Economics
Paychecks or Food Stamps?
Newt Gingrich continues to earn my respect and trust. He’s made some mistakes in his long political career, but at this stage in this life, he is one of the clearest voices for a return to faith, family, and freedom that exists in America.
I don’t generally think in terms or political parties, or “left” and “right.” I think terms of right and wrong, and in the coming elections it is the Republicans who have it right.
This insightful column puts the November 2 election in simple and stark terms. Though flawed and badly wounded by years of poor national stewardship, the Republican Party is being re-born through the Tea Party Movement and is returning to its Judeo-Christian principles of limited government and biblical principles of liberty. On the other side, the Democratic Party continues to lurch down the road toward socialism and moral confusion.
Newt Gingrich believes that the contrast couldn’t be clearer in 2010.
One party believes in paychecks and the other in food stamps.
What kind of America do you want? Your vote, one week from today, will take us one direction or the other.
Vote for liberty, paychecks, and the human dignity that they bring. RB
October 13, 2010
The Food Stamp Party “Doth Protest too Much”
by Newt Gingrich
There is a famous line from Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
In Shakespeare’s play, Queen Gertrude is referring to what she believes are overwrought vows from a Queen pledging fidelity to her King.
In modern times, the phrase has come to signify the tendency of a guilty party to so passionately insist on their innocence that they suggest their guilt.
Last week, we highlighted a memo I sent to candidates across the country suggesting the closing argument for the 2010 campaign be a choice between the Democratic Party of food stamps and the Republican Party of paychecks.
Watching Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats’ reaction to that memo, one couldn’t help but think “the lady doth protest too much.”
More food stamps or more paychecks? The choice for America November 2nd
The difference between the record of the Nancy Pelosi Democrats since they assumed control of Congress in 2007 and the last time Republicans took control of Congress in 1995 could not be starker.
From 1995-1999, when I was Speaker, unemployment fell from 5.6% to 4.2% and food stamp usage dropped by almost 9 million to an enrollment of a little more than 18 million Americans. That’s because we pursued a job-creating agenda of controlling spending, cutting taxes, reforming government and balancing the budget.
Compare this to the record of Speaker Pelosi, who since 2007 has presided over a rise in unemployment from 4.6% to 9.6% and an increase in the number of food stamp recipients from 26.5 million to a record 41.8 million–more than one in eight Americans.
That’s an additional 15 million Americans depending on government for nutrition, thanks to the Democrats’ job-killing agenda of higher taxes, bigger government, and more spending.
This record legitimately makes the Democrats the party of food stamps.
Meanwhile, Republicans have outlined a pro-growth, less spending, low tax, reform agenda for government similar to our program from 1995 to 1999 that resulted in less Americans on food stamps and more Americans receiving paychecks.
This legitimately makes the Republicans the party of paychecks. The food stamp party doth protest too much
Faced with the crippling reality of her record, Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the food stamp party have reacted to this accurate contrast in a way Queen Gertrude would find familiar.
Last week, Speaker Pelosi again made the absurd claim that food stamps and unemployment insurance are the best way to create jobs, rather than serve as a safety net for those who have lost their jobs. In addition, Speaker Pelosi hysterically accused me of trying to “stomp on the poor.”
Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the food stamp party are desperately trying to spin the accurate and devastating contrast between the Democratic Party of food stamps and the Republican Party of paychecks as a threat to take food stamps away from the poor and unemployed who need them.
But they ignore the actual historic record that repudiates their baseless attack. During my tenure as Speaker, we didn’t eliminate the food stamp program; we were, however, able to reduce the number of people receiving food stamps by pursuing paycheck policies instead of food stamp policies. Millions of poor and unemployed people went off food stamps as they took up jobs and work.
It may cause Speaker Pelosi a conniption to hear it, but it turns out that paycheck policies are better for the poor than food stamp policies. Far from stomping on the poor, the Republican Congress from 1995-1999 did more to help the poor by giving them jobs than the Democratic Congress has during the last four years under Speaker Pelosi.
Drawing the contrast between food stamp policies and paycheck policies is not an attack on food stamps or on those who depend on the program for nutrition. It is an attack on the job killing policies of the Democrats that have led to more Americans needing food stamps. And it is a pledge to enact job creating policies of lower taxes, smaller government and less spending—the same formula that worked when I was Speaker, leading to more Americans with paychecks and fewer Americans with food stamps.
