Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders by Eric Cantor;Paul Ryan;Kevin McCarthy

Author:Eric Cantor;Paul Ryan;Kevin McCarthy [McCarthy, Eric Cantor;Paul Ryan;Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Published: 2010-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

The Tipping Point

Before I came to Congress I spent some time at what Washington self-approvingly calls a “think tank.” I wrote speeches about the economy for true conservative heroes like Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett at Empower America. For the past four years in the House of Representatives, I’ve been the leading Republican on the Budget Committee. So I’ve looked at the numbers. And for as long as I have been studying the amount of tax dollars spent by the federal government versus the amount of revenue it takes in, it has been painfully clear that America is on an unsustainable fiscal path.

We’re rapidly approaching a point of no return; a tipping point after which we become a country most Americans have never dreamed we would be. If we keep spending like we’re spending, America will become a place where unprecedented levels of debt overwhelm the budget, smother the economy, weaken our competitiveness in the twenty-first-century global economy, and threaten the survival of programs for the truly needy. Worse yet, we will become a culture in which self-reliance becomes a vice and dependency a virtue; a place where so many Americans are dependent upon government that our country comes to reject individual initiative, entrepreneurship, and opportunity that made us great.

As Eric has already written, too much of our recent political history has been spent trading accusations about which political party cares about the American people more than the other. There’s been seemingly constant competition to brand one party the party that’s in it for the people and the other party the party that’s in it for themselves. As usual, Washington has been treating the American people like children, not talking about substantive differences, just calling each other names. My party: good. Your party: bad.

But this argument—whoever makes it, Democrat or Republican—is a distraction. I truly believe that most Americans regardless of party agree that the status quo is unacceptable. Republican and Democratic partisans both know that Americans are hurting. We know that too many Americans are out of work or in grim fear of losing their jobs. We know that health-care costs are out of control. They’re bankrupting our small businesses, they’re bankrupting families, and they’re bankrupting our government.

The fundamental difference in American politics today isn’t about who cares the most, it’s about which party is committed to the ideas and principles that have never failed in the past to solve our nation’s problems while preserving individual freedom and equal opportunity. And here, we don’t agree with the party that currently dominates Washington. We have real differences. In fact, Washington’s self-proclaimed Progressives see the crisis in spending and debt coming just as clearly as we do. The difference is, they’re not interested in applying the brakes. They want to see America hurtle past the point of no return. They welcome the level of government spending and the level of government control in our lives that’s necessary for a European-style welfare state. Their paternalistic philosophy calls for a self-reinforcing expansion of government.

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