On Thursday we learned the American economy expanded at an anemic rate of just 0.5 percent in the first three months of the year. It was the worst showing in two years and the third straight quarterly decline in economic growth.
The millions of Americans who continue to struggle in the
Obama economy have been held hostage by this persistently weak growth. In fact,
not only is the so-called “recovery” the weakest since the 1930s, Obama is on
pace to become the first U.S. president in history to have never presided over
a full year of growth averaging at least 3 percent. Add in the fact that the
middle class continues to shrink while wages continue to stagnate, and Obama
will likely leave office with one of the worst economic records of any
president.
Despite all of this, Hillary Clinton doesn’t think he’s
been given enough credit and even gives the president an “A” for his
performance. That’s troubling, but what should concern Americans even more is
what she is proposing to do.
Take Clinton’s plan to raise taxes, for example.
According to a recent study by the Tax Foundation, it would reduce economic
growth by 1 percent, eliminate the equivalent of 311,000 full-time jobs, and
lead to 0.8 percent lower wages.
That means if Hillary Clinton were president today and
her tax plan was on the books, Thursday’s GDP report would have shown that the
economy actually contracted. Today’s stagnant wages would be even smaller and
fewer Americans would be able to find full-time work. She isn’t just offering
the status quo of failed liberal economics, she’s promising to put it on
steroids with potentially damaging consequences.
Struggling Americans will never get ahead under Hillary
Clinton. They are going to keep getting taken to the cleaners. After seven-plus
years of economic malaise under Obama, it’s time to take the country in a new
direction, not double down on the Democrats’ failed big government approach.
Everyone knows what the solutions are. Reining in
out-of-control Washington regulation, tax reform that lowers rates and
simplifies the code, repealing and replacing Obamacare, and reducing the debt
are essential to delivering the turnaround our economy desperately needs — but
Democrats are obstructing each and every one of these reforms.
It’s clear that only a Republican president, in
partnership with a Republican Congress, can get our economy back on track and
bring relief to the millions of Americans who continue to struggle. A vote for
anything else is a vote for more of the same – and worse.
Priebus is the chairman of the Republican National
Committee.
