There's a big economic debate raging on the pages of the Wall Street Journal and on the political talking head shows about budget deficits.
The chart below will look familiar to regular HOTLINE readers. It compares the Trump and Biden budget deficits - excluding 2020 and 2021, the two years impacted by COVID and lockdowns.
We've updated the numbers now that fiscal year 2024 (preliminary) is in the books.
Conclusion: neither president has a good record on the debt and deficits, but the annual levels of red ink were twice as high under Biden. The average deficit was $800 billion under Trump and $1.6 trillion under Biden.
2) Iowa's Kim Reynolds Ranked Most Fiscally Conservative Governor
The Cato Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors was created some 30 years ago by Unleash Prosperity co-founder Stephen Moore and we're thrilled the report lives on.
This year's edition was written by our friend Chris Edwards and here is how he summarizes the results:
Six governors receive a grade of A: Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Jim Pillen of Nebraska, Jim Justice of West Virginia, Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Greg Gianforte of Montana.
These governors have led the largest wave of state tax-cutting in decades. As discussed in the report, half of the states have cut individual or corporate income tax rates in recent years.
Kim Reynolds of Iowa is the highest-scoring governor. She signed into law a series of major tax reforms and held annual average spending growth to just 2.3 percent.
We've said many times that Trump has used the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tool – a weapon – to get other nations to do things that are in America's economic and national interests. And he did that in his first term, using tariff threats to get Mexico to cooperate on the border and Europe to increase defense spending.
But we want to make sure that we don't deviate from the universal truth that free trade enhances prosperity and that protectionism makes nations poorer. Adam Smith taught us that in 1776.
So we would like to suggest four better ways to keep jobs here at home:
Keep the tax rate on American businesses as low as possible. Raising the corporate and small business tax rate is one of the surest ways to lose jobs.
Repeal hundreds of regulations that make it more expensive to do business in America.
Make every state a right-to-work state. Forced unionization destroys jobs. America isn't losing manufacturing jobs. Forced-union states in the Northeast and the Midwest are.
Produce fossil fuel and nuclear energy in the United States to lower production costs of manufacturing items—drill baby drill.
4) Just When You Thought Media's Reputation Couldn't Get Worse: Trust Level Hits New All-Time Low
A new Gallup poll finds that Americans have the highest distrust ever recorded in mainstream media. Naturally, the media didn't cover the story.
Fewer than one in three Americans surveyed have a "great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust that the media is fair and accurate.
Worse, 36% have no trust and confidence at all.
Suspicion of the media is present in every demographic group. Just over half of Democrats (54%) have much trust in the media. Among independents the number was 27% and among Republicans only 12%. Younger people, who get most of their news online, trust the media far less than their elders. Among Democrats under the age of 30, only 31% trust the media
The last time the majority of Americans expressed trust in the mainstream media was back in 2003, over 20 years ago.
Here's a great example of why the media is so widely distrusted. Speaker Mike Johnson taped a 15-minute interview with CBS, and they strategically cut his five most effective minutes. He posted the complete and edited answers side-by-side on X, and they are all worth a watch. You can see it by clicking below!
