State of the Union 2019: The Trump economy is a success story not even his harshest critics can deny

With the shutdown over (at least for now), the State of the Union address is back “on.” When President Donald Trump takes the House podium on Feb. 5, you can count on him to take the opportunity to celebrate one of his greatest achievements: the economy.
It is booming by nearly every meaningful measure, and the president has every right to take a large measure of credit for it.
In November, unemployment dropped to its lowest rate in a half century. African-Americans, Latinos and women are thriving. Black unemployment was at 5.9 percent in May, the lowest ever recorded. Women’s unemployment recently reached its lowest rate in 65 years.
ANDY PUZDER: PRESIDENT TRUMP DESERVES ALL THE CREDIT FOR OUR SOARING LABOR MARKET
And, no Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it is not because people are working two jobs and a zillion hours a week. Employment statistics don’t work that way. It’s because more people have jobs. And more people are encouraged about their prospects of finding a job.
Labor force participation continues to rise because strong wage growth is causing Americans who were once too hopeless to even look for work to pour back into the job market. In fact, unemployment ticked up slightly to 3.9 percent (still historically very low) in December despite adding 312,000 jobs because nearly 100,000 formerly “discouraged workers” decided to start looking for jobs.
For good reason. America has created more than five million jobs since Trump entered office. And for the first time there are more job openings in America than there are unemployed people.
Industries that some said were dead and never coming back – like manufacturing – are booming. Manufacturing added 284,000 jobs in 2018, the most in a year for more than a decade.

America has created more than five million jobs since Trump entered office. And for the first time there are more job openings in America than there are unemployed people.

A large part of these successes can be traced to the Trump-backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In addition to sparking business investment and expansion by reducing corporate taxes, it also included a big tax cut for middle-class American families.
The average individual saw a tax cut of $1,400 while the average family with two children saw their taxes reduced by $2,917. In fact, Americans in every congressional district got a tax cut. While mega-millionaire House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed a couple thousand extra dollars as mere “crumbs,” those tax-cut tidbits have been a big deal for the average working American and the economy overall.
President Obama – who presided over an average GDP growth of 1.65 percent – proved himself no economic Nostradamus when he said: “Two percent real GDP growth is the new normal for the U.S. economy.” Really? It shouldn’t be and under this administration, it’s not. GDP growth during the Trump administration has been nearly twice the Obama average, and was more than four percent in the second quarter of 2018.
And this is just scratching the surface: With consumer confidence rising, more pro-growth deregulation on the way, new trade deals being negotiated, and an energy boom on our horizon, we may be in for a much better “new normal.”
All this economic success is not just something the administration and the millions of Americans with good new jobs have noticed. The world has noticed. After a long decline beginning during Obama’s tenure, America, in just one year, has moved up six places in the Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom because of the strong economic and deregulatory policies the Trump administration has enacted.
The president’s political opponents and the media can gaslight and uproot goalposts all they want – and they will. But the success of the Trump economy is plain to the millions and millions of Americans whose lives are measurably better than they were two years ago.
So when President Trump enters the well of the House next week, he can stand confidently before America and the world and say that, when it comes to the economy, “the state of the union is tremendous.”

Meadows to Ocasio-Cortez: Congress isn't 'just sitting around eating bonbons'

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., reportedly butted heads with freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a bit on Tuesday. (AP/Getty)

