Here’s a deal for President Obama and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley: the Republican Party will support both of your proposed hikes in the minimum-wage both nationally and in Maryland, if you agree to support a series of economic policies which will return us to vibrant economic growth. Deal? Granted, I cannot speak for the entire body of elected Republican officials, but I am so confident that a philosophical change in direction will result in strong economic growth, that it will render the President’s arbitrary $1.75 increase in the federal minimum-wage and the Governor’s $2.75 state-wide increase, insufficient to keep pace with the free-market wage increases resulting from the new growth-oriented legislative orientation.

These two PhD level politicians have mastered the art of the political shell-game and they have determined that a new target of opportunity is needed to distract from the recently announced return to negative quarterly growth rates and Maryland’s mass-exodus. A minimum-wage fight is one they relish as any political fight on the issue puts the finishing touches on their paint-by-the-numbers, political self-portraits as defenders of the economically disadvantaged. Why give them this fight and allow them to continue flying this false flag? Republican economic policies already support healthy wage growth for all Americans, the core difference being that these big government politicians support wage increases by fiat while we support greater wage increases through robust growth.

For a real-world example, one only needs to look northwest from Maryland and the cavernous halls of Washington D.C. There, in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields, an economic explosion so profound is occurring that in some areas, the unemployment rate has fallen below an incredible two percent and low-skilled work wages have risen to over $60,000. This is not a talking point but an economic reality, and with the United States and Western Maryland floating on a sea of clean-burning natural gas and middle-class families struggling, politicians had better start leaving their luxurious offices and feeling our economic pain.

We are currently entangled in the worst economic recovery from a recession in American history and wages have suffered as a result. We have been down this road before and the solutions are obvious. Sustained wage growth is only possible through investment and the resulting productivity enhancements which result from it, not from a printing press. Government bureaucrats may insist that they can manufacture value and productive workers through legislative or monetary magic, but the supporting evidence is damning. Deriving more economic output from better quality inputs has always been the engine that drives wage growth and arguments to the contrary are typically ideological and not based in sound economics.

Sending a bold, pro-growth legislative package to the President and Maryland’s Governor, including tax-code reform which eliminates loopholes in exchange for lower marginal rates, dramatic cuts in our confiscatory corporate and our investment-hindering capital gains tax rates, and regulatory reforms which encourage energy production for our abundant natural resources, and offering it as fair trade for our support of a minimum-wage hike is an economic victory for the country and my home state.

Why? Because, while the President’s economic game-plan has produced disastrous results, a change in direction using the aforementioned template will ignite an economic tsunami waiting to reach the shore and will render arbitrary legislative minimum-wage hikes insufficient to meet what is sure to be a resurgent demand for labor and an explosion in wages.

The President and Maryland’s Governor may cynically support this minimum-wage hike in a struggling economy to further divide the country into a fictitious caste-system, but our economic package will render their arguments nonsensical. After all, who wants to fight for a minimum-wage which is lesser than a labor-hungry market wage? If these two blame-first, lead-last politicians want to continue to play politics with American economic security and stability then we should take the gloves off and force them to the bargaining table. We will trade you, maximum economic growth for your minimum-wage, you pick.

Daniel Bongino

Daniel Bongino began his career with the NYPD in 1995 as a Police Cadet while attending The City University of New York full time. During his tenure in the Cadet program, Daniel was a member of the distinguished pattern identification unit which specialized in the identification and apprehension of serial criminals. Daniel proudly joined the ranks of the U.S. Secret Service in 1999 as a Special Agent where he graduated the Secret Service training academy with honors. Beginning his career in the New York Field Office, he was assigned to investigate federal crimes, including but not limited to, computer crimes, bank fraud, credit card fraud, protective intelligence and counterfeiting. His early career was marked by a number of investigative successes. Although the details of his signature investigation are still for official use only, it involved over 300 million dollars in potential financial fraud and a nexus to international terrorism. This joint investigation in cooperation with the FBI, IRS, SSA and a number of local police agencies, was responsible for collapsing a major international fraud ring. The investigation earned Daniel the Department of Justice recognition award, along with other agency specific awards, for excellence in federal investigations. Daniel left the New York Field Office in 2002 to become an instructor at the Secret Service Training Academy in Beltsville, Maryland. He was the project manager for the re-design of the investigative tactics training program which he subsequently taught to incoming trainees. Daniel was awarded a number of commendations for his work in researching and re-designing the investigative curriculum to reflect current trends in federal crime. In 2006, Daniel entered into duty on the elite Presidential Protection Division in the administration of President George W. Bush, graduating at the top of his class in the difficult detail training program. Daniel distinguished himself early by becoming one of the earliest tenured Special Agents to be given responsibility for an operational section of the protective detail. Daniel remained on protective duty during the change in administration to President Barack Obama and again distinguished himself by quickly becoming the highest ranking member of his operational shift of agents. With this distinction came greater responsibility and Daniel quickly rose to the challenge. He was designated as the lead agent responsible for the coordination of the President’s trip to Prague for the signing of the START treaty, his visit to Jakarta, Indonesia, among a myriad of terror threats, and finally as the lead agent responsible for the President’s visit to an active war zone in Afghanistan. With the successful coordination of these historic events, Daniel was awarded a series of commendations and left the protective detail as one of the most distinguished agents in their history. Daniel transferred to the Baltimore Field Office in 2010 where he immediately made an impact on the community, breaking up one of the largest fraud rings in Maryland’s history.

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