As long as every other country on the earth wants to swap raw material and finished products with US dollars, they can print money to fund defense budget, social security, medicare, etc.
FTA!: “a bill that would abolish the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), eliminate the national income tax, and replace it with a national consumption tax.”
I guess they mean a (federal) sales tax because taxing at time of consumption is fairly hard to implement.
I imagined it in a dystopian way with zillions of cameras everywhere (how else would we know who ate that sandwich that you took with you when you went hiking with friends for a week?), but yours is better.
Imagine John Cleese working in an office, tallying how much toilet paper every employee uses at work, so that they (the consumers) can be taxed for it, and not their employer (who merely bought it)
For better and worse, this is pretty much what I'd expect. It's not a serious attempt to genuinely govern or otherwise make reasonable policy, it's sending up an ideological flag, and since the fundamental ideology is actually opposed to the idea of well-functioning social institutions with mutual accountability...
Republicans have run on a platform of "Government is terrible at it's job" for 50 years, and every time they get elected they work really hard to prove it.
Regardless, what's the alternative? Have corporations run everything and only majority share holders get any say? How do you think that'll work out?
Yet, that's exactly what the "government doesn't work" crowd seems to be pushing for. It's great if you're a billionaire neo-feudalist and terrible if you're literally anyone else.
I can imagine alternatives that aren't one of a) unlimited fascist oligarchy (present) and b) unlimited corporate oligarchy (your proposed alternative).
I'm not following you. Are you saying we implement this alternative by removing income tax and replacing it with consumption tax, that corporations will run everything and only share holders get a say?
I'm not sure what this tax issue has to do with the right to vote?
Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy?
No, I'm not talking about the IRS specifically, just the general "government doesn't work" sentiment.
> Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy?
You can think a government isn't working well, but the solution is not "dismantle the government" (which would lead to corporate rule and kind of already has), it's "elect a better government".
If California were particularly terrible, it wouldn't be so damn popular, and most of its problems would go away. California does have some specific policy problems, but most of what it has are popular place problems.
It also doesn't pass muster with my own lived experience. I've loved all of the 15 years I've spent in both Northern and Southern metro California, and I'd do it again.
Thousands of Californians left this last year or two and moved to Idaho. This sparked a housing crisis here in Boise, Idaho. I would assume these are left and right of center folks looking for cheaper housing and a better life.
At one point last year the median household income was $75k/year. The median house price was $525k or so. Basically this created the situation if you couldn't afford a house before the housing crisis, the $1500 to $2000 rent payments were going to eat into your income and make it harder to buy a house.
The NIMBY politics surrounding housing has got to go in California. We're beginning to get that here.
> This sparked a housing crisis here in Boise, Idaho.
How interesting. Presumably as enlightened examples of the opposite of California governance, they wouldn't have any such thing as a housing crisis caused by popularity.
Or... it could be they've had the luxury of not having popular-place problems thus far, and like everyone else are suddenly discovering that actual governance is hard.
NIMBYs are everywhere while the population is always growing. Did you think you would escape it, or just want to blame city slickers who like a roof over their head?
People complain of Californians moving here as well, driving up costs but nobody looks at the 385 vacant AirBNB's in a town of 45k (Cedar City, UT). If you had 385 homes open up for student or family housing the rental crisis would plummet and prices would drop to normal. If they go un-filled that means they need homeowners instead of renters and will be back on the market at lesser prices because demand will drop if airbnb is limited. There should be like a set quota of airbnb's per capita (1 per 1k maybe?, and a yearly license by random lottery to see who gets a license).
At what point is it reasonable for the major Californian cities to stop growing? Aren't there states where the entire state population could fit inside a single Californian city? Aren't there cities whose population could amount to several US states? People are complaining about California's governance, taxes, and pricing, so what's wrong with encouraging movement to other states?
A popular HN perspective would describe SF's problem as NIMBY and that we should allow developers to build without regulations like mandatory parking, but the transportation situation in SF is really bad. I feel that a city cannot just scale linearly once you pass a certain population / density threshold.
When I go to SF I expect to burn 20 minutes solely on parking or to pay very expensive parking fees for private lots. If you use any major highways in California during rush hour then expect a 30-45 min tax on your time. If people want SF to pass 1M then there needs to be a deliberate public works project to revamp the infrastructure in a massive way.
Also, do people think that building more lots would make things cheaper? London's population is ~9M, NYC is ~8.4M, Tokyo is ~14M. If London gets to 10M, is housing going to be finally affordable to UK citizens? When will Tokyo be affordable? SF is approximately 3-4x the population density of London and 3x of Tokyo. The vibe I get when driving around SF residentials is one of claustrophobic density, like the city can't afford any interstitial gaps between lots for things like trees.
> People are complaining about California's governance, taxes, and pricing, so what's wrong with encouraging movement to other states?
In short, public golf courses -- moreover -- the protection of public golf courses. That's pure NIMBYism right there. California chose golf courses over housing. Think about that.
California is popular because of its _climate_ and despite all of the batshit insane policies that have been legislated.
I'm gradually approaching retirement age and looking for a place with better climate to retire to, but everywhere I've visited - including California - has a lot of negatives that outweigh the positives of where I currently live, which (by a lot of metrics) has some of the worst climate in the nation. Despite all of that, I might still put up with additional crap elsewhere to live in a more moderate climate. Don't underestimate climate as a powerful decider for where people live.
Climate is indeed one of the reasons it's popular. That's not even remotely a counterargument against the premise that most of the state's problems are primarily from popularity rather than policy.
And "batshit policy" shouldn't be taken seriously as a charge without serious specific policy criticisms.
> > Republicans have run on a platform of "Government is terrible at it's job" for 50 years, and every time they get elected they work really hard to prove it.
> I have a hard time combining this sentiment with my lived experience in California.
I have no problem at all reconciling it with my 45 years of lived experience in California. About the only good thing California Republicans did for government in that time is provide such a flagrant display of how a minority dedicated to scoring political points with no concern for the general warfare could abuse supermajority requirements as to motivate California voters to change the Constitution to make the state somewhat practically governable despite the existence of the California Republican Party by removing the legislative supermajority requirement for the annual budget.
Amen. And don't forget that some of the formative policies people are critical of now (cough Prop 13) actually stem from periods where conservatives had the pull to win elections and ballot initiatives in California.
And California's progressive lock arguably isn't even really old enough to drive.
The US is astoundingly well-functioning and most US citizens astoundingly lucky by historical and/or global standards, and certain kinds of minimally functional mutual accountability are part of the reason why we've gotten this far.
There's also plenty of room for improvement of course (including learning from other industrial social democracies as well as recent internal issues), so that's relative, but the most reasonable perspective to start from is that we're all ridiculously lucky. Without substantial appreciation for that fact we're quite likely to wreck institutions that have gotten us here.
> since the fundamental ideology is actually opposed to the idea of well-functioning social institutions with mutual accountability
A charitable interpretation of Republican "fundamental ideology", as it were, would be that they prefer more well-functioning social institutions at lower levels of government, closer to the people those institutions are meant to serve. It would make sense than beyond just a publicity stunt to lower federal taxes and have states and localities tax more.
I can't take you seriously if you're claiming that one of the two major parties in this country isn't interested in the well-being of the country.
There was a point where I would have held the charitable reading of Republican ideology and I still know some people who identify with the party who probably understand their own position this way.
But at this point, no, I don't believe that's actually what's animating it. Selective election denialism is as nihilistic about local institutions as it is about national ones, while theories about state legislatures overridding citizen ballots sure isn't moving things closer to the people.
Whether you can take me seriously isn't any particular concern of mine, whether you can take the actual underlying topics seriously is the primary matter of concern.
Republicans have mostly lost their ideological way it seems like. They seem to just be against anything the Democrats are for these days.
The J6 response from the Republicans is the hallmark about power and politics in the party these days. Law and Order is fine long as it's only applied Biden's son or Hillary Clinton.
> They seem to just be against anything the Democrats are for these days.
This.
This was the problem with Democrats for a long time. They weren't for anything, they were just against Republicans. Republicans in government used to be well-educated and their main ideological thrust was based on a set of principles of limited government, free-market capitalism, and maximum agency of the governed. They fell short of this ideal, but the ideal was there.
Not any more. They're doing stupid symbolic things like this resolution to "get them Democrats" not to actually fix anything, and not as a matter of principle. Part of the problem is any conservative leaning person of any intelligence or reasonable level of education doesn't go into government, they go into business. We end up stuck with bozos like we have now.
