Issues and Solutions

Economy and Job Creation

Capitalism is the most successful economic system in the world in terms of providing the overall highest standards of living and unlimited opportunities to anyone willing to work hard. The Democrats advocate socialists’ policies which heavily tax and regulate all aspects of economic productivity, print money, pass out checks to everyone, including illegal immigrants, to buy votes and retain all power in the federal government. When the productivity of the American economy suffers, there is less and less tax revenue to provide money for truly needed government programs, like Social Security and Medicare. Eventually, there is not enough of other people’s money to support reckless and irresponsible government spending and serious economic deterioration occurs to the point where we won’t be able to “right the ship”.  Florida can’t afford to operate under the losing Democrat socialists policies that we see in the failing blue states. People and businesses are fleeing those states for Florida. We must continue the winning, sensible Republican economic polices that we have in place and Florida. To do so, the Florida State Legislature has to have Republican super majorities. A VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT IS A VOTE TO SUPPORT THE POLICIES THAT ARE RAPIDLY SINKING OUR U.S.ECONOMY!  WE CAN’T BECOME CALIFORNIA OR NEW YORK. 

Democrats, whether in the state legislatures or in federal government support the concept of spending without concern for the economic fallout. The consequence of out-of-control spending is inflation and recession. Since Joe Biden was sworn into office, we have the record levels of inflation and rising, which began with the March 2021 America Rescue Plan.  America didn’t need rescuing. There were billions of dollars still floating around unspent from the two, prior COVID relief laws passed in 2020 and the economy was beginning to recover. The $1.9 Trillion dollar needless, spending package passed without one Republican supporting the bill. Next came the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted on November 15, 2021 with a price tag of $1.2 Trillion dollars, when only a fraction of that sum was needed for infrastructure and where is the Jobs part? Then, last but definitely not least in its infliction of inflationary damage to our economy, the Inflation “Reduction” Act (“IRA”) enacted on August 16, 2022, which doles out $1.2 Trillion dollars in green tax subsidies to corporations. Make no mistake, the green subsidies in the form of billions of dollars of tax credits and outright payments to companies making electric cars, solar panels, etc. simply destroy the industry because the companies won’t be forced to be profitable as their primary objective in producing those items and will have to end production when the government subsidies phase out and/or dry up because production costs won’t be competitive with world markets. Then the U.S. is back to buying the same items from China, for less. The IRA also continued the America Rescue Plan health care subsidies put in place during COVID for Obamacare plans. Why continue those additional subsidies when the “crisis” has passed and people are back at work or could be back at work? It is another disincentive to work and earn income, passing out more money leading to inflation and increasing the cost of healthcare for everyone. 

The other primary driver of inflation is high oil and gas prices caused by the attempted destruction of the U.S. oil and gas industries by the Democrats. High oil and gas prices aren’t simply felt at the pump but throughout every sector of the economy since oil and gas move our goods, fly our planes, heat our homes and are used in the production of many products. More than 60% of the electricity generated in the U.S. comes from fossil fuels. We have to have fossil fuels to live and make changes in power sources in a judicious manner. The Democrats want us in the Dark Ages. 

In 2019 and into the first part of 2020, wages were finally growing for the lower income workers and blue collar workers for the first time in decades and the labor participation rate was going up for the first time in 9 years. In 2019, more than 4.2 million fewer people were living in poverty in the U.S. compared with the previous year.  People are lifted out of poverty, not by government checks, but by opportunities.

The labor participation rate hit 63.4% in the beginning of 2020. When we should have been rebounding from the pandemic in October 2021, there were 11 million jobs open, 4.3 million people had quit their jobs, which is about 2.9% of the U.S. workforce. People were staying home and collecting government checks. Why worry about a job when money is passed out? The Democrats wanted to continue down that path of passing out money but they were unable to pass the Build Back Better (Socialist Spending Bill) in December of 2021 by a few votes in the Senate. However, so many billions of dollars were handed out from the prior “relief” programs that the labor participation rate in the U.S. in June 2022 was only 62.1% and it hasn’t moved much since then. 

