Few things in politics are more annoying than elected officials claiming credit for how many jobs they’ve “created.” Presidents, governors and members of Congress don’t create jobs, but they can enact policies that make it easier for the private sector to do so.
With a new Republican administration and a Republican Congress committed to giving power back to the states, the chance to elect a Republican governor here in Virginia in 2017 brings an opportunity to shake off the economic doldrums of the last eight years, throw out federal and state policies that hinder job creation and stifle our economy, and replace them with lower taxes, less regulation and an education system that produces the well-prepared workers businesses need to grow.
Such policies will foster an environment for a dynamic economy where private-sector job creation is thriving, take-home pay is rising, and people are lifting themselves out of poverty. For too long, the policies of federal and state government have done the opposite.
Obamacare drove up health-care costs and limited many workers to part-time jobs. Dodd–Frank brought an onslaught of financial regulations that constrained access to capital for entrepreneurs. The EPA did all in its power to make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket” and kill jobs by waging a war on coal and preventing oil and gas exploration off our deep-sea coast. Sequestration cost Virginia more than $9 billion in economic activity and tens of thousands of jobs.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam doubled-down on an outdated, top-down economic development strategy, emphasizing corporate whale hunting and dubious handouts instead of creating the conditions where the private sector can expand and every region of Virginia can capitalize on its distinctive strengths. They wasted four years pushing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion despite its enormous costs. State agencies acted as extensions of the Washington regulatory state; the administration even attempted to circumvent the legislature to enforce the EPA’s soon-to-be-dead energy restrictions.
The effects of these failures are clear. Five years ago, Virginia ranked first or second on CNBC’s list of best states for business. Under the McAuliffe–Northam administration, we have dropped out of the top 10. Our growth rate in 2014 ranked 48th of 50 states. Our labor-force participation rate hit a 10-year low in 2016.
None of this is going to change unless we change it. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we are going to keep getting what we’ve been getting: anemic growth, stagnant job creation, flat wages and less opportunity.
We must reform our policies, change the tired way of doing things, and make sure we keep the promise of Virginia—and America—alive for the next generation. To do this, we need to enact conservative policies based on constitutional principles of limited, effective government at the federal and state level.
We need to modernize our tax code and cut taxes so families can keep more of their paychecks and small businesses can more easily expand. Congress is working on comprehensive tax reform for the country, and Virginia’s next governor will need to put forward a plan to lower the cost of doing business in Virginia in a meaningful way.
We need to repeal antiquated regulations and streamline our regulatory processes so entrepreneurs and small businesses can thrive. We can roll back many of the unnecessary regulations put in place by the Obama administration. The commonwealth also needs to minimize its regulatory burdens by requiring the state to repeal two regulations for every new one adopted, eliminating barriers to entry that too often protect big businesses at the expense of start-ups and small businesses.
We need to give parents more choices in and control of our children’s education, make college and post-secondary degrees more affordable and align high schools, community colleges and four-year universities to marketplace needs so graduates have the right skills to get good-paying jobs.
It is time to eliminate federal mandates that needlessly drive up college costs and cut the number of strings attached to federal workforce training funding. Virginia colleges and universities need to confer affordable degrees that respond to the demands of the marketplace.
The focus must be on policy changes that promote opportunity for the people—not new stimulus programs or sugar-high press releases touting the number of jobs deals that tend to benefit the rich and powerful or the special interests. Lower taxes, less regulation and a well-prepared and agile workforce are the fundamentals of economic success. The role of government—including the president, Congress and the governor—is to provide a foundation. When that’s done, the private sector can build on it.
Dave Brat represents the 7th Congressional District. Ed Gillespie is a Republican candidate for governor. Their piece originally appeared in Sunday’s Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star.
12 comments
Let’s see:
The PROMISE is for
lower taxes, less regulation and an education system that produces the well-prepared workers businesses need to grow.
Details please?! Got any?:
Lower taxes for whom? …. on the working low income? on the working middle income? on the elderly on fixed incomes? ….
Less regulation? …. what about the REGULATION that allows BIG ENERGY to tramp on the private property rights of good Virginia families who don’t want a big dangerous pipeline? what about the REGULATION that prohibits families to have their own energy generation and to sell it into the electricity grid? etc
Well-prepared workers? …. will they be sick, or healthy? where is the REPLACEMENT PLAN? will they have good mental health or on pain pills and anti-anxiety meds? will there be accessible affordable individual and family counseling all over the Commonwealth?
AND NOT A WORD about housing?! …. HOUSING IS GROSSLY UN-affordable for working people in most places in Virginia with job growth! Do you plan to bring thousands of jobs to places that are job-poor with poor-compensation, poor-career ladder jobs?
Do you think we are idiots out here in rural Virginia?
If McAuliffe and Northam did such a bad job with the economy in Virginia? Then where is the money coming from that Republicans are going to use to give state workers a raise? Why would the Republicans have money to give raises if McAulliffe was so bad?
Why are the increases in the cost of healthcare substancially less under Obamacare, than they were during the Bush 43′ presidency?
You talk like ending regulations is going to fix the problem. Why keep spreading the lies. Jobs go to Mexico for $3 hr..labor. Ending regulations is not going to change that.
Make college affordable? Ok, let’s send our students to Canada, where they can get an affordable 4 year degree for the price of 1 year in the USA. The Virginia General assembly responds to overpaid professors and administrators at state colleges and universities by giving them raises?????
