Economy

On my 36 County Tour, I have met with families, small business owners, and childcare providers who are rightfully concerned about the skyrocketing cost of childcare. As a father of four, I agree that we need real solutions to lower costs for our families, especially as inflation eats away at paychecks and gas prices are on the rise.

On my 36 County Tour, workforce issues and labor shortages are topics of constant and repeated concern when I’m meeting with farmers, small business owners, manufacturers, childcare centers, hospitals, and other enterprises. With so many job openings in Iowa and nationwide, we need to do everything possible to help our businesses, manufacturers, and hospitals hire, train, and retain quality employees.

In 1933, the federal government established the foundation of what would eventually become the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – better known as SNAP – when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act during the Great Depression. Now, almost 100 years later, 42 million people receive SNAP benefits, which costs American taxpayers approximately $145 billion every year. Naturally, as this government program has grown, waste, fraud, and abuse have also grown with it.

The number and severity of unprecedented challenges our nation faces are growing at a time when our capacity to address them is declining.

Economically, Americans continue to see their cost of living rise relentlessly in the face of inflation. Homeownership is increasingly unaffordable for most Americans, with 99% of America’s counties seeing a new peak in housing costs as climbing interest rates and a lack of housing supply make buying a home, or even renting one, increasingly out-of-reach.

We’re all familiar with the grief and pain that comes with losing a loved one. Whether a death is unexpected or occurs after a long battle with an illness, families must make funeral arrangements, settle an estate, and manage any outstanding personal or business debts. The last thing families need is an enormous tax bill – known as the death tax – from the federal government after a family death.

As any taxpayer knows, the federal government never misses an opportunity to tax income, assets, earnings, or real estate. Family farms, small businesses, and other multigenerational enterprises – which sacrifice and invest their time, talent, resources, and energy into their operations – are often the target of the Internal Revenue Service’s army of auditors.

In my weekly column last week, I outlined my strong opposition to President Biden’s $7.3-trillion budget for Fiscal Year 2025. As I noted, this proposal would hike taxes on our families, farmers, and businesses by $5.5 trillion, leave our country with a $1.8-trillion budget deficit for FY 2025, and balloon our national debt by trillions and trillions of dollars. It must be resoundingly rejected for the good of our fiscal health and financial stability.