Banks to big to
fail; an American automaker turned into ObamaMotors; issuing of college student
loans taken over by Washington bureaucrats from private sector companies and
ObamaCare with 1/6 of our economy now under the control of the Federal
Government . . .
I will repeat what many have
already said that we are at a cross roads in our country. There are many
troubling signs. Obama’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in Obama’s
first year as President, the Federal Government added 86,000 permanent
(non-Census related) jobs in ‘09. This is occurred at a time when private
businesses were slashing jobs and overall unemployment reached double digit
levels. Government’s size and score just keep getting bigger. Numbers recently
released for May show the Federal Government as the only real job creator last
month. Not a real comforting stat.
USA Today analyzed data from the Federal Office of Personnel
Management and found that the number of Federal salaries over $100,000 per year
has increased by nearly 50% since the beginning of the recession and today, the
average Federal worker earns 77% more than the average private-sector worker.
Spending at the Federal level has
gone completely out of control. Obama and Democrats have taken prior deficits
both in our annual budget and our long term debt, thrown gas on the deficit fire
and blow them to epic proportions.
And now enter stage right, the
members of the various Tea Parties. And those on the Left and in the
Administration include Mr. Obama himself can do nothing but berate and question
why common, every day folk are upset with Washington and the Obama agenda.
The solution my friend is simple. The implementation is the
challenge because it takes something in very short supply these days in
Washington: Political will and backbone.
I know those on the Left get tired of us saying that to find
the solution, we must look back at the past, at the original intent of our
Constitution. But when you look at the original intent, our Founding Fathers
were pretty clear that they intended for very limited powers at the Federal
level.
Thomas Jefferson said:
"The way to have good and safe government
is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to
every one exactly the functions he is competent to [perform best]. Let the
national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its
foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights,
laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the
counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward [township]
direct the interests within itself.
What has destroyed
liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under
the sun is the generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one
body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the
aristocrats of a Venetian senate."
Today’s autocrats are those in Washington, both
Democrat and Republican; the President and the inside the Beltway bureaucrats
who think they are smarter than everyone else.
James Madison provided support to
this view of limited Federal Government when he said:
"The powers
delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few
and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are
numerous and indefinite. The former [federal powers] will be exercised
principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign
commerce."
Jefferson even had a warning to
the young nation that is very relevant today:
"If the
day should ever arrive when the people of the different parts of our country
shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from
Washington, and when the self government of the states shall have been so far
lost as that of the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that
of the counties of England -- on that day the political career of the American
people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and
the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably (meaning: sorrowfully)
impaired."
Jefferson’s intent for our
Federal Government was very limited at best:
“The true theory of our Constitution is surely
the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within
themselves, . . . Let the general(Federal) government be reduced to foreign concerns
only . . . and our general government may be reduced to a very simple
organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by
a few servants.”
I think Jefferson would be
stunned at how many people now make up our Federal government.
Abraham Lincoln called the United
States the last best hope of earth. We still are but we are on a precipice from
which we must find the courage to step back and rediscover the path our
Founding Fathers so brilliantly captured in our Constitution so many years ago.
The Shining City on the Hill is
still within our sights and the first steps begin this fall and 2010 elections.
