America Has Good Reasons to be Proud

At this time of New Year's resolutions, most people realize they will not keep theirs. It's refreshing to know that our president has kept his "resolutions" - the solemn campaign promises he made to the American people. This article discusses just a few of the dozens of promises he has made good on.

I follow the news closely, so I am well-informed about most of President Trump’s accomplishments during his first 11 months in office. But as I researched this article, I was surprised (and very pleased) to see that he has achieved hundreds of successes, some of which even I had not known about.
 
Various writers have published their list of Trump’s top 10, top 20, and even top 81 major accomplishments in 2017. But everyone has their priorities, and today I offer you my thoughts on Trump’s Top Twelve most important actions from a Conservative Christian point of view.
 
You may well question my title. If these are President Trump’s accomplishments, why should America be proud? Well, if we hadn’t elected him, I would be listing the disastrous actions of Hillary Clinton’s first 11 months. So congratulations are due to all who voted for Donald Trump. I would also like to thank the hundreds of thousands of Democrats who would never vote for a Republican, but who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Horrible Hillary. There are more Democrat voters than Republicans, so without these Democrats, Hillary would be advancing Obama’s Socialist agenda today.

Here is a preview of what you will learn about today:
“HUGE” TAX REFORM
RADICAL CHANGES TO THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY
DISMANTLING OBAMACARE
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
MASSIVE DEREGULATION
MOVING OUR EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM
WITHDRAWAL FROM DISASTROUS OBAMA-ERA DEALS
DEFEATING THE ISLAMIC STATE
CUTTING GOVERNMENT WASTE
STANDING UP TO THE UN
SLASHING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BY 85%
SUPPORTING OUR MILITARY AND VETERANS 

Now, on with the show…
 
 
"HUGE" TAX REFORM
 
Trump’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” topped off a year of lesser victories. While he accomplished a lot with administrative actions, and Congress passed many Conservative measures, this was the president’s first major legislative victory. This landmark bill slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, while cutting individual rates for all income tax levels, doubling the child tax credit to $2,000, and dramatically increasing the standard deduction.

This was the biggest tax legislation to be passed since Ronald Reagan’s tax cut bill in 1986. It if did nothing more than that, it would be a historic victory for Conservatives. But it also eliminated the ObamaCare mandate that forced American’s to buy government-approved insurance policies (more on that later), and it opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, which will reduce our dependence on oil bought from terrorist nations.
 
 
RADICAL CHANGES TO THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY
 
Most Conservatives focus on Trump’s early victory when his nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed by the Senate to succeed Justice Scalia last April. This was a fulfillment of a major campaign promise to nominate a strict constructionist and originalist like the late Antonin Scalia. This was certainly a brilliant appointment. In my opinion, if the time ever comes to name a new Chief Justice, Gorsuch will be the man. But Trump did much more in the area of the federal judiciary.
 
Trump smashed a historic record when the Senate confirmed his 12th federal appeals court nominee. This is the first time in U.S. history when a president has made more than 11 appellate appointments during his first year in office. With these appointments, along with several other low-court judges, Trump has radically changed the federal judiciary in less than a year.
 
 
DISMANTLING OBAMACARE
 
Millions of Americans cheered when the repeal of the ObamaCare individual mandate was repealed as part of the tax-cut bill. Among other things, the mandate: 

• Required all citizens to buy an insurance policy, whether they wanted it or needed it. This was, of course, a major violation of individual liberty and the right of the self-determination.
• Imposed a fine (collected by the I.R.S.) on anyone who dared to defy Obama’s edict.
• Forced citizens to buy government-mandated policies, which often included features that many did not want or need (such as addiction coverage for Christians, and pregnancy coverage for post-menopausal women). This dramatically increased premiums and deductibles, making it impossible for millions who previously had health insurance to afford the “new and improved” policies. 

But this is just part of Trump’s methodical dismantling of ObamaCare. He signed an executive order in October that directed federal agencies to rewrite regulations to encourage the offering of cheaper health plans. He also ordered rules changes that will allow consumers to purchase policies across state lines. This will increase competition, and reduce costs. It is a measure that has long been sought by free market Conservatives. Other directives allow trade associations, fraternal groups, and small-business owners to purchase health insurance together, which will give them the lower rates enjoyed by huge corporations. And under the new rules, people who don’t have medical problems would not be required to buy plans that include prescription drug benefits.
 
