No polls exist to prove it, but most people give what they believe they can afford to their churches and charities. However, the bulk of those who can give detest being told how much to tithe. You don’t hear too many folks hollering “Oh, boy!” when a federal, state or local tax increase is announced, or when an interstate highway is converted into a tollway.
Comes now Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat who has stuck around the Capitol in Washington long enough to be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The spin Pelosi put on the latest U.S. jobs report is an abject lesson in “do what I say, not what President Trump does.”
First of all, the guy sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office has only an indirect influence on the national economy beyond workers on the federal payroll. The strongest part of the president’s role in effecting a strong economy is making us feel good about ourselves to the point that we don’t feel like we’re being robbed of what we have legitimately earned. Trump has done that, just as President Ronald Reagan did.
The real drivers behind the economic numbers being crunched are those at the top of the pyramids in the private sector – the entrepreneurs, the dreamers, the investors and the risk-takers like our farmers and the little guys who own their own businesses (the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers). Trump understands that they are profit-motivated, service-driven, and that they want lower taxes and a level playing field on which to challenge foreign competition.
Unless somebody in the Department of Labor is spoofing us, the Trump administration must be doing something right to hand us a report of record high employment nationally (158.5 million jobs added in October) and a record low national unemployment rate of 3.6 percent. Historically, a jobless rate of 5 percent is considered acceptable by economists – so, the October figure is well under the that.
And yet, according to Craig Bannister of CNS News, Pelosi put on her contumacious hat and insisted that the Labor report is proof of how the Trump/Republican agenda is hurting the middle class. She went so far as to declare that the October news is “further evidence” of “broken promises and an under-performing economy.”
“The October jobs report offers further evidence that the Republicans’ disastrous special interest agenda is hollowing out the middle class while enriching the wealthy and well-connected,” Madam Speaker stated. “Clearly, the GOP Tax Scam has left our country with nothing but broken promises and an under-performing economy.”
What? Where’s the evidence? What promises were broken? She must be reading Venezuelan tea leaves. For one thing, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget clearly has projected that the 2017 tax cuts — if kept in place — would not start generating trillion-dollar fruit until 2028.
Sure, the federal spending deficit for fiscal 2019 (October 2018 through September 2019) jumped to $984 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest report. In fact, the deficit is expected to balloon even further, unless somebody like Trump can hobble our federal sacred cows. But to do that, he’ll need the cooperation of Congress.
One thing to remember up front: Freedom is not free. However, the current figures show that U.S. defense spending ($693 billion in fiscal 2019) as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product is less than half of what it was 60 years ago. Trump has shown that he wants to cut bait on foreign expectations that the U.S. will continue to police the planet, and he has broad public support on this initiative.
That aside, apparently a lot of perpetual, non-defense “free” stuff continues to be super-costly to taxpayers – such as food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid “entitlements.” And let’s not forget the ever-escalating interest ($593 billion last fiscal year) that has to be paid on our national debt. Nor should we neglect to mention wasteful and irresponsible federal spending — e.g., the Justice Department’s redundant Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program that costs $304 million per year, or the protectionist and corruption-fraught Maritime Guaranteed Loan program that costs taxpayers $815 million annually, or the little $1.5 million grant to the University of California San Diego to study the endurance of two fish species on a treadmill. Pelosi must be dreaming if she believes the Democrats’ socialist economic agenda is going to reverse any of that.
And then, after Pelosi shot another figurative arrow at the President, she trumpeted her fellow Democrats’ endeavors “to give Americans the economic security they need.” She touted her party’s legislation that has been sent to the U.S. Senate that would:
— raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, applying to all 50 states. Of course, that likely would result in the loss of more than a million jobs in the short term. In the long term, it would inflate the prices of everything for everybody as businesses and industries pass those higher-wage costs along to consumers. Can you spell “wage controls”? Socialist and Communist nations have tried them repeatedly, only to bankrupt their own economies.
— start a promised trend to rebuild the USA “with a resilient, modern, job-creating infrastructure and to clean up corruption to ensure Washington works for everyone.” Wonder when she’s gonna start? What’s she shooting for? Utopia? It’s not like the Democrats had that very opportunity during the failed Obama years.
— mandate lower health-care costs. Horse hockey! Pelosi paints House Resolution 3 (named for the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings) as “transformative legislation that will lift the crushing burden of unfair drug prices on American patients, taxpayers and employers and put money back into the pockets of seniors and families.” Well, can you spell “price control”? Arguably, the Cummings bill promises to infringe upon the republic’s traditional free-market way of doing business while crushing future research-and-development initiatives. Just ask India, South Korea and Chili how well price-controls on pharmaceuticals are working for them?
Makes one wonder what Pelosi was thinking last week when she stood in front of the casket bearing Cummings’ remains and flagrantly made the Sign of the Cross. Most folks believe in helping their fellow citizens. But take this to the bank, Nancy: Nobody likes forced charity.