Not too long ago I was reading a string of responses to a video someone had posted on Facebook. One individual, obviously not a Trump supporter, retorted that he wasn’t any better off now than before the election and another responded “Neither am I!” It is, of course, possible that they are not. They might have been among those who had jobs during the Obama administration rather than among those who had quit looking for work. Or they might not be black or Hispanic. Or they might be among the 40% of Americans who pay no federal income taxes, or among the wealthy from states like Illinois and California who are now losing their huge mortgage deductions and their federal deductions for high state income tax. Or they may be among those who only watch news from the mainstream media, which refuses to tell them anything really good about the country. If so, then in some ways, they may not realize that life has actually improved for them.
But in fact, life in America has improved for everyone. Let us begin with the majority of Americans who do pay federal income taxes and do not fall into the wealthy class. Because of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, they are seeing more money in their paychecks and will pay less in federal income tax come April of 2019. One lady asked, “How does how much I get in my paycheck have anything to do with how much taxes I pay?” Obviously she hasn’t a clue to the fact that the higher your taxes, the more the government takes from your paycheck! Another gentleman told me, “I may have more money in my paycheck, but that doesn’t mean I won’t owe more tax. I’ll have to wait and see!” Hmm. Perhaps he has always had thousands upon thousands of deductions to claim. . . health bills, union dues, charitable deductions, state taxes, huge mortgage payments. . . . It is possible. But more likely, he is getting more money in his paychecks because his employer understands he will owe less in taxes and so has decreased the amount of federal tax deducted from his paychecks. He may be surprised in April. I hope he is! But for most of us, more money in our paychecks, lower taxes in April, bonuses for millions of employees, higher wages for countless more, expanding business, and millions more jobs available than people looking for work. The Tax Cut Act has been a boon, albeit one that some clueless liberals will not understand until they file their 1040s next year!
In fact, although noted economists predicted that the Stock Market would dive if Donald Trump were elected president, the opposite has happened. Before the election, it was at about 18,000, but immediately after the election it began to rise. Businesses, it seems, had more faith in a billionaire businessman in the White House than did the much touted expert economists who appeared daily on CNN, NBC, and so on. Today, the Stock Market has been above 25,000 for months and has spiked over 26,000 at times.
Unemployment in July was reported at 3.9% compared to the 8.2% it had reached in 2012, long after the recession had officially ended. Hispanic unemployment is the lowest it has been in years, and black unemployment has reached an all time low at 6.6%. The economy grew at 4.2% in the second quarter of 2018, and consumer confidence is now higher than it has been in two decades.
The President nominated Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, both strict constitutionalists who can be relied upon to decide the merits of a case based upon its constitutionality rather than upon their own ideology as has happened in the last few years. The President has also appointed dozens of like-minded judges to lower court benches.
His administration has already reduced governmental agency regulations by 35%, including costly and needless Environmental Protection Agency regulations, which has led to the biggest energy boom in history and made the U.S. the world’s number one energy producer, thus ending our dependence on oil from the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land throughout the western states have been returned to private ownership after the unprecedented federal land grab of the Obama years.
The Trump administration has also joined Christian groups in court cases by filing amicus briefs, supporting the rights of Christians to the freedom to practice their religion as guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.
The Trump administration ended the Obamacare mandate by reducing the penalty for not purchasing health insurance to zero dollars, and allowed for insurance companies to offer coverage across state lines to members of groups. . . firemen, Christians, dock workers. . . at considerably lower premiums and with coverage that the insured may actually use. No longer do men and women beyond child-bearing years have to pay for maternity expenses or birth control. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which actually penalized small banks and made it more difficult for small businesses to get loans, has been reformed.
The President has also removed us from the Paris Climate Accord which would have imposed special sanctions and costs on the U.S. And, despite the horror on the left at that move, the U.S. still reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country in the world in 2017. In fact, none of the countries who did sign the Paris Agreement reached their stated CO2 reduction goals!
Just as the Climate Accord should have been presented to Congress as a treaty, so should the Iran deal. President Trump removed us from that deal as well, and re-imposed sanctions upon the Iranian government. The billions of dollars that were shipped to Iran as a part of the deal can not, unfortunately, be recovered. They were spent long ago supporting Muslim terrorist activities in the Middle East and Africa.
Under President Trump, the American Embassy in Israel, our longest and best ally in the Middle East, was moved from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital of Jerusalem. Congress passed a law in 1995 ordering the move, but giving the president the ability to put off the move if he felt it would be politically expedient to do so. Every president since 1995 has vowed to move the embassy. But none of them carried through on their promise. President Trump did. And the world did not end!
At the behest of the President, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council which has repeatedly condemned Israel for defending itself against the rocket attacks of Hamas while the Council had as its members countries such as Venezuela, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have horrible records of human rights abuses in their own countries. The U.S. has also withdrawn funding from the U.N. population fund because it “supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” We also withdrew from the Obama era U.N. Migration agreement because, as Ambassador Haley stated, “America is proud of our immigrant heritage and our long-standing moral leadership in providing support to migrant and refugee populations across the globe…But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone.”
The President also faced down North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who had been testing missiles by firing them over Japan and threatening to deliver a nuclear bomb to Guam or to the United States itself. The president met with the North Korean dictator, and the two started the process of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. North Korea has removed anti-American propaganda posters, destroyed some testing sites, and returned the remains of some American soldiers killed during the Korean War. Reports that they are building a new testing site suggest that this will be a long and bumpy road to denuclearization, but as of yet, no more missiles are being tested and only yesterday, Kim Jong Un once again reiterated his intention to denuclearize. . . more progress than has been made by any previous president.
NATO countries, after a scolding from the president, have grudgingly begun to pay what they have agreed to towards their own defense. The threat of trade tariffs has brought concessions from both the European Union and Mexico, working towards leveling the playing field for American workers. Talks continue with Canada and China remains to be dealt with, but on the whole, American workers are coming out much better than they have in decades.
Iranian dissidents have been assured that they have the support of the U.S. in their fight for the toppling of their theocratic government. The Ukraine, whose only support from President Obama against Russian aggression was some military food packets, has been sent strategic weapons from the U.S. under the Trump Administration. And, as a key part of dealing with countries such as Iran, North Korea, and even Russia, the U.S. military has begun to be strengthened, making us once again the most formidable military force in the world.
One must really wonder at the doggedness and determination of the President who has accomplished all of this while the media has spent its time interviewing Stormy Daniels’ lawyer and triumphantly proclaiming every day or so that this new revelation is proof of Russian-Trump collusion in the 2016 election, only to be proven wrong time and time again. They may be waiting with bated breath for that bit of proof, but after over two years of investigations by the FBI, the DOJ, and special counsel Mueller, the rest of us have long since dismissed it as a bunch of hooey. We are more concerned with the fact in that our lives are improving under this President and that once again America is taking its place as the foremost nation in the world. We saved Europe from German aggression in WWI and in WWII and from Communist aggression during the Cold War. They could not have survived without us. They need a strong America, and at long last, the world is getting a strong America again. Though former President Obama and the liberals would prefer it, we are not just one of the nations of the world. We are, as President Reagan quoted from the Bible, “A shining City on a hill.” We give light to the world once again.