This move to abolish the IRS is as much theater as the move to "abolish" daylight savings time in the U.S. which never goes beyond submission of a bill.
If they'd backed this with something like a flat tax, that would have been a bold move, even semi-realistic. But this is circus fare.
They would have and could have done it when they controlled the House, Senate, and Whitehouse 4 years ago. But they aren't seriously about getting things done, just optics.
Edit: When they controlled all three during the beginning of the previous President's time in office. Still waiting for infrastructure [week] to end and I'm still waiting to see what the Republicans ACA replacement will be... SMH
This political posturing will probably ensure an increase in support come election time.
People are getting savaged by inflation while the Democrats want the IRS to hire more agents that have a habit of targeting the middle income and poor because they are low hanging fruit.
Please stop spreading such nonsense. They don't have "a habit of targeting the middle income" people because they are low hanging fruits. They currently target middle income people because the lack the funds to go after the affluent and the wealthy and the obscenely rich.
That's what the additional funds is trying to rectify.
"low-hanging fruits" is implying that other fruits would be available for harvest - which they are not - the IRS lacks the funds to go after these other "fruits". So I'm not sure this metaphor is applicable.
> do you really believe US corruption is minor enough that politicians will target the major donor class for tax violations en mass?
Not giving the enforcement agencies the means to do the enforcement is not going to help either. If you are worried about corruption in the US, support efforts that get money out of politics, reversing Citizens United, etc. Not by virtually absolving rich people from paying taxes "because they already bought the politicians".
A charitable interpretation of Republican "fundamental ideology", as it were, would be that they prefer more well-functioning social institutions at lower levels of government, closer to the people those institutions are meant to serve.
But that's not what this does. This doesn't do anything to transition power away from the federal government. It just makes it impossible for the federal government to do its job.
That doesn't prove that they're not interested in the well-being of the country, but only because they know this won't succeed. If they thought it could pass, it would be wildly irresponsible. Instead, all we know is that at this moment they've chosen to make a grand and pointless gesture instead of actually governing.
Most of the people I know and care about are within 10 miles of my house. I don't care about my town's relevance on the "world stage," whatever the heck that means to you.
And what do you suppose should be the priorities for the federal government? What needs actually governing that can't be better done at state and local levels at the moment?
Whether it could, in theory, be done better locally, then at the very least you'd need to plan for that. You can't just turn off the Social Security Administration, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security etc and assume that the states will pick up those jobs tomorrow.
We could have a decent argument about which jobs are better handled by a federal government and which aren't. The notion that the federal government isn't actually doing anything and could just vanish tomorrow is absurd and not worth discussing.
How about the notion that the federal government is doing way more than it should given its remit under the Constitution? That's my point, not that it can and should cease to exist.
I don't actually believe that, because the Constitution is deliberately vague about what the government can and can't do. It exists in its current form as the result of 250 years of evolution, following the rules at each step as best it could.
Even so, I'd be willing to say, "Sure, fine, the government is doing more than it should". That's pretty vacuously true, and also irrelevant. Getting people to agree on which parts are important, and finding a better way to implement them, seems a more germane question.
> Would this eliminate the federal income tax leaving state and lower taxes?
The proposal “gets rid of the national personal and corporate income taxes and abolishes the IRS…as well as implements a national sales tax. Additionally, the bill gets rid of the death, gift, and payroll taxes.”
The rate seems to be 23%, and given that this is only a sales tax this would mean the federal government is taxing at maybe 10-15% of GDP. If I remember correctly, federal government expenditures are around 30% of GDP.
If that’s across the board and there’s no relief for lower income or retirees it’s going to suck hard. My income tax rate is lower than that…. And I asked about state/local taxes as removing state revenue from source a will replace it with source b. Remove existing taxes, and the national vat will sit on top of state or provincial vats as in Canada and I assume elsewhere.
Every time the subject of a consumption tax or VAT comes up, people say it will replace the income tax. If anything like this ever gets mass appeal because they say it will replace the income tax, the implementation IMO will be in addition to the income tax. Governments rarely get rid of taxes.
Am the only one who feels like thia whole article is like ChatGPT repeating the definitions without giving out any details?.
For example, instead of the other Rep who said exactly just a paraphrase of what the previous Rep said, they could explain what is FairTax is actually instead of just keep saying the samething.
Senate wouldn’t back it and President wouldn’t sign it.
