Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) unveiled his vision to bring about an “American sunrise” while speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary Celebration on Thursday as he continues to flirt with a bid for the presidency.
Scott began by recounting his journey from trying circumstances in his childhood – when he shared a bedroom with his single mother and brother in a 700-square-foot South Carolina home – to become a member of the United States Congress.
Through his mother and a Chick-fil-A operator who he described as a mentor, Scott said he learned “the goodness of the American people,” how “to work really hard,” and not to “worry about consequences” as “they will take care of themselves.”
However, Scott suggested that the very avenues he took to success are under siege by “the radical left and [President] Joe Biden.”
“Every rung of the ladder I held onto in order to climb out of my very challenging situation, it seems like today, the radical left and Joe Biden are literally attacking the ladder to success I used to climb,” Scott said. “And it’s almost if they have created a blueprint on how to ruin America.”
Scott argued that an attack on patriotism and religion, dependence on China, printing and spending of “trillions of dollars leading to inflation that exceeds 15 percent,” open borders, and establishing a culture of dependency would be hallmarks of such a blueprint.
“This blueprint to ruin America would be so effective that you would have Americans making decisions on the value of other Americans based on how they look, not who they are,” he said.
“But there is good news in every story. Elections have consequences, and the good news is we have one coming up very soon,” Scott added before unveiling his plan for “a new American sunrise .”
He sees a revitalization of patriotism, parents’ rights in education, national security, and border security as focus areas for an “American sunrise.”
“Patriotism has to be back on the ballot,” Scott said. “We have to have a serious conversation: Why we are the country that should be celebrated.”
He added that the founding fathers, though imperfect, “were geniuses to be celebrated, not to be canceled, because we live in the land of opportunity, not the land of oppression.”
On education, he advocated for school choice across the country and said that students should be taught “how to think and not what to think.”
“If we’re going to have a new American sunrise in education, we need to make sure every single parent has a choice so that every single child has a chance,” he said.
“We educate our kids; we don’t indoctrinate our kids,” he went on to continue. “We simply become the party of parents. We don’t send the DOJ after parents and call them domestic terrorists because they show up at school board meetings.”
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Scott then turned his attention to the economy, calling for the tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which then-President Donald Trump signed into law, to be made permanent:
We make the tax cuts in 2017 — the personal side of the tax code that I had the good fortune of writing — those taxes were temporary because of the vehicle of reconciliation that we used to get it done. That $2.5 trillion worth … just expires in the next couple of years. We make those tax cuts permanent, so that you keep your money, you decide your future, and you dream your dreams.
He also advocated for “an incentive-based economy like the opportunity zones” included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, “bringing $200 billion back into the poorest areas of the country.”
Scott said in 2017 that opportunity zones “empowered the governors of each state to designate economically distressed communities that were ripe for investment and tie them to a brand-new federal tax incentive to drive private investment into our nation’s most distressed zip codes.”
He argued Thursday that this would aid in building up America’s supply chains and help in shedding dependence on China. Scott also shared a vision to bolster domestic supply chains by bringing American companies home through tax incentives.
“Think about the future that we will lead over the next American century. It requires for us to beat China and put them in their place,” he said, adding:
It means no more balloons breaching our sovereign territory. It means no more IP theft of our intellectual property. It means no more Chinese Communist illegal police stations set up in a couple of our states. It means no more purchases of our farmlands — actually, we take them back so their surveillance stops. It means no more TikTok figuring how to have surveillance on our kids… The next American sunrise means the strength of our leader is more important than the strength of their leader. Today we are losing the battle because the weakness of the President of the United States is always more important than the strength of President Xi in China.
While speaking of America’s security, Scott zoned in on the nation’s borders, declaring that they must be secure “in order for us to have a new American sunrise.” The vision not only includes a wall along the southwest border, but also mobilizing the “United States military, if necessary, to deal with the Mexican cartels that are transporting enough fentanyl to kill 70,000 Americans.”