Mr. President,
I, along with many Americans tonight, sat down to listen to your remarks regarding the state of our union. You spoke about the American dream and opportunity, an opportunity which you pointed out has been crippled in recent years. It has been crippled by a struggling economy that is bleeding jobs.
Mr. President, it is clear that the first priority of our government must be to cure what has been ailing our economy. What is not so clear, however, is your prescription.
You call for investment in our future, which seems to mean an increase in spending on education, infrastructure, technology, and health care. You intend to get the money to pay for it from oil companies and the richest 2% of Americans.
While your plan certainly appears to have its political selling points, its effectiveness is unquestionably lacking. We have indeed been spending and spending and spending for more than your two years in office. The stimulus failed, Mr. President. If it had worked, you would not be making this speech tonight. You would not have had a Republican sitting behind you tonight. More importantly, 9% of Americans would not still be out of a job tonight.
Why has your plan failed? It has failed for the same reason that the Soviet Union failed. It has failed because the free market knows better what to do with its money than the federal bureaucracy does. See, what you fail to mention every time you speak of “investing” money in our economy, is that the investment comes, primarily, not from an outside source, but from the economy itself.
What do you suppose the evil oil company executive does with his millions of dollars in bonus money? He invests it! He invests it in his 401(k). He buys a yacht, or a sports car, or a vacation home. Maybe, he gives it to charity or supports his favorite non-profit organization. Regardless, his money is invested back into the economy. What you are doing, by “investing” money, is taking that dollar away from that CEO and, worst of all, it costs money to get it from him.
So, obviously, what you are doing is not an investment, it is manipulation. You feel that you and your government know better what to do with his money than he does. You feel that the United States needs a governing body, a central planning agency to coordinate its economy, and to mandate investments in whatever technologies it deems profitable and utilizing whatever value system it holds important.
That idea may sound good in your head, but it has never worked in practice and most certainly does not line up with the principles of self-government on which this nation was founded. Liberty is the most precious gift that our fathers gave to us. It is a cause for which men and women have fought and died.
What you ask us to do today is to give up that liberty one day at a time for the sake of our economic well-being. What is more, you ask us to do this when history is ripe with examples of countries that have fallen into the “ash-heap of history” for following your proposed way of thinking.
Even further, we are already paying for decades of poor judgment by lawmakers such as you in Washington, D.C., who have piled up more than $14 trillion of debt. That is why we are in the very mess we are in today! You are so quick to point the finger at Wall Street, but the bills that were signed on Pennsylvania Avenue have done more damage to our economy than any Enron executive ever did.
Jobs are moving overseas and businesses are closing in our country not because of a lack of spending, but because of a blood lust for spending on Capitol Hill. Every dollar spent by Congress is a dollar not spent by a business to maximize its profit and therefore ensure its competitiveness and its employees’ job security.
It appears that you have seen the light on this aspect of our nation’s struggles as you promised tonight to end earmark spending and lower corporate income taxes. I am afraid, though, that this is one promise that you will have to show me in action. To this point, you have provided no evidence that your conviction truly lies in reigning in spending.
Under your watch, Mr. President, spending has sky-rocketed on Capitol Hill. You have already in just two years in office allowed the national debt to increase by $3.5 trillion. In your speech tonight, you made no effort to propose any significant cuts in spending, only to take as much as you could from oil companies and the nation’s wealthiest individuals in hopes that they can financially support the monster in Washington, D.C.
Mr. President, they can not support it any longer. And, I have to say, it is simply degrading the way you championed the idea of a spending freeze as a cure to our ills. After two years of out-of-control spending, when our nation has swelled its spending to a new height far beyond any that the world has ever seen, you stood there with a straight face, acting like you were the responsible one in the room, and asked Congress not to spend any more than they already are for the next five years. I suppose in Washington, D.C., not spending more is your idea of a spending cut.
Mr. President, our nation needs more than a spending freeze and an earmarks ban. We need to get serious about the real problems in our budget: Social Security and Welfare. We need to get serious about doing more than just reducing the deficit; we need to work towards eliminating the national debt.
Mr. President, our economy is bleeding and our government is failing. The time for band-aids is over.
Mr. President, the state of our union is decline, but not terminally so. This is a time for principled leadership. It is the time for men to stand up and say enough is enough.
We can sail this sinking ship to calmer seas, but we must first repair the breach in the hull. We can not continue to allow more and more spending to weigh down our country and, ultimately, swallow us whole. We can no longer afford to ignore the leak.
Mr. President, I believe that you and I share the same goal: to see the United States prosper again and ensure that this and future generations of Americans are provided the greatest opportunity on earth to achieve their American dream, not to inherit an overwhelming debt. We must make real sacrifices, not superficial ones in order to achieve that goal. I hope that you are willing to take that action. If not, I know that our nation will find the right leader to take it down that path when the time comes.
I know that because ours is a special nation, a nation conceived as a city on a hill, a guiding light of freedom. As such, we are the special province of God and, just as He has blessed us throughout our past, He will continue to bless us so long as we honor Him.
God bless America!
