Jim DeMint
U.S. Senator, South Carolina
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| Press Release |
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Freedom will work - if we let it
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April 15, 2009 - Greenville, SC -
an Op-Ed by Jim DeMint
from the Greenville News
During the campaign, Barack Obama said that if I voted for John McCain, America would be stuck with George W. Bush's third term. Well, I did … and he was right.
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For Barack Obama, after promising for two years to bring change to Washington, has only maintained and accelerated the worst aspects of the Bush economic program.
Bush gave us the Wall Street bailout, known as TARP; Obama is working his way through TARP II and has recently proposed TARP III: The Financial Stability Plan (“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the market.”).
Bush bailed out General Motors; Obama fired the CEO, is replacing the board of directors and has guaranteed its muffler warranties.
Bush signed a small but futile stimulus in 2008; Obama signed a huge but equally futile stimulus in 2009.
Bush oversaw a doubling in the national debt in eight years; Obama's budget would double it again in only five, then triple it within 10.
Partisan finger-pointing aside, this is not the Bush recession or the Obama recession, it's both: the Bush-Obama recession. Yes, Republican spending and government growth from 2001-2006 contributed to the problem, but remember, Democrats have controlled Congress and held the power of the purse now for three years. And since Democrats won their majority in November 2006, spending and debt have exploded, and the unemployment rate has jumped from 4.5 percent to 8.5 percent today.
And now, with Democrats in full political control of Washington, their comprehensive agenda has emerged: new taxes on small businesses, new taxes on charitable giving, new taxes on electricity, a regressive tax on cigarettes, and government takeovers of our financial, automotive, energy and health-care industries.
Those who today defend President Bush out of partisan loyalty are missing the point — truly loyal conservatives opposed President Bush's big government ideas in the first place. Socialistic, command-and-control economies don't work, regardless of what party is commanding and controlling it.
Today, the first tax day of Barack Obama's administration, it is time for conservatives to remember the one thing we most want to conserve: freedom.
Everything wrong with our economy is attributable to some misguided effort in Washington that infringed on our freedom: some tax or regulation or new, “compassionate” spending program. These things don't work.
Every time politicians grow government to solve a problem, they create three new ones. Then government must grow again to solve those three, and on and on the cycle goes. But every time Congress sets its mind to “do something,” it has to take a little bit more of our money, and a little bit more of our personal and economic freedom to do it.
And before you know it, every baby in America is born with a $34,000 share in the national debt. That is simply immoral. It is a crime, a $20 trillion theft perpetrated by politicians against our children, and if we allow it continue, we will deserve history's condemnation.
History's lessons could not be clearer: everywhere socialism has been tried, it has failed. Inevitably, jobs are lost, opportunities stifled, businesses shuttered, economies stagnated, health care rationed; government increases and freedom decreases.
We cannot spend our way out of a deficit, tax our way out of a recession, or borrow our way out of debt. The only economic system that works is one based on free people making free decisions. It was 200 years of economic freedom that made America the world's greatest superpower, not Washington control.
Obama was indeed right that America needs sweeping change, but all he's given us are “the failed policies of the past.” We don't need tax increases, but tax reform and simplification. We don't need an energy policy based on global politics, but one based on national economics. We don't need federally controlled education, we need family-controlled education. We don't need a health-care system run by politicians and bureaucrats, but one run by patients and their doctors.
Freedom can and will solve our economic problems. It did for most of our national life, and it will again.
But only if we let it.
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Charleston
112 Custom House
200 East Bay St
Charleston, SC 29401
P: 843-727-4525
F: 843-722-4923
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Columbia
1901 Main St
Suite 1475
Columbia, SC 29201
P: 803-771-6112
F: 803-771-6455
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Greenville
105 North Spring St
Suite 109
Greenville, SC 29601
P: 864-233-5366
F: 864-271-8901
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Washington, D.C.
340 Russell
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
P: 202-224-6121
F: 202-228-5143
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