Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York and one of the first to intellectually eviscerate the fraud known as Obamacare, rises to the defense of Donald Trump’s economic program in the pages of the New York Post:
The rap on Donald Trump is he’s all bluster. The New York Times says he’s offering “incoherent mishmash.” Former GOP rival Ted Cruz claimed Trump has “no idea” how to fix the economy. Don’t believe it.
Trump slashes the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from the current 40 percent, the highest rate in the industrialized world. Not all American companies pay that staggering rate, but even after deductions and accounting maneuvers, companies in the United States end up clobbered by taxes nearly twice the global average (24 percent).
Trump also proposes a one-time 10 percent repatriation tax on profits US companies made overseas and kept there to avoid the 40 percent rate. That bargain could lure back as much as $2.5 trillion in capital urgently needed here. To promote investing in plants and equipment, Trump would allow companies to write off the purchases the year they’re made, rather than over several years, as current law requires.
Economist Larry Kudlow predicts that if Trump’s corporate tax plan becomes law, you’ll see “a tremendous movement of capital and labor back to the United States.”
Trump’s lower 15 percent business rate would also apply to small businesses that usually get taxed at individual income tax rates. That would give a break to mom-and-pop operations, startups and other small businesses that are the source of most jobs.
For those who think (?!?) Hillary Clinton would be better, McCaughey advises them to think again:
Compare Trump’s blueprint with Clinton’s nightmare scenario: Higher taxes, more tax complexity and an avalanche of new regulations. Over-regulation has depressed economic growth for the last 15 years.
The Obama administration suffocated business with 81,000 pages of new regulations in 2015 alone. Hillary is pushing for even more — with controls on hiring, pay, bonuses and overtime to promote “fairer growth.” Translation: gender and racial preferences, plus meddling in how much you get paid.
Remember Obama’s statement, “You didn’t build that.” Hillary assumes “You don’t own that.” Government will run your business. Hillary wants companies to stop maximizing quarterly earnings for shareholders — what she derides as “quarterly capitalism.” She wants “farsighted investments” (whatever that means). Companies that can get out of the United States will rush for the exits.
She’s even promising an end to “the boom-and-bust cycles on Wall Street.” As plausible as ending rainy days.
For all the tiny foot-stamping, the issue now isn’t whether Trump is a good GOP candidate; it’s that he’s the only GOP candidate, up against a manifestly unqualified, greedy criminal whose very candidacy mocks our nation’s history and values and disgraces the Democrat Party, if such a thing were possible. And is anyone really prepared to argue otherwise?
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