by
Curtis Coleman, conservative GOP candidate for US Senate
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) voted to borrow another $1.9 TRILLION this past week…and our children are going to pay. What kind of immorality is this that we are recklessly throwing away our children’s future? What happened to us that we care more about our comfort than their freedom?
Of course, Sen. Lincoln had little choice since she and her cohorts in Congress have been consistently spending more than is coming in. It’s called deficit spending. If it continues, it inevitably leads to bankruptcy. Which is where the U.S. is headed on a high-speed train.
There is a very important distinction between a deficit and the debt. Deficit spending means we’re spending more than we’re taking in. Debt is what results from deficit spending. The deficit is how much we are borrowing. The debt is how much we have already borrowed from lenders like China.
So, as a country we have already borrowed $12,400,000,000,000 to finance our deficit spending. That’s our debt. President Obama is now asking us to spend $1,700,000,000,000 more in 2010 than the federal government’s projected income. That amount will be our deficit this year. The result? We’ll have a new total debt of $14,100,000,000,000 at the end of year. Let me bring this closer to home. This debt is not the money somebody else owes. This is the money you owe. The only money the government has is your money.
Your portion is $45,000. Pay up, please! Don’t have it? Well, then we’ll have to borrow it from somebody (probably the Chinese if they’ll still lend it to us). So our children will have to pay it back – plus interest.
Is this really okay with you?
The POLR (Pelosi/Obama/Lincoln/Reid) Administration is now talking about reducing the deficit starting next year. (That’s kind of like me starting a diet- tomorrow.) All that means is that we’ll slow how fast we’re still borrowing money! We must stop deficit spending, but we must also attack the debt. Our country’s debt is a clear and present danger, an urgent matter of national security, and it must be attacked as our worst enemy.
What is the solution?
Well, let’s start with the profoundly obvious: Spend less than we have. When our outgo exceeds our income, our overhead will be our downfall. So, we can either increase our income or decrease our outgo. Or do both!
First, how do we increase our income? The liberals believe we do that by increasing taxes. That approach seems to make sense – but it doesn’t. Our economic history has consistently shown that when we increase taxes, we suppress growth in our economy and discourage initiative and achievement in our people. The government ends up taking a bigger piece of a shrinking pie. This process is a death spiral – and one the U.S. is on today.
What we must do is allow U.S. businesses and individuals to generate more income by (1) reducing taxes and (2) getting a stifling, smothering, anti-business bureaucracy out of our faces, out of our offices, and out of our pocketbooks. Our economic history has consistently shown that reducing taxes creates economic growth. The result is government can take a smaller piece of a much bigger pie and still increase its income. When Americans discover that they get to keep more of the income they generate, they’ll generate a lot more income – and the pie gets even bigger! But government’s intrusion into every aspect of our economy creates huge inefficiencies as businesses and individuals must deal with the demands placed upon them.
Increasing income is only ½ of the solution. We must also decrease our outgo. How do we do that?
The cost of government has gotten too big because the size of government has gotten too big. We reduce the cost of government by reducing the size of government. Easier said than done? You bet!
So where do we start? Well, you can poke the federal government just about anywhere and hit fat, so our choices are almost endless. Let’s start with eliminating some of these bloated, competitive, and duplicative bureaucracies. (I’ve been in the food safety business for the last decade. I’ve been told that there are as many as 17 different federal agencies that regulate food safety. That over-regulation could explain why we don’t have safer food – and a budget deficit!)
We must rein in some terribly out-of-bounds if not out-of-control federal agencies such as the EPA, which has become something like a 21st century American Gestapo. It recently told Congress that it will do by regulation what Congress refuses to do by legislation. When a federal agency blackmails Congress, it is time for that bureaucracy to have its wings clipped and its chain dramatically shortened.
But more fundamentally and much more importantly, we must make a multi-generational commitment to return and reshape the federal government to the original prescription of the Constitution.
The biggest challenge to reducing the size of the federal government is the inevitable battle over what we will be cut and what will be kept. Those decisions – though painful – are not as difficult as they are made to seem. We already have an adopted blueprint for the role of the federal government. It’s called the Constitution of the United States of America. It clearly defines what the federal government is supposed to do, and perhaps more importantly, what the federal government is not supposed to do.
We are far adrift from its prescription. If we’re going to survive this seemingly insoluble situation, we must make the commitment – an indisputable, multi-generational and solemn commitment – to reshape and restore the federal government according to the Constitution’s prescription.
This is the fundamental battle we must fight and win in Congress. We start now and we must not waver nor be deterred. We must put – not just politicians – but leaders in Congress; bulldogs instead of blue dogs; warriors who understand that nothing less than liberty and freedom for our children and their children are at stake.
Thank you for standing with me in this fight for freedom!
*The Lonoke County Tea Party has not endorsed any candidate for the 2010 election cycle. This is posted by the editor for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an endorsement of any candidate.