Telling how ignorant audiences are of civics that this stunt would merit an article. (Indeed, a good number of these same reps literally voted to fund the IRS at unprecedented levels just a few weeks ago.)
I don't understand the implication that this must have a chance of passing to merit an article. The behavior alone merits an article. I am glad to be informed of government behavior (regardless of party).
I know that this isn't a serious piece of legislation, but just entertaining the idea of a consumption tax: wouldn't this hugely incentivize people to spend money overseas rather than domestically? Basically this would give people a huge discount if they take vacations abroad rather than domestically, to the point that it would make sense to do regular weekend trips to Mexico or Canada. In theory the government could try to tax consumption abroad, but in practice it seems like that would be very hard to enforce.
another concerning point is that ultra-rich would be taxed much less, say now Bezos sells 100B of stock, he pays 20B in taxes (long term capital gain). With new tax he will pay nothing.
How often does bezos sell 100B of stock, vs how often does he buy cars and boats and houses? you have to look at both sides of the scale, i'm not sure he'd end up paying less as a consumption/sales tax. I think the major argument is that the income tax is a mess, and very difficult to administer
He would pay taxes on whatever he spends that 100B on. If he just has 100B sitting in his bank account does that really benefit him? Money is not worth anything until it's spent.
The problem with taxing money before it's spent is that you have no way of separating out "good" consumption (e.g. health care) from "bad" consumption (e.g. yachts, 2nd homes). That kind of system leads to convoluted tax codes and things like HSA's and using health insurance as a form of compensation.
This is just the first in a long list of "messaging" bills that will come from a very slim Republican House, because there is Democratic control of the Senate.
They know it won't become law. The point is to rile up the media, get hits on cable news, fund raise, and generally be useless as a governing body. This is what both parties do when they are out of power, and I would say is what they _prefer_ to do. It's easier than governing, makes them money, gets them media attention, etc.
Both parties here in the US _want_ to be minority parties so that they can behave this way and assume no actual responsibility for anything.
There is literally no way a Democrat controlled Senate even reads this bill.
To your point though, a good example of that kind of thing is the idiocy of Republican states who passed years of anti-abortion "trigger laws" in case Roe/Casey were ever overturned. They all assumed those precedence would never be overturned, and so they could be as extreme as they wanted.
Will voters barely making ends meet dealing with inflation prefer the party that doesnt send government agents to attack them while they are struggling?
I really don't get this “both parties” attitude. There is no basis for that argument. There is a lot to criticize about Democrats, but they at least want to govern.
Democrats want to govern? Maybe you want to check the 10 bottom cities in America say by crime rate and poverty metrics. Name too 10 cities or even towns in USA and check which party doing the governing.
For contrast, the first bill introduced in 2018 by the democrat-controlled house under newly minted Speaker Pelosi focused on voter suppression and anti-corruption[0]. Like this bill, it was ceremonial and had zero chance of passing the senate or getting the President’s signature.
Regrettably taxes are kind of necessary within our system. I don't think abolishing the IRS is the solution, but I would certainly like to see it dramatically, cut down, and the tax code dramatically simplify. Get rid of all the loopholes and just set a flat tax for each income bracket.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 188 ms ] threadI guess they mean a (federal) sales tax because taxing at time of consumption is fairly hard to implement.
Yet very amusing to imagine.[1]
[1]: In a Monty Python or Douglas Adams way, natch.
Imagine John Cleese working in an office, tallying how much toilet paper every employee uses at work, so that they (the consumers) can be taxed for it, and not their employer (who merely bought it)
Since they oppose this by trying to pull funding from them.
Yet, that's exactly what the "government doesn't work" crowd seems to be pushing for. It's great if you're a billionaire neo-feudalist and terrible if you're literally anyone else.
I'm not sure what this tax issue has to do with the right to vote?
Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy?
> Don't follow the fact that only billionaire feudalists are allowed to think their government isn't working well? Why can't ordinary citizens be unhappy?
You can think a government isn't working well, but the solution is not "dismantle the government" (which would lead to corporate rule and kind of already has), it's "elect a better government".
It also doesn't pass muster with my own lived experience. I've loved all of the 15 years I've spent in both Northern and Southern metro California, and I'd do it again.
At one point last year the median household income was $75k/year. The median house price was $525k or so. Basically this created the situation if you couldn't afford a house before the housing crisis, the $1500 to $2000 rent payments were going to eat into your income and make it harder to buy a house.
