Did you know that after a year of the one, big, beautiful bill working family tax cuts, the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is showing that the biggest beneficiaries were the poorest quarter of workers which had a pay jump of 5.5 percent? And a middle quartile of earners at or below the median income got weekly wage gains of 4.6 percent over the past year.
These working-class folks outpaced the upper income earners. Think no tax on tips or no tax on overtime. And lower taxes on social security benefits. Think electricians, carpenters, welders, and other trades people. Maybe even working on AI data centers. Also the BLS report shows a 2.5 percent drop in prescription drug prices.
This is all good news because the Democratic party wants to jack up prices, sky-high. Yet the problem is recent polls suggest over half of voters don’t even know what was in one, big, beautiful bill. And many thought the biggest benefits were going to the wealthiest earners. This is one of many reasons why I fear the GOP is not messaging well in the run up to the midterms.
The former speaker, Newt Gingrich, argues that all the Democratic socialists talk about is big government socialism and weird values. Always talking about Palestine and transgenderism. Yet if the GOP wants to get its swag back, they’ve got to really pin those labels on the far left; make them stick.
And then Republicans should be talking about building a bold future for economic growth. Yet they can’t get a strong budget through. Allysia Finley in today’s Wall Street Journal says and I’ll quote: "The tenuous GOP majority looks to have given up on serious spending and tax reforms this year." And she goes on to talk about how Republicans should be implementing Medicaid loan grants including work requirements and sobriety eligibility. Or ending the student loan forgiveness program. Instead of just creating more grant programs to fund left-wing local socialist so-called nonprofit programs that produce housing shortages and homelessness.
Meanwhile supply-siders like myself have been pushing for an end to the Biden inflation tax. Hat tip to Mike Faulkender. To grow the economy, how about inflation indexing capital gains. To produce more homes on the market, how about increasing the capital gains tax exemption for home sales. That allowance hasn’t been touched since 1997, but inflation has gone up 108 percent since then.
And President Trump is right about the SAVE America bill’s photo ID requirement for federal elections. And we must have military replenishments for the Iran war. And to underscore peace through strength and America First freedoms, Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion War Department budget is crucial. Freedom and free enterprise are American values, so is patriotism. Godless communism is a weird un-American value. Israel is our friend. Iran is our enemy. Republicans know this. Democrats don’t. Yet the GOP has got to put some swag into their messaging to get these America First values across the finish line.