By Frank Pallotta
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The Mueller Investigation that has dominated national policy and politics for nearly two years, ended with a whimper – not the bang that the ‘Never Trumpers” had hoped for. Mueller found no Russian collusion, no conspiracy and issued no more indictments. In a reasonable political environment, the $30 million investigation should be over, and the country should move forward.
But these are not reasonable times in America. These are days marked by vicious political hand-to-hand combat – and our country is the worse for it. Congress should be moving on and doing what it is paid to do – work for us. Instead, the nation is saddled by the misguided aspirations of Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)– who simply will not accept the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. They, and others like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, want to discredit the 2016 election with tactics that are more reminiscent of a Third World totalitarian government than the United States.
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Democrats are trying to prolong this national distraction by alleging yet another conspiracy; this one involving the U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who is being accused of hiding the truth in the Mueller report. Anti-Trump news outlets like The New York Times, are publishing articles citing unidentified members of Mueller’s Team, who claim the report contains information damaging to the president. Those new claims are hardly surprising since Mueller’s team was comprised of predominantly Hillary Clinton supporters.
Nadler says the Attorney General must turn over the complete and unredacted Mueller report– so that “trusted members” of Congress can review it. That’s a recipe for more national discord as pieces of the report will almost certainly be leaked to a waiting media, fueling more wild, unsubstantiated speculation and damaging the lives of innocent people.
America is suffering from the irresponsible objectives of congressional Democrats and the anti-Trump punditry that are fully invested in rooting for the failure of the Trump presidency – no matter how destructive that may be to Americans.
In the business world where I came from, rooting for and encouraging failure is an unseemly tactic for the lazy; that is typically uncovered and then excised. The same values should apply to Congress.
A recent CNN poll indicated that the top three concerns of the American people are the economy, immigration and health care.
The economic gains under President Trump are undeniable to all but the most strident progressives. Last month’s job report shows the economy is continuing to expand, but if you listen to Pelosi and company; you would think economic ruin is being visited on American families.
Instead of undermining the gains in our economy, Congress has an obligation to work with the president to continue this nation’s economic progress. Most Democrats are wedded to policies that would redistribute income and unilaterally raise the minimum wage, rather than supporting measures that would create jobs that pay far more than a government-imposed minimum wage.
The president has been on a lonely mission to improve our country’s outdated and unfair trade policies. Every Democrat in Congress has been afraid to engage in the fair-trade discussions, continuing a years-long pattern of Washington ineptitude. The fact remains that if Trump succeeds in trade talks with China, there will be a profoundly positive long-term impact on the American economy. Chinese officials, however, can’t help but notice the division in American politics and are content to play their own waiting game. They are hopeful that a new, progressive president in 2020 will be far less determined to break down the unfair trade policies that have worked entirely to their favor and harmed or destroyed countless American industries and jobs. The Never-Trumpers appear willing to side with the Chinese while rooting for an American recession in 2020.
By any objective measure, there is a crisis at America’s southern border. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials reported in late March that there were over 13,400 immigrants in custody – four times our accepted safety levels. There are record numbers of Central American migrants claiming asylum and dragging children with them to better their odds of entering the United States. Illicit drugs like heroin, and humans, are being smuggled into our country at a great cost to the American people – but to the benefit of the smugglers.
Yet for all the obvious reasons to secure our southern border and for Congress to finally enact meaningful immigration reform, Democratic congressional leaders are content to do nothing but complain about the way illegal immigrants are treated – which, is still better than the way many of our disabled Veterans are being treated.
The health care debate continues as Democratic presidential hopeful’s campaign for a Medicare-For-All plan that is guaranteed to be expensive and disastrous for Americans. Even many Democrats acknowledge that Obamacare has not worked as planned: premiums and deductibles are too high, mandates are too numerous and consumer choices are too few. The industry is ruled by bean counters at insurance companies to the detriment of dedicated doctors, nurses, consumers and small business owners. Yet, instead of working to give people more choice, progressives want to saddle the nation with a single payer system that will put people out of work and burden working families with crippling tax increases.
The progressive’s approach to energy and climate policy is positively infantile. It employs scare tactics, and the exploitation of children as the driving force for a government takeover of our energy industry. The Green New Deal is so obviously an empty, pandering, political policy, that not one Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted for it. It’s time to bring the real grownups back into the room to begin productive and relevant energy discussions.
After two years of resistance against Trump, it’s time that Democrats in Congress accept the results of the 2016 election and do what they were elected to do – work for Americans, not for their own selfish political interests.
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Frank Pallotta, Bergen County resident, is a former banking executive and owner of consumer marketing firm Steel Curtain Capital LLC. He also volunteers with American Corporate Partners (ACP), a nonprofit group that helps active duty military veterans transition back into the workforce.
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