The NIMBY politics surrounding housing has got to go in California. We're beginning to get that here.
How interesting. Presumably as enlightened examples of the opposite of California governance, they wouldn't have any such thing as a housing crisis caused by popularity.
Or... it could be they've had the luxury of not having popular-place problems thus far, and like everyone else are suddenly discovering that actual governance is hard.
My property taxes have more than doubled over the last decade.
Now this is "homes" I'm talking about, not other dense living situations like apartment buildings and hotels.
And I'm not sure that AirBnB avoids any particular segment of the market; it can as easily cannibalize 1bd condos as it can 4bd homes.
This is partially due to people buying up available housing stock to AirBNB resulting in a skewing of prices.
Many houses that would be back on the market now sit empty with no tenants for significant portions of every month thanks to that business model.
A popular HN perspective would describe SF's problem as NIMBY and that we should allow developers to build without regulations like mandatory parking, but the transportation situation in SF is really bad. I feel that a city cannot just scale linearly once you pass a certain population / density threshold.
When I go to SF I expect to burn 20 minutes solely on parking or to pay very expensive parking fees for private lots. If you use any major highways in California during rush hour then expect a 30-45 min tax on your time. If people want SF to pass 1M then there needs to be a deliberate public works project to revamp the infrastructure in a massive way.
Also, do people think that building more lots would make things cheaper? London's population is ~9M, NYC is ~8.4M, Tokyo is ~14M. If London gets to 10M, is housing going to be finally affordable to UK citizens? When will Tokyo be affordable? SF is approximately 3-4x the population density of London and 3x of Tokyo. The vibe I get when driving around SF residentials is one of claustrophobic density, like the city can't afford any interstitial gaps between lots for things like trees.
In short, public golf courses -- moreover -- the protection of public golf courses. That's pure NIMBYism right there. California chose golf courses over housing. Think about that.
I'm gradually approaching retirement age and looking for a place with better climate to retire to, but everywhere I've visited - including California - has a lot of negatives that outweigh the positives of where I currently live, which (by a lot of metrics) has some of the worst climate in the nation. Despite all of that, I might still put up with additional crap elsewhere to live in a more moderate climate. Don't underestimate climate as a powerful decider for where people live.
And "batshit policy" shouldn't be taken seriously as a charge without serious specific policy criticisms.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
> I have a hard time combining this sentiment with my lived experience in California.
I have no problem at all reconciling it with my 45 years of lived experience in California. About the only good thing California Republicans did for government in that time is provide such a flagrant display of how a minority dedicated to scoring political points with no concern for the general warfare could abuse supermajority requirements as to motivate California voters to change the Constitution to make the state somewhat practically governable despite the existence of the California Republican Party by removing the legislative supermajority requirement for the annual budget.
And California's progressive lock arguably isn't even really old enough to drive.
There's also plenty of room for improvement of course (including learning from other industrial social democracies as well as recent internal issues), so that's relative, but the most reasonable perspective to start from is that we're all ridiculously lucky. Without substantial appreciation for that fact we're quite likely to wreck institutions that have gotten us here.
And I agree, it is astoundingly well-functioning at it.
A charitable interpretation of Republican "fundamental ideology", as it were, would be that they prefer more well-functioning social institutions at lower levels of government, closer to the people those institutions are meant to serve. It would make sense than beyond just a publicity stunt to lower federal taxes and have states and localities tax more.
I can't take you seriously if you're claiming that one of the two major parties in this country isn't interested in the well-being of the country.
But at this point, no, I don't believe that's actually what's animating it. Selective election denialism is as nihilistic about local institutions as it is about national ones, while theories about state legislatures overridding citizen ballots sure isn't moving things closer to the people.
Whether you can take me seriously isn't any particular concern of mine, whether you can take the actual underlying topics seriously is the primary matter of concern.
The J6 response from the Republicans is the hallmark about power and politics in the party these days. Law and Order is fine long as it's only applied Biden's son or Hillary Clinton.
This.
This was the problem with Democrats for a long time. They weren't for anything, they were just against Republicans. Republicans in government used to be well-educated and their main ideological thrust was based on a set of principles of limited government, free-market capitalism, and maximum agency of the governed. They fell short of this ideal, but the ideal was there.