Don’t let the howls of protest from the food stamp party deter you. They’re just resorting to the same lies and distortions they always employ when faced with the failure of their radical left-wing agenda.
This time it’s not going to work. Americans are fed up with all the spending, all the taxing, and all the big government programs that are killing jobs. And they are going to make their voices heard on Election Day by electing job creating, “paycheck” candidates across the country.
How many “paycheck” candidates are elected is up to you.
At American Solutions, we have launched a project to bring 10 million new Americans to the polls on November 2. It’s called 10MillionVoters.com. Our website gives you easy ways to use Facebook, Twitter and other tools to maximize turnout for conservative candidates this fall. You can also recruit your friends to the effort. Click here to get started.
You can donate to specific, high value campaigns we have targeted at SolutionsPac.com. For instance, here are five key Congressional races we are highlighting this week.
The bottom line is this: there are just 20 days left until Election Day.
It’s time to win.
It’s time to win this election for every small business owner who has been crippled by the job-killing polices of this administration and Congress.
It’s time to win this election for every young American who will graduate in a few months into an increasingly bleak job market.
It’s time to win this election for every American family dependent on food stamps yearning for the independence of a paycheck.
In short, it’s time to win this election for every American.
Let’s get it done.
Your friend,
Newt Gingrich
The Most Hated Tax
The Founding Fathers of the United States were skeptical of government’s ability to tax. They understood that “the power to tax is the power to destroy” (Chief Justice John Marshall).
They themselves had been overtaxed by their British sovereigns and resisted strongly through the first “Tea Party” which dumped crates full of English tea into Boston Harbor.
There was one tax they hated the most.
The income tax.
Before we go there, let’s discuss the brief history of American taxation.
For the first fifty years of America’s history, the government operated through excise taxes, tariffs, and customs duties. Our wise leaders were loathe to add taxes to the backs of those working hard to make a living. They certainly didn’t believe in re-distribution–taking from the productive to give to others.
Thomas Jefferson spoke for a generation:
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
Our Founding Fathers believed in freedom, not socialism.
The increased costs of the Revolutionary War (remember- fought against unfair and high taxes) brought a spate of sin taxes on tobacco, liquor, etc. In the 1790s some direct taxes on homes, land, slaves and estates were added–but were later repealed by Jefferson.
The Civil War brought the first income tax–3% on those making more than $800 per year. In 1894 Congress made the first attempt at a graduated income tax, but it was ruled unconstituational in 1895. It was not until 1913 that 36 States ratified the 16th Amendment giving the Federal Government the ability to fully tax income.
There has been a dizzying ascent of American taxation since that time. In 1900, the Federal Government received only 1.3 percent of national GDP. Today the tax take is nearing 20 percent of GDP–and Americans work nearly four months of the years to satisfy the voracious appetites of all levels of government.
The Founding Fathers would have hated the income tax the most because it discourages the productive, stifles entrepreneurship, and wastes resources on bloated bureaucracies. It has also become a primary tool of class warfare in our society.
And now, some individuals want to bring a state income tax to the Evergreen State. Maybe our rulers want an “ever green supply of money” for state coffers.
The Wall Street Journal recently did a fantastic article on the foolishness of the income tax. We share it below, and encourage all Washingtonians to say an emphatic NO to Initiative 1098 on November 2.
August 14, 2010 – Wall Street Journal
The Gates of Confiscation
The battle between taxpayers and government unions will define the fiscal future of the 50 states, and the newest battlefield is Washington state. That’s where a few rich taxpayers led by Bill Gates Sr. and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are bankrolling a November ballot measure to create the state’s first income tax.
And not just a toe-in-the-water tax. They’re diving into the deep end with a proposal that would immediately impose a 5% tax rate on income above $200,000, or $400,000 for married couples. The rate would climb to 9% on single filers making $500,000, or $1 million for couples.
No state has introduced an income tax since Connecticut nearly 20 years ago, and that state’s experience has not been happy. The top rate in Hartford began at 4.5% but has since climbed to 6.5%. Washington wants to leap over that and achieve California and New Jersey heights in one giant step. Washington would move overnight from one of the nine states with no income tax to having the eighth highest rate in the country.
