Democrats Don't Realize That Trump Can Make Their Wishes Come True

Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is real malady and Democrats have it bad. Democrats are so invested in Trump hatred that they don’t comprehend that they are on the cusp of realizing much more of their agenda under Donald Trump than they could possibly have accomplished under Hillary Clinton.

The first sign of hope for Democrats was the Republican failure to reform Obamacare. The tax reform bill repealed the individual mandate and that was enough for President Trump to proclaim Obamacare “essentially repealed,” leaving the vast majority of the health law untouched. The GOP has gone silent on further attempts to repeal, reform or replace the Affordable Care Act. Republicans fought for six years under President Obama to repeal Obamacare, but President Trump has apparently stifled the repeal movement.

Next, President Trump turned to immigration and infrastructure, two subjects near and dear to liberal hearts. The president proposed a deal with Democrats to extend DACA and unveiled a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. In keeping with the Trump-brand philosophy of doing things in a “YUGE” way, Trump’s proposals were even bigger than the programs enacted by his predecessor. President Obama’s DACA program enrolled about 700,000 participants. Trump’s version would expand that to include an additional 1.1 million. President Obama’s 2009 infrastructure bill had a price tag of $787 billion. Trump’s plan is twice as hefty at $1.5 trillion.

CNBC editorialized that “Democrats would be crazy to reject Trump's DACA deal,” but reject it they did. Were they crazy or were they merely deranged?

But wait, there’s more. A promise kept by candidate Trump was to engage in protectionist trade policies. In 2016, Trump said that his views on trade were “very similar” to those of Bernie Sanders. Trump withdrew from the TPP, is renegotiating NAFTA and has enacted several tariffs. Protectionist Democrats should be ecstatic.

Democrats have spent years calling for a gas tax in the name cutting carbon emissions. President Trump recently endorsed the idea of a twenty-five cent gas tax as well. The Trump tax would not be intended to stop global warming and would instead be used to generate revenue for his infrastructure spending, but will Democrats really want to quibble over the purpose when they can soak auto owners, save the planet and blame a Republican president?

To top it all off, President Trump today signed a memo that instructed the attorney general to propose regulations banning “devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.” That’s right. President Trump is not only enacting the first significant gun control legislation since 1994, he is using his executive authority to bypass Congress to do it. What liberal cannot celebrate a new gun control law that isn’t subject to the congressional stalemate?

In fact, President Trump’s progressive proposals are more likely to become law than anything Hillary Clinton would have proposed. Hillary’s agenda would have been DOA with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. On the other hand, Trump can probably deliver enough Republican votes to pass the Democrat wish list into law… if the Democrats can get over their TDS to form a bipartisan coalition.

On the other side of the aisle, there has been remarkably little furor as President Trump moved to the left. Immigration and deficit hawks have been largely silent as Trump acceded to “amnesty” and a trillion-dollar deficit. Thus far, there has also been little reaction to his bump stock ban even though conservatives have traditionally had zero tolerance for new gun control measures.

Apparently, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a bipartisan epidemic.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Rise of the Big Government Republicans

The Republican Party seems to have turned a corner in recent months. After a promising start to the Trump Administration that included regulatory reform and concluded with a long-awaited tax reform bill, the party seems to have taken an abrupt turn away from fiscal conservatism toward big government and big spending policies.

The most obvious sign of the shift is the new budget signed by President Trump this week. The new budget raises spending caps by $300 billion. The first Trump budget raises spending by about $500 billion over the 2017 budget signed by Barack Obama.

The new budget also includes increases to the debt ceiling through March 2019. Previously, Republicans tied spending cuts to increases in the debt ceiling, but no more. The new budget increases military spending by $165 billion and nonmilitary programs by $131 billion. The funds include $10 billion for infrastructure, $2.9 billion for childcare and $3 billion to fight opioid abuse.

Predictably, the massive spending increases will dramatically increase the deficit. Even before the deal became law, the Washington Post reported that borrowing for the 2018 fiscal year was expected to reach its highest level in the past six years, a date that coincides with the Republican takeover of Congress in the 2010 Tea Party wave.

