Wide open on economy

Ike Brannon is a senior fellow at the Jack Kemp Foundation and has worked on several Republican presidential campaigns.

There’s little benefit to a candidate in providing much in the way of specific economic policies, and since today’s GOP has an increasing number of populists who have little regard for the party’s traditional limited-government stance, a lack of specifics is even more prudent.

Where DeSantis has spoken on a hot-button policy, he has largely avoided saying anything controversial. For instance, while he voted to increase the retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 70 as a member of Congress, he has rejected any change to benefits as governor, which is in line with Donald Trump’s statements on the issue.

DeSantis voted for the 2017 passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut corporate tax rates and individual rates. As governor, he provided a two-year reduction in Florida’s corporate tax rate, but today the rate is at its previous level of 5.5%.

He recently signed a bill that would provide what is claimed to be $1.3 billion in tax relief via a series of sales-tax holidays and passed several other holidays earlier in his tenure. However, economists find that these provide little savings to consumers, as retailers invariably respond to the sharp increases in demand that these engender by keeping prices higher during those holidays.

He has said little about trade, monetary policy or a variety of other economic issues that will likely come up during a campaign. That’s fine for now, but DeSantis should be thinking about a coherent plan to show how he’d move on from the highinflation, high-spending, highregulation Biden years.