Joyce's Thought of the Day 11/7/25 - Senator Cotton introduces Fair Tax Act to address the bias in the hiring of foreign workers over Americans

A snarl in the woods. Ancient forest spirits nip at his heels. He can outrun a force of nature on foot. He needs an instant power machine built for the wild. The only escape is in. The Toyota BZ Woodland, off-road handling, all-electric power. Leave evil in the dust. John Joe stars in camping. Face to Wild, test drive Toyota's new all-electric family at your local dealer. Toyota, let's go places. Senator Cotton has introduced his opt fair Tax Act. To correct what he believes is a bias in the way that encourages employers to hire foreign students on student visas instead of U.S. citizens. Opt allows foreign students attending a U.S. education facility to work in the U.S. in a job directly related to their major area of study. Under present law, employees and foreign students hired through the Opt program are not each required to pay Social Security-related federal payroll taxes of seven point 65% of their wages. If the employer hired a U.S. citizen, the employer and the citizen would each pay that money in payroll taxes. As Senator Cotton points out, this policy provides an incentive not to hire a U.S. citizen, and his bill is meant to correct this. Perhaps the logic for exempting these foreign students was that since the employment was normally only for one to three years, these students would return home and never be entitled to any retirement. benefits from Social Security. Well, Mr. President and members of Congress, this exemption from payroll taxes that discriminates against our citizens is buried in the Internal Revenue Code, and it is likely that very few people have ever heard about it. How many more of these types of benefits are hidden in the Internal Revenue Code? We could spend endless amounts of time to find the hidden benefits for special interests that were purchased from our politicians and unfairly the income payroll tax burden from the special interest to the rest of us. We could demand that these outrages be corrected, and maybe we could embarrass the politicians to repeal the hidden benefits we discovered, like the balloon that when you push one side will bulge out the other side. Is this type of graft will not stop if it can be hidden in the code? Does anyone doubt that in Washington, D.C., private rooms, more special interest benefits will be sold and inserted into the IRC? This will continue for as long as there is an income payroll tax. because it is complex and it is easy to hide these purchased benefits in it. If there was no alternative to the irrational and unfair income payroll tax system, maybe U.S. citizens would just have to tolerate it for the good of the country. However, there is an alternative, the fair tax, a national retail sales tax on new retail goods and retail services. The fair tax provides a family credit so that all purchases up to the poverty level for each family are not taxed.