House Speaker Mike Johnson pitched Wall Street today on Republicans’ agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, promising to deliver an economic boost while also pursuing “fiscal responsibility” if former President Donald Trump wins a second term and is given a GOP-controlled Congress.
“We know the playbook for economic prosperity because we put it into action eight years ago,” Johnson said in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange. “The evidence is clear that we know what it takes to have a vibrant American economy, and we have to defeat at the ballot box politicians who are actively trying to do the opposite, to try to destroy it. The survival of the American dream depends upon our victory. Republicans have a plan to stop the bleeding of inflation, to remove the parasite of socialism and to cut out the cancer of overregulation that is making our economy so sick.”
Johnson said that Republicans would look to enact a wide-ranging economic plan “based on the successful plan we implemented under President Trump’s first administration that will restore the American economy to full health and reinvigorate our can-do spirit.”
The speaker outlined five elements of the GOP plan:
- Encourage investment and opportunity by extending and building on Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts, including restoring immediate expensing of research and development costs. Johnson added that Republicans would seek to ensure that the tax code “doesn’t pay people more for staying out of the workforce.”
- Use the tax code to promote an “America First” agenda, including efforts to restrict outbound investments in China and working “to deter illegal immigration and eliminate existing policies and loopholes that currently reward illegal aliens.”
- Increase energy production by rolling back climate regulations.
- Reform the education system, maximizing school choice for parents. “We’ve seen how years of counterproductive government programs, exploding administrative payrolls and loan cancellations have only made it more expensive to get a degree,” Johnson said.
- Cut spending. “We’re in an unsustainable and, frankly, immoral position as a nation,” Johnson said of the national debt, noting that U.S. interest costs will top defense spending. Johnson promised to roll back Democrats’ climate tax breaks and root out waste, fraud and abuse along with $1 trillion worth of improper payments. He said Republicans would also cut the federal workforce, eliminating non-essential jobs across the federal bureaucracy.
Johnson also said that a Republican-led government would do away with continuing resolutions like the one Congress passed last week to avoid a government shutdown. “Moving forward, we must get the appropriations process back to regular order,” he said. House Republicans had hoped to pass all 12 spending bills this summer, but those aggressive plans were derailed by intraparty clashes on several of the measures.
The bottom line: The speaker’s plan will be familiar to anyone keeping tabs on Congress or the presidential race. But Johnson ignored the fact that economic growth in Joe Biden’s first three years surpassed that under Trump’s (though inflation was much higher under Biden). He also ignored the fact that the United States is producing more oil and natural gas today than ever before. And his plans to cut government spending and the federal workforce don’t address the biggest drivers of the national debt.