Since the Democrats and some turncoat Republicans blocked the repeal of ObamaCare, Trump wisely decided to take it apart piece by piece. Soon there will be nothing left of the unconstitutional “Affordable Care Act,” which did nothing to improve care and was anything but affordable.
 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
 
President Trump has made dozens of decisions that have resulted in greater religious liberty, more protection for unborn citizens, and protected for persecuted Christians around the world. Here are just a few.
 
Persecuted Christians: In a reversal of Obama’s policy, Trump declared days after he was inaugurated that Christian refugees suffering persecution in Muslim countries would be given priority over other refugees seeking to enter the United States.

Religious Political Expression: On the annual National Day of Prayer in May, Trump signed an executive order on religious liberty that included a loosening of IRS restrictions, known as the Johnson Amendment, against political activities by tax-exempt religious organizations.
 
Protecting Life: In January, Trump signed an order reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which defunded the International Planned Parenthood Federation and other organizations that promote foreign abortions.Then in May he broadened the scope of the Mexico City Policy to restrict funding to any international health organization that performs or gives information about abortions, expanding the amount of money affected from $600,000 to nearly $9 billion.
 
Also, the Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft of a new strategic plan that states in its introduction that life begins at conception. The personhood of the unborn child is central to the abortion debate — as even the justice who wrote the landmark Roe v. Wade opinion has acknowledged — because, if established in law, it would nullify a “right” to abortion.

Religious Freedom: In October Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Oct. 6 issued guidance to all administrative agencies and executive departments regarding religious liberty protections in federal law in keeping with Trump’s May 4 executive order. The guidance interprets existing protections for religious liberty in federal law, identifying 20 high-level principles that administrative agencies and executive departments can put to practical use to ensure the religious freedoms of Americans are lawfully protected. Among the principles are the fact that “freedom of religion extends to persons and organizations,” “Americans do not give up their freedom of religion by participating in the marketplace, partaking of the public square, or interacting with government” and government “may not restrict acts or abstentions because of the beliefs they display.”

 
MASSIVE DEREGULATION
 
Trump promised to reduce regulations he said were strangling businesses and damaging the economy, and he’s made major progress in this area – despite constant obstruction by Socialist-leaning congressional Democrats. 

• He issued an executive order cutting regulations for small businesses.
• He is working on the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, one of Obama’s pet projects.
• He has expanded oil drilling in the Arctic and Gulf of Mexico and granted a permit to the Keystone XL pipeline that Obama had rejected. 

Another terrible set of regulations put in place under Obama was the Net Neutrality Rules. Recently the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the rules. The move angered consumer groups and tech companies, but Trump sees it as a major win for advocates of less government oversight.
 
When Trump took office he promised to slash two existing regulations for each new one his administration enacted. He said recently that the White House beat its goal “by a lot” this year. (According to some estimates, it has actually been close to twenty regulations repealed for every one enacted.) More than 1,500 regulations have been canceled in his first 11 months, saving taxpayers billions of dollars. He credits the flourishing economy the U.S. has enjoyed in his first year in office to his push for deregulation.
 
 
MOVING OUR EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM
 
Others who have written about Trump’s list of accomplishments have either ignored his recognition of Israel’s right to determine its own capital or have put it low on their lists. It’s high on mine, because: 

• The Bible says that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her. Obama cursed Israel, and we suffered because of it.
• Israel is our only true friend and ally in the Middle East.
• While the U.N. and most of the nations of the world have proven that they are anti-Semitic by condemning Trump’s move, America has always been a friend to Israel and the Jewish people. This is Trump’s way of reversing many of Obama’s insults to the Jewish state. 

Democrats and European Socialists direly predicted that moving our embassy would create a “firestorm” in the Middle East. They also claimed it would derail the “peace process” (which has been non-existent for years). Obviously, they were wrong. The only changes have been that our ties with Israel have been strengthened, and the majority of U.N. nations have proven themselves to be bigots. Those who voted to condemn the U.S. include many that we call allies, including Great Britain, Italy, France, and Germany.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barrack Hussein Obama all promised to move our embassy to Jerusalem as required by a federal law passed in 1995. All broke their promises. Trump is the first U.S. president to keep his promise in this regard.
 
