According to a recent report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, regulations issued by the Biden-Harris Administration have cost the average American household a total of nearly $50,000. From its electric vehicle mandate—expected to increase the price of a new vehicle by more than $6,000—to restrictions on household appliances and energy production, this kind of burden on families is unsustainable.
This is in striking contrast to the executive policies of the Trump Administration. Cuts to red tape at federal agencies under President Trump saved almost $11,000 per American household.
Meanwhile, while campaigning for president, Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed policies such as eliminating much of the 2017 tax cut bill alongside price control proposals which demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of market forces and basic economics. It appears Vice President Harris has not learned the lessons of the last four years during which government spending has led to inflation over 20 percent and a decline in real wages since she and President Biden took office.
Growing government is not a solution to the economic problems facing Americans. It’s the very posture which got us into this affordability crisis in the first place. Spending more than we can afford, trying to tax our way to prosperity, and imposing federally mandated price controls are not the way to help struggling Americans.
When it comes to meeting the diverse needs of Americans across our great country, the market is very instructive. As consumers are free to make the best purchasing decisions for them rather than having the federal government telling us what to drive or what to buy, the marketplace dynamically adjusts to meet demand. Price controls and EV mandates, on the other hand, are a dead end.
Our nation learned a hard lesson from what price controls did to the economy during the 1970s. When the Nixon Administration imposed a freeze on prices in 1971, the economy took years to recover from severe inflation and crippling shortages of everyday goods such as fuel and food. The recession of the 1970s was worsened, not improved, by an attempt to mandate control of the cost of goods and services.
In order to get economic policy right, House Republicans are again working to hear from hardworking Americans. We started working on the tax reform passed in 2017 long before we had the votes necessary to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). It’s important to note at the time, even President Obama understood our country was losing companies to relocation to more favorable tax jurisdictions as a result of our then-stifling corporate tax rate.
Recently, in meetings in Nebraska and Iowa my colleagues on the Committee on Ways and Means and I heard feedback from rural farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. Consistently, we were told among the most impactful improvements we made to the tax code was making the corporate rate more competitive and increasing the thresholds for Sec. 179 expensing and bonus depreciation. This increased American productivity and competitiveness by rewarding businesses with immediate expensing for manufacturing and production equipment. By allowing family businesses to take the full deduction for equipment upfront, rather than forcing them to spread the same deduction across a number of years, we encouraged businesses to create more jobs in the United States, increasing demand for labor and driving up wages with minimal impact on inflation. The greater opportunity this gave businesses to invest strengthened markets and increased wages across the income spectrum.
In a simplified expression of economic principles, Ronald Reagan once said, “If you want less of something, tax it.” Knowing the success of pro-growth policies for American job creators and workers, we can do much better than tax hikes, runaway spending, and heavy-handed government mandates. We will continue fighting, so Americans can thrive.