Experiment in trickle-down government hurts middle class
In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.
The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
The President's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.
In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.
Declare a multi-year moratorium on new rules of any kind
Federal agencies have acted as if nothing mattered but their chosen mission, as if no new cost they piled onto a staggering economy might be too much to bear. Aside from a revamped tax system, no move the nation could make would be more pro-growth,
pro-jobs, and pro-solvency than some kind of regulatory relief. The best and most direct way to do this would be to declare a multiyear moratorium on new rules of any kind.
As an alternative, we could commit to a period of self-certification, in which businesses would agree to meet standards of emissions, effluents, reclamation, and so forth, and proceed to build, retool, drill and employ
Americans now, rather than wasting time and money begging for the government's permission. Any employer later found to have fallen short of the standards could be sanctioned heavily. In the meantime, we'd be growing our economy and getting back to work.
People who are coached to shift the cost of their own bad luck, or their own mistakes, to their neighbors are actually being told, "You are incompetent." People who are supplied with increasing amounts of money transferred from their neighbors in
an open-ended fashion by the force of government are being told, "You are not fit to provide for yourself and your family." Those who are described as helpless victims, at sea in an ocean of private-sector sharks, are being told: "You are incapable of
looking out for yourself." Every expansion of public power shrinks the citizen, automatically and axiomatically. Americans accepting these premises are not the kind of citizens Jefferson hoped to educate.
Beyond all the arguments about spending, taxing, deficits, health care, regulation--and on and on--lies the largest decision of all: What kind of people do we want to be?