Under Obama there were 5 government jobs added for every one manufacturing job. With Biden, we are squarely back in that position once again. The jobs numbers that have been posted as jobs added for the last year are increasingly government jobs (federal, state and local), about 30% every month, solely due to federal deficit spending. It is the quintessential problem of Democrat socialist ideas of government being the main employer in a country.  Nothing is being produced nor manufactured. This economic model kills innovation, progress and the real creation of wealth for all. Under Democrat theory, the government holds the wealth and decides how it should be spent and deployed. Soon, there is no more wealth to take from the taxpayers and only the politicians and their friends remain wealthy and powerful.

The Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 doubled the standard deduction and lowered all tax brackets. The lower and middle income taxpayers benefited the most. The upper income taxpayers were generally penalized due to the $10,000 limitation of the State and Local Tax deductions on their federal returns and the caps on mortgage interest deduction of $750,000 of indebtedness. I believe that these reduced income tax brackets, which are set to expire in 2025, should be made permanent. Additionally, I am in favor of reducing these middle rates by a few more percentage points. I want to see the American people keep more of their money.   

The Build Back Better Bill (Socialist Spending Bill) which passed the House on November 19, 2021, is the framework of the socialist policies that the Democrats are seeking to permanently put in place. It’s the nanny government state from cradle to grave. People won’t have the ability to build their American dream because the capitalist economy of opportunity would be replaced by the stagnant, inflationary dream of the Socialists Democrats. One example of the Democrats desire to pass out money, which was included in the Socialist Spending Bill/BBB was the indefinite extension of the monthly checks of $300 per child, called a tax credit, from the American Rescue Plan. Those payments are actually an additional welfare program that would include monthly payments to illegal immigrants for their children, even without social security numbers. Those payments caused low labor participation and high inflation because even when the economy opened back up. People stayed home and collected checks, not to mention the level of fraud that went on to the tune of billions of dollars, in all of this “relief” funding.

The American people are struggling with inflation of the Consumer Price Index of over 17% since Biden came into office, which isn’t even the real 20%-30% increase that people are actually paying at the grocery store, restaurants, for services, insurance premiums and for household items, forget gasoline prices, which are still double from the day Mr. Biden took office. Yet the Democrats kept pushing to spend recklessly with no thought to the long term economic consequences. 

The IRA provides additional funding to the IRS of 80 Billion dollars to hire 87,000 new IRS agents who will be auditing everyone to justify their jobs. We will have an army of approximately 160,000 IRS agents. It does not matter if you did nothing wrong, you will have to defend your tax returns, hire legal counsel and live in fear! Most people, especially in the lower income brackets will just have to pay whatever sums the IRS army says they owe because they won’t be able to afford to fight. Taxpayers earning $75,000 or less are expected to account for 60% of the new, additional audits. The IRS has the legal authority to freeze your accounts and justify it later. Your bank accounts will be subject to government review without a subpoena or probable cause of any wrongdoing.

In August of 2022, Biden attempted to achieve by executive decree what would have been nearly a trillion dollars in student loan forgiveness. The Supreme Court stopped the imperial order. But Biden’s administration is still attempting to create other ways to forgive students’ debts even though is has been declared illegal and unconstitutional.  Not only is it not fair to ask the taxpayers to pay for someone else’s debt, which they did not sign up for nor receive a benefit, it is inflationary and will continue to cause college tuition costs to rise. The government should not be in the student loan business. Private lending institutions should fill that space completely, with the federal and state governments, continuing to fund the universities and require the universities and colleges to reduce tuition and housing costs. If any area of our society could use some regulation regarding prices, it is definitely the universities.  Paying off the debt of a few does nothing to address the real issue. Affordability of college for all. 

One reason the economy has seen some growth in 2022 and 2023 is because, for the moment the Democrats could not pass the Build Back Broke agenda and America was saved. Furthermore, and more importantly, this “growth” is fictitious because it is a product of the trillions of dollars being pumped into corporate “profits” by Biden’s programs and government hand outs to consumers and increased rivers of money flowing to state and local governments which is being spent and reflected as growth of the U.S. economy. We still have in place the policies of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which is responsible for the U.S. economic comeback. However, make no mistake, this is a temporary reprieve from the destruction of the U.S. economy if the American people don’t stop the Democrat Socialist policies. 

STOP SOCIALISM NOW!