The national debt has already reached crisis levels, as Vice President Mike Pence realized during the campaign. President Obama nearly doubled the debt in eight years, bringing it to more than 100 percent of GDP. The continued increases in deficit are bringing the US Treasury into Greek territory.

There are indications that more increases in spending are to come. President Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure spending plan. Perhaps coincidentally, the price tag for Trump’s plan is almost exactly double that of President Obama’s infrastructure stimulus bill from 2009. All that is lacking are promises jobs from shovel-ready projects.

Similarly, Republicans seem ready to embrace a new family leave entitlement that is championed by both Donald and Ivanka Trump. The plan includes paid time off for six weeks for new parents courtesy of the federal government.

Other Republican big government priorities are not new. Trade protectionism was growing in the party even before Donald Trump vaulted to its head. Under President Trump, free trade has taken a beating as tariffs have been imposed and trade deals renegotiated. One of Trump’s first acts was to withdraw the US from the TPP free trade agreement. In the end, trade restrictions hurt American businesses and consumers by increasing the cost of goods.

Immigration policy has long been a big government aspect of the Republican platform as well. Most Republicans support border security, but immigration hardliners favor a crackdown to deport illegal immigrants that would require an expanded federal police bureaucracy.

Deportation of illegal immigrant workers would be expensive and counterproductive. CNN reported in 2016 that it cost more than $10,000 to deport each illegal immigrant. At the same time, deportations can result in labor shortages than increase costs for employers and ultimately for consumers as well.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that Republicans would jettison their promises of fiscal restraint. After all, the same pattern has been followed several times in the past few decades. What is surprising is the extent and the speed with which they have done so.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump speech was mixed bag for conservatives

President Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress last night (text here) was a triumph for the president. Without a doubt, Mr. Trump delivered one of the most effective speeches of his political career.

Stylistically, the president was smooth and practiced. The speech was in sharp contrast to his disjointed stump speeches and press conferences. Mr. Trump proved that he can deliver a polished, rehearsed speech with minimal ad libbing. In a word, Mr. Trump seemed presidential.

To a conservative, the content of the speech was a mixed bag. Much of what I heard involved new federal spending by a government that is broke. While I applaud Mr. Trump’s desire to expand the defense budget and believe that rebuilding the military is long overdue, I would have liked to hear that the new spending would be balanced by spending cuts elsewhere. Instead, I heard that there would be more spending domestically.

“America has spent approximately six trillion dollars in the Middle East, all this while our infrastructure at home is crumbling,” Trump said in a statement that sounded like it could have come from Barack Obama. “With this six trillion dollars we could have rebuilt our country --- twice.”

Trump continued, sounding even more like Obama circa 2009, “To launch our national rebuilding, I will be asking the Congress to approve legislation that produces a $1 trillion investment in the infrastructure of the United States -- financed through both public and private capital --- creating millions of new jobs.”

America has already tried a near-trillion-dollar stimulus. It failed to stimulate the economy or the job market. It didn’t work. We woke up afterward with eight years of economic stagnation and a national debt that had almost doubled.

“I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be FAIR TRADE,” Donald Trump said.

I distrust politicians who talk about fairness. Fairness is the opposite of freedom because it relies on government to determine what is fair. Fairness is subjective. What is fair is at the discretion of who defines fairness. When fairness is the goal, government grows because government is the ultimate arbiter of fairness… if you can hire enough lobbyists to advance your notion of fairness.

When Barack Obama said that he wanted people to pay their “fair share,” I held onto my wallet. When I hear Donald Trump talk about fair trade, I expect that, if he gets his way, I will be paying more when I go to the store.

President Trump’s speech did have plenty for conservatives to applaud. His support for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare was much needed. Hopefully, he will take the lead on unifying congressional Republicans around a single plan. Trump’s promise of tax reform is also much needed. His victory lap over the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court was well deserved. His support for law enforcement after Barack Obama’s equivocations was reassuring.

Also reassuring was President Trump’s expressed support for immigration reform. While Trump did stress violent crimes carried out by illegal immigrants and promised again to build his wall, he did open the door to the bipartisan compromise that will be necessary to resolve the problem of illegal immigration. The claim that Mexico would pay for the wall was conspicuously absent.

