Economic Improvement Connects to Conservative Policy

Things are looking up for the middle class, in spite of everything Obama did

America’s working class was a tremendous focus of the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton took for granted voters in the Rust Belt in particular and chose to focus on bicoastal population centers, in keeping with the Democrat Party’s clear and continued leftist direction. Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump’s populist sloganeering stuck. His promises to “Make America Great Again” and to put “America First” not only resonated but created a firm foundation of an intense voter base.

Why?

From 2007 through 2016, the working class was dramatically impacted through a recession that began as a subprime mortgage crisis caused by Democrat policies, with home values tumbling 28% — a drop not seen since the Great Depression of 1929. The widespread foreclosures and the tremendous impact to lending institutions due to bad debt began sinking those whose biggest investment was their home. And, as we all remember, the beginning of massive government spending kicked in with Barack Obama’s “stimulus” of almost $1 trillion and bailouts to rescue companies.

And who bailed out the working class? What “stimulus” made its way into the family budgets of middle America, not just financiers and investment institutions? The unemployment rate spiked to 10% in October 2010 due to six million jobs being eliminated in the previous 12 months, testifying to the fact that the middle class was hurt disproportionately in the recession of 2007-2008.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) review of newly published Census data, real median household income dropped during the Obama presidency with an increase in measurable poverty. Households earned $55,683 in 2009, which tumbled to $54,398 in 2014. Food stamp participation in 2007 was 26.3 million recipients, and that number almost doubled by 2013 with more than 47.6 million Americans enrolled.

Middle-class households are only now seeing their income eclipse 1999-2000 levels. According to a Washington Post analysis on the same Census data, the income of black workers still remains lower than the high reached in the Bill Clinton/George W. Bush years — then it was $41,000, now it’s $39,490. All median household income rose to $59,039 from $54,105 when comparing earnings from two decades ago, 1996 to 2016. In 20 years, an average family had a $5,000 raise during a window of time that energy prices soared, the cost of health care and education exploded, and the value of one’s home was reduced by about a third. Oh, and don’t forget that mandatory government-run health insurance program that was supposed to save each family $2,500 each year but, instead, drove deductibles so high that no one can afford their “affordable” health care.

Compare that $5,000 earnings increase over almost 20 years to a six-year window during the era of President Ronald Reagan: From 1982 to 1988, poverty dropped 2.4% with an increase in real household income of $4,905.

So, when Trump spoke about the need to improve America’s economy after the Obama years with hopes to renegotiate trade deals, prioritize the American worker above illegals, and to repeal and replace ObamaCare, he won. Trump is president today not because of his polished campaign machine or eloquent rhetoric. He inspired workers to see hope down the economic road. He echoed the plans and policies from the Reagan administration.

And, indeed, the U.S. economy, according to Census data, tracked along with the launching of presidential campaign activity beginning in 2015 — perhaps a signal to all of America that the Obama economy would soon meet its end. Furthermore, reforms to food stamp programs permitted by the Republican-controlled Congress freed the hands of states to tie work requirements to benefits, and it clearly worked.

Between 2015 and 2016, according to the WSJ, median income for blacks and Hispanics climbed 5.7% and 4.3%, respectively, with 2.5 million Americans lifted out of poverty by work. The 99 weeks of unemployment benefits came to an end in 2014 with 3.4 million dropping from the program. Social Security Disability rolls also deflated by about 25,000 in 2015 and full-time, year-round workers increased by 2.2 million as many people moved out of part-time jobs between 2015 and 2016.

Americans are indeed “getting richer,” as the WSJ declared in its editorial headline. A recent Gallup poll shows that 64% of Americans think their “standard of living” is improving, the highest percentage since 2007.

Mercatus Center researcher Dan Griswold notes that, in real 2016 dollars, the percentage of Americans earning less than $35,000 has fallen to 30.2% while those earning more than $100,000 has almost tripled to 27.7%.

Now, at a 16-year low in unemployment due to 2.2 million jobs added to the economy, with unquestionable consumer sentiment driving a more favorable economy, any continued growth will come with serious policy changes such as tax reform. That could drive wages even higher.

These figures don’t lie. Americans express more confidence when they’re employed and have hope for more opportunity. With the responsiveness witnessed over the last 24 months to a reduction in government programs and regulations, Congress must act on its promise to restructure the U.S. tax code to incentivize work, savings and investment that creates jobs.

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Erasing America's History

Removing the names of Confederate soldiers is the next step in the Left's cultural revolution. Leftists hate history.

