What President Obama could have said
Newly sworn-in
President Barak H. Obama could have said a lot of things during his
inaugural address today. He could have said that he recognizes that
the current financial crisis is a direct result of interference by
the Federal government in the workings of the marketplace. He could
have said that he understands that Federal policies aimed at
extending credit to those who could not afford it fueled the fires
under the housing bubble. He could have said that it is now obvious
that Federal regulatory policies have led to marketplace collapses of
unprecedented magnitude and that those policies need to be not simply
re-examined, but scrapped wholesale so that the markets in the United
States could indeed be called “free”, not simply in the rhetoric
of politicians, but in reality. President Obama could have admitted
that his proposed economic stimulus package is economically wasteful,
inefficient, and likely to prolong the economic problems that it is
supposed to solve.
President
Obama could have said that no more bailouts will be provided to any
business or group which finds itself in economic trouble. He could
have called for an immediate halt to the on-going process of the
nationalization of large parts of the American economy. He could
have forthrightly said that the Federal gravy train for UAW workers,
in the guise of the “bailout” of the Detroit automakers, and for
Wall Street bankers in the form of TARP funds, is going to come to a
screeching halt. He could have said that it is unfair, unethical, and
economically unsound practice to require taxpayers who make less than
UAW workers and Wall Street bankers and brokers to support those who
wantonly gutted the companies which provided them employment. The
new President could have said that he realizes that the only way out
of the economic mess we find ourselves in is to allow a marketplace
free of restrictive Federal regulation to sort itself out and
reallocate the malinvestments, that have been made over the last
couple of decades because of misguided Federal policies, so that
assets are once again usefully employed and people are able to find
work in private enterprise instead of within some gigantic make work
Federal program which will simply suck the lifeblood out of private
enterprise.
President
Obama could have said that the Federal government will no longer be
in the business of choosing who will win and who will lose in the
marketplace. He could have announced that he would begin this
process by canceling his much-ballyhooed plan to spend billions of
Federal dollars on“green” technology. He could have said that ,
after careful study, he now understands that the best way out of the
health-care crisis that this nation finds itself in is to get the
Federal government out of the business of paying for, providing, and
regulating health-care. He could have forthrightly recognized that
much of each dollar spent on health-care in this country is the
direct result of providers having to pay for the expense of
ineffective and unnecessary Federal regulation of the health-care
marketplace. He could have said that, after further study, he
understands that any government-funded health-care system
automatically leads to the rationing of health-care resources. He
could have said that he realizes that the way to lower health-care
costs is to remove Federal regulation and allow competition to
determine the price and availability of health-care services.
The
newly inaugurated President could have said that he intends to abide
by the oath which he took to “preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States” and that he would begin that
process by vetoing any bill which falls outside the list of eighteen
items found in Article I, Section 8 of that document. He could have
called for the immediate reigning in of the power of the Federal
government by saying that he would immediately disband Federal
agencies such as Health and Human Services, the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Labor Department, the Surface Transportation
Board, and every other Federal bureau and agency not authorized in
the explicit and plain language of the Constitution. He could have
said that he plans on making the expansion of liberty the keystone of
his new administration, not by expanding the reach of Federal
regulators to control what American citizens can do, but by
disbanding those agencies which are not only unconstitutional, but
are also counterproductive so far as the expansion of liberty is
concerned. President Obama could have admitted that our government
has strayed very far from the vision of a free nation, inhabited by
citizens for whom the government acts as an enabler of liberty,
rather than the restrictive beast that it has become. He could have
gone on to say that he will begin immediately to dismantle the
liberty-destroying apparatus of the Federal regulatory state which
has grown up since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's open assault on the
classical liberalism that this nation was founded upon.
However,
President Obama chose not to say any of those things. Instead, he
focused on how the role of the Federal government will expand under
his administration: “this crisis has reminded us that without a
watchful eye, the market can spin out of control “ is as direct a
statement that he intends to expand the interference of the Federal
government in the marketplace as one will get in an inaugural
address. He intends to go ahead with his economically foolish
“stimulus” plan by stating, “...we will act - not only to
create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will
build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines
that feed our commerce and bind us together...” He went on to say
that, “The question we ask today is not whether our government is
too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps
families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a
retirement that is dignified. “ There is no recognition here that
it is the State itself which is the cause of much of our current
distress. Instead, we will be served up more of the same: more
Federal government regulation, more Federal spending (under a
misguided belief in Keynesian economics), more Federal interference
in the marketplace, and certainly, a continuation of the process of
nationalizing yet more pieces of the American economy. President
Barak Obama did indeed have an opportunity to lay out a plan for
making a radical break with America's immediate past, and a return to
the principles upon which this nation was founded and which served it
well until certain “progressive” politicians decided that they
knew better how to live the lives of ordinary American's, than did
those citizens themselves. There will be no real change, no
recognition that the current way of doing things simply does not
work, but is, simply put, destructive of that freedom which the new
President claims to hold in such high regard. Because the old
policies have signally failed there is no reason to believe that the
so-called “new” policies, which are, in reality, merely rehashes
of tired liberal programs and goals, will fare any better. The
American people are in for yet more disappointment and
disillusionment. Perhaps this time they will recognize that electing
another Democrat or Republican will not change things, and that the
way forward is to vote for those candidates who actively support the
libertarian principles that made this nation great. To continue to
do otherwise is simply to prove that, according to Einstein's
definition of insanity (repeatedly doing the same thing while
expecting different results), the American body-politic is far from
sane.