Those who have included this move in their lists have titled it “Declaring Jerusalem the Capital of Israel.” That’s not what happened. Israel, the only entity that has the right to declare the Capital of Israel, made that decision on the first day of its independence. For more on this, read my article,“After 70 Years, US Finally Discovers Location of Israeli Capital!” Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
 
 
WITHDRAWAL FROM DISASTROUS OBAMA-ERA DEALS
 
President Trump has repeatedly promised that he would put America first. Obama always put the “global community” first, as evidenced by many terrible deals he signed on behalf of our country. Trump, bless his heart, is working hard to extricate us from these ruinous agreements.
 
Paris Climate Accord: In June, the president pulled the U.S. out of the global agreement, which, according to a study, would have cost the United States economy nearly $3 trillion. According to the same study, by 2040, 6.5 million industrial jobs would have been lost, including 3.1 million manufacturing jobs.The same Democrats and European Socialists who freaked out about the Jerusalem decision predictably claimed the U.S. would lose prestige in the global community if it walked away from the agreement, which Obama had negotiated without congressional input. Even though some of his closest advisors (including his daughter and son-in-law) strongly advised against it, Trump kept his promise and tore up the costly deal.
 
Adjusting Obama’s Normalization of Relations with Cuba: This summer he delivered on another campaign promise - to roll back the Obama administration’s agreement with Cuba, which Trump contends benefitted the Cuban regime at the expense of the Cuban people.As we have gotten used to with Obama deals, the Communists got almost everything they asked for, and in Trump’s words, “The U.S. got nothing.” He rolled back some of the worst provisions of the deal. He also placed new financial restrictions on Havana over a series of bizarre “sonic attacks” targeting U.S. diplomats in the country.
 
Exiting the Trans-Pacific Partnership: In his first month in officeTrump signed an executive order removing the U.S. from the international trade deal, which critics charged was a monumental compromise to American sovereignty and would take millions of jobs away from American workers.The president called it a “potential disaster for our country,” and promised to negotiate direct one-on-one trade deals with Asian nations.
 
Working on Dismantling the Iran Nuclear Deal: Trump has made no secret of the fact that he agrees with the experts that instead of preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons, it guarantees that they will have them within ten years of the deal’s date. In addition, Obama released over $100 Billion in sanctions funds we had frozen over Iran’s previous broken agreements regarding its nuclear programs. There is no doubt that much of that money has been used to finance terrorism in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Iranian people are demonstrating against the government because they can’t afford food.
 
NAFTA Renegotiation in the Works: Obama was not involved in the NAFTA negotiations, but he supported the pact while he was in office. The Trump administration is working to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. This was yet another deal in which the U.S. came out on the short end of the stick, and Mexico got most of the benefits. Another more basic problem with NAFTA is that it moves us closer to something the Democrats dream about at night: the merging of the three nations into a proposed North American Union similar to the European Union. A new round of negotiations is slated to be held in January, and it is possible Trump could decide to pull the U.S. from that deal as well.
 
 
DEFEATING THE ISLAMIC STATE
 
A strong argument can be made that Obama’s actions created ISIS. Showing weakness before the enemy, announcing our strategies to the world, and pulling our troops out of Iraq prematurely all contributed to creating a vacuum that the fledgling organization filled. This resulted in the Islamic State occupying huge portions of Iraq and Syria. They established capitals (Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria), government programs, and a system of taxation. They were, in essence, a complete terrorist nation which Obama was unable to contain.
 
With a few changes, Trump has dealt a death blow to ISIS in less than a year.

• He changed the Rules of Engagement, something the military had been requesting for years.
• He expanded the military’s authority to carry out air strikes in the Middle East, which experts say broke ISIS’s back.
• He gave commanders in the region more decision-making authority, rather than micro-managing them as Obama had done.
• In March he armed the Syrian Kurds in their fight against the Islamic State, something Obama refused to do due to Turkey’s objections. 

ISIS has seen its numbers decimated, lost huge areas of territory, and was forced out of both its capitals this year. A U.S-led coalition helped to free Mosul from the Islamic State in July, a victory that denied the extremist group the largest city under their control. In early October, coalition forces won another victory when 1,000 Islamic State fighters surrendered as Iraqi Security Forces closed in on Hawija, the last of the terrorist group’s strongholds in Iraq.
 
 
CUTTING GOVERNMENT WASTE
 
Less than three months after his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order directing every federal agency to determine “where money is being wasted [and] how services can be improved.” Although the order did not set a specific number for the cuts, several Cabinet-level departments have already found ways to shrink their payroll and consolidate internal programs.
 