Tax reform is nothing but code for a major tax increase. Look for Congress to legislate out of the $2.8 TRILLION they owe the SS Trust.
We keep hearing from speaker Ryan about how Social Security and Medicare need to be changed because they are going bankrupt. But one thing speaker Ryan will not do is to debate someone who is knowledgeable in the numbers, and talk about the numbers. Wonder why? Is it all just another lie?
The Republican Party ran their mouth for seven years about their health care plan. And now they don’t have a health care plan just like I said. For the most part congressional staffs are made up of campaign operatives, cronies, and friends and relatives. I doubt if Congress has any staff left who’s capable of writing a health care plan. The Republicans don’t know when their health care plan will be ready because the heathcare/health insurance/drug comapany lobbyists who are really the ones writing it haven’t told congress when they will be finished. Look to be flat out robbed if they ever come up with anything but another excuse to keep the failed Obamacare.
I get tired of responding to the same ole lies and BS over and over.
So if I have read correctly this joint op ed statement that Rep. Brat has subsequently stated to one comment contributor “does not imply any candidate endorsement of Ed Gillespie” (though it certainly looks like one to me) emphasizes that the centrally theme going forward for Virginia is the importance of the
“new Republican administration and a Republican Congress committed to giving power back to the states, …. throw out federal and state policies that hinder job creation and stifle our economy, and replace them with lower taxes, less regulation and an education system that produces the well-prepared workers businesses need to grow.”
What I see is a rather succinct summation of what the Trump presidential campaign both ran on nation wide (including here in Virginia) and that his subsequent administration is clearly showing intent to implement in policy both in the form of his specific cabinet appointments and post election policy statement commitments. This specific set of policy options have been readily and anxiously anticipated and sought after by a large swath of the Virginia Republican voter base for the past decade or more, long before the Democratic parties’ McAuliffe administration was ever in place (to lay all the blame upon).
In actual political retrospect this purported state Republican political opposition (both establishment and conservative) produced little to nothing from the state’s elected Republican party leadership and it’s supported candidates but endless rhetoric, loss and continual failure to deliver any policy results outside annual increases in state and local taxation revenues. But of course now we are to accept unquestionably that they have truly “seen the light” by simply dismissing past historical fact.
After an at best case tepid, but more generally, open opposition to Trump (and his policies that they now so fervently claim to embrace) by this group here in Virginia (Bush supporter Gillespie is most certainly included here in his late and largely grudging acceptance of the Trump accession) we now find this collection of entrenched politicos (including Gillespie) touting the very same policies and commitments that they could not apparently justify or support in a proposed Trump administration that both the nation’s and significant segments of the state’s voters “did” support with a historic national election vote.
If Rep. Brat doesn’t mind being deployed as a statewide popular “heat shield” to protect, deflect and bolster Mr. Gillespie’s lack of credibility with this sleight of hand regarding his very politically mixed message background and associated past actions in the areas he now champions that is of course his choice. Mr. Gillespie himself and his rather mixed bag of state political power players with their rather crude effort to rewrite political fact and past documented actions by candidate Gillespie are not in my opinion going to fool the typical Virginia Republican primary voter and certainly not the 45% Trump supporters that he will have their backs in the difficult political and cultural challenges that lie ahead for the nation and the state.
All candidates have their faults, as for me, I place being two-faced in open communication with the electorate close to if not at the top of the no go list. I would rather place my vote with the guy that was with the states’ voter base for the entire bumpy ride not the one that jumped on the caboose when he and his supporters political self interest called for career action.
I’m with you on McAuliffe ‘ med. expansion.
But.
Under McAuliffe is was able to provide
Employee Christmas bonuses due to
his Executive Order 24.
Any Republicans have the testicular fortitude to combat payroll fraud?
I expect a big fat cat NO.
Wonder what the professor of economics thinks about payroll fraud and the employment of illegal immigrants.
Just what does Va. expense annually in building trades (public schools & community colleges?
If we don’t tap an elected officials previous experience to his position , is he just now a mouthpiece?
Just spoke with David Brat. He is not endorsing Ed or anyone else prior to the primary. He said he never does that. Dave also said he tried to get the Richmond Times to run his article but they refused so Gillespie helped get his article out. Real nice of Ed to get his name next to Daves. It would make one think Dave broke his own word of not endorsing in a primary.
I think the market will probably go to hell and bring in another severe recession at the least, probably worse, and I think that will happen relatively soon. Decades of excess debt and money printing will cause problems at some point and it seems like we’re getting close. I thought the silver lining to Clinton getting elected is that it would probably happen on her watch and that after eight years of Obama they would own it, but now that Trump has won it will look like Obama saved us and then Trump destroyed everything.
It’s unfortunate, because reducing red tape, fixing taxes, etc, will actually help the economy long term, I just don’t see how it fixes the biggest mess we are in short term.
I like Dave Brat, I am not sold on Ed yet
I like Dave too. But I’m not drinking swamp water with Ed.
Same. I’m not voting for anyone who pushed TARP.
I agree TARP was real bad. Ed also was instrumental with Contract For America and playing an instrumental role helping Newt with leveraging a balanced budget.
Same, Ed is no vote.
“Not just no, but hell no” Ed may have a lot of money, but he will never have enough to buy my vote.