Personal freedom is and always has been the highest and most
important political goal of our great nation. To achieve it
necessarily means that the power of government must be limited so
it cannot excessively infringe on our freedom.
Limited government and individual freedom were the primary
principles of our nation’s founding, and of the Republican Party’s
founding amid the anti-slavery movement. These principles are
worthy of our protection because they are so fundamental to our
national identity, because they offer better solutions for the
problems Americans face today, and because they are under attack
today as never before.
It is this loss of freedom that I hear about on the campaign
trail as I travel across Pennsylvania, from all types of folks. I
hear about the concerns of patients who are worried about the
freedom to make personal decisions about their own health care
without the government interfering. I hear about the concerns of
small business owners who want to be able to expand their
businesses without Washington politicians imposing massive new tax
increases and onerous regulations. And I hear about the concerns of
responsible homeowners who work hard to pay for their mortgages and
can’t afford to bail out other people’s mortgages.
Let’s take a minute to review what’s happened in just the last
18 months. First, there were the ill-advised taxpayer-funded
bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Wall Street, and the car
companies. Now, to be fair, the bailouts were begun under the
previous administration; but the crew that’s in charge now took
them to a whole new scale.
Next, we had the so-called stimulus bill — nearly a trillion
dollars in new Washington spending, including some egregiously
wasteful spending like $2 million to study exotic ants. We were
told that this monster spending bill would create jobs and keep
unemployment below eight percent. Well, since then we have lost
nearly 3 million more jobs and the unemployment rate hit 10
percent, and in some states it’s still well above that. More than
14.5 million Americans remain out of work.
But even that was not enough for the one-party extremists in
Washington. After that, they went ahead and rammed through a $2
trillion health care bill, which even the official budget
scorekeepers say will actually increase the cost of health
insurance for individuals and families. And that’s not to mention
the very serious consequences for health care quality of imposing
government in between doctors and patients.
Now where do all these bailouts, takeovers, and spending sprees
leave us?
They leave us with a weak economy, without job growth, with a
mountain of debt for our kids, and a significant decrease in our
personal freedom.
I have every confidence that the 21st century can be another
great American century. And I know we can have a booming economy.
But to get there, we have to remember the source of our national
strength. Our strength does not come from bailouts and government
spending. It comes from a free enterprise system and the
hard-working, honest citizens who make it run — the kind of
industrious folks I see every day in Pennsylvania. It comes from
protecting our most basic freedoms.
