Washington Times: Republican states v. Team Biden
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A recent CBS poll had, as is now the norm, a lot of bad news for President Biden. A strong majority (63%) thinks (correctly) that the national economy is bad; the same percentage disapproves of his handling of the economy.
Who can blame them? Inflation has soared to a 40-year high, and consequently, workers have received a de facto 2.7% pay cut. Gas prices have reached record territory, and there have been widespread shortages at stores.
At the same time, despite the best efforts of Mr. Biden, Americans see some bright spots in their state and local economies. In the CBS News poll, 56% said their local job market was good; just 29% said it was bad. This is without a doubt driven by experiences in states governed by Republicans.
Americans’ confidence in states governed by Republicans is well placed. Most of the top states (14 of the top 15 states) for jobs recovered since March of 2020 are governed by Republicans, and 17 of the 20 states with the lowest unemployment rates are led by Republicans. The 10 states with the highest increase in personal income from 2020 to 2021 are run by Republicans.
Thousands of companies, including industry titans like Tesla, that were historically based in Silicon Valley or Wall Street have left their blue state homes in search of less taxes and regulations in red states. As a result, most new tech jobs in the country aren’t in California; they are in Florida and Texas.
It isn’t just businesses. From 2020 to 2021, 9 of the 10 states with the highest net in-migration were governed by Republicans.
How about the other team?
States governed by Democrats have struggled to regain jobs and get their economies back on track. Six of the 10 states with the fewest jobs recovered are governed by Democrats. Ten of the 15 states with the highest unemployment rates are governed by Democrats, and just one Democrat-led state has recovered all jobs lost during COVID-19. Six of the 10 states with the highest net out-migration in 2020 and 2021 were run by Democrats.
Republican state legislators all over the United States have pursued a consistent agenda that allowed families, neighborhoods and business communities in states to limit the damage done by COVID-19 — and the government responses to COVID-19.
A study done by our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which assessed mortality, health, economic and educational outcomes, concludes that 8 of the 10 states with the best COVID-19 response were governed by Republicans. Nine of the 10 states with the worst COVID-19 response were Democrat-led. Republican states ended job-killing lockdowns that had no effect on COVID-19.
Republican states spearheaded the movement to end remote schooling and get kids back in the classrooms so their parents could return to work. Fifteen states governed by Republicans passed historic tax cuts in 2021.
Mr. Biden should be thanking Republican governors and state legislators for counteracting his disastrous agenda with smart, conservative ideas that are working to counteract the damage he has done at the national level.
By avoiding lockdowns, rejecting the idea of paying people not to work and creating durable pro-growth policies, Republican-led states have created an economic model that the president should follow.