The most sweeping reforms have taken place at the State Department, where Secretary Tillerson has eliminated several coordinators for sanctions policy, offered early retirement incentives to hundreds of career employees, and promised to “redesign” the agency.
 
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has also been busy overseeing the reduction of duplicative programs and wasteful spending. His agency killed 59 guidance and policy documents in June that officials found were obsolete or inefficient.
 
 
STANDING UP TO THE UN
 
Under Trump’s direction, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, announced following the U.N. General Assembly condemnation of the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital that had Washington negotiated a $285 million cut in the global body’s “bloated” budget for next year. Prior to the December vote, Haley warned that the U.S. “will remember this day” when “once again, we are called up to make the world’s largest contribution to the U.N., and we will remember it when many countries come calling on us to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”

The U.S. also withdrew from the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, announced the move will be made before the end of the year. “This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.”

 
SLASHING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BY 85%
 
The Department of Homeland Security released figures in December showing that Trump is delivering on his promise to control illegal immigration and deter would-be border-crossers. Border Patrol arrests dropped to a 45-year low in the fiscal year that ended September 30, down 25 percent from a year earlier.
 
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced December 3 that the Trump administration is withdrawing from the Global Compact on Migration because the pact would “undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders.”
 
The Trump administration has submitted to Congress a 70-point proposal that calls for increased border security, interior enforcement of immigration laws and a merit-based immigration system. It includes funding and completing construction of a southern border wall, improving expedited removal of illegal aliens, protecting innocent people in “sanctuary cities,” ending extended-family chain migration and establishing a point-based system for green cards to protect U.S. workers and taxpayers.

Despite strong Democratic opposition, the House Homeland Security Committee gave first approval to the broad scope of President Trump’s border wall on October 4, clearing a bill that would authorize $10 billion in new infrastructure spending, new waivers to speed up construction, and 10,000 more border agents and officers to patrol the U.S.-Mexico line.

 
SUPPORTING OUR MILITARY AND VETERANS
 
Trump has often said that he “loves” our troops and veterans. His actions this year have shown that. He has worked to rebuild military strength, which Obama promised to reduce by 50%. When Trump took office, many parts of our military strength and readiness were at lower levels than they were at the end of WWII.
 
He elevated the Department of Defense’s Cyber Command to the status of Unified Combatant Command in August. This is the first time a president has recognized what many experts have been saying for years: that cyber warfare against the U.S. is one of the greatest threats to our national security.
 
He directed the military not to move forward with a controversial Obama mandate to allow transgenders to be recruited into the armed forces. In addition to the damage to troop morale, the military would have been forced to pay for the huge medical costs of military personnel who decided they were really not the gender they were born. For those who had already “transitioned”, tax dollars that should be used for training and readiness would instead be spent on expensive hormone treatments.
 
President Trump signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act in August, streamlining the lengthy process that veterans undergo when appealing disability benefits claims with the VA. More than 470,000 veterans are awaiting decisions regarding their appeals. The Veterans Affairs administration is the first agency to post information on employee disciplinary action online.
 
Trump also signed the Veterans Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in June to allow senior officials in the VA to fire failing employees and to establish safeguards to protect whistleblowers. The department reported it had fired more than 500 employees since January 2017 and suspended nearly 200 as part of the president’s efforts to restore integrity and accountability.
 
Finally, he signed the Veterans Educational Assistance Act last August, which provides educational benefits to veterans, service members and their family members, including tuition, fees, books, housing and other additional costs.

 
Many of my readers are hearing about many of these accomplishments for the first time. Why do you think that is? And why was I unaware of some of them, in spite of closely following all national news? The answer is simple. The mainstream media sets the agenda for what we are allowed to see and hear. And they have an unreasoning, abiding hatred for our president. On average, they publish ten negative stories about Trump for every positive one.
 
Why do they hate him? Perhaps because he has proven them wrong so many times. They said he would never run for president. They said he would never be nominated by the Republicans. And they said so many times that he could never be elected that they convinced most Americans – even those who voted for them. In fact, a national poll taken just before the election gave him only a 7% chance of winning.
 
In his inaugural speech, President Trump said, in part, "We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions."

"Together, we will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together, we will make America great again."
 
He has made a great start at fulfilling these promises in this, his first year in office. Please pray for our president as he labors to serve our nation in the face of tremendous undeserved resistance.