The University of Virginia’s board of visitors has voted to remove bronze tablets bearing the names of graduates who had fought and died for the Confederacy during the War Between the States. According to the board, the tablets, which have hung in the Rotunda since 1903, will be placed in an undisclosed location “where they may be preserved as artifacts of the era in which they were erected, and utilized to provide context to the history of the University.”

In the wake of the Charlottesville violence, the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, site of significant War Between the States history, and the first Medals of Honor, set the pace for UVA’s board. Democrat Mayor Andy Burke announced that the city would no longer maintain its historic Confederate Cemetery. Burke opined, “Our action today makes it clear that the City of Chattanooga condemns white supremacy in every way, shape and form.” No it doesn’t. Burke just played a tune for his “social justice” constituency. He continued, “While we honor our dead, we do not honor the principle for which they fought. Our city should be invested in our future, not a discredited past. Confederates fought against America to preserve slavery. That is the truth, and we should no longer subsidize any myths to the contrary.”

So instead Burke and others like him will continue to peddle the myth that the War Between the States was fought purely out of the South’s desperate attempt to preserve racism. These leftist iconoclasts won’t even consider the other pressing political considerations and convictions of those who fought to protect their homes and families from what they perceived as tyranny from the Northern states. They wholly ignore the fact that the issues leading to war were much more nuanced than they were black and white.

Finally, in service to their divide and conquer agenda, they continue to popularize the myth that America is essentially an evil nation of white supremacists that continues to institutionalize racism and even slavery. (Never mind the Democrat-run urban poverty plantations.) And they label conservatives as motivated by bigotry and racism in order to shut down our speech — it’s easier than having to actually produce an intellectual argument to counter their social and political challenges.

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The GOP's Last-Ditch Effort To Repeal ObamaCare Is Surprisingly Good

After nine fruitless months, Republicans have finally come up with an ObamaCare replacement plan that is simple and appealing, and that should easily pass the Senate. Will the GOP blow it again?

Put together by Sens. Bill Cassidy and Lindsay Graham, the plan would take the money being spent on ObamaCare's insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and give it to states in the form of fixed block grants.

States would then have wide latitude in how they spend the money — for example, they could use it to set up high-risk pools, reduce out-of-pocket costs, pay providers or subsidize premiums. They'd also be able to get out from under ObamaCare's disruptive and costly market regulations and benefit mandates.

It would repeal ObamaCare's individual and employer mandates, and its tax on medical devices. It would expand Health Savings Accounts and for the first time let those with accounts spend HSA money on insurance premiums. It would reform the rest of Medicaid by replacing the current open-ended matching grant program with fixed per-capita payments. And it would also let states impose work requirements for able-bodied adults enrolled in Medicaid.

Interestingly, while trying to craft legislation that would appeal to Republican moderates in the Senate, Cassidy and Graham have created a plan that is in some ways more conservative than the earlier House and Senate repeal-and-replace bills.

Those plans retained ObamaCare's disastrous "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" regulations and carried over its essential health benefits mandate, replacing one federal ObamaCare subsidy scheme for another. The plans were overly complicated and difficult to defend, but easy to attack.

The Cassidy-Graham bill, in contrast, is comparatively simple and straightforward. It lets states run their insurance markets as they see fit.

This is a welcome return to federalist principles that the GOP had forgotten when crafting their earlier ObamaCare replacement bills.

Is the Cassidy-Graham bill ideal? Of course not. Liberal states could keep ObamaCare in place, or use the money to finance single-payer health care. It concedes that the federal government is responsible for providing massive health care subsidies to the states. And it leaves many other free-market reforms off the table.

Of course, the Congressional Budget Office will no doubt say that the bill will cause 20 million or so to "lose" coverage — a prediction that Republicans should ignore since, as we've pointed out in this space, it is based on outdated numbers and ridiculous assumptions.

To be sure, the chances of the Cassidy-Graham bill getting approved in the Senate are slim. The deadline for getting a repeal bill approved is September 30.

Two senators — Rand Paul and Susan Collins — have already come out against it, but John McCain says he'll back this. That means Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski would have to change her previous "no" votes to "yes" if there's to be any hope of passage. (With a 52-seat majority in the Senate, the GOP can only afford to lose two GOP votes.)

Someone needs to remind Murkowski that she ran for election in 2016 repeatedly vowing to repeal ObamaCare. In May 2016, for example, she said on the Senate floor that "I have consistently supported full repeal of the ACA and have voted to do so on several occasions." But those votes, which took place while President Obama was sure to veto any repeal measure, were meaningless.

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