Thursday, Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Saks, told constituents in Moody that the strong economy is due to Republican policies.
“When the new Congress came in we immediately began trying to rip out regulations that the Obama administration put on,” Rogers said. We used the Congressional Review Act to rip out regulations that we thought were onerous. Under the Congressional Review Act we can only go back six months. Then the new Administration came in and President Trump’s cabinet secretaries began doing the same thing.
“The stock market started to pick up,” Rogers said. “It reached record highs. The Stock market has gone up 31 percent since Trump was elected. $5 trillion in new wealth has been created.”
Rogers said that during the Barack Obama Administration Congress passed the Consumer Protection Board. It has very heavy regulations. “We did not have the votes in the Senate to repeal it, but we began rolling back the regulations.”
Rogers said that then Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “Every American got a rate cut. No media outlet but Fox was reporting on it.” They were just reporting on negatives so by the time that passed we were down 17 points. That began changing a month later.
“Wal Marth raised their minimum wage to $11 an hour,” Rogers said. Protective Life and Regions Bank raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour. American companies had $billions in profits offshore. They wanted to bring that money home, but they weren’t going to pay a 35 percent tax penalty to do it. We cut that down to 10 percent. Much of that money has been reinvested here in the U.S.
“Every tax rate got cut,” Rogers said. “The average worker in the Third Congressional District is saving $975 a year. The average household is saving $1976.” We gave a forty percent tax cut in the business rate. They start putting that in their business. Small businesses paid down debt or bought new equipment like a new truck.
“Businesses want to grow,” Rogers continued. “They are going take that money and put it back in their businesses. Nancy Pelosi had been critical of the bill when we passed it. She called it crumbs. Nancy Pelosi is married to a man who is worth over $100 million and lives in San Francisco. Maybe to her a thousand dollars is just crumbs, but to those of us in the real world a thousand dollars is not just crumbs. As a result, we are at 3.9 percent unemployment. We are at full employment.”
Rogers said that Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, who became the President at Harvard, Larry Summers said that we are not ever going to see three percent growth in America again that we just had to get used to. Last month we were at four percent.
Rogers said that People voted for Donald Trump primarily for three things: to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, to replace Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court with another conservative, and to turn the economy around. Before he was elected, he published 25 names that he would name to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch from that list. “He promised all three things and delivered,” Rep. Rogers stated. Rogers was addressing the Moody Chamber of Commerce and the St. Clair County Republican Party.
Congressman Mike Rogers represents Alabama’s Third Congressional District. He is running for his ninth term in the United States Congress. On November 6 Rogers faces Miss America 2013 Mallory Hagan (D) in the general election.