There was a shortage on specifics in general, but especially on how a broke government will pay for his many programs.

The most moving part of the night – and probably the longest of many ovations – was for President Trump’s salute to US Navy Senior Chief William "Ryan" Owens, who recently died on a raid against al-Qaeda in Yemen. It is doubtful if there was a dry eye in the house as the president recognized Ryan’s widow, Carryn.

Reaction to the speech will largely depend on what camp the listener falls into. Trump supporters will justifiably claim that he hit a homerun. Trump opponents will point to flawed policies and very questionable claims and statistics.

As a conservative who voted for “none of the above,” I can at least think that Trump is, so far, better than Hillary would have been. Other than not withdrawing from the TPP, I cannot think of anything that Hillary would have said that would have been more palatable than Mr. Trump’s speech. A low bar, I know. President Trump, for all his flaws, has so far supported at least a partially conservative agenda and appointed some (not all) very good people to very important jobs.

Nevertheless, as the speech opened and closed, it’s easy to hear Trump saying, “Generations from now, we will look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

How did that work out?

Originally published on The Resurgent

Is Trump conservative? Does it matter?

One of the big criticisms of Donald Trump from the right during the campaign is that he wasn’t a conservative. Trump embraced many policies, such as his proposal for a new childcare entitlement and his promise to outspend Hillary on an infrastructure stimulus, that made him seem somewhat liberal to many of us. After a week in office, it’s still hard to tell whether Trump is a conservative, a liberal or something in between. Now, however, there is a new question: Does it matter?

Donald Trump was definitely not the most conservative candidate in the Republican Primary. With the exception of John Kasich, it’s hard to identify any of the candidates that I would have considered less conservative than Mr. Trump. This may have actually helped him win.

Many of us have argued for years that the Republican Party needed to appeal to moderate and independent voters to win. As evidence of this, consider the fact that John Kasich, considered by many to be a “RINO,” polled better in head-to-head matchups with Hillary Clinton than any other candidate. Kasich could not bring together the GOP base to win the primary, however. Trump, for all his faults, managed to eke out a primary victory and then win 88 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of independents in the general election according to CNN exit polling.

Could any other candidate who could have won the Republican nomination succeeded in winning Ohio and Florida, not to mention Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? There is no way to know for sure. What is certain is that Trump, with his moderate to liberal background on many issues, did do exactly that.

Trump’s performance in the first week of his presidency is undoubtedly preferable to Hillary Clinton. In spite of some missteps, President Trump seems genuinely interested in paying back the people who put him in office. Can anyone seriously argue that President Clinton would have restored the Mexico City Policy or the Keystone and Dakota pipelines? Would Hillary have instructed HHS not to enforce the Obamacare mandate? Certainly not.

The flip side is that President Clinton may not have withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even though she professed opposition to the trade deal. President Clinton definitely would not have adopted policy and made comments that would place the United States on the verge of a trade war with its second largest trading partner.

The rub is that Donald Trump’s protectionist position on trade cannot be blamed solely on lack of conservatism.  Numerous polls show that about half of Republican voters believe that free trade deals have hurt their communities. Over the past ten years, party views on free trade have flipped to the point where more Democrats are now in favor of free trade than Republicans.

Much of the Republican angst over trade can be traced to the stagnation of the Obama era, the loss of jobs to automation and a lack of spirited defense of trade by Republican and conservative leaders. In contrast to the 1970s when economist Milton Friedman was able to describe the benefits of free trade and economic freedom of choice to the common man in a witty and entertaining way, there seem to be no voices today answering the charge that “America never wins anymore.”

Likewise, Trump’s unconservative promise to spend billions on an infrastructure stimulus draws support from Republicans as well as Democrats and independents. A Public Policy Poll from September found that 72 percent of Americans favored more federal spending on roads and bridges. The traditional conservative view is that such projects should be the responsibility of state and local governments.

The problem on many issues isn’t so much that Donald Trump isn’t conservative, it’s that many Republican voters aren’t conservative on many issues. It is difficult to fault President Trump for being insufficiently conservative when he ran on a moderate platform and was elected by voters who knew exactly what he stood for.

