by Alfredo Ortiz
Job creation in November bounced back, with 227,000 jobs created, after coming to a standstill in October.
This solid jobs report is due to one factor: President Trump’s reelection. The Republican victory has renewed confidence among Main Street job creators. The tough economic times of the Biden-Harris administration are ending, and the strong Trump economy is returning.
JCN’s new national poll of small businesses showed a record jump in sentiment in November. Forty percent of respondents say they plan to hire over the next 12 months, a huge jump from the Biden status quo.
Small businesses and ordinary Americans are looking forward to a return to the shared prosperity they enjoyed under Trump before the pandemic. Our poll showed that American small businesses supported Trump over Kamala Harris by 16 points. Even more respondents say a Trump presidency will be good for small businesses.
Trump and Republicans can reward this small business support by passing an extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, set to expire next year, immediately upon taking office. Our poll shows that by a five-to-one margin, small businesses want the tax cuts extended.
Unfortunately, Republicans’ slim margin in the House of Representatives doesn’t give the party much room for error. Over the objections of House Republicans, Senate Republicans are reportedly calling for prioritizing border and energy legislation and shelving tax cuts until later in 2025.
This would be a strategic mistake. With almost no votes to lose in the House, Republicans would be smarter to lead with tax cuts in tandem with executive actions on the border and energy while political capital is at its highest.
This strategy would allow Republicans to go bigger on tax cuts. Rather than a mere TCJA extension, Republicans should look to expand it. They should raise the existing 20% small business tax deduction to 25%, expand this deduction to more small businesses, and ensure small businesses receive 100% immediate expensing every year.
These tax cuts would allow Main Street to keep competitive parity with corporations, whose tax rates Trump wants to slash to 15%. They would keep more money in communities where it’s needed and reinvigorate the nation’s entrepreneurial climate that has been under constant attack by the Biden-Harris administration.
But what about deficit concerns? With the nation adding $1 trillion of debt every hundred days, Republican lawmakers are right to focus on fiscal impacts.
Yet the deficit driver is not tax cuts, it’s reckless spending. Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues have significantly increased since the TCJA was passed in 2017. Meanwhile the spending baseline has ballooned from $4 trillion to more than $6 trillion over that timeframe.
The only way to fix the nation’s fiscal problem is through spending cuts and strong economic growth. Extending and expanding the TCJA will return the nation to the 3% growth needed to turbocharge the economy and increase tax revenues.
As President Kennedy put it in 1963, “Reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.” By cutting taxes and returning federal spending to the pre-Covid baseline, lawmakers can eliminate the deficit. Extending and expanding the TCJA will bring back Main Street and deliver productive job creation for years to come.
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Alfredo Ortiz is CEO of Job Creators Network, author of The Real Race Revolutionaries, and co-host of The Main Street Matters podcast.
