In Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz called Obamacare “the biggest job-killer in America.” Chris Wallace had asked Cruz what he would do to bring manufacturing jobs back to Detroit (the site of the debate) and the rest of the country, and the Texas senator replied, “The way you bring manufacturing back to America is, number one, you lift the regulations. As president, I will repeal Obamacare, the biggest job-killer in America.” After mentioning other onerous federal regulations and his proposed tax plan, Cruz added that “when we compete on a fair and level playing field, American ingenuity can beat anyone. But right now, the federal government isn’t giving us a level playing field.”
Cruz mentioned Obamacare several more times in the debate, more than any other candidate. In his first answer of the night, Cruz talked about Obamacare in the context of Main Street economic woes:
“Well, Megyn [Kelly], you know, at the end of the day for the folks at home, this is not about the insults back and forth between the candidates. This is not about what attacks we can throw at each other. This is the people at home who are struggling through seven years of Barack Obama. This is the single moms who are working two and three jobs, 28, 29 hours a week because their hours have been forcibly reduced because of Obamacare. This is the truck drivers and the steel workers and the mechanics with calluses on their hands who have seen their wages not grow year after year after year while the cost of living goes up. This is all the young people coming out of school with student loans up to their eyeballs that aren’t able to find a job.
“And I don’t think the people of America are interested in a bunch of bickering school children. They are interested in solutions, not slogans. It’s easy to say, make things better, make things great. You can even print it and put it on a baseball cap. But the question is, do you understand the principles that made America great in the first place? As president, I will repeal every word of Obamacare. I will pull back the regulators that are killing small businesses.”
This sort of Obamacare-focused economic message should resonate with voters, and perhaps particularly with those who have been drawn to Donald Trump.
Jeffrey H. Anderson is the author of “An Alternative to Obamacare.”