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., reportedly butted heads with freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Tuesday.
The clash came at the first gathering of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the 116th Congress, which is led by Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Bloomberg reported.
Meadows and fellow GOP lawmakers were trying to persuade Cummings to provide upward of three days' notice -- ideally, five days -- for Democratic lawyers' questioning of witnesses so members could sit in, the outlet said.
Five days' notice was reportedly seen by some as more ideal, to better accommodate members who don’t reside near the nation’s capital.
Ocasio-Cortez chimed in to say she didn’t “believe we need five days” as long as members were effectively carrying out their jobs, Bloomberg said.
Meadows reportedly addressed Cummings in his reply.
“Mr. Chairman, I can tell you on all of this at this particular point, we’re all wanting to cooperate,” Meadows said. “Sometimes our schedules, you know, we’re not just sitting around eating bonbons, waiting for the call of anybody.”
The freshman lawmaker went on to wonder if Republicans previously allowed for similar notice when they sat at the helm of the committee, to which Cummings replied, “No,” Bloomberg reported.
The committee chairman reportedly said he’d do what he could to give lawmakers the notice Meadows sought, while noting that this might not always be feasible.
On another matter, during a recess of the House Oversight Committee Hearing on Tuesday, Fox News Correspondent Peter Doocy asked Ocasio-Cortez whether she supported the proposal from California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris -- who recently announced her 2020 bid for the White House -- to eliminate private insurance companies. While speaking at a town hall Monday night, Harris vowed to scrap all private health care insurance for approximately 150 million Americans if she was elected president.
"I think that's the direction that we absolutely need to go in," Ocasio-Cortez said. "I think one of the things that we're hearing right here in our, that we're really discovering in our hearings is that we -- the real issue with our health care system is that we're trying to have it both ways. We're trying to have half a free market system, half a more public system. And it is in the half-commitments that our systems are breaking down."

Scalise: Another shutdown inevitable without 'serious, credible' offer from Pelosi

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told Fox News' "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Tuesday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to change her tone and start making "credible" compromises to avert another government shutdown over border wall funding.
Pelosi, D-Calif., on Monday invited President Trump to deliver the State of the Union address on Feb. 5, after refusing to allow him to appear in House chambers during the partial government shutdown. On Friday, both chambers of Congress passed a short-term spending bill to reopen the government through Feb. 15 -- but it includes no funding for a border wall.
"Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn't negotiate during the shutdown. OK, now the shutdown is over for the time being," Scalise told Cavuto. "Will she finally start be willing to put a dollar amount on the table, to say how much is she willing to put together to support securing the border?"
Scalise said that experts have called for more than $5 billion in wall funding, and that Democrats are playing politics. Earlier this month, U.S. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost told "Your World" that "we certainly do need a wall," and the president has touted the support for one from the national border patrol union at White House press briefings.

FILE - In this Jan. 3 photo, a woman at the border fence between San Diego and Tijuana, as seen from Mexico. The top House Republican says a bipartisan border security compromise that Congress hopes to produce doesn't have to include the word "wall." (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File)

"It's going to take at least 5 and a half billion dollars -- our experts who risk their lives have said that's what it will take to secure our border," Scalise said. "What's Nancy Pelosi willing to put on the table now that we're out of the shutdown?
Asked by Cavuto what specifically he was looking for from Pelosi, Scalise responded: "Well, it's got to be a serious, credible offer. Let's talk serious. What is your offer? If it's not $5.7 billion -- which is what the experts said -- then what is your number, and how do you back it up?"
Pelosi has rejected the White House's attempts at compromise to secure wall funding, including various immigration-related concessions for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and extensions for emergency refugees.
"I don't think that's a tenable position for most Democrats," Scalise said. "We started seeing over the last few weeks more and more Democrats coming to our side -- even Steny Hoyer, the [Democratic] majority leader -- said physical barriers ought to be part of the solution."
Earlier this month, Hoyer, D-Md., told Fox News that border walls "obviously" work in some instances, and rejected Pelosi's suggestion that walls are necessarily immoral.
And House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told ABC News' "This Week" that he "would not rule out a wall in certain instances," although he cautioned that the White House needed a better "plan" than simply using a wall as a "talking point."
Democratic leaders previously have supported building border walls. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats, including then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, supported the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of some 700 miles of fencing at the border. As of 2015, virtually all of that fencing had been completed, according to government figures.

FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2018, file photo, members of the U.S. military install multiple tiers of concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande near the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge at the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas. Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan says the U.S. will be sending "several thousand" more American troops to the southern border to provide additional support to Homeland Security. He says the troops will mainly be used to install additional wire barriers and provide increased surveillance of the area. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

"The president said: 'I don't need a sea-to-shining-sea wall," Scalise said. "But there's about 550 miles of completely unprotected area where we know bad things -- drugs, human trafficking, even murderers come across the border. Let's start focusing on those areas."
He continued: "And if Nancy Pelosi really doesn't want a wall, President Trump has said, 'Hey, I'll be willing to let you put in language that bans cement wall.' But have some form of physical barriers. The steel slat barriers right now are what the experts say work the best. Let the experts figure that out."
The president's best chance to break the ongoing logjam with Pelosi, Scalise said, is the upcoming State of the Union address.
"They're going to see President Trump laying out the case for securing America's border," Scalise said, referring to the large audience expected to watch the president's speech. "What it's going to take. There are bad things that happen every day that most Americans never hear about. So let's actually lay that case out. And then we'll see where everybody is going to be."

Da Nang Dick Cartoons

Schultz heckled, called profanity at event day after announcing possible 2020 bid

Howard Schultz, the self-made billionaire and former CEO of Starbucks, was heckled Monday during an event at a New York City Barnes & Noble over fears that an independent run in 2020 would all but guarantee President Trump’s second term.
Schultz, who grew up in subsidized housing in Canarsie, Brooklyn, said in an interview that aired Sunday that he is "seriously considering running for president." His life story is compelling and different from Trump's. Schultz said he had to "fight his way out" from his humble beginnings whereas Trump benefited from his father's real estate business and connections in New York.
Many Democrats have been vocal about the dangers of a Schultz presidential run. One heckler in the audience on Monday summed up their concern, "Don't help elect Trump you egotistical billionaire a—hole," according to video that captured the exchange.
The crowd booed, but the heckler continued, "Go back to Davos with the other billionaire elite who think they know how to run the work."
Trump on Monday said Schultz doesn’t have the "guts" to run for president.
"Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the ‘smartest person.’ Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!” Trump tweeted Monday morning.

Trump slams 'Da Nang Dick' Blumenthal, questions why he's on Senate Judiciary after Vietnam scandal

President Trump took aim at Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in a tweet Monday. (AP, File)

President Trump attacked Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Twitter Monday night, mockingly referring to him as "Da Nang Dick" and questioning his fitness to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the wake of decade-old allegations of stolen valor related to Blumenthal's false claim that he fought in the Vietnam War.
"How does Da Nang Dick (Blumenthal) serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he defrauded the American people about his so called War Hero status in Vietnam, only to later admit, with tears pouring down his face, that he was never in Vietnam," wrote Trump, who added that Blumenthal was, "An embarrassment to our Country!"
It's unclear exactly what prompted the president's tweet. Earlier Monday, Blumenthal and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation that would require Special Counsel Robert Mueller to submit a report to Congress and the public when his investigation into alleged collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign concludes. The legislation also would require a report within two weeks if a special counsel is fired, transferred or resigns.
Blumenthal, who was elected to the Senate in 2010, regularly referenced his supposed Vietnam service in the 2000s, when he was Connecticut attorney general.
“I served during the Vietnam era,” Blumenthal reportedly said at a Vietnam War memorial in 2008. “I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even the physical abuse.”
Blumenthal reportedly obtained at least five military deferments between 1965 and 1970. He eventually served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, but did not deploy to Vietnam.
In 2010, Blumenthal admitted that he had "misspoken about my service, and I regret that and I take full responsibility."
Grassley and Blumenthal are both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Grassley is a former chairman of the panel. Both men supported legislation last year to protect Mueller's job. The bill, approved by the Judiciary Committee in April, would allow any fired special counsel to seek a judicial review within 10 days of removal and put into law existing Justice Department regulations that a special counsel can be fired only for good cause.
"A special counsel is appointed only in very rare serious circumstances involving grave violations of public trust," Blumenthal said. "The public has a right and need to know the facts of such betrayals of public trust."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to hold a vote on the bill, however, saying it was unnecessary.

