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Big Government, small dreams
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Despite growing resistance to the likes of President Obama’s health care agenda and cap-and-tax proposals, America’s Commander-in-Chief continues to champion big government as the healer of economic, social, and political distress. Although this country has yet to see government-run health care, the more comprehensive notion of government-operated programs is a phenomenon the American people have come to know quite well. Let’s take a quick peek at the contributions of a handful of U.S. government-run agendas put to action. I can only assume that, much like our President’s promising discourse with respect to health care, we will unearth an abundance of prosperity and proficiency that the wise, business-savvy hand of government has bestowed upon us feeble-minded citizens…right?
Not quite. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, public school districts in the United States in the fiscal year 2006 spent roughly $9,138 per student, receiving $521.1 billion in federal, state, and local funding. New York State was the highest recipient, with school district spending per child reaching $14,884. And yet in June of 2009, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein proudly announced that New York City’s four-year graduation rate climbed to a height—and I adopt that word with an accompanying cringe—of 60.7%, which includes August graduates who must complete supplemental summer work in order to meet requirements. The percentage excluding August graduates was 56.4%. Fifty-six percent and the New York City Mayor was glowing? The fact that it represents an increase from prior years only divulges that our government has been neglecting to do its job for longer than I care to ponder, despite dollar after dollar of hard-earned taxpayer money flooding the bureaucracy. What’s worse is that the dreadful 56.4% doesn’t account for the vast grade inflation that saturates the system. Opposition to vouchers and distaste for a free-market style competition among colleagues that would promote a rise to the top of the best and brightest molding the minds of our youth each day, permeate our nation’s government-operated public education giant. The consequence is an infinite number of teenagers who hold high school diplomas, yet haven’t been provided with even a fragment of the tools they’ll need to succeed in challenging college courses and the cutthroat work force that awaits.
Medicaid, the welfare program birthed in 1965 as a means of providing for the destitute, now cloaks more than forty-six million Americans, including a wide array of the middle class. Federal Medicaid expenditures were $181.7 billion in 2007. In addition to staggering spending and the inclusion of individuals the program was in no way designed to accommodate, the system is wrought with calamity, from rationing to government-imposed monthly prescription limits, as it profoundly depletes our state and federal budgets. Medicare, the once envisioned guardian of our elderly, is operated by the Health Care Financing Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and is virtually bankrupt. Much like Medicaid, it is a bureaucracy void of personal choice, unless of course you are a retired member of Congress or federal worker, in which case the world is your oyster. FDR’s government baby, Social Security, has well-surpassed a state of crisis. David Marotta, author of “Social Security is Still Broken,” offers some fascinating insight: “Between 2037 and 2075, the Social Security program is projected to run deficits totaling $30 trillion.” Privatization, in which the contributor would reap the rewards of his or her decisions, fostering personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and consequence, has been not too surprisingly shot down time and again by big government gurus, who would prefer that your fate lay comfortably in their hands.
President Obama’s standard rhetoric reflects either a supreme naiveté with respect to the efficacy of government-run U.S. programs or, even worse, the notion that he believes himself to be consistently addressing an uninformed, damsel-in-distress audience he can lead by the hand with deceptive “hope and change” style declarations. Many of us—54% actually, thanks to our dear friend Rasmussen on October 5 of 2009—aren’t buying it. American history has illustrated, from the tireless ambition of our Founding Fathers to Johnson’s Great Society to Reagan’s unparalleled rebirth of conservatism, what works and what doesn’t. Government has never and will never be a source of prosperity. Despite an addictive “opium of entitlements” (an expression coined by Mark Levin to exemplify the handouts that have hypnotized many to the coddling hand of government and bred a dependency into their souls that Thomas Jefferson would shudder to behold), a vast majority of this sea to shining sea is still a nation of builders and soldiers. We believe in persistence, entrepreneurship, and most of all, in ourselves. So the next time the President addresses us—this very passionate, very accomplished, very independent conglomerate of patriots—I hope that he will consider the intellect and initiative of his listeners. Most importantly, if he aspires to a favorable future as the leader of this great country, it may behoove him to put his big government solutions to rest and begin to champion the core tenets of opportunity, self-reliance, personal accountability, and enterprise that birthed the greatest superpower this world may ever know.
