RUSH: Now, I have just peppered you with close to 45 minutes of the day’s news on the economy and unemployment and none of it good, right? Now we turn to a column in the New York Post today by Larry Kudlow of CNBC. ‘Don’t Sell America’s Recovery Short — Sometimes, you have to take off your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the US economy’s health. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound after a deep downturn could be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped recovery boom by year’s end. I’m aiming this thought especially at many conservative friends who seem to be trashing the improving economic outlook — largely, it would appear, to discredit the Obama [regime].
‘Don’t do it, folks. It’s a mistake. The numbers are the numbers. And prosperity is a welcome development for a nation that has suffered mightily. Credibility is at issue here. Now, I’ve written much about the tax-and-regulatory threats of the Obamanomics big-government assault. But most of that’s in the future.’ Yes, Larry. This is why they’re worried about double-dip. Anyway, ‘The current reality is that a strong rebound in corporate profits (the greatest and truest stimulus of all), ultra-easy money from the Fed and some small stimuli from government spending are working to generate a stronger-than-expected recovery.’ This is Larry Kudlow of CNBC, a noted conservative.
”Free-market conservatives should tell it like it is. Let’s begin with the March employment numbers recently released by the Labor Department. Those numbers were solid. People say small businesses are getting killed by taxes and regulations from Washington, but the reality is that the small-business household employment survey has produced 1.1 million jobs in the first quarter of 2010, or 371,000 a month. If that continues, the unemployment rate will drop a lot. The corporate payroll number for March also rose by 224,000 (not 162,000 as some claim), with the prior two months being revised up by 62,000. This is being led by private-sector job creation. Just-released data put retail chain-store sales for the year ending in March up a blowout 10 percent.
‘Ten percent. That’s a V-shaped recovery. The real-time purchasing-managers reports for manufacturing and services indicate that the economy in the next few quarters could be much stronger than the consensus expects — maybe 5 to 6 percent. Another V-shaped recovery. Commodity charts, meanwhile, are roaring. All manner of raw industrial materials have been booming: iron ore, steel, you name it. More V-shaped recovery. So with higher commodity prices running almost across-the-board, there’s every incentive for rapid inventory rebuilding. At this point, it’s impossible to project a long-lived economic boom, such as we had following the early ’80s deep recession. For one thing, tax rates will rise in 2011 for successful earners and investors, quite unlike the Reagan cuts of the ’80s.
‘So it’s possible that entrepreneurs and investors are bringing income, activity and investment forward into 2010 in order to beat the taxman in 2011. This would artificially boost this year’s economy, stealing from next year’s economy.’ So we could have a little bit of a dip. ‘Although the Obamacons deny it, tax-rate incentives matter a lot. At some point, monetary policy will tighten, with higher interest rates on top of higher tax rates. That, too, could slow growth markedly next year. Then there’s the dozen tax hikes in the Obamacare bill, and a possible value-added tax attack from Paul Volcker, all of which will work against growth in the out-years. Clearly, we aren’t operating a supply-side, free-market model today. What I wish for is sound money and lower tax rates, which would promote sustainable economic growth.
‘Instead, we’re getting easier money and higher tax rates, which could mean a temporary boom today and disappointingly slow growth after that. But then again, who knows? Maybe the tea-party revolution overturns the obstacles to future growth and the boom is sustained. Free-market populism and a return to Reaganism, along with an anti-federal-spending coalition that is the most powerful force in politics today, could right the economic ship. That’s the credible take.’ This is Larry Kudlow. So to translate and summarize: ‘Hey, we’ve got a V-shaped economic recovery happening right now from inventory replacement, to commodity prices, to Wall Street going up, to corporate and small business employment. We’ve got a V-shaped recovery going on — and all of the pain will start next year and years later when all of Obama’s new taxes and Obamacare gradually kick in.’
Now, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that the out years — and Kudlow is just made the case himself — pose great challenges. But here again is somebody who’s optimistic. He’s optimistic about the effect of the tea party, he wants to be optimistic about what’s happening now and what he writes is in stark contrast to what we’re hearing everywhere and anywhere else — including real life, anecdotal stories from our neighbors and friends and the State-Controlled Media. So his column stands out. So I ran through all of this continuing horribly bad economic news, and then there’s Kudlow today in the New York Post, a little bit of an island. This is also tax week. This is the week you pay the IRS and your state government what you owe. You ever notice when you put the word ‘the’ and ‘IRS’ together, it spells ‘theirs’? T-h-e-I-R-S. ‘The IRS — theIRS?’ But I digress, my friends.
There’s nothing in our future today that even suggests you’ll pay less next year or the year after, as Kudlow has just documented. We are going to have to put forth new irrefutable research showing why and how we must cut taxes. I think most Americans, a majority of them, understand this. They understand what we’re up against. However, for those who don’t, the researchers at the Heritage Foundation have already started such a project. This Thursday they’re conducting their own tax day money bomb, taking a page from Scott Brown’s one day fundraising effort to win a Senate seat. Now, what Heritage is trying to do here is raise $150,000 that’s all meant to support their research on government spending that can be cut and taxes that can be saved. So this Thursday don’t look at it as just the day you must help President Obama pay for the trillions of dollars of new spending that we don’t have, look at it as a day you’re helping countless researchers mount new arguments with real research to make the case for lower taxes in your future, and they don’t lobby just the American people, they lobe at the Heritage Foundation elected officials. They even try to get hold of Democrats. Heritage Foundation’s tax day money bomb is Thursday. All of the details of this are at AskHeritage.org.