Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #1253
04/29/2025
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1) Our Favorite Trump First Hundred Day Accomplishments

Tariff turmoil has unfortunately overshadowed Trump’s accomplishments in his first 100 days.

Here is a brief list of some of our favorites:

• Slashing Regulations
  Trump has put an end to Biden's regulatory assault, which cost the economy an additional $47,000 per family over four years.  Trump's "one-in-for-ten-out" deregulation rule will save thousands of dollars per family in extraneous costs.

• Deploying America's Abundant Resources
  The US has more than $45 trillion of natural resources that are accessible with existing drilling and mining technologies. Trump's executive orders are opening up this treasure chest of resources -- which could over time raise up to $150 billion for the federal government in higher royalties and other tax payments.

• Eliminating Federal Waste, Fraud and Duplication
  Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump budget team have already deleted $160 billion of waste, fraudulent payments, unspent funds.  The EPA and DOJ are taking legal action to freeze and recover tens of billions of dollars in grants to green groups that one Biden EPA official colorfully described as "tossing gold bars off the titanic."

• Draining the Swamp
  Fewer than 10% of our 2.4 million federal workers were working full-time in the office under Biden, even though COVID ended four years ago.  Trump has ordered them to show up for work, or be fired.  He has already downsized the federal bureaucracy by more than 280,000 employees and contractors through buyouts and tougher performance standards, saving the taxpayers millions.

• Pulling Out of the Paris Climate Accord - Again
  Biden pushed us back into this crackpot anti-energy and blame-America-first treaty. Trump once again said "we're out of here."

• Firing IRS Agents
  Biden wanted to add some 87,000 new IRS agents. Trump has already fired or offered early retirement to 20,000 IRS snoops and auditors. A simple flat tax will fix the problem of tax compliance.

• Promoting Education Choice for ALL Children
  Trump is the school choice president. He has ordered most of the $80 billion-a-year wasted in Washington at the Department of Education to go straight to the states and parents to expand school choice for all children. Let's hope Congress doesn't stop him.

2) We're Going to Run Out of Americans?

We've warned many times on these pages that the decline in the birth rate in America is a prescription for demographic collapse. Last week, the CDC reported that the U.S. birthrate has fallen to 1.63 births per woman of childbearing age. That's roughly half the reproduction rate of 50 years ago.

The replacement level of fertility is closer to 2.1 kids per woman.

These falling birth rates will create an inverted population pyramid for the U.S. with fewer young people to support aging baby boomers who are mostly retired today.

Thankfully, America has the one golden demographic safety valve: the immigration of millions of foreigners who come at the start of their working years and ease the crisis.

But a nation without children is an empire in decline. The population bomb we were told to worry about in the 1960s has turned into a population bust - which is a lot worse.  We don't know whether to blame this on the young ladies or the men.

But come on young people: be fruitful and multiply.

3) Jordan Rules

The big, beautiful tax bill winding its way through the House and Senate just got a lot better.

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio just posted the draft text of its portion of the bill yesterday and it's a banger.

They would amend the Congressional Review Act (which allows Congress to rescind costly regulatory agency regs) to correct its biggest design flaw. Even if the House and Senate vote to overturn a regulation, the president who issued the regulation can use his veto to save his own rules (except when the presidency has just changed hands). This delegates way too much law making authority to the Executive Branch.

Under the new process proposed by Jordan, any regulation that has a budgetary effect would require affirmative majority approval by the House and Senate to take effect.

This would restore to Congress its role under the Constitution of deciding on issues related to the cost of government, which regulations absolutely are. As we reported last week, Heritage research shows that a regulatory freeze would reduce the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

This would prevent the regulatory pendulum from swinging wildly with each presidential election and stop another unchecked regulatory spree like the ones we had under Obama and Biden in the next left-wing administration.

Kudos to Chairman Jordan.