Mr. Gates, a wealthy lawyer whose son is among the richest men on the planet, is pitching the proposal as a chance for 97% of the voters to pay the state’s bills by socking it to the richest 3%. What he doesn’t say is that Washington’s lack of an income tax is among its main comparative advantages in luring those top 3%, along with their businesses and jobs, into the state.
In addition to Washington, the states without an income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. Combined they had an average 18.2% growth rate in jobs over the past decade, more than twice the 8.4% job growth of the nine states with the highest income tax rates, according to a new report based on Commerce Department data by the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The liberal Seattle Times accurately describes the state’s zero income tax as “a selling point. An asset. And more than that: It’s a bonus for living here.” Even liberal Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire begins her sales pitch to prospective business investors with the reminder: “No income tax.”
That’s an especially powerful attraction on the West Coast, where California and Oregon impose a top tax rate of 10.55% and 11%, respectively. Proponents say Oregon raised its income tax last year, so Washington should get in the game. But Oregon at least has no state sales tax. Washington has close to the highest sales tax burden in the nation, varying by area but reaching as high as 10% in Seattle depending on what you buy.
To win votes, the ballot measure resorts to all sorts of trickery. Unions describe the initiative as tax “relief” because it includes a mandatory cut in the hated property tax (only by 4%) and it eliminates various unpopular fees and taxes on business. Still, the overall impact of the measure is a $1.5 billion tax increase in 2012 and $2.5 billion a year by 2016. Small business taxes are cut, but they are also hit with a whopper of a new tax: a personal income tax paid out of their profits. Over half of the tax will be paid by Washington businesses.
The biggest deception is the description of the new income tax as “an excise tax on income.” This language is cleverly designed to dodge the state’s constitutional prohibition against an income tax and the requirement that any tax be “uniform upon the same property.” Obviously a tax that hits only 3% of taxpayers and applies graduated rates is anything but uniform. Proponents claim that because the tax is withheld from worker paychecks, the money was never the property of the person who earned it. That’s like saying if someone steals your paycheck, it’s not your property.
We hope Washington voters aren’t duped by the claim that only the rich will pay this tax. After two years, the law allows the legislature by simple majority to extend the tax to nearly everyone. The revenue from the tax will finance new spending, which will soar and lead to even higher deficits in the next downturn, which will create political pressure to expand the tax to the middle class.
Income taxes are always sold as a one-time way to reduce deficits, but they always become engines of greater spending, and eventually deficits. Just ask Californians. If Mr. Gates wants the rich to finance more Washington spending to create more SEIU dues-paying jobs, he and his son can do so by donating their own fortunes.
The Meaning of Uncertainty
Def: uncertainty – n. 1. The quality or state of being uncertain, 2. Doubt, 3. Stresses lack of faith in the truth, reality, fairness, or reliability of something or someone.
Many have been saying it, including Democratic party leader and fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe, who recently announced on Hannity that “U.S. corporations are sitting on three trillion dollars that could be used to rev up the American economy, but they are holding it back because of uncertainty in the nation.”
Uncertainty.
I’ve heard that word dozens of times in the past few months. Banks are uncertain. Lending institutions are uncertain. Businesses are uncertain.
Uncertain of what?
Even the people that control the money supply, the Federal Reserve, are concerned about uncertainty. The following article is from Marketwatch on September 1, 2010: (I will bold the dreaded word for impact.)
“Political uncertainty about taxes and the costs of hiring workers is holding back the U.S. economy, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.”
“‘What is restraining the economy is not a shortage of current liquidity; rather, it is uncertainty, high household debt burdens and a lack of confidence in future income growth,’ said Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, during speech in Houston. A copy of his remarks was made available in Washington.”
“Fisher repeated a theme he’s hit before: Businesses are reluctant to hire and to expand because they aren’t sure about tax and regulatory rules. Politicians are acting ‘in a capricious manner that makes long-term planning, including expanding payrolls, difficult, if not impossible,’ Fisher said.”
“Some business owners have said that they aren’t hiring because of uncertainty about what will happen with taxes as well as about health insurance, credit availability and the cost of energy.”
“As long as political uncertainty is the main obstacle to growth, Fisher said the Fed shouldn’t create more money to stimulate the economy. ‘Further accommodation might be pushing on a string,’ he said — and in the worst case, it could ignite inflation,’ he added.”
Obviously “uncertainty” is a big problem.