Not any more. They're doing stupid symbolic things like this resolution to "get them Democrats" not to actually fix anything, and not as a matter of principle. Part of the problem is any conservative leaning person of any intelligence or reasonable level of education doesn't go into government, they go into business. We end up stuck with bozos like we have now.
This move to abolish the IRS is as much theater as the move to "abolish" daylight savings time in the U.S. which never goes beyond submission of a bill.
If they'd backed this with something like a flat tax, that would have been a bold move, even semi-realistic. But this is circus fare.
Edit: When they controlled all three during the beginning of the previous President's time in office. Still waiting for infrastructure [week] to end and I'm still waiting to see what the Republicans ACA replacement will be... SMH
People are getting savaged by inflation while the Democrats want the IRS to hire more agents that have a habit of targeting the middle income and poor because they are low hanging fruit.
That's what the additional funds is trying to rectify.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-20/super-ric...
>They currently target middle income people because the lack the funds to go after the affluent and the wealthy and the obscenely rich.
Low-hanging fruit: The obvious or easy things that can be most readily done or dealt with in achieving success or making progress toward an objective.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/low-hanging%20fru...
It's not nonsense, it's the reality.
Additionally, do you really believe US corruption is minor enough that politicians will target the major donor class for tax violations en mass?
> do you really believe US corruption is minor enough that politicians will target the major donor class for tax violations en mass?
Not giving the enforcement agencies the means to do the enforcement is not going to help either. If you are worried about corruption in the US, support efforts that get money out of politics, reversing Citizens United, etc. Not by virtually absolving rich people from paying taxes "because they already bought the politicians".
But that's not what this does. This doesn't do anything to transition power away from the federal government. It just makes it impossible for the federal government to do its job.
That doesn't prove that they're not interested in the well-being of the country, but only because they know this won't succeed. If they thought it could pass, it would be wildly irresponsible. Instead, all we know is that at this moment they've chosen to make a grand and pointless gesture instead of actually governing.
Where do I sign up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia
I'd refer you to their web site, but they don't appear to have one.
And what do you suppose should be the priorities for the federal government? What needs actually governing that can't be better done at state and local levels at the moment?
We could have a decent argument about which jobs are better handled by a federal government and which aren't. The notion that the federal government isn't actually doing anything and could just vanish tomorrow is absurd and not worth discussing.
Even so, I'd be willing to say, "Sure, fine, the government is doing more than it should". That's pretty vacuously true, and also irrelevant. Getting people to agree on which parts are important, and finding a better way to implement them, seems a more germane question.
The proposal “gets rid of the national personal and corporate income taxes and abolishes the IRS…as well as implements a national sales tax. Additionally, the bill gets rid of the death, gift, and payroll taxes.”
I'm not sure 23% would be enough to offset the loss of the federal income tax.
Same with money that you already took out of a regular 401k and paid taxes on it.
Same with money that was already taxed for the past 5 years.
Etc.
Senate wouldn’t back it and President wouldn’t sign it.
Telling how ignorant audiences are of civics that this stunt would merit an article. (Indeed, a good number of these same reps literally voted to fund the IRS at unprecedented levels just a few weeks ago.)
Bezos very likely sold much more stocks value wise than spent on boats and cars.
The problem with taxing money before it's spent is that you have no way of separating out "good" consumption (e.g. health care) from "bad" consumption (e.g. yachts, 2nd homes). That kind of system leads to convoluted tax codes and things like HSA's and using health insurance as a form of compensation.
that's depends if reinvesting is counted as spend.
They know it won't become law. The point is to rile up the media, get hits on cable news, fund raise, and generally be useless as a governing body. This is what both parties do when they are out of power, and I would say is what they _prefer_ to do. It's easier than governing, makes them money, gets them media attention, etc.
Both parties here in the US _want_ to be minority parties so that they can behave this way and assume no actual responsibility for anything.
Didn't Brexit start as a "there's no way this will actually happen" signaling gesture by establishment Conservatives?
To your point though, a good example of that kind of thing is the idiocy of Republican states who passed years of anti-abortion "trigger laws" in case Roe/Casey were ever overturned. They all assumed those precedence would never be overturned, and so they could be as extreme as they wanted.
Now they are reckoning with their posturing.
*I'd argue that most people in either party do _want_ to govern. But each one is being hijacked by loud minorities who would rather perform.
[0] https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2018/11...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html