Today, people are panicked that with $85 billion in cuts to spending this year, the world just might end. I can see where they might get that impression from our president, who speaks at length about the problems soon to befall our great nation and how it’s all the Republican Party’s fault. I’m here to tell you it’s a Washington issue, created by both parties for political gain to grow government.
Government loves to tell us how necessary it is, and how it has all sorts of responsibilities to us. It tells us how it always needs more of our money to operate so that it can do a million things, and then never tells us what those things are. It loves to say that it is the solution to the human condition, and we believe it. We need to change that.
We need to demand a radically smaller government.
Washington refuses to admit that is has a spending problem, and it’s going to spend us and our children into oblivion. In four years of President Obama’s leadership, we’ve racked up more than $4 trillion in debt, and the sequestration only “cuts” $1.2 trillion from future spending over 10 years. We’re still racking up debt, just not as fast. The only way out of this mess that Washington created is to make Washington smaller.
As Ronald Reagan said, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”
We have to demand a stop to this madness. If there’s duplication, it must be eliminated. If it is ineffectual, it must be canceled. If it is bankrupt, it must either be restructured or dismantled.
Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to establish a system of limited government, where the federal government only possessed a small number of necessary powers, and the rest were left to the states or to the people. Where’s Social Security in the Constitution? Where’s Medicare? Where’s the Department of Education, which is doing a bang-up job of putting us further and further behind other countries?
You’ll hear claims that getting rid of these programs will leave grandma out to die, or that we’re abandoning the poor, or that the country will fall apart without so-called “vital” bureaucracy.
There’s not an ounce of truth to any of it. We got along just fine without because we’re decent, smart, and hard-working people. We’re the most innovative people on the face of this earth and are capable of solving any problem. Who invented the airplane, one of the most innovative machines in the world?
Not government, but two brothers who ran a bicycle shop, and wondered if we could fly with the birds. Stories like this prove that not only is it not the job of government to help, but we don’t need it! We need to be responsible for ourselves, learn and practice self-reliance, and help those in need by getting dirty and helping them, not by reaching into somebody else’s wallet and saying that we’ve done good.
We need to reward those who have labored with the fruits of their labor, not accuse them of stealing from someone else and take what is rightfully theirs in the name of “fairness.”
I believe that America really is the “shining city on a hill” that Reagan talked about. We are the world’s best hope for freedom, but before the world can realize this, we must realize this: We have to get our government under control so that we don’t enslave our children with the debt that we created.
I know that together, we can do it, but the question is: Are we willing?
