For some reason, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is really committed to rolling back taxes imposed on consumers seeking indoor tanning services, a new financial requirement that was implemented as part of Obamacare, known somewhat more formally as the Affordable Care Act.
Paul has introduced in the Senate his at least third attempt to repeal those taxes, getting only paltry support and probably not moving forward in any way any time soon, considering Democrats still lead the chamber overall. He has three cosponsors — all Republicans — in the chamber of 100 members. Per records on Congress.gov, Paul has evidently targeted these taxes on at least two other occasions, in both 2018 and 2019. With the high bar in the Senate for moving most initiatives forward and low levels of support even inside his own political party for his pet project, it’s a consistently failed ploy.
Paul has also seen other proposals of his recently fail. For instance, he procedurally forced a vote during recent proceedings of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on an amendment he’d produced that would’ve enshrined GOP talking points in law.
In short, his idea was to broadly restrict government staff from getting in touch with social media companies about content on their sites, coming after the spread of false Republican ideas that there’s been some kind of widespread censorship targeting their ideology on such platforms. A similar proposal was produced in the House, but the Senate was uninterested. An overwhelming majority of members of the Homeland Security panel voted against Paul’s bid, which in theory could have damaged efforts to combat foreign misinformation and outright criminal acts documented on popular social media sites.
These Republicans don’t have great ideas. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has also been pushing to establish the possibility of 25 percent tariffs on imports from China… import taxes that would in general be paid by Americans.
