Buddy alone before, she felt “guilty with a capital G.”

But with an audiobook playing, “I felt like I was leaving him with a friend, so it gave me a great feeling of comfort,” she said in a video on the Audible site.

I might mention dog audiobooks to Paul, who apologizes occasionally for the barking disturbance. But, frankly, it sounds as if we’d all be better off if I found audiobooks for me to listen to when the dogs bark.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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`Huddled masses' need not apply? -- Aug. 3, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the White House briefing room, a senior White House aide lectured on the Statue of Liberty.

The statue is a “symbol of American liberty lighting the world,” senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Wednesday. Welcoming immigrants was only an afterthought, he suggested.

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the base, with its line about “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” was added later, he said.

Miller was right about the timing, but why make that historical footnote now? Because President Donald Trump intends to set the United States on a new path regarding immigration. He wants to halve legal immigration over a decade.

“Very, very important, Trump said of the proposal. “Biggest change in 50 years.”

Trump sees his America First ideology in conflict with America’s traditional role as beacon to the world’s persecuted and downtrodden.

The RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act would slash the number of green cards to about 500,000 annually and change the face of immigration. Green card holders are lawful permanent residents who can live in the country permanently and serve in the military.

The current system prizes family unification; people who are kin to citizens get top priority. The new system would prioritize green cards for English speakers, people who can support themselves financially and have job skills.

Miller emphasized most voters support such changes. To be sure, Trump’s pledges to curb illegal immigration were central to his election. But this bill goes a step farther. 

Now, legal immigration is also on the chopping block, as it has been at various points in history.

But legal immigration should not be an us-versus-them issue in the 21^st century. We rightly celebrate hard-working legal immigrants who follow the rules. We need immigrants to keep our economy humming.  

Democrats on Capitol Hill declared the bill a nonstarter. Two Republican senators – Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona – drenched the proposal in cold water.

Graham said it would hurt his state’s agriculture, tourism and service industries. McCain told reporters he “wasn’t interested.” Why? “Because I’m not interested.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued the bill would hurt the economy.

“Dramatically reducing overall immigration levels won’t raise the standard of living for Americans,” said Randy Johnson, a senior vice president at the chamber.

“In fact it will likely accomplish the opposite, making it harder for businesses, communities, and our overall economy to grow, prosper and create jobs for American workers,” Johnson said.

The bill proposed by two Southern Republicans, Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, has undeniable political appeal in Trump country. But it’s helpful to think about what the RAISE bill is not.

It is not comprehensive immigration reform. It does not address the 11 million people who entered the country illegally or guest workers or border security or deporting “bad hombres,” in Trump’s phrase.

This is not 1986, when Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Trump is not Reagan, who said: “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”

Reagan understood that society can’t prosper with “a class of individuals who must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society.”

The 1986 law -- called Simpson-Mazzoli for sponsors Sen. Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, and Rep. Romano Mazzoli, Democrat of Kentucky – promised a path to legalization – amnesty -- for millions of undocumented immigrants in return for 

cracking down on illegal immigration.

The law is now widely viewed as a failure. Nearly 3 million illegal immigrants did come out of the shadows, but the border remained porous. To pass the bill, Congress jettisoned key enforcement provisions, including penalizing employers who hired workers here illegally. 

Thirty-one years later, a new president wants to remake immigration. Surely we can do better this time around – without halving legal immigration. Curb illegal immigration, yes, while affirming America’s role as a beacon to the world, while helping our citizens prosper. Our future demands no less.

© 2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Old enough to vote, old enough to choose not to smoke -- July 27, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Nearly half a century ago, Americans decided 18-year-olds were responsible adults capable not only of fighting our wars but also of voting.

In the 21^st century, though, some believe these responsible adults need government protection from, of all things, tobacco. 

A trend has spread from community to community to raise the age for buying tobacco and electronic cigarettes to 21. New Jersey just became the third state to enact a law, after Hawaii and California.

The measures are well intentioned and seemingly sensible. Nine in 10 smokers start before age 18, and most states, including Virginia, allow young people 18 to buy tobacco products. No one wants young people who believe they’ll live forever to take up a habit likely to ruin their health and shorten their lives.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed the bill July 21 that will raise the state’s smoking age from 19 to 21 in November. It will give young people “more time to develop a maturity and better understanding” of the dangers of smoking, he said.

