Four years ago, supporting Donald J. Trump for president was controversial.
Today,
backing the president is downright risky. People are losing their jobs,
children are being kicked out of class and businesses are boycotted
because their owners support President Trump. Imagine.
Hitting back at the Democrats' assault
on Candidate Trump in 2016, I wrote a piece for the Fiscal Times
titled: “Five Reasons a Sane Person Might Still Vote for Trump.” The
arguments I highlighted hold up well, and are perhaps even more
persuasive today.
First up: Education.
If you believe in equal opportunity, you want all youngsters to receive a decent education. In many Democrat-led cities, Hispanic and African-American kids do not receive one.
And
yet the teachers' unions and their Democratic Party backers refuse all
accountability or reforms, condemning millions of Black and brown
children to second-class status.
New York City spends $28,808 per
public school pupil but in 2019 only 28% of black kids were proficient
in math and 35% made the cut in English.
That
is unacceptable, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would
respond by handing even more funds over to his union pals and supporting
the status quo.
Why? Because he needs money from the National
Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, two of
our nation’s largest political donors.
In the past year alone, those two unions spent $25 million on political campaigns, 94% going to Democrats.
That doesn’t include the invaluable in-kind contribution of millions of
teachers being sent door-to-door signing up Democrat voters and getting
them to the polls.
President Trump has championed school choice,
which is overwhelmingly popular across the nation. A recent RealClear
Opinion Research poll showed
77 percent of voters approve of families being allowed to use their tax
dollars for a school that works for them, including 69% of Black
respondents.
Bottom line: if politicians actually care about
improving the fortunes and opportunities for Blacks and Hispanics, they
need to back school choice. Only Trump can deliver on this essential
issue.
Next up: ObamaCare.
Democrats have
put this failed insurance program on the ballot, and it should be. While
Biden tries to scare people by saying the Trump White House will remove
protections for people with preexisting conditions, which is not true,
they neglect to mention that the cost of insurance premiums under
ObamaCare for people not receiving subsidies doubled between 2013 and
2017, making it unaffordable to millions.
As
a consequence, the number of uninsured people in the country actually
went up. As of 2019 only 11.4 million Americans were enrolled in the
ACA- mandated health care exchanges. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/761101
The
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services gives this example: “a
60-year old couple in Grand Island, Nebraska making $70,000 a year—which
is just slightly too much to qualify for Obamacare’s premium subsidy—is
faced with paying $38,000, over half of their yearly income, to buy a
silver plan with an $11,100 annual maximum out-of-pocket limit.” The
numbers simply don’t work. https://www.cms.gov/blog/thank-obamacare-rise-uninsured
The
Trump administration wants to increase the number of people covered by
allowing less expensive private short-term plans and permitting groups
to form their own Association Health Plans. The president is also
combatting rising healthcare costs by issuing an executive order
mandating price transparency, which the medical community opposes.
ObamaCare
helped some people but it was also seriously flawed. It needs to be
fixed, and augmented with more private options, which is Trump’s
ambition. Someone should ask Biden: if the ACA is so terrific, why do so
many Democrats want to replace it with “Medicare-for-all”?
Next: The economy.
As
we emerge from a sharp recession, Trump’s continued embrace of lower
taxes and light regulation, and insistence on better trade deals for
American workers, will inspire business investment and expansion, and
fuel more job creation.
That’s what happened in 2016; the minute
the president was elected, both business and consumer optimism spiked,
pushing our then-lethargic economy into overdrive.
The
upshot was a hiring spree that drove wages higher at the fastest clip
in a decade, and allowed people to climb the ladder of opportunity. Last
year incomes rose 6.8% as a result of higher pay, but also because, as
the JOLTS reports show, people had the confidence to quit and take
better-paying jobs.
This will happen again. Activity has
rebounded faster in recent months than economists expected, even as much
of the country has been locked down, and the outlook is for more growth
in 2021.
Biden’s prescription of sharply higher taxes,
especially on the investor class, would reverse this momentum. As would
his promised reentry into the Paris Climate Accord and vow to eliminate
fossil fuels. These hare-brained policies will stifle growth and should
be rejected.
Next up: Dissatisfaction with government
Americans
do not want a bigger federal government. In 2016, Gallup asked, “In
general, do you think there is too much, too little or about the right
amount of government regulation of business and industry?” At the time,
47% responded “too much”, 22% said too little and 27% said “the right
amount.”
Today, thanks to Trump’s efforts to reduce the regulatory
burden on small business owners and individuals, only 36% say we are
over-regulated, and 36% think we have the “right amount of oversight.
That’s called progress.
Finally, the Supreme Court.
The
last issue I cited in 2016 as directing my vote was the Supreme Court. I
wrote that those believing in free markets and limited government
needed to support a president dedicated to appointing justices to the
Supreme Court and judges to other courts who would protect our
constitution.
Trump has outperformed expectations on this front,
and the addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court will be
another bulwark against judicial activism and increased federal power.
But make no mistake, the task goes on.
These
five reasons to vote for Trump remain critical in 2020. His many
accomplishments – bringing hostages home, revised trade deals, taking
on China, rebuilding the military, tightening our borders, the
blockbuster Middle East peace initiative -- and the near-insanity of the
left, make the choice even easier.
