The Patriot Post® · Election Will Decide Trump Recovery or Biden Recession
There has arguably never been a starker contrast for visions of America than 2020’s presidential race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat former VP Joe Biden. While Biden was given the nomination by Democrat power brokers to avoid having crazy Bernie Sanders as their candidate, Biden’s economic vision is straight out of Sanders’s socialist playbook.
Biden’s is a plan for higher taxes, more burdensome regulations, and more government control of individual lives and private industry. It’s a plan to reverse the Trump policies that put the economy on steroids after eight years of economic stagnation under Obama-Biden, which saw the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression, the lowest workforce participation since the Jimmy Carter years, and an anemic GDP growth Obama told us was “the new normal.”
Under President Trump, we have seen the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates in history, a wave of tax cuts and regulation-slashing that unleashed investment and job creation, and a huge jump in personal and family income levels.
The resurgence in American prosperity was dealt a body blow by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, which forced a shutdown of the economy, the loss of 22 million jobs, and the shuttering of countless thousands of small businesses.
Yet under President Trump’s leadership, nearly half of those lost jobs have been recovered in just the last four months, a record-breaking achievement.
As The Wall Street Journal notes, “The housing market is booming, small-business sentiment is bullish, and manufacturing is on the rebound. Once a Covid-19 vaccine is approved, and better therapies become more widely available, the economy should take off as even Democratic governors ease their lockdowns. The service economy will revive as Americans feel safer, and the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates low as long as it can get away with it. Mr. Biden could do nothing and inherit a boom in 2021 and 2022.”
But all of this progress is endangered under a Biden-Harris administration.
Biden, driven by his far-Left base, has promised to raise our taxes. He claims he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000/year, but that lie is exposed with his promise to repeal the Trump/GOP 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which, contrary to the Democrats’ claims that it only benefited the rich, actually gave the biggest cuts to lower- and middle-class workers.
According to economist Joseph Sullivan of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, “In the exact middle of the household income distribution, over 95 percent of households can expect a tax increase if the Biden-Harris plan becomes law. Overall, 82.6 percent of American households can expect a tax increase.”
The impact of the Biden-Harris tax increases would be devastating to an economy working back up to full strength, just as the Obama-Biden tax policies smothered an economy struggling after the 2009 recession.
Readers may recall it was the Obama-Biden “stimulus” plan that actually increased unemployment by more than two points, and it was Joe Biden who Obama put in charge of the laughably named “Summer of Recovery,” as well as Recovery Summer 2, Cash for Clunkers, and other gimmicks that never actually stimulated the economy or created jobs.
Biden is also pushing a $15/hour federal minimum wage, more than double the current minimum wage. According to the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), that would eliminate roughly two million jobs over the next six years, with those hardest hit being minorities and women.
EPI managing director Michael Saltsman warns this would cripple small businesses, arguing, “Business owners across the country are already facing a great loss after the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus. Increasing labor costs through a federal $15 minimum wage would only bring businesses — and the people they employ — closer to the point of no return.”
Biden has also proposed a 33% increase in the corporate income-tax rate, from 21% to 28%, which would discourage investment and job creation in the U.S. Keep in mind that it was Apple CEO Tim Cook, no fan of Donald Trump, who proclaimed it was the GOP’s corporate cuts that led to Apple’s decision to repatriate nearly $300 billion in overseas profits, and announce another $350 billion in investments to expand operations in the U.S.
These taxes would also be crushing to tens of thousands of small businesses, which employ more than 40 million Americans, many of which pay business taxes at the individual tax rate.
Also included in Biden’s hellish economic plan is his support for the Green New Deal, at a cost of nearly $100 trillion (though his version is supposedly substantially smaller), the expansion of ObamaCare for those over age 60, and increases in the federal income and payroll taxes.
He has also proposed raising the capital gains tax for high earners from 23.8% to 43.4%, which would wreck investment in the U.S., killing job growth in its wake.
The end result of Biden’s plans would be a return to the economic stagnation that we have escaped under the Trump economy.
Under President Trump, we have weathered a global pandemic and an economic shutdown, and we are well on our way back to the strong economy we enjoyed just eight months ago (yes, unbelievably, it’s only been eight months).
On November 3, Americans will chart their course for the next four years. Will it be a booming economy and job growth, or a plunge into another long recession?
Choose wisely.