Regardless of Trump’s personal beliefs on policy and issues like abortion, he seems willing to work toward the beliefs of the people who put him in office. Does it really matter what Trump believes about abortion if he is willing to pass pro-life legislation and roll back the Obama Administration’s pro-abortion policies?

At this point, with the Trump Administration established in the White House, it matters less whether he is a true believer in conservative principles than if he is willing to use his position to advance conservative ideas. Where liberals often seem to feel that motives are more important than results, I would be happy to have a president who enacts good, practical, conservative ideas even if it goes against some of his own beliefs.

A positive thing about Donald Trump is that he is a dealmaker, not an ideologue. He realizes that deals require give and take. In that sense, it is even possible that more conservative reforms can be enacted under President Trump than under a conservative version of President Obama, an ideologue who refused to compromise to get things accomplished for the good of the country. With a slim majority in the Senate, cloture votes will require deal-making with Senate Democrats to pass almost any legislation and break the partisan stalemate.

With respect to the issues where Donald Trump does not take the conservative position, such as free trade and the Keynesian belief in stimulus spending, it will be up to Republican leaders and conservative thinkers to convince both the president and the members of the party’s base to take the conservative tack. The right shouldn’t just oppose centralized government planning and micromanagement when it is done by Democratic administrations, it should oppose the expansion of government under Trump as well.

So does it matter if President Trump is not a conservative? Sometimes it does. Republicans should rally behind him when he enacts conservative policies, but oppose him when he advocates policies that are not in line with conservative principles. Convincing the president on these issues will mean persuading his supporters with conservative arguments. That, in turn, will require much better communication from Republican leaders than what we have seen over the past eight years.

Originally published on The Resurgent

A battle over spending is shaping up between President Trump and congressional Republicans. Many of Trump’s campaign promises involved spending large amounts of tax money on items from the military to infrastructure. Now budget hawks in Congress are gearing up to try to prevent the deficit from exploding over the next four years.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the tensions surfaced in the confirmation hearing of Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina congressman who has been nominated by Mr. Trump to head the White House Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney faced sharp questions from two different camps in the GOP. On one side were defense hawks who were concerned about Rep. Mulvaney’s past votes to cut military spending. On the other were those at odds with Mr. Trump’s campaign promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare.

While the Trump Administration has indicated that it plans some cuts in government spending, the elephant in the room is that programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Center for Public Broadcasting aren’t what’s busting the federal budget. Even foreign aid only represents about one percent of federal spending.

Let’s face it, America. We have an entitlement problem.

Entitlements make up about half of the federal budget. The largest entitlement of all is a program that many don’t even think of as an entitlement. Social Security accounts for 24 percent of the federal budget and is the largest single budget item. Health spending in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Obamacare subsidies account for another 25 percent. Defense spending is a distant third at 16 percent. Entitlement spending is expected to rise even further as Baby Boomers age and leave the workforce.

“I’m not looking to pick a fight with the president of the United States, but if his goal is to put the country on a fiscally sound course, he’s going to have to address entitlement reform,” Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.) told the Journal. “Anybody who is going to balance the budget on discretionary spending [cuts] is on a fool’s errand.”

A fight that is likely to come before entitlement reform is Mr. Trump’s plan for an infrastructure stimulus. Rep. Mulvaney and many Republicans were critical of the infrastructure spending plan before the election, but a separate Journal article noted that Democrats were embracing the $1 trillion proposal.

“We’re challenging him to join us even if his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate aren’t for it,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. This raises the possibility that President Trump could form a bipartisan alliance with congressional Democrats to enact his spending proposals as well as block conservative attempts at entitlement reform.

The Republican budget hawks will have allies in the Trump Administration. Mr. Mulvaney, a proponent of entitlement reform during his four terms in Congress, said, “I haven’t been quiet and shy since I’ve been here. The president knew what he was getting when he asked me to fill this role.”

Likewise, the fiscally conservative Heritage Foundation was influential in the Trump transition team. Since the group holds President Trump’s ear, reports like the one that advise him to “not be taken in by hyperbolic rhetoric about the state of the nation’s infrastructure or lured by false promises of stimulus-induced job creation” may prove influential in the long term.

