National Review Online
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
President Trump had a lot to boast about in his first
speech to a joint session of Congress in his new term, and he was not shy about
doing so. He continued to exult in the breadth of his electoral victory. He
then touted his executive orders against DEI and transgender madness, which
are worth celebrating, and especially his restoration of order at the border. That subject drew his best line of the
night: We didn’t need new legislation to secure the border, “all we really
needed was a new president.”
He was on weaker ground concerning the economy. He said
he would balance the budget — while also advocating gimmicky plans to eliminate
taxes on Social Security benefits, tips, and overtime pay that would add to
deficits. He asked for some spending increases without requesting specific
spending cuts from Congress. He also repeated false claims about millions of
people over 100 years old collecting Social Security benefits. In reality, this
is just a misinterpretation of a database in which the government does not have
a date of death associated with certain Social Security numbers.
Even more jarringly, Trump said that he was working every
day to bring prices down at the very time that he is imposing the biggest increase in tariffs in 80 years. He promises that
the disruption will be minimal and the rewards great — which both economic
theory and the experience of his own previous administration belie.
Politicians say misleading things all the time, but Trump
is setting himself up for failure by suggesting that fiscal balance will be
easy and that tariffs will be like manna from heaven.
Trump’s greatest political asset was on display during
the speech: the Democratic Party, whose members in Congress could not bring
themselves to stand up for mothers who had lost their children to violence by
illegal immigrants, a child with cancer, or the capture of the Abbey Gate
terrorist. And Representative Al Green, the 78-year-old Texas Democrat, had to
be escorted out for heckling.
The speech confirmed that Trump has less to fear from his
opposition than from his own hubris.
No comments:
Post a Comment