Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (15 page)

Let me pause here to note that what I’ve already said about America’s unsustainable fiscal path was true
before
the spending binge of the last year and a half. Our day of reckoning was always coming. President Obama and Democratic leaders in Washington are just seeing that it comes much sooner. In fact, they welcome this day of reckoning because they believe that from it will emerge a very different country from the one we’ve known.

Most of us grew up in an America in which hard work was rewarded and slacking off was penalized. When I was a kid in Janesville, Wisconsin, I learned early about the power of incentives. For just one B on my report card, my parents cut my allowance from $4 to $2. If I got a C, I got no allowance at all. Later, studying economics in college, I came to understand that my parents were on to something. It is this approach—combining maximum opportunity with the right incentives to succeed—that has made America great. We are a country that rewards enterprise, favors self-reliance, and fosters free enterprise. Historically, we have given Americans the incentive to take risks and achieve by viewing welfare and government entitlements as
ways to help those in need, not as ways of life for the middle class. Justice requires that individual effort and reward be kept together, and we have uniquely understood that long-term dependency on government saps the spirit of entrepreneurialism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.

But at the same time that America is an entrepreneurial nation, it is also a generous and compassionate nation. During the twentieth century, America built a safety net for those suffering hard times. Beyond private savings, we offered Americans help in securing their retirement through private pensions and the Social Security program. In the 1960s, the government created health-care programs for retirees, and those less well off.

Our social insurance strategies of the twentieth century are a critical component of our nation’s social safety net—but they must be reformed if they are to exist for those in need for the twenty-first century. As currently structured, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are set to implode in the face of the massive demographic shift underway. This represents both a critical moment for needed action—and an opportunity to chart a new course for renewed growth and restored promise for this century.

Too often in American politics when anyone or any party raises the issue of reform of these entitlements, the other party reverts instantly to manipulating fear. They quickly take to the airwaves with charges that the other party is out to “gut” Social Security or deny impoverished Americans medical care. But today, this tactic isn’t just
cynical, it’s dangerous and self-defeating. Because the fact is, our major entitlement programs have expanded beyond the government’s ability to sustain them in the future. If nothing changes, they will go bankrupt. This isn’t a theory, it’s a fact acknowledged by all nonpartisan scorekeepers and understood by an American people far ahead of Washington’s political class. So those who demagogue Americans—who understand the need to address this problem—are actively complicit in the destruction of these programs. By attacking reformers, they are depriving the next generation of American retirees the promised services for which they worked and to which they contributed all their lives.

Can America be both compassionate and prosperous? Absolutely. But compassion is not a function of the welfare state, as Progressivists would have you believe. Compassion is a relationship among individuals who know and love one another as persons. Consider, for example, the difference between the way a family provides health care for its elderly members compared with the impersonal, rationed health care that government bureaucrats may, or may not, apportion depending on budgetary calculation rather than individual need. Acts of compassion can only increase by raising the level of society’s general prosperity, and this comes, not by expanding the welfare state but by lowering tax, regulatory, and other government barriers to entrepreneurialism, economic growth, and new jobs.

On the other hand, the policies of President Obama and the Democratic congressional majority will do little to
overcome America’s economic stagnation. They will create a level of spending, deficits, and debt that’s unprecedented in America. According to the CBO, the president’s policies will increase spending by an amazing $5.7 trillion by 2020, equal to nearly a full quarter of the nation’s economic resources. That’s one quarter of the nation’s economy in the hands of government. Under Washington’s current policies, deficits never fall below $670 billion in the next ten years and will exceed $1 trillion by the end of the decade.

And, of course, all these deficits add up to mountains of debt. Thanks to this administration’s spending, our debt as a percentage of our economy is projected to exceed 60 percent in 2010, the highest in over a half a century. By the end of the next decade, debt will consume 90 percent—90 percent!—of our GDP. The irony is that, while those advocating an expanded entitlement state would like to make America more like Europe, the levels of debt created by their policies are too high for us to join the European Union.

America is on a dangerous downward path, but it’s not too late to get back on the upward road to security and solid growth. We have a handful of years to save our children and grandchildren from a life of economic decline and insecurity. If we begin to restructure our nation’s entitlement programs now, we may revive, rededicate, and save the American idea.

The Wisconsinites I have been honored to represent for the last twelve years are like Americans everywhere. They
can look squarely at the choices facing them and take the right path. But to make an informed choice, Americans need a sound vision of a future to which they can aspire. Republicans must rededicate ourselves to the principles that founded this nation—liberty, free enterprise, and government by the consent of the governed. Let’s reapply these principles as timeless guides to meet the challenges we face and save this exceptional and blessed country in which Providence has placed the American people to live.

CHAPTER SIX
A Roadmap for America’s Future
 
 

I’m a fifth-generation Wisconsin native—born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin. I lost my dad in my formative teenage years. It forced me to grow up fast, and I’ve been beyond blessed to have been surrounded and supported by family and friends. I recall my dad often telling me, “Son, you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.” Strangely, he usually made this point when I found myself to be part of the problem.

