by Lt. Col Tony Schaffer (Ret)
Ohio’s economy is thriving, but it’s all at stake as the 2020 presidential election nears. In fact, the growth we’ve experienced under President Trump would quickly evaporate in our state if the destructive policy agenda of the Democrat’s presidential candidates is fulfilled.
When Donald Trump visited Cincinnati for his latest blowout campaign rally, he made sure to remind us of everything we’ve accomplished together over the past two and a half years — and of everything that we stand to lose if the Democrats manage to win the White House in 2020.
A majority of the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates, for instance, have already promised to scrap the President’s signature middle-class tax cuts, which created more than 8,000 jobs in Ohio last year while saving local taxpayers an average of $1,476 on their federal income taxes. In total, President Trump’s pro-growth economic policies have spurred the creation of more than 113,000 new jobs in Ohio since his inauguration.
If the Democrats go through with their promise of repealing Donald Trump’s tax cuts, an average American family of four making $73,000 a year would see a whopping $2,000 annual tax hike. To make matters worse, corporate tax increases would drive up the cost of utilities in all 50 states, and small business owners would lose their 20 percent deduction for small business income.
Repealing the President’s tax cuts would only be the start of the Democrat Party’s destructive economic agenda. The tax increases would serve as a venue of “income redistribution” — the revenue would not benefit Ohio citizens as it would go to programs and pet projects that would further diminish the power of the Ohio economic recovery. Several prominent Democrat candidates have already embraced the Green New Deal — a radical regulatory proposal that would cost America a jaw-dropping $93 trillion over 10 years, or $600,000 per household, and accomplish absolutely nothing to help the environment or the people of Ohio.
The Democrats have also largely ignored the rising fiscal burden of illegal immigration, pledging to “decriminalize” illegal immigration and even vowing to provide taxpayer-funded healthcare to the millions of illegal aliens who are already in the country, and every new one who gains access to our borders illegally. Not only does illegal immigration jeopardize national security, it results in costs, some hidden and some obvious, that serve to damage the economy.
Thankfully, Donald Trump’s return to Ohio was designed to directly push back on the Democrat claim that socialism is the best economic model for America.
Contrary to the threadbare liberal talking points, President Trump’s pro-growth policies have done wonders for Ohio, transforming local economies into mighty engines of job and wealth creation.
According to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Ohio’s unemployment rate fell to 4.0 percent in June, with employers adding 1,500 new jobs last month alone, bringing the total number of jobs created since President Trump took office to more than 113,000.
But this economic renaissance is far from over — despite the Democrat Party’s best efforts to obstruct the President’s policies, Ohio continues to attract major investment from some of the most successful businesses in the world.
Kroger Co. and U.K.-based Ocado, for example, recently announced plans to build a $55 million state-of-the-art customer fulfillment center north of Cincinnati — a first-of-its-kind robotic warehouse that is projected to create more than 400 jobs. Hendrickson, an advanced manufacturing company, also recently committed to a $50.6 million expansion project in Eastern Ohio that is slated to create 300 new jobs.
Those are exactly the sorts of results that candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2016, and he highlighted those victories at U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati. That rally, which took place just one night after the Democrats wrapped up their second round of presidential primary debates, provided the President ample opportunity to contrast his own record of success with the job-killing policies being promoted by his would-be opponents.
Ohio’s economy is poised to continue thriving for years to come, but only if we preserve the policies that President Trump implemented to get us to this point. For the past two and a half years, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he has what it takes to make Ohio great — now it’s our job to ensure that he has four more years to finish what he started.
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Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer and President of the London Center for Policy Research.
