DV Journal

Below is an edited transcript of U.S. Sen. Tim Scott’s address to the Republican Jewish Committee on September 5, 2024.

One year ago, Israel was attacked. Homicidal terrorists had desecrated Israeli communities, bombarding and invading the Jewish state.

So many innocent men, women, and children — killed in cold blood on their own soil. And many more carried off as hostages.

We were stunned. But it was also a time of clear-eyed resolve.

We knew that America had to stop sending love letters and wire transfers to the terrorist supporters in Tehran. We knew that Republicans had to unite and bring an end to this failed Biden-Harris Administration that pays lip service in public to Israel while undermining them behind closed doors.

We were also confronting something deeper than policy failures. In our city streets, on our college campuses, we saw how the rot of anti-Semitism had spread throughout our institutions here at home.

And we resolved that we would cut out that cancer.

One year ago, I gave the terrorist sympathizers a few reminders.

Getting a federal subsidy for your education is not a right. It’s a privilege. Getting a student visa so you can be a guest in our country is not a right. It’s a privilege.

Let’s talk about what is a right: The right of Jewish Americans to walk their own neighborhoods in safety. The right of Jewish students to study and worship in peace.

It turns out a lot can change in one year

The elites who coddle anti-Semitism have seen enormous scrutiny. And many of them have gotten pink slips.

The president of the University of Pennsylvania — gone. The president of Columbia — see ya! The president of Harvard — hit the road, jack, and don’t come back. Two of the craziest Israel haters in the House Democrat caucus lost their own primaries.

Americans overwhelmingly support Israel over Hamas. We are the mainstream. We are on the right side of history. The vast majority of the American people count themselves as members of our parade — and we’re on the march.

Our work isn’t finished, not even close — but we’re beginning to put the cancer of anti-Semitism back into remission.

But there’s a problem.

There is one institution in America where the regime change ran in the other direction.

One powerful place, where a leader who half-heartedly supported Israel was forced out and replaced with somebody who the radical, anti-Israel, far left likes much better.

It’s called the Democratic ticket for 2024.

Joe Biden has been a weak, disloyal partner for our friends in Israel. He’s slow-walked. He’s equivocated on the world stage. He’s emboldened Israel’s enemies and meddled in Israeli politics.

But even so, the radical left thought President Biden was too pro-Israel.

All those same people seemed mighty happy when Joe Biden was shoved off stage for the coronation of Kamala Harris. She’s pretending to sprint back towards the middle.

The Democrat Party and the corporate media are working overtime to rebrand this radical San Francisco liberal as some kind of centrist. She ran for President on racial reparations, socialized medicine, and open borders. And now these people want us to believe she’s somewhere between Bill Clinton and Barry Goldwater.

Just how dumb do they think we are?

I know Kamala Harris. I served in the Senate with Kamala. I’ve seen her in action. She’s going to pretend to be a moderate for the next nine weeks. And the media will bend over backwards to help her.

But come Inauguration Day that mask of moderation would fall right off.

The failed Joe Biden foreign policy we see today — with a weak America, an emboldened Iran, land wars in Israel and Europe, and terrorists on the march — would be the absolute best case scenario under President Harris.

There’s a reason why the radicals and the socialists and the anti-Semites were popping champagne corks when the Democrats coronated Kamala Harris.

It’s our job to make sure they aren’t drinking champagne on November 5th.

The stakes for America and the stakes for Israel are even higher today than they were two months ago. We have nine weeks to continue our momentum and keep building on our success where it matters most.

We have nine weeks to re-elect the best friend and partner the Israeli people have had in the White House in our lifetimes — President Donald J. Trump.

And we have nine weeks to put the most liberal presidential nominee in American history out to pasture.

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For another point of view, see: Point: An Economic Agenda for the People

Right problem, wrong solution. It’s one of the most familiar stories in politics.

Thanks to inflation, every American is paying higher prices for groceries and housing than before the pandemic. But politicians’ proposed solutions would make those problems even worse.

The right solution is to attack inflation’s root cause, a money supply that ran amok during COVID. When the amount of money grows faster than the amount of real goods and services, you get inflation. Conversely, inflation stays low when money and goods grow in sync.

In September 2024, we’re most of the way back to that point, but keeping inflation low for the long haul means reducing deficit spending, which neither party will do.

Instead of fiscal and monetary restraint, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris pledged to enact a grocery store price gouging ban “to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”

A problem with this is that the industry average for grocery store profits is 1.6 percent. This leaves little room for price gouging. For context, the stock market averages an 8 percent return.

This is a perfect example of the right problem, wrong solution dynamic. Price controls have failed everywhere they have been tried because they aim at symptoms of inflation and not its root cause.

Since COVID-19, grocery prices have risen at about the same rate as overall inflation. Inflation is the culprit here, not a sinister CEO cabal. Over the last year, grocery prices have gone up slower than inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While overall inflation was 2.9 percent over the last year, food prices rose 2.2 percent.

Housing prices also have a right problem, wrong solution story. Unlike groceries, housing prices are going up faster than inflation. But even here, price controls and price gouging laws will not make housing more affordable. The best way to make housing more affordable is to build more housing.

Instead, President Biden floated a plan to cap rent increases at 5 percent annually. Harris endorsed the plan soon after becoming the nominee. Rent controls create shortages. They reduce housing construction. They reduce the maintenance of existing housing. This has been the experience everywhere, from San Francisco to Minneapolis.

There just isn’t much the federal government can do here. Zoning laws and permits are mostly set at the state and local levels. Modernizing local codes and taking on NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activists in city council meetings is a city-by-city project for which presidential candidates can’t take credit.

Harris’ rent control proposals are about virtue signaling, not substance. On an issue with little federal role, Harris is letting voters know she still hears their problems and wants to do something about it. That is a good message, but Harris supporters should not be defending price controls on the merits.

There are a few things the federal government can do. It can speed up federally required environmental reviews, which can average 4.5 years to complete before construction may begin. Removing tariffs on building supplies like steel and lumber can save thousands of dollars on homebuilding costs.

Instead of those helpful things, the administration is up to something else highly unhelpful.

The Justice Department has sued RealPage, which uses AI technology to comb through comparable real estate listings in various markets and suggest rents to landlords. This price-fixing lawsuit will do nothing to increase the housing supply.

It could actually keep rents higher for longer. RealPage’s algorithm brings price signals to markets faster than going through listings manually. If housing supplies do increase and rents go down, it will take longer to show up in market prices without algorithmic help, and landlords will collect higher rents for longer than if RealPage were allowed to operate.

Republicans are no better. Donald Trump’s proposed 20 percent across-the-board trade tariff would cause at least as much damage as Harris’ price controls. New tariffs would pile onto existing steel and lumber tariffs.

Both parties have identified the right problem — rising prices — but have proposed the wrong solutions. Our best hope is that these Harris and Trump policy promises are empty campaign rhetoric.