But, really, can anyone in 2017 reach the age of majority – 18 – and not know nicotine is addictive and smoking kills?

The Maine legislature passed a 21 purchase age bill this month, but Gov. Paul LePage vetoed it.

If 18-year-olds can be sent to war, they’re “mature enough to make their own decision” and should be allowed to smoke, LePage, a Republican, said in a radio interview.

LePage’s tenure has been fraught with controversy stemming from his racially insensitive and profane outbursts, but this time he’s onto something.

The slogan “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” helped pass the 26^th Amendment in 1971, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. Using the same rationale, a couple dozen states soon lowered the drinking age to 18.

An increase in deadly crashes involving young drunk drivers followed, and states started reversing course. Then, in 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill linking loss of 10 percent of federal highway funds to states that did not adopt 21 as the drinking age. All states complied.

Tobacco is the latest front in the war to save “kids” from risky behavior. But someone 18 is legally an adult who can sign contracts, get married and be sent to an adult prison. People under 21 serve in combat every day.

Raising the age to buy tobacco is a solution to a problem that’s naturally receding. Smoking rates for teens and adults have been cut in half since the first surgeon general’s report in 1964.

New Jersey, for example, has one of the lowest rates of smoking in the country. About 12 percent of adults 18 to 24 in the Garden State smoke. In Virginia, 18 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds smoke.  

Health concerns aside, it’s surprising that young people especially choose to spend their limited cash on cigarettes. The average cost of a pack of cigarettes nationwide, including state and federal excise taxes, is $6.16.

Unfortunately about 42 million Americans and 3 million middle and high school students smoke. The key, health advocates say, is stopping kids from starting.

The surgeon general last year reported that high school students are more likely to use E-cigarette products than old-fashioned tobacco, including cigarettes and cigars. Most E-cigarettes contain nicotine, the report said.

But is an age ban the smartest course to discourage teens from lighting up and vaping? Big Tobacco wouldn’t like it but raising excise taxes still higher could serve as a deterrent for all ages.

On a practical level, we should consider who’s going to enforce the new laws. I bet most of us would rather our overworked law enforcement officers focus on stopping youth violence than go after convenience store clerks who sell a pack to a 20-year-old.

Do we really care as a society if the teen gang member who’s making our city streets unsafe has a pack of cigarettes in his pocket?

Recognizing that young people have the brains to make the right choices in life is a first step toward creating a responsible citizenry. We should respect our responsible adults, not baby them.  

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Fake news? Don't get mad. Get facts -- July 20, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A Facebook friend shared a quote the other day purportedly from Vice President Mike Pence on Fox News.

Americans need more “Jesus care” not health care, because if people went to church, they’d be healed and wouldn’t need doctors, according to Pence.

The post soon sparked plenty of angry comments. Almost as quickly, though, someone linked to an article by the independent fact-checking site Snopes.com. The quote was wholly fabricated.

Snopes rated the post “False” with a big red X, explaining the image macro, a picture with text, surfaced in May on Fox News the Facebook Page, which used a Fox News logo and lampooned Fox News, but was totally unrelated to Fox News. 

The Facebook page appears to have been taken down, but everything is immortal on the internet.

It was heartening to see the fabrication identified and neutralized so rapidly. Perhaps someone thought the quote squirrely – it was ungrammatical – but instead of moving to the popular video of the dog saving the fawn looked into the quote and found the facts.

That’s what we should do: Check out stories designed to make us mad, find the truth and share it. Fake news is an equal opportunity liar. So, whatever our personal political leanings, we all benefit when sunshine kills the germs.

Facebook is taking steps to combat fake news, but the perps are likely to find ways around changes. That’s why policing social media is up to us.

It’s also heartening to see news organizations persevere in debunking President Donald Trump’s brags and myths – and he has noticed.

“We’ve signed more bills – and I’m talking about through the legislature – than any president ever,” Trump said Monday at the White House.

“For a while, Harry Truman had us, and now I think we have everybody. . . I better say `think,’ otherwise they’ll give me a Pinocchio. And I don’t like those; I don’t like Pinocchios,” Trump said.

