“Yes We Can” – Have Bigger, Fatter, More Corrupt Government
By Newt Gingrich
After watching the cabinet selections, listening to the early speeches and listening to Congressional Democrats, one thing is very clear about the new administration:
The Obama Presidency will be centrist in style but leftwing in personnel and policies.
President Obama is a brilliant articulator of pleasant centrism. But while his rhetoric may be designed to appeal to the broad sweep of the American people, his policies will serve a single master: Bigger, fatter, and more corrupt government.
Ironically, in economic policy, the “change” the Obama Administration will bring to Washington could be called “Bush Plus” – that is, all President Bush’s spending combined with a tax increase. Amazingly, the last year of the Bush administration was the most liberal in economic policy since the New Deal, with over $1 trillion in “emergency “spending on top of a $3 trillion-plus federal budget. Far from being “change you can believe in” (to quote the Obama campaign) what we are going to get is more of the same, with tax increases.
What it will add up to is the worst of all economic policies. The Obama Administration is going to produce much bigger government with much more power in Washington, state capitols, city halls and county government buildings.
And they are going to raise taxes on productive, hard working Americans in order to do it.
As I have talked about before in my weekly newsletter, “Winning the Future”, the key to creating jobs is companies with under 50 employees. An estimated 85% of all new jobs are created by small businesses. This fact would suggest that a pro-economic growth, pro-jobs policy would focus on improving the tax, health insurance, litigation and other circumstances for small businesses, the self employed and entrepreneurial startups.
Unfortunately both the Bush and Obama administrations seem determined to focus on propping up decaying, inefficient, older companies that are likely to be job killers rather than job creators. Watch the big companies that get bailed out with your tax money. Virtually all of them will end up losing jobs. The result is that we will have spent a lot of money on badly run companies propping them up as they shrink. That actually diverts resources away from economic growth and away from job creation.
Even worse than the economic effect is the level of corruption and rent-seeking special interests that will grow from the centralization of spending and its control by politicians and bureaucrats.
The Governor Blagojevich (D) scandal in Illinois is just the tip of the systemic corruption that comes from big government. Senator Ted Stevens (R) conviction for corruption in Alaska is another case. The fact that in 2002 some 82% of retiring California highway patrolmen claimed disabilities is another example of the corruption beginning to pervade the system. The New York Times report that 10% of New York State Medicaid is pure fraud (about $5 billion a year or about what the state wants in the stimulus package for Medicaid spending) is another example of your hard earned tax money going straight to crooks and thieves.
On social policy the Obama Administration is clearly going to represent the secular left. Its judges will represent profoundly radical views of America. Its appointees will have many people from radical groups. There is a real possibility that their pursuit of radical secularism will lead them to an overt attack on religious liberty. For more information click here.
Under its pleasant façade there will be a continuing effort to raise your taxes, spend your money and turn power over your life to politicians and bureaucrats.
Don’t let the rhetoric fool you. This is going to be an administration of the left, by the left and for the left.
