Earlier this month, the Pew Center released one of those
polls with results that you or I could have predicted by just
talking to our neighbors: Almost 80 percent of our fellow
citizens don’t trust the Federal government to do the right
thing.
And why should we? The Democrat controlled Congress and the
Obama Administration rammed through a health care plan most
elected officials on Capitol Hill never bothered to read…and most
don’t understand. Now we learn that, in fact, the bill will not
lower health-care costs, but raise them. Congress and the
Administration passed spending bills that have grown the size of
government, raised our taxes and shrunk the futures of our
children and grandchildren because of the economic mess
Washington has made: in March the Congressional Budget Office
reported that President Obama’s 2011 budget will generate nearly
$10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next ten
years and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation’s
economic output by 2020. And never mind the Wall Street bailouts
that rewarded the very people who bet against America’s economy
and future.
Those are all challenges we as a nation must address. But
at the same time, we have a federal government that seems bent on
putting even more hurdles in front of us. Almost daily we hear
about another scheme hatched in Washington to expand the federal
government’s reach into each of our lives — from how we get our
medical care, to what degrees our kids earn in college, the kinds
of cars and trucks we drive, to the amount of salt we put on our
food. And of course, there is a new institution to handle each of
these, as well as a new tax or fee or budget adjustment taxpayers
get hit with to pay for it.
It’s all just a bit too much. Which is why so many folks
take to the streets to protest, and so many citizens are stepping
up to run for office, whether on the local, state or federal
level. It’s time we citizens cleaned up the messes the
professional politicians in Washington created. It’s time we
citizens took back our government and returned it to “we, the
people” and got back to basics.
Right now, Democrats in Congress are desperate to ram as
many of their radical ideas through Capitol Hill as possible.
There is talk of a value-added tax on top of the income taxes we
already pay, weighing our families down with greater and greater
levels of payments to Washington. There are threats of more
“economic stimulus” bills, where the only thing being stimulated
is the growth of government. There are veiled threats of
legislation that would limit our citizens’ Second Amendment
rights. Frankly, I’m a little surprised this crowd in Washington
isn’t looking for a way to tax our Second Amendment rights; it
might be more profitable for them.
It’s not a surprise that the feds are looking for more
taxes and fees from us; our national debt is at the back-breaking
point. The problem is taxes and fees and heaping more financial
pressure on taxpayers isn’t the way to do it. Our nation has
reached a point where with debt eating away at our national
productivity and competitiveness, the sustainability of our
government will actually be in doubt a decade from now.
Imagine, a federal government unable to pay its bills to
defend our country, to provide those basic tasks our citizens
expect the federal government to undertake, never mind the tasks
we’d prefer bureaucrats not get involved in. This is not the
America any of us want to pass to the next generation.
It’s up to us, good, commonsense conservatives, to clean up
this mess. It’s up to us to fight for the policies that shrink
the size of government and expand opportunity for our citizens,
to lift the burden of taxes from the backs of our fellow citizens
and get America back on track.
And if we succeed, my guess is that that Pew study and the
80 percent of us that don’t trust the federal government will
have shifted a bit. Because there will be far less government for
us to worry about… and far more freedom to enjoy.
