The strength of a nation rises and ebbs over time. Strength - fiscal, moral, social, political - increases when a nation creates the opportunity for all of its citizens to pursue their hopes and dreams to the best of their own ability. People free to make their own way have invariably created more opportunity for those around them and given more freely to those less fortunate. A nation's strength ebbs away when its government takes freedom away from its people, no matter the professed motive of said government.
Our country became great by making more and more people more and more free over time. The process was not perfect and mistakes were made, but in the course of history no country made more such progress. And as freedom grew, so did creativity, productivity and the wealth of our nation. America led the world in manufacturing, agriculture and innovation and spread them around the globe. We made the planes, trains and automobiles, and the loans to export them to the world. In the process, America made all those willing to work, those who recognized that rights also bring responsibilities, more prosperous and free.
But sadly our strength now ebbs away because we are no longer a nation of makers. Ruled by a government bureaucracy run amok, we have become a nation of takers. Half of Americans pay no income tax. They take the benefits our great country provides but contribute nothing to producing them. We take the goods now produced overseas since we no longer make them, and pay for them with the loaned money we have taken from those same countries selling us what we no longer make.
This new economic model is clearly unsustainable. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher - eventually we're going to run out of people to take from. Only if we return to making - making people more free from government, making products here in the U.S., making people responsible for their own actions and free to reap their own rewards - will we once again thrive as a nation.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
A Message to my Senator
Senator,
You must vote AGAINST Harry Reid’s attempt to bring his 2,000+ page health reform bill to the Senate floor (and why did the Senate bill grow from 1,500 pages to over 2,000 – did Harry just want to make sure his was bigger than Nancy’s?).
Exactly one month ago I sent you a message thanking you for voting against Harry Reid’s attempt to scam the American people by passing the “doctor fix” separately from the health reform bill. Now he’s trying the opposite trick – passing the health reform bill without the “doctor” fix. And he’s trying to do it in such a way that only 51 votes will be needed for final passage of the bill, rather than the usual 60.
Harry Reid’s health care bill is an outright scam and a shell game, and an economic disaster in the making. It’s easy to make a bill appear to reduce the deficit when you include 10 years of “revenue” and only 6 years of cost in the first decade. But of course after that the program will be upside down and a permanent drag on the economy.
If the real goal was improving health care (as opposed to the increased government control and social engineering that are clearly driving the Reid -Pelosi agenda), the legislation would be concise and targeted to the major issues needing improvement:
• portability of health insurance among employers and locations
• encouraging increased competition and reduced cost through the sale of health insurance policies across state lines
• equality of tax treatment of health insurance premiums regardless of where or from whom policies are purchased
• allowing the sale of policies customized to buyers' needs rather than mandating one-size fits all policies that make people pay for coverage they'll never need.
These are simple concepts and each could be documented clearly in just a few pages. Even if each took 20 pages to outline you'd have only an 80 page bill. But the House version is 2,000 and the Senate version is now even larger.
Congress has proven it doesn't read bills before passing them, and we know they didn't write this themselves. Bills this long simply create the impression that Obama and Congress have told their favorite special interest groups to load up the legislation with whatever they want. And they're hoping to rush it through before we catch on.
Senator, Reid’s bill is a bad bill. It will not achieve the goals that are supposedly the reasons behind this effort; it will increase taxes and reduce service. All it will accomplish is increased government intrusion into our lives – and we’ll get to pay for that privilege.
You must vote to defeat this bill NOW, not try to amend or defeat it later. Stop Harry Reid and then do health reform the right way.
You must vote AGAINST Harry Reid’s attempt to bring his 2,000+ page health reform bill to the Senate floor (and why did the Senate bill grow from 1,500 pages to over 2,000 – did Harry just want to make sure his was bigger than Nancy’s?).
Exactly one month ago I sent you a message thanking you for voting against Harry Reid’s attempt to scam the American people by passing the “doctor fix” separately from the health reform bill. Now he’s trying the opposite trick – passing the health reform bill without the “doctor” fix. And he’s trying to do it in such a way that only 51 votes will be needed for final passage of the bill, rather than the usual 60.
Harry Reid’s health care bill is an outright scam and a shell game, and an economic disaster in the making. It’s easy to make a bill appear to reduce the deficit when you include 10 years of “revenue” and only 6 years of cost in the first decade. But of course after that the program will be upside down and a permanent drag on the economy.
If the real goal was improving health care (as opposed to the increased government control and social engineering that are clearly driving the Reid -Pelosi agenda), the legislation would be concise and targeted to the major issues needing improvement:
• portability of health insurance among employers and locations
• encouraging increased competition and reduced cost through the sale of health insurance policies across state lines
• equality of tax treatment of health insurance premiums regardless of where or from whom policies are purchased
• allowing the sale of policies customized to buyers' needs rather than mandating one-size fits all policies that make people pay for coverage they'll never need.
These are simple concepts and each could be documented clearly in just a few pages. Even if each took 20 pages to outline you'd have only an 80 page bill. But the House version is 2,000 and the Senate version is now even larger.
Congress has proven it doesn't read bills before passing them, and we know they didn't write this themselves. Bills this long simply create the impression that Obama and Congress have told their favorite special interest groups to load up the legislation with whatever they want. And they're hoping to rush it through before we catch on.
