Kudlow: We need lower taxes and more energy

Happy Monday, folks. I’m still basking in the glow of last Tuesday’s election repudiation of left-wing progressive wokeism and inflationary spending and high taxes and defund the police and an open sieve border, and no parents in schools. Actually, myy friend James Carville explains what happened, best. Take a listen to this:

It’s stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at VA and NJ, look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington. I mean this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off the stools... it’s really just have a suppressive effect all across the country. The Democrats- some of these people need to go to a 'woke detox' center or something.

But I do have a little bit of a headache from the infrastructure vote that was taken Friday while I was suspended in air coming home from Florida to New York. So I couldn't do anything about it. But not to belabor the point but the main chance here is still save America, kill the bill. The big bill. The social spending, green new deal, tax hike bill. And I gave a talk to a business group today and outlined a few key points that I’d like to share with you.

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First, we need more energy. Not less. Last Thursday OPEC+, that includes Russia, denied the U.S. request for more oil production. When asked about her solution for that, our energy secretary at first giggled.

That is not good. On about five levels. Here's the deal. We're already 2 million oil barrels per day short from the pre-pandemic high… because the administration is bullying the entire fossil fuel industry.

If you put those 2 million barrels back on the market and you have a lot lower gasoline prices. Trust me on this. The U.S. has the best carbon emissions record in the advanced world because of nat gas and other improvements. Spending $550 billion in this bill and lord knows how many regulations and taxes to kill fossil fuels is absolutely nuts. We need more energy from all sources.

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But I’ll tell ya, in the next 50 years natural gas and nuclear are going to be the energy drivers no matter what the little Biden greenies say. That's going to be it. Trust me on this. Second, stop punishing success. All these tax hikes to pay for unnecessary and counter-productive social spending are aimed at workers, producers and investors. This tax hike is shear lunacy. You want a good paying job? You need a strong business with plenty of profits. You want to expand the business or even start a new one? You are going to need some seed corn from investors. And they will want a good after tax return. This is just common sense.

The middle class workforce and their families and minority groups will suffer the most from these proposed tax hikes. It's that simple. Ed Yardeni writes, progressives hate profits. But as I put it, profits are the mother's milk of stocks and the lifeblood of the economy. Third point. America must go back to work. And we've made good progress as the pandemic becomes less of an obstacle.

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But Joe Manchin is right. The government must never cut the link between generous benefits and the work needed to qualify for it.

Ben Carson just put it well. Americans believe in the safety net. Not the safety hammock. Arthur Brooks, put it well, vocation is essential to the American ideal. And as my old boss Ronald Reagan said, the best social program is a job. All these emergency social spending plans should now be ended because the emergency has ended.

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They were meant to be temporary. Not permanent and certainly not permanent with no work provisions. And speaking of ending the emergency. The federal reserve's money creation was aimed at the virus emergency, but now they should pull back because the emergency is over.

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Finally tonight, I’m calling for new policies: to promote U.S. and world prosperity, we need lower taxes and more energy. Lets substitute the success of free enterprise capitalism for the failures of big government socialism. Lets get all of America working again. In fact, save America, kill the bill. And that's my riff.

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the November 8, 2021 edition of "Kudlow."