A friend of mine asked me the other day, do you want Barrack Obama's economic stimulus package to succeed. I said: "It depends."
He said, "What do you mean , 'It depends.' Either you want America to succeed or you do not."
So I had to explain myself. It went something like this. Now, if you hear other republicans -- or conservatives -- explaining this, you can expect the media to take certain parts of it out of contexts. So, bear with me here.
I want America to succeed. I want my children to live in a prosperous and opportunistic world where they know if you work hard you can be anything you want to be. If you educate yourself and work hard, you can become as rich as you want.
However, if we punish the rich by taxing them, that pretty much takes away the incentive to be rich. If you make the hard working upper class no more powerful than the middle class person, you will take away any incentive for people to become rich.
Of course, based on his campaign, we really don't know what Obama is going to do. If he endorses an economic package similar to Ronald Reagan where their are tax cuts to stimulate growth. If he endorses a package that puts faith in the people to solve their own problems, then, yes, I do want him to succeed.
However, if he endorses an economic stimulus package that calls for tax cuts, even tax cuts on the rich; if he proposes to take money from the earners and give them to the people who are poor; if his final plan calls for building more unproven government programs like the New Deal;
if he proposes using government to solve people's problems, and thus growing the beast that is government, then I hope he fails.
I am a person, who at the core, believes that the people have the ability to solve the economic problems that ail us, and the government will only make those problems worse. You can look back at Harding, Kennedy, Reagan and the first seven years of W's administration to see what happens when you trust the American people to solve problems.
On the contrary, you can see what happens when you trust government to solve problems by looking at FDR and the New Deal. If you look back in history, you will see that the economy, that the depression, was far worse in 1936 after six years of the New Deal's big government programs, than it was in 1929. Unemployment was way higher in 1936 than it was in 1929.
I do not want that to happen again. I believe, as Reagan did, that if you have a crisis, and you want to stimulate an economy, you have two choices. One, you can trust the government to spend this money as FDR did with his failed New Deal. Or, two, you can trust the American people.
History has shown that the people are fully capable at solving the problems that ail us and the government has failed every time it has happened. And, therefore, I do not -- at the core of my heart -- believe that the government should be used to end this recession.
Likewise, I believe that adding programs such as Universal Health care and redistributing of wealth as Obama proposes, will create a more socialistic -- stagnant -- economy like that of Europe. Where there really is no incentive to save and invest in capitol. There is no incentive to start new businesses.
Speaking of this, why is it that people start new business? Why is it that people and businesses put so much time and effort into inventing and discovering new products? It is because they want to get rich. And, with government barriers in the way, such opportunities will be stymied.
And that is why I do not want Obama to succeed if his plan to save the economy is by using government. Sure I might be better off in the short term with his middle class tax cut. But, in the long run, I believe it is not about me. I believe that country should come before me. As McCain said, "Country first."
Democrats, liberals, want to create an America where the economy may be slower, where the poor may be trapped in poverty because of welfare. They want this because the more victims, the greater the power of democrats. Democrats want to give things to people to buy their votes. Democrats "feel your pain." Democrats tell you that you don't need to worry about paying your bills" when they are in power.
Essentially, they are telling you exactly what you want to hear. I hear a lot of people saying things like this since Obama was elected: "Now that Obama is president I don't have to worry about paying my bills. I don't have to worry about paying my mortgage."
Um, is that the message we want to send to our kids, that if you vote for a liberal president you don't have to go out and work hard and create a living for yourself. That you don't have to be competitive if you want to get rich because you can't get rich anyway. That you might as well sit at home on your couch and let the rich make the money, pay the taxes, and give that money to the government so the government can give it to you.
Personally, I believe that if we are going to give money to anyone it should be back to the people. I think that the people know far better, and are far more capable, of knowing how and where to spend that money than any government program.
And that is the core difference between liberalism's economic views and conservatism. And I pray, from the bottom of my heart, that republicans to not fall to democrats and vote for Obama's economic stimulus package that doesn't have the needed tax cuts that will in turn empower the people.
I, at the core of my heart, do not believe that government is the answer to solving our problems, and, most important, I do not want the kind of America that would result. I do not want my children to be dependent on the government. I do not want them to have the attitude that I don't have to work as hard to make a living. Why? Because that attitude is the attitude of failure.
It has failed every time it has been tried by individual businessmen. It has been failed every time it has been tried in the history of the world. And therefore, again, if Obama's plan is for a larger government, I hope he fails and fails big time.
