The growing Trump economy has already lifted millions of American families out of poverty and given them hope for a more prosperous future.
According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), nearly 6 million Americans have stopped using food stamps since Donald Trump took office — a figure that closely matches the total number of new jobs created under President Trump.
That correlation underscores the reality that jobs, not government handouts, are the only effective way to reduce poverty, which in turn explains why this president has achieved so much more success on that front than his predecessor.
During the first two years of President Obama’s administration, the total number of food stamp recipients increased by a whopping 33.5 percent, or about 11 million people. When Obama took office, 33.49 million Americans were enrolled in the program, with benefits totaling $50.36 billion. By 2011, 44.71 million recipients were collectively drawing a jaw-dropping $71.813 billion in food stamp benefits.
Fortunately, President Trump knew that expanding the size of the welfare state would do nothing to help millions of struggling American families regain self-sufficiency. Therefore, Donald Trump has implemented an economic agenda that truly empowers American workers by allowing them to keep more of what they earn.
Thanks to the president’s tax cuts, for instance, married couples with two children saved an average of about $3,000 on their federal income taxes in 2018. In addition, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enabled utilities to reduce electricity prices by billions of dollars, further easing the pressure on the budgets of working families.
The most significant impact of President Trump’s pro-growth agenda, of course, has been the millions of new jobs created over the past three years. Not only has the national unemployment rate hovered at a 50-year low for months, but blacks and Hispanics have achieved the lowest jobless rates ever recorded. Meanwhile, wages are increasing rapidly for workers at all income levels.
But that’s not all this president has done to combat poverty.
In order to promote development in some of the most economically distressed communities in America, the White House implemented a system of tax incentives that will drive an estimated $100 billion worth of private capital investment in thousands of “Opportunity Zones” throughout the country.
The program allows state and local leaders to select the communities most in need of economic revitalization, and developers receive federal tax breaks for providing new jobs, affordable housing, infrastructure improvements, and other much-needed investments in those areas.
In other words, the Opportunity Zones initiative is the epitome of the “teach a man to fish” approach that guides this administration’s economic agenda.
President Trump’s commitment to creating economic opportunity for all Americans is helping millions of families climb out of the poverty trap set for them by the welfare state, giving them a chance to break free from the cycle of dependency once and for all.
Harlan Hill is president of the Logan Circle Group and an advisory board member for the Trump-Pence 2020 re-election campaign.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.