The Washington Post’s fact-checkers award up to four Pinocchios for falsehoods. 

Pinocchio-anxiety notwithstanding, Trump was still way off on his numbers. He lags behind Truman and several other presidents in bills signed to date, the Post fact-checkers reported, but they gave no Pinocchios for that flirtation with falsehood.

“He certainly appeared to pause for a moment and wonder if he was right. For Trump, that’s a step in the right direction,” the Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote.

Trump dismisses any news and news outlets he dislikes as fake news.

But fake news is intentional deceit, or as The New York Times put it, “pure fiction masquerading as truth.” Trump more often labels as fake news truth that makes him look bad.

Trump’s long-running war on the news media may yet backfire. Americans’ confidence in newspapers is actually up from last year, the Gallup organization reported last month.

To be sure, it’s nothing to brag about. Just 27 percent of people said they had confidence in newspapers -- but that was up 7 percentage points from a year earlier. Baby steps.

People actually have more confidence in news on the internet than in Congress -- 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, even though the internet is a fake news incubator.

The mainstream news media aren’t perfect by any means, but when they get it wrong, the incidents are painful. Three CNN staffers resigned last month after the network retracted a story about alleged ties between Russia and a Wall Street financier who is a Trump ally. 

On Friday, Trump named the financier, Anthony Scaramucci, a tough critic of the news media, White House communications director. (Updated 7.21.17)

But there’s a difference between mistakes and deliberate lies. Fake news can have dangerous consequences.

Last December, a gullible 28-year-old man in North Carolina drove 350 miles to investigate internet reports of a child sex ring connected to the Clinton campaign in a Washington pizza restaurant.

He fired an AR-15 in the restaurant -- only to learn he had been misled. There were no endangered children, much less a sex ring. His loaded weapons were real, though, and could have caused real tragedy.

Stopping fake news may be impossible, but we all must do what we can to expose it. The stakes are too high.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Dare to eat a peach -- and other summer pleasures -- July 13, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When author Henry James said the two most beautiful words in the English language were “summer afternoon,” he surely wasn’t thinking about a heat index over 100 degrees.

But not everybody can be like my neighbors who bought a house on a cove in Maine to escape Northern Virginia’s swampy summers.

“See you in late September!” they sang out happily as they drove away in May.

Nor should we hunker down with our news feeds. Many of us stuck in town need to remember that endlessly reading tweets by the Donalds -- father and son – just makes us hotter under the collar.

Fall may not be in the air, but it is yapping at our consciousness. I’ve spotted two “Kaine 2018” bumper stickers in two days, a sure sign autumn and yet another election are coming. Back-to-school sales are in full swing, and Redskins training camp kicks off July 26.

So sit back, sip a cool drink and banish the vexing news from the nation’s capital. Just for a while.  

Here are three ways to seize the (summer) day.

No. 1 – Hit the road – and go slow.

Forget fighting traffic on Interstates. Take the back roads, and head to the mountains. The Department of the Interior named Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park one of the eight best drives in all of America.

The 105-mile road through the Blue Ridge Mountains has “some of the most sublime views in the nation,” the Interior Department says. The 35 mph speed limit is the “perfect speed to roll down the windows and let the wind whip through your hair.”

And, boomers 62 and older, now is the time to buy a lifetime Senior Pass for admission to national parks. The cost is just $10 until Aug. 28, when it rises to $80. Buy the Senior Pass at the park entrance to save time.

You could order online but demand is so heavy it takes nine weeks to get the passes, Interior warns. 

No. 2 – Go partway on the Great American Total Solar Eclipse.

This sounds harsh as the astronomical mega-event Aug. 21 will be the first coast-to-coast total eclipse since 1918. Unless you’ve already made arrangements, though, settle for the partial eclipse, which we should see in Virginia, weather permitting.

People in the know booked motels and campsites years ago in the so-called Path of Totality, including Nashville, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Columbia, S.C.

Plus, more than 200 million people live within a day’s drive of the path. Do you really want to risk viewing the eclipse bumper to bumper?  

If you plan to watch the eclipse, get your viewing glasses ahead of time and don’t bother with your camera. The event will be over before you know it. The moon will cover the sun for no more than 160 seconds in prime locations.