Kamala (Camel) Harris vows to get rid of private health care plans: 'Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on'

California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, speaking during a town hall Monday night, vowed to eliminate all private health care insurance for approximately 150 million Americans if she is elected president.
Asked by CNN host Jake Tapper if people who like their current health care insurance could keep it under Harris' "Medicare for All" plan, Harris indicated they could not -- but that, in turn, they would experience health care without any delays.
Her statements appeared to be a full-throated call for single-payer health insurance, as opposed to merely expanding Medicare, and a dramatic embrace of the kind of proposals advocated by Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require," Harris told Tapper.
"Who among us has not had that situation?" she continued. "Where you got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, 'Well I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this.' Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on."
President Barack Obama famously repeated several times throughout his presidency, in seeking to promote the Affordable Care Act (known as "ObamaCare"), that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it."
SF MAYOR SAYS HE HAD AFFAIR WITH HARRIS, HELPED HER CAREER
The fact-checking website Politifact eventually named that statement its "Lie of the Year," noting that several million Americans received cancellation notices from their providers because of ObamaCare. Politifact also said the Obama administration was aware from the outset that its promise was unsustainable.

"Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on."
— California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris

Harris appeared unwilling to follow Obama's example on Monday night, and instead stuck to her answer as she jokingly told Tapper to move onto the next question.
During a speech to officially launch her 2020 run earlier this month, Harris declared that "health care is a fundamental right" and vowed to serve her constituents by supporting "Medicare for All."
In August 2017, Harris became the first Senate Democrat to support Sanders' "Medicare for All" bill. The program, if implemented, would cost tens of trillions of dollars over a decade, experts say.
Several independent studies have specifically estimated that government spending on health care would surge by $25 trillion to $35 trillion or more in a 10-year period. A study released over the summer by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, for example, estimated that Sanders' program would cost $32.6 trillion — $3.26 trillion per year — over a decade. By comparison, the federal budget proposal for the fiscal year 2019 was $4.4 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office states.

FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2019, photo, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., reacts during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. “Medicare-for-all” makes a good first impression, but support plunges when people are asked if they’d pay higher taxes or put up with treatment delays to get it. AP

Analysis by The New York Times in 2017 showed at least 74 million Americans who currently benefit from Medicaid would potentially face higher taxes under "Medicare for All."
Sanders and New York Democratic Rep. Ocasio-Cortez have countered that while spending would necessarily increase in the short-term, fundamentally restructuring Medicare would ultimately yield sustained economic benefits by reducing administrative inefficiencies, cutting perscription drug costs, and encouraging young people to put more money into the economy.
But Charles Blahous, a senior strategist at the Mercatus Center and an author of the study, has said Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders would need to make unrealistic assumptions to come to that conclusion, because increased demand for healthcare would potentially offset any such administrative gains.
He criticized the two for making comments that "appear to reflect a misunderstanding of my study" after they cited his work as proof that 'Medicare for All' would, in fact, necessarily save money. Numerous fact-checkers, including The Washington Post and FactCheck, concluded that both liberal politicians had misread the paper's conclusions.
Speaking separately in response to a gun rights question at Monday's town hall, Harris urged a ban on "assault weapons," without defining the term.
"There is no reason in a civil society that we have assault weapons around communities that can kill babies and police officers," Harris said to applause. "Something like universal background checks -- it makes perfect sense that you might want to know before someone can buy a weapon that can kill another human being, you might want to know have they been convicted of a felony where they committed violence? That's just reasonable. You might want to know before they can buy that gun if a court has found them to be a danger to themselves or others. You just might want to know. That's reasonable."
Harris also defended her record as attorney general in California, saying she enforced the death penalty in the state despite opposing the practice. Likewise, she said she chose not to take a public position in 2015 on legislation to require her office to investigate all police-related fatal shootings because her office would write the law and enforce it.
The town hall event marked Harris' first public appearance in Iowa since announcing her candidacy last week.

