Buckeye Reporter

Last week, President Joe Biden took to the airwaves to give Americans a briefing on the beleaguered supply chain that is making the holidays a little less bright for many of our friends and neighbors. Using a well-worn page from the Left’s playbook, he cherry-picked a few seemingly positive statistics to describe the economy and immediately declared that everything was fine!

But don’t despair, I didn’t sit down this morning only to rail against the President and tell you all everything that he said with which I disagree. Not today! After all, it’s the Holidays…so in the spirit of the season I’d like to give Joe Biden a little bit of credit and tell you about a couple ideas he got right.

About halfway through his comments, the president declared that, “more of what we buy in America should be also made in America.” Hallelujah! I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have President Biden agree with an idea that I’ve been pushing since my first day in the Ohio General Assembly. Sadly, getting Americans to buy more American-made products isn’t a policy initiative that can be wished into reality. It requires common sense policies that create an environment in which homeborn manufacturing can again become commonplace and profitable. While the president failed to offer any ideas to bring an America-first policy to fruition, I’m none-the-less pleased that he’s finally adopting a policy goal long advocated by conservatives.

That’s not the only thing he got right. Biden declared that one of the keys to solving that supply chain crisis is cutting government red tape to create efficiencies in the shipping world. Amen! I’ll support even a meager sign of efficiency in government.

These are rare moments of lucidity for the president and his administration, which has sought to grow our bureaucracy and governmental influence. As president of the Ohio Senate, the cornerstone of my legislative agenda was cutting red tape and eliminating burdensome government bureaucracies that prevent Ohio businesses from succeeding. I welcome the president to this area of economic promise land.

Of course, lip service isn’t the same as creating common sense solutions and business-friendly policies, like those we’ve created here in Ohio over the last decade. If the president were serious about cutting red tape, particularly in the supply chain, he would remove one of the key restrictions on interstate travel.

Right now, as our nation faces a shortage of truck drivers, bureaucratic red tape prevents any licensed, professional driver under the age of 21 from transporting goods across state lines. So, an 18-year-old truck driver in Cincinnati can haul goods from Blue Ash to Cleveland, around a four-hour trip. But that same 18-year-old can’t make the 30-minute drive from across the Ohio river to the Amazon Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

In a state like Ohio, where nearly half of the United States’ population lives within 500 miles of our border, we have a working population that is ready and able to act as a foundation in solving the supply chain crisis.

The economic challenges facing our country are big, and the government’s response has so far been too slow. President Biden reversed many solutions implemented by the Trump White House, but now seems to pin his hope for economic recovery upon similar ideas.

We’ll take it.

Eliminate red tape. Allow Americans to do what they do best: meet the challenges of the day with grit and tenacity. Get government out of the way! That is the answer.

Now we wait to see if President Biden means what he says or is simply trying to say what he thinks people want to hear.

I hope he means it, and I stand ready to help. Just as I know that so many Ohioans, and residents across the country, stand ready to dig deep, show resolve, and weather this storm in the new year. After all, in times of crisis the eyes of our nation always turn to its most reliable resource: We the People.

Keith Faber is the Ohio auditor of state.