President Barack Obama stated his views clearly in his famous interchange with Joe the Plumber. “It’s not that I want to punish your success. It’s better when we spread the wealth around.” Socialism by another name, Joe thought. Obama has made it clear that he does not care how big or how expensive government becomes during the spreading process. In his Inaugural Address he said, "Now there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest our system cannot tolerate big plans...The question is not whether our government is too big or small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified." With a federal deficit approaching $2 trillion for 2009, and deficit projections of not less than a half a trillion dollars over the next ten years, the question of whether government is too big or too small is very relevant, even vital to the future of the nation.
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Ronald Reagan came to office during another economically turbulent time, with unemployment on its way to over 10%, and double-digit inflation and interest rates; however, he knew in the end salvation rested not in big federal government programs or government takeovers, but rather in freeing individuals so they could achieve. During his Inaugural Address he said, “From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” He instituted historic tax cuts and supported deregulation and sound fiscal policies that brought the inflation rate to under 5% and cut the interest rates by half. Following Reagan economic philosophies, the 1980’s became one of the most prosperous times in American history. Unemployment fell to under 5%, per capita income rose by 15%, and the economy grew an entire third larger. President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress followed these principles, by-in-large, throughout the 90’s to the same booming effect. Obama’s view that these principles are discredited is truly detached from reality.
The documentary film I Want Your Money, due out next summer by RG Entertainment (co-written by yours truly), will contrast the two paths the United States can take using the words and actions of Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. It will also expose the high cost in lost freedom and in lost opportunity to support a Leviathan-like bureaucratic state. Some of the major failed policies of the Far Left going back to the Great Depression and the Great Society will be examined too, and how Obama and the Congressional Democrats are simply trying to repackage and sell these stale, long discredited big government policies to the American people all over again. California will be offered as a case study of what can happen to the United States if we continue down our current path.
Finally, I Want Your Money will be a call to action to anyone who cares about the future of the United States. Starting with the Congressional elections of 2010, the restoration of our country can and must begin. To borrow a sentiment expressed by Thomas Paine in American Crisis, let it be said of this generation, that people of good sense, alarmed at a common danger to the nation, came forth in time to save it.