A Missouri Congressman who serves as the House GOP Conference Secretary praises those who turned out for President Donald Trump’s (R) visit to Springfield’s Loren Cook on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, R-Salem, rode in the presidential motorcade.
“Seeing people line the streets in Springfield waving their flags and giving a thumbs-up to the president, it was a great welcoming to him to southwest Missouri,” Smith says.
Smith, who represents 30 counties in southern Missouri, says the United States has the highest tax rate in the industrialized world. Smith serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
“If we want to make the United States open for business and we want to unleash the economy and we want to grow jobs, we have to be competitive worldwide,” says Smith.
Critics of the president’s plan include Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Kansas City, who says it will provide tax breaks to billionaires and millionaires.
Congressman Cleaver and others participated in a media conference call on Wednesday, urging Congress not to provide additional tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of working families.
Smith contends the U.S. must increase the gross domestic product, adding that cutting taxes will boost paychecks for workers.
He also says that 90 percent of Americans have to pay someone to do their taxes. He notes the U.S. tax code is more than 70,000 pages.
“It cost Americans last year 250 billion, as in ‘b’, dollars just to figure out how much they owed the federal government,” Smith says.
He says the tax code has been changed more than 6,000 times since 2001.
Smith also tells Missourinet he’s invited President Trump to visit his sprawling 8th District, which stretches from Webster County to Jefferson County, and all the way down to the Bootheel.
Click here to listen to the full interview between Missourinet’s Brian Hauswirth and Congressman Jason Smith, which was recorded on August 30, 2017:
