Trump Can Do Better Than Tariff 'Dividends' and 50-Year Mortgages

New Jersey is still a blue state, and while Virginia went red four years ago, it's been trending Democratic for more than a decade.

Republicans also fared poorly in Pennsylvania, however, an all-important presidential battleground.

Democrats even made inroads deep into the South, taking two state senate seats in Mississippi -- ending a GOP supermajority -- and picking up city council spots in South Carolina and Florida.

With results like these, the Republicans' razor-thin majority in Congress won't survive the midterm elections a year from now.

And that means the Trump administration, which came roaring back to power in January, will face implacable legislative opposition in its final two years.

Decisions the president makes now will determine not only the Republican Congress's fate and how his own last years in office play out, but also whether the GOP goes into 2028 prepared to hold onto the White House.

With the stakes the highest they will ever be, Trump has to focus on voters' most basic measure of happiness: the state of the economy.

Is 3% annual inflation satisfactory, or does that make Americans feel like Joe Biden never left?

Beef prices are well above the inflation rate, and while home prices are rising more slowly than inflation, the elevated interest rates needed to keep inflation under control make taking on the debt to buy a house more burdensome.

To address the latter, the administration has floated the idea of creating 50-year mortgages, as if what Americans really want is to spend an extra two decades paying off a home with lower payments month by month.

A half-century mortgage would turn homebuyers into something closer to renters, with their banks as their landlords -- only maintenance and home repairs won't be the landlord's responsibility, they'll be the mortgagor's.

That's not the American dream. That's 21st-century serfdom: laboring for a lifetime without owning property of your own free and clear.

The president wants the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates even at the risk of sparking more inflation, in the hopes a growth boom fueled by easy credit will generate real prosperity that outstrips the rise in prices.

He's even promising to send Americans $2,000 stimulus checks as "dividends" from tariff revenue.

Yet the administration is making some wise moves, including opening parts of the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for resource development.

With China aggressively using its rare-earth metals as leverage in trade negotiations, the need for America to develop its own natural resources is urgent.

Even the Barack Obama administration reaped the benefits of expanding domestic energy production during the fracking boom.

Escalating electricity bills, which voters associate with the rush to build new AI data centers, are one source of Americans' present discontents, and that's all the more reason for the administration to prioritize energy and natural resources.

Paring back regulation is one step in that direction -- but extracting and refining rare-earth metals and other valuable commodities is a messy business.

The answer is to make research and development of cleaner processing methods a priority alongside cutting red tape.

Can the artificial intelligence industry that contributes to the problem of higher energy costs also bring about breakthroughs that provide a solution?

America supplies the conditions that AI needs to flourish -- and AI has to start reciprocating, providing the nation with new means to prosper, sooner rather than later.

Trump's tariffs have given American companies powerful incentives for developing industry at home -- and they've given foreign nations reason to invest here to secure better trade terms with the administration.

The next step is to build up advanced industrial capacity in the sectors we need most, starting with energy and environmental protection to be achieved through technology that aids development, rather than regulatory bureaucracy that holds it back.

Not only will well-paid new jobs spring up quickly, as they did when fracking techniques first matured, but more energy will make possible more economic activity of all kinds, a virtuous cycle of growth and technological improvement.

That approach promises to generate real-world returns that will not only overcome the ill effects of inflation but also lower prices for everything, as production methods become more efficient and are made cheaper by abundant energy.

"Drill, baby, drill" were some of Trump's favorite words on the campaign trail last year.

But they also imply "learn, baby, learn" and "build, baby, build," with science supporting energy, energy supporting industry, and industry turning science into applications.

Financial finagling, whether in the form of 50-year mortgages or tariff stimulus checks, isn't the answer -- a rebirth of industry, enabled by American energy, is what the nation needs.

It was a nasty, culture of death thing for Watters to say

I despise this hate boomers thing.

We didn’t do it to our elders. And Watters is not the only one.

It is also not helpful

The government has been allowed to run things. We can talk about generational responsibility all day long

But if we go there we have to see that Trump as a baby boomer is the only one even trying. And we are supporting him, praying for him, voting for him

It is very difficult for real estate prices to go down. Trump as a real estate expert has already said this

Young adults have a challenge. They have to look at the economy and see what they are going to did to make money. Get credentialed. Put away the drugs and booze - which they really do. They drink less than we did But too much partying in college

Boomers need to get onto school boards and stop the dumbing down of kids

Daniel McCarthy is like every other Monday morning QB, in that they look at certain things, while ignoring a host of other things, and place the blame on the person who inherited the mess, as being the mess they created.

First thing that came along was a plandemic to help facilitate the theft of the 2020 election. Which brings us to the second item being the successful election theft which installed Joe Bideen. That usurping administration did not rightfully, or lawfully, win did the following. They threw the gates of the U.S.A. wide open to evetyone, willing to risk coming here, entry with no questions asked.

Pandemic? What pandemic? While the nation's citizens were locked down and illegally forced to follow eules under the false claims of being science, illegal were waved right in wiyh zero concern what alments thwey might be bring in.

So, we had illegal aliens invading this nation, numbering in the 10s of millions, which in turn placed more strain that required greater spending by the governments at all levels, Federal, State & local to provide assistance to these millions of invaders, whom the majority were conveniently of military aged males.

With already growing numbers of homeless ending up on the streets of every major city, we now had this large influx of invaders, which of course negtively impacted housing along eith all other resources, not for illegals who were givern preference, but to citizens. More government spending for housing & food in order to replace the dwinding voter base of the Democrat Party.

Crime rates rose, which further required more governmet spending at all levels, which means that the citizens were now paying to take vasre of these illegal aliens for everything, inclusing healthcare costs and now incarcerations costs also, which were even more costly. To add insult to the ctizens were the numbers who faced vicious injurous attacks & in far too many cases deaths. Which only added to the burdens placed upon the victim citizens & their famlies.

Next, the Biden Asministration decided to make the decision to start a proxy war, that many on both sides of the political aisle hailed as being the best expendeture of tazpayer money ever, with the stated goal as being to weaken Russia militarily by further expansion of NATO, and a sizeable number on this board that bought into that nonesense. That "brilliant" move only increased the need for more government spending which raised the expasnding debt to even higher levels.

Then Congress, again on both sides of the political aisle, decided to raise the spending levels even higher to increase presure on the dollar which devauled it & spured on the inflationary rise in goods & services for the citizens who pay the taxes.

Lastly, not only did Congress abandon their jobs they were elected to do, which is of course to pass responsible budget bills, and instead relied upon CRs that kept the spending at their elevated levels for those 4 yeats of the "Biden" Andministration adding more national debt, while states & local governments did the same, and then tried to raise the taxes collected from the taxpayers.

This same process followed into the Trump Administration, because hey, Congress can't do their job, and to drive that point home they refused to pass the CR, after the One Big Beautiful Bill was expiring. Instead, they decided to close down the government as they demanded that the CR contain yet an additional 1.5 trillion to pay for the healthcare, of not only citizens on the ACA, but also their new replacement voters/supporters, the illegal alien invaders they had ushered in.

Daniel McCarthy noy only conveniently omits mentioning any of the above contributing factors that President Trump inhereited, he also fails to offer any solutions whatsoever, which I counted only one other Freeper mentioning in his comment.

What hogwash, (Note: If this wassn't a family friendly board, I yhink I would have used different pajoritives to call this garbage hit piece that really doesn't deserve the bahcwidth that it was provided.)

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