When the president announced that a federal government shutdown had been averted, he noted it was “a debate about spending cuts, not social issues.”
But a spending cut is a social issue. So are spending increases, tax rates, forms of taxation, and regulatory changes. These are the rules that allow, or preclude, entrepreneurs from building the American dream and creating more jobs.
Too often, the defenders of free enterprise forget to communicate that how we spend and collect the fruits of Americans’ labor and redistribute it to others are key social issues. Indeed, they are moral issues. We get lost in dry conversations about cutting tax rates for one group or another. We wring our hands about regulations that are important but don’t immediately connect with the average American just trying to feed his or her family.
A “social issue” is an issue that affects everyone, and there are no issues that touch more people than the economic rules that guide our daily choices to work more (or less), save more (or less), and start a business (or not).
If Obama is off on his definition of social issues, consider this simple test of our moral progress proffered by many liberals’ other favorite president, the character of Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing: “If fidelity to freedom of democracy is the code of our civic religion, then surely the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that says we shall give our children better than we ourselves received.”
So imagine, briefly, the life of a child today, and decide if our economic rules meet our moral obligation to provide a better future for our children.
Thanks to dithering by politicians, our example child is born into a world in which every citizen already owes the federal government nearly $46,000. Republicans in Congress have pointed out that:
When children born today reach 40 years old, their share of the U.S. public debt will be $279,738 — an increase of 859 percent above what it is today. For a family of four, the total household debt share would be approximately $1.119 million.
She will walk into a school that spends too much to teach too little, with the failing educational system in Washington, D.C. spending as much as $25,000 a year to educate each pupil.
Upon graduation, our child will decide whether to enter a government bureaucracy that pays as much as 40 percent more than the private sector. And who could blame her if she does? Our tax and spending structures drain talent out of the private sector and continually increase the size, scope, and cost of government until our long-term obligations to public servants sink the ship.
Should our hypothetical child choose to enter the private sector, she will get the “opportunity” to pay more in taxes the more successful she becomes. The burden of federal expenditures will increasingly fall on her, as she becomes one of only half of working Americans who pay federal income taxes.
And should our imaginary child end up being successful, she may well see most of her life’s work taken by the Treasury in the form of the Death Tax.
So as Obama and other national leaders attempt to separate “social issues” from economic issues, it’s important to remember that free enterprise is a moral choice and defenders of free enterprise must continue to take that message to American voters.
After all, we had our own favorite president by the name of Ronald Reagan who reminded us: “The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.”
Brett McMahon is a spokesman for the Free Enterprise Alliance’s Halt The Assault campaign.