Rx For Greater Greatness In Post-Lockdown America

After having been shot at and missed by the C-19 enemy, Americans who bravely step forward into post-lockdown America are likely to be purposeful and dedicated to taking charge of the future that might have been taken away from them, but was given back by an authority far higher than the Centers for Disease Control.

The reformation that will follow the dark ages of the lockdown requires another of “America’s Greatest Generations” like the one that emerged from WWII, case-hardened and ready to rebuild America’s post-war economic engine.

The new American heroes who rebuild America’s post-lockdown economy will have to overcome barriers erected by the dominant left side of the newly radicalized Democratic Party’s brain, which is one of the few places in the world where the discredited Marxist model still prevails.  The others are Albania, Cuba and China.

Step one is to restart America’s economic engine, regain the ground lost during the lockdown and get back to the economic high point that existed in January 2020 when new records in jobs growth were set daily. 

That success was achieved by President Trump’s reforms that repealed many of the Democrats’ favorite job-killing tax rules and made a good start on clearing out their warehouse of job-killing regulations.  But before he could finish the job, the Democrats retook control of the House in the 2018 elections and slammed the door on reform. 

Step two is to make the economic engine run extra fast and efficiently enough to surpass America’s pre-lockdown job-creating high point and thereby to make America even greater. 

To do that, the stalwart post-lockdown rebuilders must eliminate the rest of the Democrats’ legacy of tax and regulatory rules that years ago were deliberately designed to slow America’s economic engine and make Americans less prosperous, less free and more dependent on government.

Quick remedial action is required.  Abolish Democrat-built taxes that create deadweight losses by reducing Americans’ pre-tax incomes more than the tax revenue generated.  Abolish taxes that discriminate against the business capital investment that is essential to good-paying jobs.  Fix tax rules that make it hard for upwardly mobile strivers to save and invest, and rules that encourage businesses to export American jobs and factories instead of products. Withdraw from their old-timey international tax treaties that allow foreign companies to profit from American markets free of U.S. tax.      

Give new start-up businesses sufficient time to get going.  Allow them to obtain needed cash by “selling” their early-year net operating loss deductions either to the Treasury or to some other company.  A new business that succeeds and creates new jobs and adds to national income and GDP is worth a lot more to America than the initial small revenue cost to the IRS.

Step three is to get the Democrats’ heavy foot off the “regulatory” brake so that  America’s economic engine can run at top job-creating speed.  Washington warehouses are full of Democrats’ over-reaching regulations and ten thousand other commandments.  They must immediately be suspended until it is proven that their benefits substantially exceed their costs.  Most prima facie do far more harm than good and should be discarded.

When a Democrat-created job-killing regulation is eliminated at the federal level, Democrat governors must be prevented from re-imposing it at the state level.  The power of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce is presumably exclusive.  On occasion, it has “preempted” states from regulating an activity that the federal government could regulate but has chosen not to regulate.

Before we can restart and rebuild our economy, before we can go about our lives unsurveilled and unobstructed by government, before we can have a bright future, we must first overcome the objections of the authoritarian Socialists and Marxist “progressives” who have taken over the Democratic Party and the media.

America faces a clear-cut choice between two polar opposites.  One choice is to follow the Democrats down the hole to perpetual lockdown in the land of Marxism.  The other choice is to reject all the socialism, communism and fascism variants – and, instead, to stick with personal freedom, free-market capitalism, jobs and rapid recovery from the lockdown.

It is shocking to see the “ism” that our grandfathers, fathers and older brothers died fighting against in WWII, Korea and Vietnam now on the ballot in America, falsely flying the flag of my parent’s Democratic Party.  Breaks my heart and, no doubt, theirs too.

Stand your ground, American heroes.  Defeat the “ism” again and forever.

Ernest S. Christian, a lawyer, served as a tax policy official in the Treasury Department in the Ford administration.