Dems will diminish the economic boom if they win midterms

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (R-Calif.) prediction about the disastrous impact of tax reform has faded faster than San Francisco fog in the hot noonday sun.

What was supposed to be Armageddon didn’t bring the end of the world; instead, it brought a different kind of “end” —  the end of the world being able to take advantage of our previously uncompetitive tax code.

{mosads}Yet amid the fear-mongering and false projections even Pelosi has proven herself capable of being right on the issues of taxes. 

That is, Pelosi was right on taxes when she supported cutting them in 2016, and then, too, in the opposite direction, she was right when she claimed that Democrats would raise them in 2018.

Just over two years ago, Pelosi endorsed one of the most critical components of tax reform: a globally competitive corporate tax rate.

In Pelosi’s own words, “It is long past time for tax reform that would lower the corporate rate.” Interestingly, another top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), agreed with Pelosi; he called the corporate-rate reduction “imperative.”

Both Pelosi and Schumer were surely correct about the national imperative: The U.S. rate had remained virtually untouched since the 1980s, and so, after three decades of increasing global competition, America’s high-rate corporate tax code was looking obsolete, indeed.  

Yes, the U.S. tax code was far and away the world’s most burdensome on business, which is to say, burdensome on jobs. Our combined federal and state corporate rate of nearly 40 percent taxed American businesses of all sizes a full 15 percentage points higher than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average.

So it’s little wonder that Democrats of all stripes — from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, from Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) — joined Pelosi and Schumer in supporting a corporate rate cut. 

At least they did in 2016; strangely, that realization of the need for American business to compete seemed to fade away in 2017.  

Yet in the meantime, President Trump and the Republican Congress focused on the issue of corporate competitiveness. Happily, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) achieved a victory for the American economy and for all Americans: 

The new 21-percent federal corporate tax rate puts the United States rate more than a full point below the OECD average.    

Today, the positive results of TCJA are pouring in: An ever-growing list of more than 650 businesses have passed their tax reform savings along to more than 6 million American workers, and countless American consumers in the form of wage hikes, bonuses, 401(k) match increases, expansions and utility rate cuts. 

As 87 million customers are receiving lower monthly utility bills, totaling $3 billion so far, American workers have already been rewarded with $4 billion in tax-reform-related bonuses. In all corners of the country, paychecks are growing and bills are shrinking.

In addition to the meaningful benefits that congressional Democrats have disparaged as “crumbs,” tax reform has helped our economy become the “world’s most competitive.”

Now that America’s competitive edge has been restored by tax reform, the 3.8-percent unemployment rate matches the lowest point in half a century, and job openings officially outnumber the jobless. 

Indeed, following tax reform, small business optimism — as well as consumer, economic and housing confidence — have experienced record highs. At the same time, the African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates, total jobless claims and layoffs have reached record lows.

As a Joint Economic Committee analysis recently found, “one million jobs have been created since tax reform was enacted.”  Even The New York Times had to admit that it “ran out of words to describe how good the jobs numbers are.”

In the face of all this success, it may seem strange that top Democrats seek to reverse course. Yet on May 8, when Pelosi was asked if she wants to “raise taxes” by moving to “roll back the tax cuts that [Republicans] passed this year,” Pelosi responded: “that’s accurate.” 

Okay, so it’s easy to see what Pelosi believes — that we should have higher taxes. Yet it’s harder to see how a tax hike would do anything other than harm the people that Pelosi purports to want to help. 

With companies like Apple and Cisco repatriating billions of overseas dollars and with job-creating businesses like Broadcom moving back to the U.S., there are no bigger fans of the Pelosi plan than the countries with which we compete for jobs and investment capital.

Why wouldn’t our competitors cheer at the thought of the U.S. raising taxes and reverting back to our outdated tax system?   

These are the stakes for the average American: The best way to determine the tax burden on April 15, 2019 — as well as the continuity of the thriving economy that tax reform has given us — will be to vote Republican on Nov. 6, 2018. 

Yes, it’s really that simple: If the Democrats win, they will raise your taxes and diminish the economic boom; by contrast, if the Republicans win, they will preserve the tax cut, and thus our collective prosperity. 

So it’s clear: The best way to empower the Republican majority to defend our national prosperity is for the American people to defend the Republican majority.

James P. Pinkerton served as a domestic policy aide in the White Houses of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is the co-chair of the RATE Coalition, a group of companies and associations that advocates for a more competitive tax code.