”You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could do before.”
Those are the words from President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel back in 2008 during the presidential campaign. Emanuel broadly applied this idea to a wide range of problems, implying that had the federal government simply stepped in to supervise the situation, each crisis could have been avoided. From health care to energy reform, education to regulatory reform, and even in the fiscal and tax areas – “the solution,” as Emanuel claims, always leads back increased government control. This morning, in the wake of President Obama’s newly-appointed oil spill commission and energy Czar, we see another example of this government fix-it mentality implying that government can and will fix all of the nation’s problems.
We’ve got an unstoppable oil leak? No worries, the government will swoop in and ensure it never happens again. We don’t have health insurance? No worries, the government will step in and ensure we never have to pay a high premium again.
Our politicians preach on responsibility – corporate responsibility, environmental responsibility, and social responsibility, always with the subtle suggestion that the current problems of our country somehow link back to being the direct result of Bush-era greed that could have conveniently been avoided if only we had a controlling body to referee the rules and lifeguard the economic pool. The magic ingredient needed to fix each of this country’s problems, according to this administration, is control. Just add government intervention.
Are we listening to their rhetoric? Are we paying attention to what they are implying?
Our politicians insinuate that if those countless masses of irresponsible CEOs and greedy individuals had simply exercised a bit more fiscal responsibility, if they just cared a little more about the future generations, if they had only showed concern for the environment instead of their corporate profits, if they simply controlled their excess, if only they had someone to watch over them and make sure they behaved – none of this would have happened. In other words, our politicians want us to believe that if only we had let the government control the situation from the beginning, the risk of failure would have been removed. In Emanuel’s own words: a crisis requires immediate government intervention and provides “the opportunity to do things that [government] could not do before.” I.e., if we had only given the government the power it needed to control the situation, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
Federal government intervention under the banner of national emergencies is not a new idea to the American public. Teddy Roosevelt once gave a speech at the turn of the last century on “The New Nationalism” in which he claimed that our money and property only belongs to us if there isn’t a better government-determined use for it. He stated that personal property is “subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.” Nationalism, as Roosevelt stated, “puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage.” However, because our country is founded on principles equal opportunities, which grant us free access to life, liberty and the use of our personal property (with minimal government intervention) but does not necessarily guarantee equal outcomes, this call to Nationalism has been rejected over time.
Yet, with all the political lecturing as though our government were a nurturing parent desperate for more opportunities to monitor its reckless and unruly children, er, constituents, who simply can’t fend for themselves, our politicians continue to push their controlling agenda on this country with no regard for their own call to responsibility, moderation, and self-control.
Who oversees the overseers? Who regulates the regulators?
The recent housing collapse is largely attributed to the federal government’s meddling involvement with bank loans via the Community Reinvestment Act, which was enacted over 30 years ago. Our country is teetering at the grand canyon of national debt, we’re on the verge of losing our triple-A lending status (which basically means that our interest rates used to pay back our federal government’s debt could skyrocket if we continue along this path), and our national debt is on the verge of being unsustainable, also because our federal government for years has overstepped its fiscal boundaries.
Do our politicians have room to lecture on self-control and responsibility?
No, they do not.
When has our government proved that it is above the vices of the common man? Does the government stop its reckless spending that will inevitably bankrupt our country? No, our Congress continues to sneak in additional spending that we simply cannot afford. However, the American public is catching on – we are aware that we cannot control and sustain our debt, so our politicians have found a way around the minor inconvenience of the public calling for less spending by citing each plea for additional funding as a national emergency. The checks may bounce, but what does it matter to our politicians if the bill had “good intentions” of fixing a national emergency? What does it matter if our hard-earned money is used for a national cause determined not by populous vote but by self-regulating politicians?
Take H. R. 4899, for example, a bill currently on the table in the House of Representatives and marketed as an act proposing “emergency supplemental appropriations for disaster relief and summer jobs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.” Despite the bill’s blatantly broad description projecting an image of good-natured responsibility and assistance in the wake of current economic issues, it’s a prime example of how our government never lets a good crisis go to waste. Slyly tucked forty pages into H.R. 4899 is a proposed $174,000 paycheck to Representative John Murtha’s family, because apparently, according to our politicians, entitlement funds for the family members of dead politicians qualify under the “for other purposes” emergency category.
Where in the Constitution have the states granted the federal government the right to take up mandatory tax collections at the expense of the public to fund their “charitable” causes? How does this $174,000, for example – which happens to be the equivalent of an additional one-year Congressional salary payment – qualify as an emergency fund in the eyes of our politicians? The current spending habits of our elected officials and their blatant disregard and reckless spending proves that they would rather burden the American family for generations with debt through taxes for money they think they’ve earned a right to freely distribute. I highly doubt that when Teddy Roosevelt shaped his definition of Nationalism, that taxpayer-funded collections for families of deceased politicians qualified as the new “national need.”
It’s always easy for politicians to spend someone else’s money, but the redistribution of our money and property at the expense of self-appointed political perks does not fall into the same category as emergency funds either, which is why Nationalism will always be rejected. The people inherently know that regardless of how bad a problem is or how big a crisis gets, there can never be an end-all government solution for everything. The public also inherently knows that not every problem is an emergency nor will increased government control ever remove a nation from the risk of a future crisis, because the individuals making up our collective government body will always be subject to the exact same vices and flaws that the government seeks to villainize and control in the private sector.
~Gee
No comments:
Post a Comment