The Sunshine State is finally back in business after years of stagnation and uncertainty — and Florida’s future is blazing brighter than ever thanks to Donald Trump’s rejuvenating policies.
When President Trump delivered his third State of the Union address earlier this month, his message to the American people was simple: our country is thriving like never before, and the best is yet to come.
“This nation is our canvas, and this country is our masterpiece,” the president said as he concluded his remarks. “We look at tomorrow and see unlimited frontiers just waiting to be explored. Our brightest discoveries are not yet known. Our most thrilling stories are not yet told. Our grandest journeys are not yet made. The American Age, the American Epic, the American Adventure, has only just begun!”
The same can certainly be said about the great state of Florida.
For the past three years, I’ve worked with countless families from all around the country who are now proud to call the Sunshine State their home. When I asked why they wanted to move to Florida, their answer was simple — the blossoming economy made it the most attractive place to live in America.
When Donald Trump was elected, our economy was still struggling to recover from the devastating economic recession, which the horrendous policies of the Obama administration only prolonged. The lethargic economic “recovery” during Obama’s presidency didn’t make the job any easier — as 2016 came to a close, Florida’s unemployment rate lingered at a disappointing 4.7 percent.
Since then, though, President Trump’s common-sense, pro-growth economic agenda of cutting taxes for middle-income Americans, slashing burdensome regulations, and securing genuinely fair trade deals has unleashed a tidal wave of job creation that has washed over the entire country. The U.S. economy has added a whopping 7 million new nonfarm jobs since January 2017, including nearly 580,000 new jobs right here in Florida. Thanks to the jobs boom, Florida’s unemployment rate has fallen to 3.0 percent, the lowest level ever recorded.
This economic renaissance touched every part of Florida — small and medium-size businesses like my own were revitalized thanks to the president’s policies, experiencing more growth than ever before. For the first time in years, companies of all sizes are competing for job applicants, eager to expand in the wake of America’s new era of prosperity.
“In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny,” the president declared in his State of the Union address, adding that the country is “moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back!”
Even as President Trump’s economic agenda has put Florida and the rest of the country back on the path of prosperity, though, the Democrats have done everything they can to obstruct his policies and interfere with America’s economic revival.
The Democrats voted — unanimously — against the middle-class tax cuts that saved the average American worker $1,400 on their federal income taxes in 2018. Liberal activist groups have fiercely defended the bureaucratic leviathan erected by President Obama, challenging virtually every single one of Donald Trump’s efforts to eliminate the job-killing regulations that kept our economy stagnant for so long. When they had an opportunity to approve the groundbreaking new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) with strong bipartisan support, Democrat leaders in Congress sidelined the trade deal for nearly a year in a cynical attempt to forestall its benefits until after the 2020 presidential election.
Their consistent failures to undermine this presidency have only made the Democrats even more petulant. Unable to refute the litany of economic accomplishments President Trump recited during the State of the Union address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi melodramatically tore up her official copy of the president’s remarks.
Those sort of petty, childish theatrics won’t change the fact that the Great American Comeback is already well underway. The Sunshine State has made incredible progress over the past three years, and our future looks even brighter.
Julio Gonzalez founded Engineered Tax Services.
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