Agree with Prof. Frenkel again: it is way more hypocritical to feign fiscal responsibility and spray money around than to spray it with pride. The main issue, though, is the overspending, not the parading.
Also agree that the tax code is purview of Congress, just as it is the allocation of money to the IRS. And no doubt it is a lot harder to fix the code than to shower some more money on the enforcers, but I am reminded of the words about doing things because they are hard, not easy.
It is also well known that there was surplus during Clinton’s years, though I am not sure if in that case post hoc equals propter hoc. Someone probably has studied it.
Finally, democrats may have plenty of good ideas on how to take more money from the public to finance both useful and dishonest spending, the thing is at some point the governed may start to dislike that too much of what they earn goes to pay the for stuff they would not really buy if they had the choice, plus the “cut” of all those who intermediate the spending.
Once again, if the public understood they cannot eat the cake and keep it too, they might demand more sanity and less profligacy.

Even better, set up a Marshall Plan where this tax serves to fund it

Call me when Congress tries to tax gas in an election year when inflation, especially rising gas prices is a major issue. I can just see Republicans uniting to help Biden solve this problem. As for the argument that we don’t buy much Russian oil and therefore won’t be much hurt by a tax on Russian gas: that only shows how useless the gas tax would be. If the Russians don’t sell us much oil, the tax won’t hurt them much either. It’s a wash, scarcely noticed by either side. It would not be an effective deterrent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What would help Ukraine would be resumption of massive US exports of oil and gas such as we had under Trump. That would cause an immediate drop in world oil prices, a reduction in inflation, and a direct hit to Russia’s main source of income. And all Biden would have to do is reverse position on a handful of executive orders. That Biden doesn’t take these simple and direct steps is powerful evidence (not proof mind you) that he doesn’t want to prevent a Russian takeover of Ukraine.

suppressing fossil fuel production, which is part and parcel of so called decarbonization will strengthen populism which can smoothly transition into fascism with nukes. Populism emerged in developed countries because of a strong downward pressure on living standards that cannot be fixed by playing with money. You can't eat money.

The numbers are pretty clear and stark. If one wants to extend North American oil consumption per capita to 8 billion people, oil production has to go up by ~600%. To the EU level, by ~300%. This is the scale of the problem and it will get worse before it gets better.

In some ways you can have your cake and eat it too. I am in favor of subsidizing alternatives to fossil fuels to give them the market push, while at the same time making sure that there is enough energy to go around ,which requires continuing investment in fossil fuels by the private sector. For this to happen we have to stop demonizing carbon dioxide and squash the hyperventilating catastrophism that has nothing to do with reality. No catastrophe is happening ,just predictions of the catastrophe that have been around ever since I can remember, I am old, so I went through quite a few tipping points, including when we were surely sliding into an ice age in the 1970-ies.

As far as the population growth is concerned. The growth occurred mostly in the developing world because of culturally sudden reduction in the mortality of the young. The only country that moderated this growth was China, using pretty drastic measures. You can't stop it, really, it has to run its course. Nonetheless, there are consequences of this growth that one needs to be aware of. I mentioned these consequences in the previous post.

World elites appear to be living in a bubble which is increasingly disconnected from reality. The "Humanity" needs to focus on overcoming the consequences of XXth century population growth, not on chimeras of climate change. As I said, the time remaining is short and there are plenty of nukes to go around if this all deteriorates into social implosions followed by wars, as in 1930-ies.

And finally, we need to return environmentalism to its proper function, protecting the environment, not playing fashionable politics. The developing world will face environmental devastation due to overpopulation, which can be stopped only by pulling people out of poverty, which requires energy. Meanwhile, the developed world will face intensifying migration pressures, not because of climate, but because of the interaction between climate fluctuations and overpopulation. Old fashioned fluctuations, like periodic droughts.

Dear Professor Frankel,
Apologies.
I prefaced that I might be doing something wrong, but the file is titled "vvv_jul18abstr.pdf", so I incorrectly assumed it was just the abstract as the name suggests.
I will certainly read the paper and, although I may disagree with this article, I respect and am grateful for your immediate attention and response, including the care about my name.

Cheers,
Claudio Migliore