“The president struck the right tone in his State of the Union on Tuesday night,” said Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) in an address to the NAIOP Board of Directors during their annual meeting on Capitol Hill. “He’s right that more things unite us than divide us, and people want the country to grow. Things are going well – the state of the union is generally pretty strong, but things can be better.”
Crenshaw said that’s why he’s here: to make the argument for what he believes makes the country run stronger and smoother. That includes limited government, and the conviction that we aren’t divided, but are united under one flag. He believes in the traditional motto of the United States: E pluribus unum, or “Out of many, one.”
He said the next few weeks will continue to be tumultuous, as Congress and the president wrangle over border security and what, if any, shape a border wall will take. But Crenshaw is hopeful that the House and President Donald Trump can find a solution together so that the president doesn’t have to take emergency action to fund the project.
Crenshaw said that Congress and the administration need to give the nation a sense that the government is committed to American sovereignty. He said that 400,000 immigrants cross the border into the country each year – a number that he believes is unsustainable. What, he asked, is a reasonable amount of immigration? And how can we come together to have a reasonable and humane conversation about how to manage immigrants already in the country?
Regarding economic growth, Crenshaw emphasized that the 3 percent annual growth we’re experiencing is strong, and wages are picking up as the labor markets tighten. Crenshaw said he wants to keep it that way and believes the administration’s support of business, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is valuable. He is supportive of particular fixes to the tax legislation that are supported by NAIOP, including correcting the drafting error involving the expensing of qualified improvement property (QIP). In the end, he said, the goal is American prosperity.
Photo: Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) (right) and NAIOP’s Vice President for Government Affairs Aquiles Suarez (left).