New details of 2016 meeting with Trump dossier author conflict with Dems’ timeline

New details contained in congressional transcripts and emails about a July 2016 meeting involving the author of the anti-Trump “dossier,” Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, and his wife, Nellie, appear to conflict with claims from Democrats -- and the co-founder of the firm behind the dossier -- that significant contacts did not occur until after the election.
According to the records, the little-known breakfast meeting was held on July 30, 2016 at Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel.
Congressional transcripts, confirmed by Fox News, showed Nellie Ohr told House investigators last year that Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who compiled the dossier, wanted to get word to the FBI at the time.
“My understanding was that Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce (Ohr) could put in a word with the FBI to follow-up in some way,” Nellie Ohr testified in response to a Republican line of questioning, regarding the purpose of the meeting. Bruce Ohr did just that, almost immediately contacting then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Asked by House investigators what they talked about at the breakfast meeting, Nellie Ohr said: “[Steele’s] suspicions that Russian Government figures were supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump.”
The transcripts came from closed-door interviews conducted last year by the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees when they were under Republican control. The transcripts are undergoing an FBI and DOJ review and are not public.
Nellie Ohr was of interest to investigators since she conducted opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump for the firm Fusion GPS – the same company that commissioned the dossier. Her husband, meanwhile, is a senior official at the Justice Department who became a back channel between Steele and the FBI, after Steele was fired by the bureau on the eve of the 2016 presidential election over his contacts with the media.
In her testimony, Nellie Ohr also said that pieces of the unverified dossier – which later would be used to secure a surveillance warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page – may have been shared during the meal.
In response to a committee Democrat's line of questioning, Ohr stated, "At the breakfast, I – if I recall correctly, they may have shown pieces ..." of the document.
Ohr said she never saw the entire body of opposition research, later dubbed the "dossier," until it was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.
Question: "Okay. And you hadn't seen it or its portions during the time that you were employed, correct?"
Ohr: "I -- if I recall correctly, I may have seen a -- maybe a page or something of it at the breakfast."
Email traffic, reviewed by Fox News, indicated that Steele broached the possibility of a meeting with Bruce Ohr as early as July 1, 2016.
He emailed Ohr at the time: "I am seeing [redacted] in London next week to discuss ongoing business but there is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite business tycoon!"
Subsequent emails between Ohr and Steele also confirmed the July 30 meeting in Washington.
Nellie Ohr’s testimony regarding Steele and the FBI would appear to align with her husband’s.
Fox News recently reported that Bruce Ohr told House investigators as part of the Republican-led probe that shortly after the July 30, 2016 meeting, his “first move” was to reach out to senior FBI officials.
Fox News recently confirmed the Bruce Ohr transcript said: “Andy McCabe, yes and met with him and Lisa Page and provided information to him. I subsequently met with Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and eventually [an FBI agent]. And I also provided this information to people in the criminal division specifically Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, Andrew Weissmann.” (Strzok and Page left the bureau last year after their anti-Trump texts emerged. Swartz was a deputy assistant attorney general. Weissmann was chief of the DOJ Criminal Division’s Fraud Section before becoming a senior prosecutor on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Ahmad worked at the DOJ and is also now assigned to Mueller’s team.)
However, congressional Democrats have asserted many of the contacts occurred later in the year.
In February, in response to a Republican report on the surveillance-warrant process, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee accused Republicans of overstating Bruce Ohr’s role.
"The Majority mischaracterizes Bruce Ohr's role, overstates the significance of his interactions with Steele, and misleads about the time frame of Ohr's communication with the FBI. In late November, Ohr informed the FBI of his prior professional relationship with Steele and information that Steele shared with him (including Steele's concern about Trump being compromised by Russia)," the Democrats' statement said. “He also described his wife’s contract work with Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele separately. This occurred weeks after the election and more than a month after the Court approved the initial FISA application.”
There appeared to be another discrepancy.
The emails showed Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson was in contact with Ohr in August 2016. However, Simpson's November 2017 transcribed interview before the House Intelligence Committee showed him saying he worked through Bruce Ohr "sometime after Thanksgiving."
Fox News recently asked the FBI, Justice Department and special counsel's office whether the meetings with Ohr over Steele and the dossier were consistent with -- or in conflict with -- existing DOJ or FBI rules, including chain-of-custody procedures for handling evidence. In addition, the special counsel's office was asked whether Weissmann and Ahmad had fully disclosed their contacts with Bruce Ohr and others over the dossier.
The FBI and special counsel declined to comment; the DOJ did not immediately respond.
An attorney for Nellie Ohr did not respond to a request for comment. An attorney for McCabe did not respond.
Fox News also reached out to the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the current chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for comment.