The Trump campaign has led to a Trump Administration that is filled with contradictions. Trump’s promises of spending, some made as recently as last week, conflict with his appointment of fiscal conservatives like Mulvaney. Other appointees, such as Steven Mnuchin, seem to be more squishy on deficit spending.

Will Trump follow his advisors or his instincts? Will Republicans back him if Trump follows his liberal inclinations on spending? Stay tuned and find out.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump and Pence plan 'big' infrastructure spending bill

There have been indications in the past that the Trump Administration is planning to start with another infrastructure stimulus package. Now Mike Pence, the incoming vice president, has said openly that one of the first items on the agenda of the Trump Administration will be a big infrastructure spending bill.

“I called [Trump] this afternoon to tell him I was coming by,” Pence told the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors in The Hill. “In addition to urging me to send along greetings, he said, ‘Tell them we’re going to do an infrastructure bill — and it’s going to be big.’”

But maybe not “yuge.” The Hill notes that Trump proposed a plan that would give $137 billion in tax credits to private companies that form public-private partnerships to build transportation infrastructure projects. At other times, Trump proposed doubling Hillary Clinton’s proposed $275 billion infrastructure stimulus. In either case, Trump’s spending would fall short of President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package in 2009 that had negligible effects on the economy.

Trump may find that his stimulus is attacked from both sides. Democrats may argue that the smaller figure is not enough to properly address the country’s aging roads, bridges and airports while Republicans will be concerned about adding billions of dollars to the national debt.

Nevertheless, Trump’s infrastructure stimulus may present an opportunity for Trump to cobble together a bipartisan majority to pass the project. Democrats are proven supporters of debt-financed, infrastructure spending. While most Republicans normally resist the siren song of borrowing and spending on public works, many might be swayed if the bill is backed by Donald Trump. With conservative Trump supporters like Mike Huckabee and Mike Pence in favor of more infrastructure spending, many Republican congressmen may vote for the bill.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump and Democrats could form alliance on some issues

One potential problem for the Trump Administration is that since Trump is a newcomer to the Republican Party, he holds different views than many other Republican elected officials. During the campaign, Trump’s views on many set him apart from other candidates in the primary. They also set him apart from other members of his party in the general election.

Trump made many promises that he may find his Republican colleagues unwilling to back up. The Republican Party has traditionally been a free trade party, but Trump is openly hostile to trade deals. Republicans fought tooth and nail against Obama’s infrastructure stimulus, but Trump has hinted at a similar spending program. Trump’s proposed childcare plan is the sort of entitlement expansion that Republicans have opposed when put forward by Democrats.

Some Republicans are undoubtedly confirmed passengers on the Trump Train, but many others will require much persuasion. Many Republicans supported Mr. Trump only reluctantly as the only alternative against Hillary Clinton. Conservative members of the party are unlikely to be willing to blindly follow Trump down a path of progressive policies.

The rub is that the Republican Party isn’t as conservative as it used to be. While few Republicans have voiced support for Mr. Trump’s childcare entitlement, anti-trade sentiment and isolationism had been growing in the GOP even before Trump burst onto the stage.

The libertarian faction of the GOP has been arguing against foreign involvement for years. When President Obama drew a “red line” in Syria, it was a bipartisan coalition of anti-war Republicans and Democrats that revolted against a military strike against the Assad regime’s chemical weapons facilities. Likewise, the Trans-Pacific Partnership was tagged as “Obamatrade” by Republicans who sided with Bernie Sanders to kill the trade deal.

Following these examples may provide Trump with a strategy to enact some of his less-than-conservative ideas. It is not beyond question that President Trump could reach out to forge bipartisan coalitions to push through policies that lack conservative support.

For example, the base of the Republican Party has moved left on trade. A September poll in Politico found that 85 percent of Republicans believed that free trade cost more American jobs than it has created. Only 18 percent believed that trade deals had helped their communities.

Even though many voters have shifted, many congressional Republicans remain favorable to free trade. President Trump is unlikely to be able to rely on Republicans to rubberstamp an anti-trade agenda of higher taxes and more regulation. The answer might well be to find a majority by combining protectionist Republicans and Democrats into one voting bloc.

