Trump Top Economic Adviser: 'I Want You To Put Socialism on Trial and Convict It'
Trump top economic adviser Larry Kudlow called on those gathered at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington, D.C., on Thursday “to put socialism on trial and convict it.”
Kudlow first made the case that the free market policies enacted under President Donald Trump are working, producing the lowest unemployment in decades, the highest blue-collar employment since the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, and an annual economic growth rate of 3 percent.
The latter figure nearly doubles the rate during the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency. “It’s the hottest economy in the world,” Kudlow said.
He recounted the keys to launching the current boom have been lowering tax rates on businesses and individuals, cutting regulations, unleashing the energy sector, and negotiating new trade deals.
“Our opponents are proposing to overturn America’s success and its greatness,” Kudlow contended. “It’s crazy stuff … high taxes, health care take over, impoverished poverty traps … socialism.”
“So I’m going to come to you today, really with a plea. Stay with me on this; I need your help,” the former Reagan administration economist said. “I want you, everybody in this room and your friends and your neighbors, I want you to put socialism on trial.”
“That’s what I’m asking you to do today. I don’t want us to stand idly by. I don’t want to let this stuff fester; I want it challenged; I want it debated; I want it rebutted, and I want to convict socialism.”
Larry Kudlow: “I want you to put socialism on trial.” https://t.co/2k7VXRtyUo pic.twitter.com/Hx19ixE2b6
— The Hill (@thehill) March 1, 2019
Kudlow then quoted from a portion of Trump’s State of the Union address last month, when he said, “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, or domination, or control.
“We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”
Kudlow also recited words from a speech Trump made to Venezuelan Americans in Miami not long after: “Socialism promises prosperity, but it delivers poverty. Socialism promises unity, but it delivers hatred and it delivers division. Socialism promises a better future but it always returns to the darkest chapters of the past. It never fails; it always happens.”
The former CNBC host sought to debunk the notion that the wealthiest Americans are not paying a fair share of the nation’s taxes.
The top 1 percent in the country pay nearly 40 percent of all income taxes, Kudlow explained, though they earn 20 percent of all taxable income, according to the Tax Foundation. The top 10 percent pay 70 percent, while earning 47 percent of taxable income.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners pay just 3 percent of federal income taxes received by the Treasury.
Kudlow went on to put the Democrat-supported Green New Deal in the crosshairs, saying it “would literally destroy the economy, literally. It would knock out energy transportation, airlines, jobs, businesses. We’d probably lose 10-15 percent of our GDP.”
“They are proposing a state government control of the entire economy: central planning on a grand scale. It’s never worked,” he argued, pointing to the failed 70-year experiment in socialism under the Soviet Union and the current failing economy of Venezuela, which used to be one of the wealthiest countries in South America.
“We prosper in America when we are allowed to use our God-given talents of creativity and ingenuity and inventiveness and our gifts from God of faith and life,” Kudlow concluded.
“Socialism, government controls, government coercion and all the rest will block out these God-given gifts, and if we let that happen, we will permit them to block America’s greatness.”
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