You might expect me this month to emphasize the importance of 1) voting (early), 2) making sure your friends, team and family vote and 3) voting for people who understand agriculture, the free market and have a spine. Absolutely.
Underlying the decisions should be whether the candidate—presidential or any level—believes the solution to problems is more government. The list of things government does in an efficient and cost-effective manner approaches zero.
Latest example: the Biden administration’s bragged-on rural internet rollout. Money in the 2021 infrastructure bill has yielded little or nothing because of intergovernmental disagreement and contract stipulations.
Agreements must: “make sure providers plan for climate change, reach out to unionized workforces…” (New York Post). Resolving those requirements, providing low-cost, fast connections and allowing a provider profits is a problem when customers are in the outback. What work has been done came from other funding.
Then there’s the seven electric vehicle charging stations the feds managed in two years from $7.5 billion in that same bill.
Congress managed to put off their tardy continuing resolution (CR) to Dec. 20. That means the lame-duck Congress rather than the new one may set the fiscal 2024-25 budget. Worse, it could mean another gargantuan omnibus bill with legions of expensive stupidities lurking among thousands of pages. We need them to extend a CR to March, for a new Congress. Contact your members and tell them no deficit-enhancing omnibus crammed through on Christmas Eve for a Christmas present.
Economic signals continue mixed. Consumers continue to struggle paying for necessities and are unhappy giving up other things. But they seem more aware of what’s causing their difficulties. Hopefully, they will vote out their frustrations regarding inflation caused by profligate government spending, the war on fossil fuels, deficit spending, heavy government regulation, “climate change” priorities and resistance to merit-based concepts. The invasion of foreign nationals from every corner of the planet, crime and poorly enforced law and order plus insidious government interference in business and daily life may motivate the electorate to change political course.
As for employment numbers—remember jobs mean paychecks, which lead to buying necessities like burgers or steaks or dinners out—many of the new jobs continue to be taxpayer-funded government or “government-adjacent” jobs.
Interestingly, it turns out the government tracks jobs for “native-born” Americans and “foreign-born” workers. Jobs for the former have decreased by about 1.3 million, while those for the latter increased by about the same. So, border crashing illegals are taking jobs from native-born Americans and putting downward pressure on wages.
For good news, leisure and hospitality job numbers have been increasing, which helps our restaurant and travel outlets. But overall, the so-called increase in the September jobs reports were really just seasonal adjustments in the data. We actually lost 400,000 jobs, which likely helped convince the Fed to cut interest rates.
As for government economic reports, there are complaints that budget shortfalls are pinching them, just like they’ve been cutting agriculture reports. One legitimate, essential government function is economic data but out of trillions in spending, that’s what they cut.
For undecided voters, taxes alone should be deal-breakers. An increase in corporate taxes, capital gains taxes and truly unfathomable taxes on “unrealized gains” are unacceptable. Death taxes, critical to farming and ranching families, are also on the menu.
A key fact is usually omitted from tax cut discussions. The left screams about losing government revenue. The truth is just the opposite. Within a year or so, government revenues increase after tax rate cuts. Economic growth generated by tax cuts, especially if accompanied by regulation cuts, raises government receipts, as it did after the 2017 tax cuts.
For an election year “October surprise,” liberal publications have touted the jobs numbers above as “it.” I’m thinking it’s Hurricane Helene and FEMA’s incompetent response. FEMA is whining about lack of funds while claiming they didn’t spend money on illegals. Truth is, they split the money into different accounts, so that technically they could say they hadn’t spent domestic relief money on illegals. But they actually spent over $600 million on illegals from another account, leaving little or nothing for Americans. And sent Lebanon $150 million.
Ignore the left’s claims about Trump increasing “taxes” by imposing tariffs. He’s considering reciprocal tariffs, i.e. on countries who don’t allow us access to their markets, not abrogating free trade agreements with our trading partners.
Vote for down ballot representatives who will vote to advance common sense government or block political idiocy if necessary. — Steve Dittmer, WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter. Views in the column do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of WLJ or its editorial staff.)
