The State of the Union speech has been given and you’ve seen all the clips and read all the analysis. But what you may have not have read yet is the State of the Union speech that should have been given. John Stossel of Fox News has provided that. If only we had a politician to stand up and say this – and mean it:
Our debt has passed $15 trillion. It will reach Greek levels in just 10 years.
But if we make reasonable cuts to what government spends, our economy can grow us out of our debt. Cutting doesn’t just make economic sense, it is also the moral thing to do. Government is best which governs least.
We’ll start by closing the Department of Education, which saves $100 billion a year. It’s insane to take money from states only to launder it through Washington and then return it to states.
Next, we’ll close the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That saves $41 billion. We had plenty of housing in America before a department was created.
Then we eliminate the Commerce Department: $9 billion. A government that can’t count votes accurately should not try to negotiate trade. We will eliminate all corporate welfare and all subsidies. That means agriculture subsidies, green energy subsidies, ethanol subsidies and so on. None of it is needed.
I propose selling Amtrak. Why is government in the transportation business? Let private companies compete to run the trains.
And we must finally stop one of the biggest assaults on freedom and our pocketbook: the war on drugs. I used drugs. It’s immoral to imprison people who do what I did and now laugh about.
Still, all these cuts combined will only dent our deficit. We must cut Medicare, Social Security and the military.
I know. Medicare and Social Security are popular. But they are unsustainable. The only way to cut costs and still have medical innovation is to free the market. So I propose that we repeal Obamacare immediately. My proposal was a mistake. We should repeal all government interference in the medical and insurance industries, including licensing. It all impedes competition.
We must shrink the military’s mission to true national defense. That means pulling our troops out of Germany, Japan, Italy and dozens of other countries. America cannot and should not try to police the world.
Those cuts will put America on the road to solvency. But that’s not enough. We also need economic growth.
Our growth has stalled because millions of pages of regulations make businesses too fearful to invest. Entrepreneurs don’t know what the rules — or taxes — will be tomorrow.
All destructive laws must go. I endorse the Stossel Rule: For every new law passed, we must repeal two old ones.
Let’s find that candidate and elect him or her President this year.
I have to say most of that sounds good, but some of it is too Ron Paul’esque. The commerce department can’t really be removed, given the commerce clause to the constitution, which is there for good reason. Also, military spending as a fraction of GDP is historically low, so while I believe much waste can be eliminated from the DOD and the budget could be lowered I also think the waste needs to be eliminated first, otherwise the DOD will only respond to budget cuts by cancelling long overdue programs (P-8, F-35, new carriers, etc.). Also, the purpose of our troops abroad is not “world policing” but rather Projection of Power. Since we are the big dog on the block we must have a forward deployed force to truly deter attacks on us. Maybe some of this can be scaled down, but it would be foolish to abandon it.
So it is too Ron Paul’esqe eh? That’s because you are a Republican sheeple. The commerce clause has nothing to do with authorizing a dept. of commerce. Those delegates to the Constitutional Convention (sent there by the 13 orig. states) understood the importance of commerce to every human being on earth. The idea of the “commerce clause” is to PROMOTE commerce throughout the World, not to further empower the United States government as our current political parties believe. Promotion of commerce is to make it dependable, reliable, consistent. If a hotel in New York City wishes to set out bowls of grade A table grapes (Tokay grapes) grown and harvested in California then that consumer wants a dependable standard to operate by so that he knows what to reorder and what standard of quality he can expect. That is the purpose of the “commerce clause.”
The use of the Commerce Clause by the Obama Administration to force American citizens to buy a product from a private company under threat of criminal violation (enforced by the IRS of all agencies) is a bastardization of the Commerce Clause beyond anything the Founding Fathers imagined. Under this interpretation of the commerce clause there would be no limit to the power of Congress.
Correct Michael, and Justice Clarence Thomas said that again in United States v. Lopez, 1995. Nancy Pelosi and her kind understand that but will do anything they think they can get away with. Who is to stop them? The answer is Governors of the states with backbone and the people. Unfortunately, we do not have enough governors with backbone (which the organized political parties suppress) and enough people who understand the Constitution. Justice Hugo Black said it well:
“Where would we really find the principal danger to civil liberty in a republic? Not in the governors as governors, not in the governed as governed, but in the governed unequipped to function as governors. “The chief enemies of republican freedom are mental sloth, conformity, bigotry, superstition, credulity, monopoly in the market of ideas, and utter, benighted ignorance.” [Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 49 (1966)].
ObamaCare and IRS enforcement? I could write a book about that one.