The Tiffany Telegram: April 30, 2021

Dear Friend,

This week lawmakers did not convene for legislative activity, but President Biden addressed a sparsely attended joint session of Congress to report on the first 100 days of his administration, and his plans for the future.

I was disappointed that the President did not come clean with the American people about the humanitarian catastrophe that his pro-illegal immigration policies have created along our southern border. Even worse, he offered no plan for how to bring this dangerous and rapidly worsening situation under control.

The speech was also a reality check for many Americans. After promising repeatedly to seek "unity," President Biden has instead pursued a radical agenda – one that has sought to divide America along political and racial lines, demonize the men and women of law enforcement, and ignore an alarming wave of crime, violence and lawlessness that is becoming a way of life for many American cities.

On the economic front, the President announced yet another multi-trillion dollar spending proposal that would further expand the bloated federal welfare state – this one with a price tag of some $2 trillion. Yet in the next breath, he blamed the tax reductions approved in 2017 for today's skyrocketing national debt.

For those of you keeping track, this new spending plan adds to the more than $2 trillion "stimulus" bill the President already signed into law – and the roughly $3 trillion "infrastructure" bill he has already sent up to Congress (which dedicates only around 6 percent of that total to roads and bridges). Taken together, these three proposals alone will cost taxpayers a whopping $7 trillion dollars – and this is before Congress even begins to consider the regular spending bills that fund annual government operations (those will likely cost taxpayers another $4 trillion dollars).

President Biden has promised repeatedly to "Build Back Better," yet his first acts as President were to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and strangle the American energy development that our manufacturing sector depends on – killing jobs and hammering Americans with soaring gas prices at the pump.

We also heard the president call for increasing the top marginal income tax rate to nearly 40 percent, and 30 percent hike in the corporate rate – even as millions of American workers, families and businesspeople continue to struggle under the weight of government-imposed lockdowns.

These policies won't just squeeze family budgets, they represent a return to the kind of failed high-tax, job-killing, big-spending policies that strangled our economy during the Obama years and exported American jobs and factories to countries like China.

In short, the last 100 days have not been what many Americans expected, and they have set the tone for an administration that we simply can't afford.

I hope we can work together in Congress across party lines in the coming weeks and months to restore some basic checks-and-balances to our government, find ways to address problems like the border crisis, and get serious about expanding opportunity for American families – not the budgets and bureaucracies in Washington, DC.

Thanks for checking in with us this week, and we hope you enjoy this Friday's edition of the Telegram!

Sincerely,

Tom Tiffany
Member of Congress

Learn, Build, Fly at the Wausau Downtown Airport

Critical Race Theory: Your tax dollars at work
Telegram readers have seen our updates on some of the troubling steps Democrats on Capitol Hill have taken to polarize America along racial lines. From House Judiciary Committee approval of a "reparations commission," to a Senator from a neighboring state declaring she would only vote for "minority" nominees, it seems like every day there is some new push to stop treating Americans as unique individuals, and start treating them based on their skin color. The Biden administration now appears headed further down that unfortunate road – and is reportedly planning to spend taxpayer money to inject radical, race-based theories into history class curriculum. This project would indoctrinate our students with the false and inflammatory claim that America's founding – and even our war for independence from the British Empire – were simply tools to expand slavery. You can read more about this dangerous proposal here.

Equal opportunity challenge filed against race-based USDA program
Many of you have been keeping an eye on the Agriculture Civil Rights and Equality or ACRE Act, legislation Rep. Burgess Owens and I introduced last month to block a USDA program signed into law by President Biden. The Biden program would provide debt relief to farmers based solely on the basis of race. This week, our efforts got a boost when farmers in multiple states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas, challenged the constitutionality of the program.

Coming soon: Subsidized high-rise apartments in the suburbs?
A little-known feature of President Biden's massive "infrastructure" package would take aim at neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes by offering federal money to local governments if they agree to pave the way for construction of high-density apartment blocks in suburbs. Some of you remember that former President Trump and Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson warned that Democrats would pursue such a plan in a newspaper column last summer. I am opposed to this idea and believe we'd all be a lot better off if Washington, D.C. bureaucrats kept their noses out of local neighborhood planning decisions.