Trump is hardly hostile to the idea of reaching across the aisle. Last January, early in the primary season, Trump said on MSNBC, “I think I'm going to be able to get along with [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi — I've always had a good relationship with Nancy Pelosi.” Trump also said he was “close to” incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “in many in ways.” Trump said in the Washington Examiner in July that he wouldn’t mind being a “free agent” when dealing with Congress.

Trump’s cabinet appointments also show a willingness to go outside the Republican Party. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary, was a Democrat until after the election.  Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, worked for Goldman Sachs and George Soros. Mnuchin, like Trump, was a big donor to Democrats before this election cycle. Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, is also a registered Democrat.

Would congressional Democrats work with Trump? They seem open to the possibility.

“If he truly wants to revise U.S. trade policy, he is going to have to come and work in a bipartisan manner to do that. It's always been a substantial majority of Democrats who oppose these agreements," Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in US News.

Even new Senate Minority Chuck Schumer is reaching out. “To the extent that the president-elect and the Republican majority pursue policies that help Americans and are consistent with our values, we stand ready and willing to work with them,” Schumer recently said in a speech quoted in Yahoo News. Schumer suggested that an infrastructure stimulus, tax reform and trade might be areas where Democrats and Trump could find common ground.

On the other hand, some Trump priorities would find little, if any, support from Democrats. A repeal of Obamacare or hardline immigration reform would be largely party-line issues that Schumer says Democrats would fight “tooth and nail.”

At this point, we can only speculate what the Trump Administration will be like. From his performance in the campaign, we can assume that there are few ideas that President Trump will be strongly committed to, but one of those is a protectionist trade agenda. To accomplish his goal of imposing large taxes and restrictions on trade, Trump, the former Democrat donor, is very likely to make a deal with congressional liberals.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Mike Huckabee wants infrastructure jobs 'you cannot outsource'

(Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

It seems that Gov. Mike Huckabee is the latest conservative on Team Trump to fall victim to the Keynesian delusion that infrastructure spending is the way to revitalize the economy. A tweet by Fox News yesterday quoted Huckabee as saying, “The most effective way to put people on a job is to do infrastructure jobs b/c it’s the one thing you cannot outsource.”

The tweet does not offer a link to a clip of the segment, so Huckabee’s comment cannot be viewed in full context, but the statement comes after other members of the Trump transition team, including the president-elect himself, have signaled that infrastructure spending, most likely financed by debt, will be a top priority in the new administration.

While Huckabee is technically correct that construction jobs cannot be exported to foreign countries, the construction industry is a major employer of illegal immigrants. In 2012, four years into the unemployment crisis brought on by the Great Recession, Pew Research found that about 15 percent of construction and extraction jobs were held by illegal aliens.

During the campaign, it was pointed that Donald Trump had even used illegal aliens in the construction of the Trump Tower in the 1980s.  The Washington Post reported that Trump was also using illegal workers in the construction of his new hotel in Washington, DC, a charge that he denied.

Even without possibility of government infrastructure money going to illegal workers, Huckabee’s infrastructure comment shows a lack of deep thinking on the issue of jobs. Government spending on infrastructure can create jobs in the short term, but what happens when those projects are finished? Government projects often run behind schedule and over budget, but eventually they come to an end. If the underlying problems with the economy are not fixed the result will be a country with a lot of nice, new roads and bridges, a lot more debt and a chronic high unemployment rate.

The key to revitalizing the economy is to create a climate in which American companies can create things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. Tax and regulatory reform would allow American businesses to build things at prices that are competitive with the rest of the world.

When the federal government takes on more debt, it needs more tax money to pay back what is borrowed. Higher taxes and more government spending make the US less competitive. Neither families nor countries can borrow their way to prosperity.

The infrastructure stimulus has been tried and has failed numerous times. Most famously, President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” created the Works Progress Administration, an entire government agency whose purpose was to create infrastructure jobs for unskilled laborers. The WPA was responsible for many roads, bridges, parks, and post offices, but what it did not do was end the unemployment crisis.