Senator, Reid’s bill is a bad bill. It will not achieve the goals that are supposedly the reasons behind this effort; it will increase taxes and reduce service. All it will accomplish is increased government intrusion into our lives – and we’ll get to pay for that privilege.
You must vote to defeat this bill NOW, not try to amend or defeat it later. Stop Harry Reid and then do health reform the right way.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Crawling to Conclusions
After the Fort Hood "man-made disaster", we were treated to the absurd irony of Obama telling the American people not to "jump to conclusions" about why this tragedy occurred. This from a man for whom jumping to conclusions is one of his primary skills and means of exercise. Obama had no trouble jumping to the conclusion that police officers in Boston "acted stupidly" in the arrest of Louis Gates, before he had any facts whatsoever about what actually happened. Yet in the case of the Fort Hood tragedy the murderer might as well have worn a Team Al Qaeda t-shirt, but Obama still can't even crawl to the conclusion that the shooter is a terrorist.
Friday, October 30, 2009
2,000 Pages!?!?
Pelosi's new health care bill arrived yesterday - and it comes in at 2,000 pages. Any bill that long is guaranteed to be a compliance and enforcement nightmare that will dramatically increase bureaucracy, inefficiency and cost (pardon the redundancy). Does anyone really believe that health care can be made more effective and efficient through a bill that's 2,000 pages long?
Anyone in Congress or the media who comes out today in favor of this bill is revealing themselves to be an ideological kool-aid drinker. They cannot possibly have read the bill and judged it on its merits, so it's clear they'd be supporting it only because Obama, Pelosi and the special interest groups that actually wrote it told them to.
Democrats will say that anyone who opposes this bill is simply being obstructionist. But which is more logical and responsible - supporting legislation that hasn't been read (as the Democrats do), or NOT supporting legislation that hasn't been read?
If the real goal was improving health care (as opposed to the increased government control and social engineering that are clearly driving the Democrats' agenda), the legislation would be concise and targeted to the major issues needing improvement:
Congress doesn't read bills before passing them, and we know they didn't write this themselves. Bills this long simply create the impression that Obama and Congress have told their favorite special interest groups to load up the legislation with whatever they want. And they're hoping to rush it through before we catch on.
Anyone in Congress or the media who comes out today in favor of this bill is revealing themselves to be an ideological kool-aid drinker. They cannot possibly have read the bill and judged it on its merits, so it's clear they'd be supporting it only because Obama, Pelosi and the special interest groups that actually wrote it told them to.
Democrats will say that anyone who opposes this bill is simply being obstructionist. But which is more logical and responsible - supporting legislation that hasn't been read (as the Democrats do), or NOT supporting legislation that hasn't been read?
If the real goal was improving health care (as opposed to the increased government control and social engineering that are clearly driving the Democrats' agenda), the legislation would be concise and targeted to the major issues needing improvement:
- portability of health insurance among employers and locations
- encouraging increased competition and reduced cost through the sale of health insurance policies across state lines
- equality of tax treatment of health insurance premiums regardless of where or from whom policies are purchased
- allowing the sale of policies customized to buyers' needs rather than mandating one-size fits all policies that make people pay for coverage they'll never need.
Congress doesn't read bills before passing them, and we know they didn't write this themselves. Bills this long simply create the impression that Obama and Congress have told their favorite special interest groups to load up the legislation with whatever they want. And they're hoping to rush it through before we catch on.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
We should trust these people because.............?
Perhaps the most critical element in the long-term success of any democracy is mutual trust between a nation's people and their government. Such trust must be earned through demonstrated integrity, fidelity to common principles and performance over time.
Right now, our government is asking us to trust them as they develop their plan to radically transform our health care system. So I thought it appropriate to review some relevant history to find out what our government has done to merit such trust.
Right now, our government is asking us to trust them as they develop their plan to radically transform our health care system. So I thought it appropriate to review some relevant history to find out what our government has done to merit such trust.
- Social Security and Medicare are the most analogous programs to what Obama and Congress wish to impose upon us with health care reform. Both are effectively bankrupt (the "lockboxes" don't actually exist) and contribute enormously to our federal deficit. How Obamacare will be any better on this account has not been explained.
- When Medicare was started in 1965 the government estimated it would cost $9 billion per year by 1990. In fact, Medicare was costing $67 billion per year by 1990 - more than 7 times the government's estimate. Why should the American people believe the forecast on the new health care reform will be any better?
- Obama promised that the $1,000,000,000,000+ spent on his various programs to "stimulate" economy would keep unemployment under 8%. He dramatically missed that forecast in less than 6 months and there's no prospect unemployment will be under 8% any time in the foreseeable future.
- We were promised by Obama and Pelosi that all health care debate would be open to the public, even broadcast on C-SPAN, and that everything would be available to Americans to review before legislation is voted on. They've already proven multiple times that they have no intention of living up to that commitment. What are they hiding - and why?
Based on these facts it would be difficult to make the case that our government merits the trust of the American people in crafting health care reform (or much of anything else for that matter).
While a nation's long term success depends on mutual trust between a government and its people, I maintain that under our Constitution - with its foundation on individual rights and responsibilities - the onus is on the government to earn the trust of the people rather than the other way around. Obama and Congress have done precious little to earn that trust.
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