Breaking China's grip on the WHO
On Tuesday I joined several of my colleagues in voicing opposition to Taiwan's continued exclusion from the World Health Organization (WHO). For years, the WHO has been under Beijing's thumb, undermining global public health efforts and silencing China's critics – including Taiwan. Readers may recall that Taiwan tried to alert the WHO about person-to-person transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus back in December of 2019– before the pandemic swept across the globe. Unfortunately, the WHO ignored those warnings to protect Communist China, and we know what happened next. China's domination of the WHO is unfair, unwise, and unhealthy – and it needs to come to an end. I've long advocated for closer U.S. ties with our friends in Taiwan, and I hope in the coming year we can work across party lines to deepen the friendship between our two nations – and reform the beleaguered WHO. You can listen to my statement on Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO here.

Committee Update
Natural Resources Committee Update
On Thursday the Natural Resources Committee had a National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee hearing on wildfires. I made the point that the wildfire problem in the western states is primarily a forest management problem. But that isn't the only negative consequence of poor forest management. In Wisconsin, timber harvest has been significantly reduced on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF) over the last thirty years – costing taxpayers a bundle. In fact, it has cost the federal treasury $250 million – exacerbating the budget deficit, reducing wildlife diversity, and killing jobs as mills that depend on the harvests closed their doors. We also see increased risks of fire from the blowdown of mature trees that should have been harvested years earlier in the Diamond Roof area in Langlade, Forest and Oconto Counties. One of the witnesses, invited by the majority, made the claim that "large trees are more fire and drought resistant and store and accumulate more carbon annually than small trees." This statement is patently incorrect, in fact the older trees get, the rate at which they sequester slows down, and when they die that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. That is why it is important we practice active forest management – not a neglectful "hands-off" policy that leaves forests to become overgrown and packed with dead trees, creating tinderbox conditions that make wildfires more likely.

District Update
COVID/Vaccine Update
Wisconsin continues to see a decline in daily case numbers, with an average of 612 reported cases each day. Hospitalizations remain stable throughout the state, although the North Central HERC region did experience an increase in COVID admissions in the past two weeks. On the variant front, Wisconsin is still seeing significant numbers of B117 (UK) and B1427 (California) being reported throughout the state with 707 and 394 total reported cases respectively.

On the vaccine side, Wisconsin reached 4.3 million doses administered, and nearly 2 million people have received their second dose and are fully vaccinated. Additionally, this week the CDC and FDA lifted their temporary pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine following an investigation for reported events of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). Both the CDC and FDA concluded the benefits of the vaccination far outweigh the risks with only 15 people out of more than 8 million recipients ever showing signs of TTS. They do encourage women under the age of 50 to consider all available vaccine options as TTS has largely been traced to that demographic in clinical settings.

New Studies and Announcements on Masking
This week the CDC also presented new guidance for vaccinated individuals, allowing them to go without masks in most outdoor settings. You can find that guidance here. This announcement leads me into another conversation regarding mask wearing—mask mandates in schools. Many schools throughout the state have begun removing mask mandates in classroom settings, a major milestone in bringing our children back to a state of normalcy.

I also wanted to highlight a study conducted by Baruch Vainshelboim, a clinical exercise physiologist, which shows the negative impacts mask-wearing can have on our health. The research shows mask wearing can raise heart rate and arterial oxygen pressure when worn for more than 60 minutes. Additionally, cloth masks have shown to provide poor filtration and increased moisture retention, which in some cases leads to increased risk of respiratory infection. The most critical point in my opinion was Vainshelboim's discussion of the psychological and emotional impact of never seeing another person's mouth in a conversation setting. For our children, this has created a detrimental impact on social development in the classroom that needs to be addressed. It is clear the masks are ready to come off, and Wisconsin students are ready to learn fully face-to-face once again.