And plan ahead. The next total solar eclipse in North America is just seven years away, April 8, 2024. It will swing from Mexico through Texas to Maine and into Canada. You’ve got this.

No. 3 – Eat a peach.

Dire news reports last spring warned that a late March freeze had ruined the peach crop for 2017. Not to worry. It did -- and it didn’t.

Peaches are far less plentiful in the peachiest states, Georgia and South Carolina, but orchards farther north suffered no lasting deleterious effects of the cold snap.

Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania are enjoying an excellent crop, so buy local. Virginia’s more than 200 peach farms expect an abundant peach supply through early 

September.

Add peach pie or ice cream to your menu – and tuck into a taste of summer.

And remember -- President Ronald Reagan declared July 1984 National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of July National Ice Cream Day.

“Ice cream is a nutritious and wholesome food, enjoyed by over ninety percent of the people in the United States. It enjoys a reputation as the perfect dessert and snack food,” Reagan said in his proclamation. Not a word about sugar, fat or calories.

“I call upon the people of the United States to observe these events with appropriate ceremonies and activities,” he wrote.

Now that’s an executive order everybody can get behind. Happy summer!

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Can't we get along and pass paid family leave? -- July 6, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump, the father of five who boasts he has never changed a diaper, wants to give new moms and dads paid parental leave.

His 2018 budget proposes six months’ paid leave for parents after the birth or adoption of a child “so all families can afford to take time to recover from childbirth and bond with a new child without worrying about paying their bills.”

During last year’s campaign, though, Trump proposed paid maternity leave for biological mothers only. 

“Maternity leave has a 1990s feel to it,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, then the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said last September. “It’s not 2016. Because in 2016 not only do women take off to take care of kids when they’re born, but men do too.”

Those who take time off mostly do so without pay.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, workers in companies with 50 or more employees are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a baby, sick family member or themselves. Many parents can’t afford to take leave.  

Only 13 percent of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave through their employers in March 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most likely to benefit: highly paid, full-time, managerial employees who work for large companies.  

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton promised 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents and those taking care of seriously ill family members.

At a time when politicians of all stripes talk about how family friendly they are, first daughter Ivanka Trump has made paid family leave her issue.

Here’s the problem: Almost everybody favors helping moms and dads spend more time with their children in the abstract -- and if someone else is footing the bill.  

Trump wants to run paid family leave through state Unemployment Insurance programs, which means payments are unlikely to cover anything close to full salary. His budget asks for about $25 billion for 10 years and says states will have flexibility on how to provide and finance payments.

The plan has drawn deafening silence on Capitol Hill, where it is competing with Democratic and Republican paid family leave plans.

The leading Democratic plan calls for a nationwide insurance program funded by employers and employees through the Social Security Administration.  Republicans favor tax credits, which could be part of tax reform.

After meeting with congressional Republicans last month, Ivanka Trump seemed to acknowledge a bumpy road ahead.

“Just left a productive meeting on the Hill to discuss issues affecting American working families, including childcare & paid family leave!” she tweeted.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said: “And we’ll see what the next step is, but it’s certainly something we’re going to continue to work on.”

Critics on the left say Trump’s plan is stingy and should cover those caring for sick family members. The business community says requiring employers to pay for paid leave will cost jobs and hurt the economy.

Critics on the right, wary of Ivanka Trump’s bona fides as a Republican, worry about another big government program. A Wall Street Journal editorial May 26 knocked her plan as “The Ivanka Entitlement.”

“As usual the policy sounds unobjectionable but the details are messy. If the benefit is available regardless of income, the government will subsidize affluent families who don’t need assistance. But inevitably the benefit will phase out as income rises like dozens of other federal subsidies. That could create another disincentive for work and advancement that traps families in poverty,” the Journal’s editors wrote.

She responded Wednesday in a letter to the editor: “Providing a national guaranteed paid-leave program – with a reasonable time limit and a benefit cap – isn’t an entitlement. It’s an investment in America’s working families.”

In a sign of our toxic political discourse, that last, innocuous sentence rankled some Republicans because Democrats often cast their spending priorities as investments.

But spending to give workers a helping hand as they start and care for their families is a worthy investment. Democrats and Republicans should put aside their bickering and work together to make paid family leave a reality.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.