Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman pointed out in the midst of the stagflation of the 1970s and early 80s: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The nation was experiencing little economic growth, double-digit inflation and interest rates, and an unemployment rate almost identical to today’s. We ended up in this ditch following a government knows best approach, sending more and more money to Washington so politicians could divvy it out as they saw fit. Their belief was that the individual industry and creativity of the American people could not be relied upon in an ever-changing and complex world. Government control and intervention were required in their view.
Ronald Reagan led the way out of the doldrums of the 70s into the booming 80s by going in exactly the opposite direction: rein in federal spending and leave more money in the hands of the people who earned it. Let them take the nation out of recession. That is exactly what the American people did. The United States experienced over two decades of nearly uninterrupted growth with unemployment falling and staying near or below 5% for most of those years.
The lesson of the 80s and 90s is clear: less government is better. When the government takes from one person’s hard work to give to another who has not worked for it, there is an overall negative effect on the economy. Less money is left in the hands of individuals and businesses to invest, grow, and create jobs. Conversely, when the government starts wealth redistribution programs whose benefits people do not have to pay for or pay full value for, it invariably leads to more people flocking to them and becoming more dependent on government. The government then has to turn around and raise taxes again leading to fewer jobs and more people dependent on government. The downward spiral continues. Where does this all lead? Margaret Thatcher said it best, “The problem with socialism [big government] is that “eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Unfortunately, by the early 2000s, there were too many people in power from both political parties who had forgotten this lesson. The Republicans (most of them should be called progressives or Democrat light) ushered in the largest expansion of federal spending since the heyday of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s. The federal budget increased by $1 trillion from 2001 to 2006. Much of the increase was not military related, but was caused by a 36% increase in domestic spending levels, including the creation of new government entitlement programs. Following her appointment to office in 2002, Senator Lisa Murkowski was right in the midst of the big spenders voting for these increases.
When the Democrats took over, they proceeded to double down on the big spending mistakes of the progressive Republicans. Government immediately expanded, domestic spending increased by hundreds of billions, and yet another new entitlement program was created, ObamaCare, which will cost trillions. The federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion in 2009 and is on track to be $1.5 trillion this year. The Obama Administration’s projections call for a doubling of the national debt to over $20 trillion by the end of the decade. If Congressional Budget Office projections are correct, over one quarter of the federal budget will be needed to pay interest on the national debt (the largest single item in the budget). This path is unsustainable and subjects us to the whims of foreign debt holders such as China and various Mideast nations. It is the road to serfdom.
Senator Murkowski is a statist. She believes that government is the answer to nearly every problem. She is an Arlen Specter-like Republican and, in fact, was right next to him in the top five RINOs in the Senate (Human Events, “Top Ten Senate RINOs”). She’s on President Obama’s short list of Republicans to call when he needs a swing vote. Just last month, she met with President Obama’s Congressional Democrats looking for ways to move climate change legislation forward.
Additionally, Murkowski:
1. Waffled on repealing ObamaCare
2. Supports cap and trade
3. Voted for TARP
4. Voted for bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
5. Voted against measures to secure our borders and for amnesty
6. Voted with the Democrats to rescind Reagan’s Mexico City Policy
7. Voted for taxpayer funded abortions and embryonic stem cell research
8. Voted with the Democrats against the Republicans over 300 times, according to the Washington Post
9. The Huffington Post described her as, “a center-right Democrat”
10. Voted for 7 out of 8 of President Obama’s and the Congressional Democrats major appropriations bills that Republicans voted against.
We can no longer afford to go down this road that big spenders, like Senator Murkowski, have us on. It is unsustainable. To borrow a phrase from Reagan, we must cause this “sad, bizarre chapter” in American political history to come to an end. We either have to return to our Constitutional moorings, grounded in limited government and individual liberty, or face the likely prospect of national insolvency, akin to Greece, with no one big enough to bail us out. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Let it be said of this time and place, that people of good sense, alarmed by a common danger to our nation’s future, came together in time to save it.
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