When I think of the word “uncertainty” I usually think of things that are completely out of my control–like the weather. I’m uncertain whether we’re going to have rain or sunshine today. Or I’m uncertain about who will win the football game on Sunday. Used this way, it’s normal to talk about “uncertainty” because nobody is ultimately responsible.
Uncertainty usually mans we don’t have any control over what is about to happen.
But is that what we’re talking about when we use the word “uncertainty” to describe the American current economic climate? I don’t think so.
Here’s the meaning of uncertainty in 2010:
Will socialism succeed in America?
Or worded another way, will the Obama Administration succeed in fundamentally changing the American nation from a free, self-governing people into a bloated and bankrupt European style social democracy? The entire world is waiting for an answer to that question. It may just determine the direction of history in the coming years.
All of the uncertainty relates to changing America’s freedom-oriented economy to a controlled one. Vast amounts of government spending and stimulus, the threat of increasing taxes to fund the welfare state, and the increased costs of health care via a government managed system will fundamentally alter the United States of America.
Entrepreneurs and businesses are looking at these changes and holding their breath–and money. If these trends are not reversed, they may not survive and cannot expand. They also can’t create jobs because they will not be affordable. If socialism succeeds in America, then the entire game changes.
Let’s state an obvious truth after twenty months of observation. Barack Obama is a socialist–plain and simple. He believes the Federal Government should “manage” the economy of the United States and “redistribute” vast amounts of money from the wealthier parts of society to various interest groups.
Twenty months of taking over banks, financial institutions, car companies, and the health system of America (Obamacare) , plus appointing “czars” over every area of America life clearly reveal the goal of the present administration.
They don’t like “America”– the land of the free. They want to radically change it from a faith-and-freedom based nation to a secular-based socialistic state.
“Yes We Can” means the triumph of social democracy. Barack Obama and his appointees do not believe in freedom. They believe in controlling your life.
Yes, there have been other presidents with controlling, socialistic tendencies. Woodrow Wilson was cut from the same cloth and desired a “League of Nations” that would control the world. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal policies created the devouring federal monster we face today.
But President Obama is different from Wilson and Roosevelt in a number of ways.
First, he does not love and respect the heritage and exceptional principles that created the United States of America. As Dinesh D’Souza points out in his hard hitting new book The Roots of Obama’s Rage, Barack Obama’s roots (via his father) in Islam and Marxism give him a very jaded, colonial view of the nation that he leads. He does not believe in our past and wants to change our future.
D’Souza summarizes the Obama worldview this way:
“We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama’s father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it’s not Dream of My Father, but rather, Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father’s dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father.”
“Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950’s—a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams into his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.”
Secondly, our current president does not appear to understand nor appreciate our unique Christian foundations which made America a light to the world for over two centuries. Barack Obama says he is a Christian, but his “conversion” came through an Afro-centric, America-bashing pastor–Rev. Jeremiah Wright–who was the founder of a quasi-Christian cult. Obama’s “faith” seems to be more of a political calculation than a heart-felt conviction.
Exhibit A is that Barack Obama is far more comfortable with secularism and Islam than he is with the claims of Christ. That’s why the vast majority of his policies on abortion, sexuality, marriage, economics, and foreign policy are largely pro-secular, pro-Muslim, and anti-Christian. He even canceled the National Day of Prayer activities at the White House and while welcoming Muslim gatherings and prayer sessions.
And finally, Barack Obama does not share a deep and abiding faith in human liberty and freedom. He believes that political elites know best how to control and guide the economies and social structures of nations. This can only be accomplished through massive government spending, redistribution of wealth, higher taxes and increased regulations.
He is doing everything is his power to establish socialism in America as he sees it practiced in Europe.
That political fact has created uncertainty in 2010.
Will socialism succeed in America?
Good question.
The Heritage Foundation looks at it this way:
“The stakes couldn’t be higher for our nation at this moment. In the coming months, Americans will help choose which direction our nation’s future will take. Will the federal government continue to spend more, tax more, control more, and defend our liberties less? Or will we choose a new and bolder direction that returns power to the people? All indications are that we are approaching one of those pivotal moments in our political history, a tipping point. It will be a test of our national character. “
I agree.
Maybe the November 2 elections–and much prayer beforehand–will help us answer that vexing question of uncertainty.