A Summary of all Donald Trump's Lies

Since the election, I have argued that the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton war against business will come to an end, and that America will once again reward success, not punish it. Nobody beats so called Christians as far as “punishing” my own efforts at improving myself. This is something they do NOT really believe. No democrat wants to punish a decent day’s pay for a decent day’s work. The Stock Market has risen after all from something like 7,000 in the early months of the Obama Administration to on the verge of twenty thousand now. And while the Left has demonized Trump's cabinet appointees as a terrible group of successful business people, free-market capitalists such as myself regard this group as very good indeed. The left hasn’t “demonized” Trump’s cabinet because they are successful but because they have no government experience. Business and government each require their own set of prerequisites.

Why shouldn't the president surround himself with successful people? Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption. This is a lie. Chuck Smith tried to advance this argument that “the rich have no need for money” and all and no need apparently to even commit a sin because they’re already perfect or something. They aren’t made perfect by the blood of Christ but by the almighty dollar. Their business success demonstrates that they know how to achieve goals and convince skeptics that good deals can be made to the benefit of both sides. Isn't this just what America needs? No this is Not what America needs.
And most of these folks aren't political. This used to be true back in the sixties. I’ll be the first to agree with that. They are highly political now. They won't be afraid to reach across the aisle for bipartisan solutions. And that includes Mr. Trump himself. For many of his years he was a Democrat. Just like Ronald Reagan. Just like me. The truth however is that nothing will pass without getting past Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan and not Trump will be the gatekeeper of legislation.

I've always loved Winston Churchill's comment that "If you're not a socialist in your twenties, you have no heart. But if you're not a capitalist in your thirties, you have no mind." Many of these “Jesus Children” were brainwashed at an early age in a way the original Christians never were to embrace a far right wing political and social outlook.

In our new book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution, Brian Domitrovic and I explain how the two great pro-growth tax-cutting presidents -- JFK the Democrat, Ronald Reagan the Republican -- used civility and respect to communicate key ideas in a bipartisan effort that yielded terrific results for American prosperity. The lie spawned by Larry Elder and others is that JFK got the tax cuts passed. Johnson passed them and they spawned one of the biggest deficit epidemics of its day and the Republicans, rightfully so, were the first to condemn them.

So far, this has been the Trump way. Not only has he conducted himself with great civility, beginning with his Oval Office meeting with President Obama, he has sought an inclusive approach wherever possible, irrespective of party. Personally, I haven’t seen it.

Yet with less than a month until the inauguration, it is crucial that Mr. Trump embarks on immediate bipartisan efforts to strengthen the economy. It was the number-one election-year issue. And despite strong post-election increases in business and consumer-confidence -- along with the stock rally -- the economy is weakening yet again.

Measured year-to-year, real GDP is rising only 1.7 percent. Business fixed investment continues to decline. Productivity is flat. Consumer spending has barely risen in the last two months, while both auto production and sales are slumping. Non-financial domestic profits have declined year-to-year for the last six quarters. President Obama had a STEADY positive economic growth all the time he was in office, a claim neither Bush W or Ronald Reagan can begin to make.

Of all these factors the slump in business fixed investment is the most harmful. If you go back in history, across the four long post-war recoveries of the '60s, '80s, and '90s, BFI averaged nearly 7 percent. In the Obama recovery, BFI was only 4 percent. Over the past two years, it has been flat. I don’t know what the BFI is.
Using a back-of-the-envelope rule of thumb, if the JFK/Ronald Reagan/Bill Clinton investment performance were in place now, our economy would be growing at 3 rather than 2 percent. A big difference. President Elect Trump said of the Blacks, the poor, and the under-paid, “You have nothing to lose by electing me”. Yeah and I have a bridge in New Jersey I want to sell you.
That's why pro-growth tax reform is so important. It is reported that Mr. Trump will immediately move to overturn costly Obama regulations, especially on small business. This is good. It will add to growth. But the big decision will be whether to repeal and rewrite Obamacare or enact tax reform as the first order of legislative business.

Replacing Obamacare is hugely important, both to improve our health-care system and remove the economic drag of its taxing, spending, and regulating. But business tax reform -- with low marginal corporate rates for large and small companies, easy repatriation, and immediate expensing for new investment -- will have an enormously positive impact on the weakest part of our economy, namely business investment.  The definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  We tried tax cuts under Reagan and got exploding deficets and increased economic inequity.  The Bush tax cuts of 2001 did nothing to spur the economy.  This is the biggest fantasy of the right wing that tax cuts help the economy.   Any more than a shot of cocaine is just what someone who is suffering from some horrible disease doesn't need.  

That's where we'll see 3 or 4 percent growth, higher productivity, more and better paying jobs, and fatter family pocketbooks. If there were a way to combine a two-year budget resolution with reconciliation instructions (51 Senate votes) to reform health care and taxes in one full sweep, that would be ideal. However, if tax reform (be it business or individual) comes second, and the start dates are postponed until 2018, then businesses and consumers will postpone economic activity. That could make 2017 a much weaker economic story than confidence surveys and the recent stock market suggest. There's a great transition going on, but the economy needs immediate attention. Tax reform is the key. The only “great transition” that will go on is that the economy will crash under Paul Ryan’s misguided leadership.


Lawrence Kudlow is CNBC’s Senior Contributor. He is also the host of The Larry Kudlow Show, which broadcasts on Saturdays from 10am to 1pm ET and is syndicated nationally. He is a former Reagan economic advisor and a syndicated columnist.