Speeches and Floor Statements

Thank you for your kind introduction.  I appreciate your invitation. I’d like to talk to you this morning not just about taxes but about the “big picture.”

In the America you and I grew up in…the America that attracted immigrants from every land…we lived under a system where individual rights were respected.  If people were down on their luck, families, neighbors, church members, and local communities extended a helping hand till they were back on their feet. Americans believed each person was principally responsible for his own well-being.  We worked.  We saved.  We took pride in looking after ourselves and our family.  We thought everyone should do the same and would succeed according to merit.  We knew luck played a role in our future, but we acknowledged no claim on government to provide our income or our livelihood.

Many Americans now believe something has gone wrong with this picture of the country we love.  I think so as well.

In order to see where we are heading, let’s look back to where we started.  America was exceptional from its very birth.  This new nation was the first in history to stake its way of life on “self-evident truths”…principles that God and nature gave to every human being everywhere at all times.  We declared our firm beliefs —

• That all human persons are created equal in natural rights by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”

• that the chief of these rights are to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

• that the mission of government should be limited to securing natural rights, and

• that the people have the right to govern themselves by consent.

These principles made up our “credo”…what Lincoln termed “our ancient faith” and Franklin Roosevelt “the ancient truths.”  America was not just a place.  It was an idea.  Self-government would succeed here, or be written off as a wrong-headed failure everywhere.

Jefferson and the Founders were painfully aware that America was birthmarked with a bleeding wound.  Race-based slavery denied the natural rights of almost twenty percent of the American people, dragged here from Africa or their descendents.  Entangled in systematic racial oppression…some possessing slaves of their own…they contradicted the social fact of slavery by proclaiming the moral certainty that all human beings are created with equal dignity.  Perplexed for practical answers, they placed their faith in America ’s future as a “promissory note,” in Dr. King’s noble words.  Their vision was breathtaking.  The day would come when the last shackle binding the last slave might be broken forever.  The emancipated would govern themselves under the same freedoms as everyone else.  And so it was.

You and I have heard the naysayers, but I still believe the story of America is the carrying out of that promise!   With fits and starts, America is still an ongoing experiment in freedom…a test that keeps asking whether human beings really can govern themselves…or whether self-government must finally fail, and the task given to a chosen few, trained to know what’s best for the rest of us.

Today we have two competing political parties offering different views and solutions to the nation’s problems.  In the end, both parties make popular consent a reality in practice.  The two-party system works for the common good when both are guided by the American “credo.”

I’m proud of Americans who are true to their party’s beliefs, I really am.  Loyalty to the core principles which your party stood for—Democrat or Republican—should be respected.  Faithful voters are great citizens from a diverse range of backgrounds and ethnicities, religions, careers, and interests.  The inclusiveness of both parties is a reflection of America ’s “ancient faith” in popular consent and equal rights.

I am not worried about our people.  But I am worried about the commitments of our leaders…frankly, the Democratic leadership.  I have the opportunity in Congress to see them up close, engage them, debate with them.  I see the rank and file keeping faith with their party, while their leaders abandon them.  Have they not decided that Americans are not good enough to govern themselves under free market democracy?  Have they not turned away from the American “credo” toward a very different belief: the idea of a European social welfare state under a rigid bureaucracy?

Oh, they may not say so, but their policies speak for them —

• Policies that place private businesses that employ thousands of laborers under government ownership, or substitute bureaucratic red tape for free market competition and consumer choice

• Policies that saddle the government and economy with a mountain of debt that will hobble prosperity… and that replace economic expansion with redistribution schemes to manage the decline

•  Policies so costly that they force taxes higher and smother innovation, excellence, and the incentive to succeed

• Policies that replace the common good with group division, and will ultimately transform self-reliant citizens into passive subjects, dependent on the political class for their well being

To understand the nature of the Democratic leaders’ agenda, consider their signature programs in the total picture.

• The Democratic leaders were not elected to turn America ’s health care into a government run scheme, yet that’s exactly what they are doing – much like European-style socialized health care, a system so compromised that many would rather travel to America for private care, while health care professionals leave Europe to practice here.

• They were not elected to establish “crony capitalism,” but they enacted a fantastic 787 billion dollar giveaway which they branded as an Economic Stimulus.  It has done little to restore economic growth, arguably has cost thousands of private jobs, and spent billions in pork barrel projects sought by interests backing these leaders.

• They were not elected to impose an enormous energy tax regime on this country, yet they pushed through the House, and are trying to make the Senate pass, an unprecedented energy tax bill called “cap and trade.”

• They were not elected to make the national debt balloon, but they rammed through Congress a mammoth budget that doubles our debt in five years, and triples it in ten.

These drastic policies, taken together, will transform our free market democracy into a collectivist welfare state.  This may not happen all at once.  It will take place step-by-step, with expressions of “regret” and promises of “temporary measures” along the way.  But soon the free and open society we love will become unrecognizable.

Not only is the size and power of the federal government growing larger under their dominance…we are quickly approaching a “tipping point.”  The expansion of federal entitlements will reach this point when more people are living off the government than paying into it.  And yes, Republicans and Democrats over decades have led us to this pass.

While we have reason to be concerned about our country’s future, we have no reason to be panicked!  We saw the remarkable response to the Democratic leaders’ Health Care plans and other policies at town halls around America .  The outpouring of popular protest inspires confidence that average Americans regardless of party will not tolerate designs on their freedom.

The time has come to reclaim our nation’s “central idea” of equality and liberty.   Let us begin a serious public debate over the two different paths before us—calmly, honestly, and openly.  There are real problems that must be addressed—how to restore growth, jobs, and prosperity … how to deliver health care at lower cost to more Americans … how to prevent terrorists and other adversaries from attacking our homeland again.

Nothing prevents Congress from establishing a freer market in health care that keeps patients and doctors at the center, without a massive government takeover.  There are Republican alternatives – including my own – that offer reforms to move health care toward cost reduction, greater access, and market freedom.

Nothing prevents Congress from ending the travesty of using government bailouts to nationalize private sector businesses, and using stimulus spending to weaken competitors and reward cronies.  Our budgets can be reduced and controlled – here too I have offered legislation to do this.

Nothing stops Congress from ending the economic boom and bust cycle by fixing our monetary system.  Instead of expanding the Federal Reserve’s role in the financial sector of our economy, Congress can stabilize the dollar’s long-term value with a monetary standard for the 21^st century global economy.

But, freedom is not the goal of today’s Democratic leaders.  The reforms they prefer are rooted in ideas that are alien to average Americans – Democrats, independents, and Republicans.  They have deserted what President Franklin Roosevelt called “the temple of our civilization.”

A great national debate between the parties over fundamental differences in principle must grow and crescendo.  Americans must make a stark choice before it’s too late.  Given the speed of the changes these leaders are forcing on our economy and our polity, we have no more time to evade the choice.  Voters don’t like to make these choices, and frankly, my colleagues don’t like asking them to.  There are political risks.  We recoil from the political demagoguery that will follow the demand to choose.  On the other hand, why would any honorable man or woman want to stay in Congress, to preside over the steady decline of our country…to hear our children say that America ’s best century was the past century?  We ourselves must arouse America from slumber, or else we sit by in Congress while this land of exceptional promise slips into the ranks of the mediocre in the 21^st century.

We owe it to the country to make the alternatives clear.  “Change” in direction toward a European welfare state? or going forward under principles that never fail: equality and liberty, opportunity and limited government?  Let this be the century when the American people regained confidence in themselves by reclaiming the truths that made us free.  By “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” this nation can answer the issues of today and tomorrow by building on the solid rock of human freedom.

Thank you.