The McCarthy Stock Rally

The market is booming as the GOP leader closes in on his speakership, but the GOP has lots of work to do to thwart Biden’s radical agenda, pronto.

AP/Alex Brandon
Representative Kevin McCarthy stands as he is nominated for a 12th time as the House meets for the fourth day to elect a speaker, January 6, 2023. AP/Alex Brandon

Updated at 9:40 A.M. E.S.T.

How about this for a Friday column: I’ve got good news. Stocks are booming, with the Dow up more than 700 points, and the jobs report was okay — not a recession, but the interesting wrinkle was a very soft wage number that sooner or later will call off the dogs at the Fed from completely destroying the economy.   

Don’t get me wrong, hard-working folks making a good wage is never a bad thing. The problem is a million PhDs at the Federal Reserve board who hate wage increases. That is, except their own. Just saying.  

Then there’s Representative Kevin McCarthy, who finally secured his speakership in a dramatic late-night vote on the 15th ballot. He was so deep in the red zone that he had to pull a quarterback sneak himself to get into the end zone. Good for him.  

So, just to have a little fun, is this the Kevin McCarthy stock rally? Is this the end of big-government socialism? Maybe not, but the change in House rules and policies is sure going to thwart President Biden’s spending craze and his constant efforts to raise taxes on American businesses and successful earners.  

Make no mistake, the new GOP House with its power of the purse and oversight functions has plenty of work to do, pronto. There’s a big story today in the Washington Times about Mr. Biden’s regulatory binge in his continuing effort to radically transform the American economy. 

Mr. Biden has unleashed a tidal wave of red tape, nearly tripling the number of the most costly regulations from the Trump era, as he works overtime to impose his left-wing progressive policies focusing on climate change, social justice, equity, diversity, clean air and water, and lord knows what else.  

Right now, the Bidens are cooking up 2,651 new rules through the SEC, the FTC, the EPA, the Labor Department, and the Energy Department. No private sector business will be immune.  

Under a new report called the Unified Regulatory Agenda, Mr. Biden has put up 332 “economically significant” proposed rules, each of which would cost the economy at least $100 million a year.  

President Trump was deregulating, remember? Businesses were free to prosper, remember? Entrepreneurial success was rewarded, remember? Not anymore.  

Can the new Republican House stop this war on fossil fuels, and virtually every other business? Well, it can surely put up a fight. Appropriators can defund — just take the Reins Act, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act. “In need of scrutiny”: Got that right.  

This is woke economics at its worst. This is redistributionism, and socialism, and radical climatism — all wrapped up in one anti-prosperity package. So, these are all huge reasons why Mr. McCarthy and company, now that they seem to have sorted things out, have got to get to work, fast. 

A long-awaited study from the energy department has finally come clean about the cost of Mr. Biden’s shutdown of the Keystone XL pipeline. According to his own energy people, the shutdown cost nearly 60,000 jobs and $9.6 billion in economic benefits.  

You know what, though? Even more, the Keystone XL pipeline shutdown has prevented an additional 830,000 barrels of crude oil flowing from Canada that could’ve been pumped into the U.S. Today, we’re still short more than a million barrels of oil, compared to pre-pandemic levels. The Keystone would’ve given us almost another million.  

That would’ve knocked down energy prices even more, without weakening American national security by depleting the strategic petroleum reserve as Mr. Biden did for cheap political gasoline price-fixing.  

This is another key area for the new Republican Congress. Let’s open the spigots for oil and gas production, pipelining, refining, and LNG development. Let’s throw out ultra-radical unscientific climate nostrums and put some common sense back into the picture, so working people can afford heating, electricity, and driving.  

So, the GOP has got a lot of work to do. It’s all good that Kevin McCarthy got himself into the end zone. He will make a fine speaker.  

So, why not? I’m calling this 700-point Dow bulge: the McCarthy Rally.  

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.


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