Dear President Trump and Leader McConnell:
To ensure the economic health of our citizens and the financial well-being of our nation now and for years and decades to come, we urge that the multi-trillions of dollars of federal government debt spending in the wake of the Coronavirus come to a stop. There is no limit to worthy causes, but there is a limit to other people’s money.
Congress has already spent more than $2 trillion on Coronavirus relief packages. The irresponsible Pelosi bill that passed the House a week ago would raise that spending total to $5 trillion, which is on top of the $4.71 trillion that Congress already authorized. We are getting very close to an unthinkable $10,000,000,0000,000 (ten trillion) federal budget, which is more money in one single year than the United States government spent, adjusted for inflation than the nation spent to fight the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and World War II – combined.
When state and local expenditures are included, government in America would for the first time in the history of the United States more than half of all national income would flow through the government. In other words, our government sector would be larger in size than all of the output of every business and every private sector worker in America. This is a road to financial ruin.
The inside-the-beltway crowd falsely calls these trillions of dollars a “stimulus” to the economy. But government can only give money to some people, as Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman taught all of us many years ago, by taking money from others. Government spending – and policies such as paying millions of workers more money to stay unemployed than to go back to work, and paying states more money to enable them to stay shut down – is inhibiting the fast recovery we want in jobs and incomes, not stimulating it.
In short, runaway government spending is the new virus afflicting out economy. The best way to supercharge a jobs recovery would be to repeal the payroll tax so that every working American would receive a 7.5% raise in the paycheck immediately, and every small business would see a reduction in their payroll costs of 7.5%. This incentivizes hiring and work. The economy desperately needs more of both of these and less debt spending.
Sincerely,
Arthur Laffer, Laffer Associates
Lisa Nelson, Alec
Adam Brandon, FreedomWorks
Alfredo Ortiz, Job Creators Network
Jim DeMint, Conservative Partnership
Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago
Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
William Bennett, former Reagan cabinet
Brent Bozell, Media Research Center
Stephen Moore, Committee to Unleash Prosperity
Tom Delay, former House Majority Leader
Jerome Corsi, CorsiNation
Charles Copeland, ISI
Andy Puzder, former CEO of CKE Restaurants
Scott Garrett, former member of Congress
Bob McEwen, Center for National Policy
Ed Meese, former Attorney General of the United States
James C. Miller, former Office of Management and Budget
William Walton, Center for National Policy