During Tuesday’s presidential primary debate, Democrats continued their embrace of policies that would make our country poorer, less free, less safe and less fair.
Sanders attacked the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) negotiated by President Donald Trump, yet omitted that USMCA is expected to increase annual US agricultural and food exports by $2.2 billion, according to the US International Trade Commission. He also touted his “free college” for all proposal, ignoring as USA Today reports, that “People with higher debts often have higher earnings, especially people who went to graduate school such as lawyers or doctors. They’re more able to pay off their loans — and loan forgiveness would make them very wealthy very quickly.”
Pete Buttigieg’s disdain for President Trump’s leadership in stepping away from the flawed Iranian nuclear deal naively dismissed that the deal lifted sanctions, enabling the bankrolling of terrorist operations for Iranian-backed proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and throughout the region.
Even as former Vice President Joe Biden tried to denigrate President Trump’s foreign policy, he neglected to mention that President Obama’s national security adviser Gen. James Jones said the Trump administration was “absolutely correct” to kill top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and that “history will say that this was the right thing to do.”
All of the Democrats onstage, with the exception of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, endorsed a ban on fracking, but none of the candidates acknowledged that the resulting shale boom from fracking has helped make the US less dependent on Middle East oil, thus protecting our gas prices from the whims OPEC nations, especially Iran. This gas price stability also helps the poor and middle classes, who spend a higher share of their budgets than the rich on transportation.
There may have been fewer candidates onstage during tonight’s debate, but their policies provided no greater clarity about what would actually work to protect our freedoms, grow our economy and strengthen America’s forgotten men and women.