My dad also introduced me to our nation’s historic legacy: that every generation of Americans tackles its defining challenges and leaves the next generation more prosperous, more secure, and more free. Whether the scourge of slavery and civil war, the Great Depression and the world at war, or stagflation and malaise—our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents met our nation’s challenges with purpose
and courage and left the next generation with a stronger America. This is our unique legacy as Americans.

Today we face the very real threat of severing this legacy. Right now, too many in Washington are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Our continued acceleration down the path to bankruptcy, with a crushing burden of debt set to crash our economy, will leave the next generation with an inferior standard of living and an inability to make the most of their lives.

My father’s lessons were kept in the front of my mind when I first came to Washington in my early twenties. Like I said, I had been a think tank guy, writing speeches and policy papers for Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett. But as proud as I was of the work I did for them, I knew I was on the sidelines. Strengthened by the encouragement of my family, I ran for the House seat in Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district, a district that had voted for Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton and would go on to vote for Al Gore and Barack Obama. Still, I didn’t hide my limited government, free-market principles. I campaigned on them. I spoke to the voters of the 1st District like adults. And the result should be a revelation to the consultants and various other poll-driven political professionals who believe Americans have to be treated like children: I won. The Wisconsinites I serve—and Americans everywhere—deserve to be spoken to like adults. They deserve leaders who are honest about our problems and offer bold solutions to address them. Agree or disagree with me, but my electoral success in
Southern Wisconsin is the result of tireless hard work and forthright honesty. I’ve been straight with my employers—the residents of Wisconsin’s 1st District—both before and after they gave me the opportunity and honor to serve them.

Since first elected as a twenty-eight-year-old in 1998, I have admittedly lost some of my youthfulness, but I believe that, if anything, my idealism has grown and matured. I believe in the fundamental decency and wisdom of the American people and their ability to govern themselves under a Constitution, now well over two hundred years old, that limits political power. I believe we have a right to enjoy a government that respects the American people as the true sovereign of the country, and, as the Declaration of Independence proclaims, that secures our natural God-given rights to live, be free, and fulfill all of our human potential.

I have learned a thing or two about the ways of Washington since I came here, though. One of the first lessons I learned was, even if you come to Congress believing in limited government and fiscal prudence, once you get here you are bombarded with pressure to violate your conscience and your commitment to help secure the people’s natural right to equal opportunity.

Members of Congress average twenty meetings a day, in fifteen-minute increments, almost exclusively with individuals or groups who want something. Constituents have requests for more government spending on often legitimate—even commendable—projects. Interest groups
want their piece of the expanding government pie. Businesses want regulations to make life easier for themselves and more difficult for their competitors. The pressure is relentless to create bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive government. Believe it or not, the people who believe in freedom and equal opportunity don’t usually come by to say, “Hey, Paul! You’re doing a great job! We love your views! Continue to leave us alone!” In fact it might help a lot if they did carry just that message to those who are supposed to represent us in Congress!

It was this relentless pressure to bring home the bacon that was the undoing of the Republican majority that came into office in 1994. They allowed their limited government principles to be overtaken by the pressure to appease voters and donors. As Eric has written, the Republican majority succumbed to the earmark culture. They did what the pollsters told them they needed to do to get reelected. They gathered the wish lists of the different groups in their electoral base and dispensed the goodies they requested. As long as the members brought home the bacon, they maintained their popularity and continued to get reelected.

They continued to get reelected, that is, until the corruption of the process caught up with them; until the people got wind of the Bridge to Nowhere and rightly asked why they were being asked to pay for such things; and until their colleagues and associates started going to jail.

In contrast to Republicans when they stick to their principles, the Democratic leadership is proud to head up the
party of government. Think, for example, of the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Massachusetts democrat Barney Frank, openly proclaiming in a TV interview that his party is “trying on every front to increase the role of government.” Resisting Washington’s pressure to expand the state and state spending isn’t an issue for these leaders. But for Republicans, staying loyal to the American principle of limited government means resisting the centrifugal forces of Washington. And our party can only do that when we have a deeper understanding of what those principles are and a publicly articulated set of solutions guided by them. If Republicans aren’t anchored to their principles, it’s only a matter of time in Washington before we imitate these Democratic leaders: expanding government and government spending in order to cling to power.

I admit that in recent years Republicans abandoned these principles. We lost the true path and suffered electoral defeats. But we have not returned from this experience empty handed. We have learned that unless we Republicans guide our policy decisions by the founding principles of freedom and equal opportunity, and the free-market democracy that is their practical meaning, change in America will no longer be guided by the enduring ideas that make this a great and exceptional nation. Unless Republicans promote economic and social policies rooted in the self-evident truths of equality and liberty, we will under the Progressivist ideology of today’s Democratic leaders slowly fall into the mediocrity that the once great nations
of Europe have become under social welfare paternalism. The real choices before us have come into view.