The Right Way v. The Wrong Way

Originally published December 4, 2012 on News Corner USA

This is a funny time to be living in America. We stand on the precipice of a fiscal calamity while Washington, D.C. blithely plays "politics as usual." Your average American would assume that every elected and appointed official would be furiously working away, twenty hours a day at minimum, finding the solution to the United States' out-of-control spending. That average American would be wrong. Barack Obama just embarked on a $4 million vacation with this family, leaving Congress to deal with the mess.

America is over $16 trillion in debt, $5 trillion of which was added by the Obama Administration alone, with growth to GDP at a dismal 2.7%. In case you're wondering, we need a bare minimum of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to growth of 4% in order to maintain a healthy economy. We fall far short of that with a ridiculously low 2.7%, which is the highest it has been in four years.

So now that we understand precisely the condition America is in, and it is not pretty, let's see what the key players have been up to as of late.

Barack Obama, who seems to be endlessly on a campaign rather than taking a shot at governing, is urging his supporters to call, email, tweet, text, and generally harass the Republicans into agreeing to what our perfectly ridiculous president wants:

$1.6 trillion in new taxes. (Yes, he wants that on top of the 21 new Obamacare taxes slamming the Middle Class as of January 1st, 2013, as well as the 4,100 new regulations also hitting us at the beginning of the new year.)
Executive Power over the raising of the debt limit, completely bypassing Congress.
$50 billion in new stimulus spending

and that's just the beginning. Our Barack Obama has delusions of grandeur, kingdoms, thrones and absolute power. It's his bad luck that Congress and the American people stand in his way.

In case you're wondering, that's a Democrat wishlist that would plunge America firmly into a depression that will make the Great Depression look like a full scale 4th of July picnic in the park. The tipping point would be Obamacare which tiptoed into the American healthcare system this year with the kind of good stuff, and hits us with a baseball bat in January, then blasts us with a tank come January of 2014. This is not survivable for any economy, and you may look at Europe to see that this is absolute truth. So that's what the Democrats are doing.

And how about those Republicans? What are they up to?

Well, let's look back a couple of years and count what they've been up to lately. While the U.S. Senate and the President have failed to issue a budget for four years, the House of Representatives, controlled by the Republicans, has submitted budget after budget, jobs bill after jobs bill, legislation upon legislation, to pull America out of this economic quagmire. Unfortunately, those are all languishing on Senator Harry Reid's desk, gathering dust.

As the fiscal cliff grows ever closer the Republicans have been meeting with business leaders and the governors of successful states. The states pulling themselves out of the economic doldrums are all red states, meaning they are manned by Republican governors using solid conservative economic principles to bring healthy economies back to their constituents.

Our Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they set up our republican form of government. They established the states as the laboratories for the federal government. They wrote a Constitution that firmly separated the limited powers of the federal government, outlined in Article 1, Section 8, and the 10th Amendment rights of the states. But most of all, they reserved most of the power in this great American experiment to the people.

America has lost her way. We forgot that men fought and died to establish America. We forgot that pioneers and mountain men paid dearly for this Republic we so cavalierly threw away on November 6th of 2012, a day that will go down in history as one of the most bitterly regretted days in our nation.

I wish I could say that we do not have troubling times ahead, but I fear I cannot. With the economic path we are on, let alone the vast inroads into our constitutional rights, we are headed for some dark days. They cannot be avoided unless the Republicans in the House of Representatives hold strong to those foundational principles that make the Grand Old Party great.

There was a day when we, as a nation, knew that hard work and standing for what we believed in were good things, things to be valued and celebrated. When those who began in poverty but reached the highest levels of success were to be admired rather than vilified as Obama and the Democrats have done. More so, when those born in wealth refused to rest on their laurels and went out and made their own fortunes. When God, family and country were abiding values that guided every American, although these foundational principles are under attack now. No more are we Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country." Instead, a full half of our nation is on their knees with a begging hand held out to an increasingly powerful government that can't seem to figure out that Keynesian economics are, and always have been, an unmitigated disaster.

Prior to the election, a gentleman on the path to citizenship in America said some troubling words to me, "If I could vote, I would vote for Barack Obama."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't like how radical the Republican Party has become."

"It is a sad day in America when believing in God, standing for the U.S. Constitution, and believing in free enterprise have became a hiss and a byword." He had no response.

And that brings us to this very moment in time. Bad is good, and good is bad. Liberty versus a willingly entered into bondage is where we are headed. If Americans do not wrest control away from the government and began educating themselves as to what is really going on in America, we are forever lost.