Mike Johnson is confident that Republicans will keep the majority in the House, take the majority in the Senate as Donald Trump returns to the White House.
He went to Wall Street to tell the assembled traders and bankers what he and his colleagues are planning to do once they get their hands on the nation’s steering wheel.
It was not exactly a Contract with America. With all the stuff going on in this crazy world, mostly generated by the Democratic spin machine (the latest Jack Smith nonsense), or by Democratic incompetence at the White House (the Middle East disaster and the ongoing Ukrainian debacle) or by Democrats behaving badly (Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz), it is hard for somebody like Mike Johnson to get a word in edgewise.
Johnson is not pre-warning what he and his colleagues are going to do. It is more like friendly advice. They are going to pass alot of stuff into law that will dramatically make this country more prosperous in the long run. It won’t be easy so hang on to your hat.
Here’s a fun fact mentioned in Johnson’s speech. GoFundMe is doing a gangbusters business as people are using the app to get donations to stop the repossessions of their cars or evictions from their houses. These fundraising pleas are up 40% this year. Despite what Kamala and Tim tell you, the economy is not doing well. Not by a long shot. People are hurting, mostly because of inflation and stagnant wages. The Democrats will get the blame for this because it is their fault and it happened on their watch and it was made worse by their polices. And don’t forget that Kamala was the tie vote on the bill that most rapidly raised inflation. No Republican voted for it because they knew how bad it was going to be, how much inflation it was going to cause.
Johnson’s agenda, as outlined in New York, is not complicated and probably not terrible surprising. First, fix the tax code so the business community can create more jobs here in America and families can have more confidence in our economic security.
Second, stop letting China get away with murder, literally and figuratively. Re-shore companies back to America, especially ones that create products with national security implications. Stop letting the Chinese import products that are made with slave labor. Make sure we don’t have a repeat of what happened during the Covid years, when it became clear that we were at a massive strategic disadvantage. The House has already passed a bunch off legislation making China more accountable for its massive cheating. It will take a Republican Senate and a Republican President to get the signed into law.
Third, drill baby drill. Make American energy dominant again. Stop with all of this environmental whacko stuff (my term, not his), and get energy prices low like they were when Trump was President. Trump did everything he could to get as much energy supply into the marketplace, mostly by getting the EPA to mostly stand down. The result was dramatic. Lowest energy prices in a generation. Low gas prices. More energy supply. Our ability to export our energy resources, which helped to lower emissions (if you care about that kind of thing). The result on inflation was profound.
Fourth, give parents more education choices. Smash the eduction labor union bosses who kept our kids locked out of school. Insist that working class and middle class parents have the same education choices that wealthy parents have.
Finally, usher in an era of fiscal responsibility. The Biden Administration wasted about trillion dollars of taxpayer money, most of which was stolen by grifters. Cut government spending so that fewer bureaucrats have an opportunity to slow down economic growth. Focus on waste and fraud but also focus on government workers who don’ t do anything productive during the workday, who choose mostly to work from home. Also focus on those who game the system and collect three pensions as they work in a no-show job. You have no idea how much money is wasted by the government unless you work here for a while.
All of these legislative items will be controversial. The Democrats and their unions will oppose most if not all of these proposals. But if Republicans can be bold under the leadership of Mike Johnson, they can get a lot of it done.
That’s what the Speaker was saying on Wall Street this week. That’s what I am hearing.
"Drill baby drill."? Oil and gas prices are set be the world demand mostly China and India. Gas prices were low during the one-term Trump era because of COVID and China in particular was shit down So were we. The US is producing more oil than any country ever. Opening up more drilling will 1) take a long time to produce product and not affect prices/inflation and 2) increase profit margins for the oil executives who visited Mar-a-lago.
We already have school choice. They are called private schools. If you can't afford them, ask. Most have scholarship money available provided your kid is not a turd. School vouchers end up being a scheme for rich people to have coupons for products they already use. See Marin County as proof. In Tucson, all kinds of fly by night charter schools appears in empty grocery stores, took money, operated a year or two, and shut down. Leave education to to professionals and be involved in your child's learning. That's how you solve education.