"Hardworking American Families Deserve Better"
By Congressman Byron Donalds
Published in "Life in Naples Magazine" – August/September/October 2023

New polling suggests that nearly 3 in 4 Americans believe our country is on the wrong track, and less than half believe our best days are ahead. Over the past two and a half years, we have experienced a systematic attack on middle-class Americans by the Biden administration and Washington Democrats. Costs are up, our pocketbooks are being stretched thin, and bad policy is prolonging the problem. This must change.

In 2009, Washington Democrats passed Dodd-Frank. They claimed it would stop “Too Big to Fail.” Instead, big banks got massively bigger, and many community banks, (those that actually lend to small businesses,) either ended up closing or merging into larger banks due to high compliance costs. If you cannot get capital to fledgling small businesses, how do you expect those business to grow? Republicans support real reform of our banking system that will benefit small businesses.

Tax policy should be simple. The Biden administration wants to hire 87,000 new IRS agents. This doesn’t help anyone. All it does, is make the IRS bureaucracy bigger, and attempts to squeeze every possible dollar out of middle-class Americans to fund trillions in Democratic overspending. This proposal goes directly after honest and hardworking Americans, just trying to make ends meet, build a life, and create something for themselves. That is wrong, and that is why House Republicans voted to block this proposal.

We must stop overprinting money. This causes inflation, destroys purchasing power, and hardworking Americans suffer. If you’re a single mother and the cost of a new car has now risen from $24,000 to $31,000 because of inflation, that eviscerates your pocketbook. How are you able to get ahead? We need people like that single mother to be able to contribute as a consumer in our economy. Her purchasing power matters too.

Democrats tell us we must buy electric cars to save the planet, but these cars cost more than the average American makes in a year. How is that economically feasible? More importantly, if you double the number of electric cars, we simply don’t have enough electricity on the power grid to accommodate them. This will result in blackouts, brownouts, and higher electricity costs for everyone.   

Regarding education, when children are red lined into failing public schools, it’s critical that parents are given the ability to send their children elsewhere. Good education changes lives. That’s not a talking point, that’s my life. I was in Brooklyn’s P.S. 235 when my mother pulled me because the school did not meet my educational needs. She moved me to a different school where I was then able to learn, excel, and grow my life. Developing a comprehensive economic strategy for our nation must start with how our children are educated, and ensuring they have all the tools they need to be successful in our economy.

Sending our children to colleges and universities just to accrue tens of thousands of dollars in debt for low-paying liberal arts degrees is simply bad policy. We should create a funding formula for student loans that rewards economically viable degrees in which the borrower can make enough money to pay back their debts. For too long, government has allowed young people to be saddled with unnecessary debt, causing them to be left behind in our economy. Then Democrats promise unconstitutional bailouts to rectify the problem. This unsustainable cycle must change.

Also, apprenticeships are a highly valuable, yet vastly undervalued feature of our economy. There is no better experience than learning by doing. We must support our tradesman and promote these careers to high school graduates who want to get their lives started in an economically viable position. Lessening the regulatory burden of entry to blue-collar careers allows them to thrive. Rather than forcing them sit through hours of exams and certifications, we should let them learn under supervision and on the job. As long as safety is kept at the forefront, we can also increase economic mobility and opportunity by cutting the regulatory burden of qualifying hours for already-accomplished workers switching between trades.

Finally, Democratic tax policy has created a draconian regulatory climate that holds back entrepreneurs and small businesses from the ability to achieve financial success. Their anti-competitive regulatory policy creates barriers to market entry and harms the innovators we most need for a healthy and thriving economy. Even the founders of Home Depot will tell you that in the current regulatory climate, they never would have been able to build their business. Simply put, our government is standing in their way.

On Capitol Hill, my House Republican colleagues and I are fighting hard to ensure that our best days are ahead and that hardworking American families are able to thrive in our economy.