More recently, President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 spent $787 billion on “shovel-ready” infrastructure jobs. The success of Obama’s program can be judged by the fact that unemployment is still a problem eight years later.

One conservative critic of Obama’s stimulus said at the time, Republicans in Congress “were elected to represent their constituents, but they can’t hardly do that and vote to pile on unimaginable debt on their grandchildren.” He continued, “If you think future generations of Americans can afford a congressional version of ‘shop-til-you-drop,’ then just remain silent, but I don’t plan to.”

Who was that outspoken critic of Obama’s stimulus boondoggle? It was Mike Huckabee.

When did borrowing money to create jobs paid for by the government become a conservative policy, governor?

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump wants to 'prime the pump' with infrastructure stimulus

Donald Trump has again embraced the idea of a stimulus spending bill to help jumpstart the economy. In his interview with Time Magazine for the Person of the Year issue, Trump said that it was necessary to “prime the pump” to increase economic growth.

During the campaign, Trump had advocated an economic stimulus plan that was larger than that proposed by Hillary Clinton. Last August, Trump discussed his ideas on stimulus on Fox Business (quoted in Bloomberg), saying, “Well, I would say at least double her [Hillary Clinton’s] numbers, and you're going to really need more than that. We have bridges that are falling down. I don't know if you've seen the warning charts, but we have many, many bridges that are in danger of falling.” Clinton’s plan had an estimated price tag of $275 billion.

To pay for his plan, Trump said, “We'll get a fund. We'll make a phenomenal deal with the low interest rates…. People would put money into the fund. The citizens would put money into the fund,” he said, adding that he'd use “infrastructure bonds from the country, from the United States.”

Trump’s comments in the Time interview, which was conducted on Nov. 28, appear to indicate that he is not moving away from his plans to spend large amounts of money on an infrastructure stimulus. Trump’s full comment on the stimulus during the interview was vague on details.

“Well sometimes you have to prime the pump. So sometimes in order to get the jobs going and the country going, because look, we’re at 1% growth,” Trump said. “I was taking to the head of a major country, because most of them have called me and I’ve talked to all of them. ‘Yes, we are doing not well, not well. Our GDP is only 4.5%.’ I said wow, if our GDP was 4.5% we’d be the happy – I mean our GDP is probably less than 1% if you think about it. And going in the wrong direction.” GDP growth in the third quarter was reported at 3.2 percent.

Other members of the incoming Trump Administration have signaled their support for government intervention in the economy as well. In a post-election interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Steven Bannon, who will be a Senior Advisor to President Trump, said, I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

Wilbur Ross, the incoming Secretary of Commerce, and Peter Navarro, an economist and advisor to Trump criticized Obama’s stimulus in a policy paper during the campaign. “All we have gotten from tilting at Keynesian windmills,” they wrote, “is a doubling of our national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion under Obama-Clinton and the weakest economic recovery since World War II – combined with depleted infrastructure and a shrunken military.” Still, they don’t seem to have a problem with the idea of stimulus spending on infrastructure, just that the Obama spending was poorly targeted.

Steven Mnuchin, who will be President Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, has said that “taxes, regulatory, trade, [and] infrastructure” will be among the new administration’s top priorities. According to Reuters, Mnuchin said that the Trump team is considering creation of an “infrastructure bank” to fund projects. Mnuchin is also considering issuing Treasury bonds with terms as long as 50 or 100 years, far beyond the 30-year term of current federal debt.

Infrastructure stimulus spending is not typically a strategy supported by conservative Republicans. When President Obama passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $787 billion stimulus package, he did so with no Republican votes.

The support of stimulus spending by the Trump Administration may set up an early confrontation with Republicans in Congress. Many Republican congressmen are deficit hawks who campaigned on cutting federal spending and shrinking the government. Trump’s plans for more government spending will put these Republicans in a crossfire between Trump supporters and debt-conscious voters in their districts.

The conflict will provide a window into the character of the new Republican Party. Will conservative Republicans stand for the traditional Republican platform of less spending and smaller government or will they listen to the siren song of borrowing and spending from the incoming president?

Originally published on The Resurgent