Better Fixes for the Financial Crisis & Ideas for a Better Future in America
Posted by Tina
Hope and change sound good, but good ideas are needed if we want solutions that actually work. Two sources of reading provide some good ideas to ponder today. The first addresses the financial crisis and the second solid solutions for Americas best future. Both have been offered for our consideration by Newt Gingrich. The first excerpt is from a post on the corner blog at NRO:
Before D.C. Gets Our Money, It Owes Us Some Answers
Watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening. ** We are being told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has a plan which will shift $700 billion in obligations from private companies to the taxpayer. ** We are being warned that this $700 billion bailout is the only answer to a crisis. ** We are being reassured that we can trust Secretary Paulson “because he knows what he is doing”. ** Congress had better ask a lot of questions before it shifts this much burden to the taxpayer and shifts this much power to a Washington bureaucracy.
Newt goes on to ask what assurances we have that future administrations will follow through with the good intent of this plan and also how we, as conservatives, can we justify the adoption of a big government solution without first considering alternatives in an open and comprehensive way through discussions in Congress. Good questions but I confess I dont have much faith that Congress has the capacity to look for solutions that would work for all Americans. Still, Newt’s ideas for alternative solutions should be ingested and stored in our consciousness so that when the discussions begin we can evaluate them and the positions our congressmen take. I hope you will read the entire post over on the Corner blog.
Newt goes on to ask what assurances we have that future administrations will follow through with the good intent of this plan and also how we, as conservatives, can we justify the adoption of a big government solution without first considering alternatives in an open and comprehensive way through discussions in Congress. Good questions but I confess I dont have much faith that Congress has the capacity to look for solutions that would work for all Americans. Still, Newt’s ideas for alternative solutions should be ingested and stored in our consciousness so that when the discussions begin we can evaluate them and the positions our congressmen take. I hope you will read the entire post over on the Corner blog.
The second essay is a transcript of a talk Newt gave to a group he founded called, American Solutions. Find a link to the transcript and an excerpt below the fold:
Get the Politicians Out of the Economy: Recipe for Sound Economic Growth
If you’re like me and like most Americans, you’ve watched your savings shrink, your house value decline, the price you pay for gasoline rise, and the economy within many of us run a company get worse. But your economic problems have been dwarfed by the appalling behavior of Washington politicians.
Not only are they undermining our economic future but if unchecked they will ruin the future for our children and grandchildren. ** Washington politicians in both parties are panicked and as a result they are making things worse.
The liberals in Congress have responded to the American people’s anger over energy prices by trying to pass fundamentally dishonest bills which raise taxes and at the same time limit energy production while pretending to increase it. These dishonest efforts would actually make it permanently illegal to drill for oil and natural gas in most of the areas offshore. Instead of letting the ban on offshore oil drilling end naturally on October 1, the liberals in Congress are trying to enact a new, permanent ban on offshore development. These dishonest “no drill bills” offer no hope of solving the underlying challenge of energy for a country which is shipping $700 billion overseas every year. And notice you now see foreign, sovereign funds with your money coming back to buy your banks and your companies because of our truly destructive energy policy.
In the name of economic security the Congress passed a Sarbanes-Oxley law which is driving companies from public scrutiny into private ownership, driving new companies out of New York and into London for financing and slowing down dramatically the development of new companies. . Let me be very clear, Sarbanes Oxley has failed. It failed to warn about Fannie Mae. It failed to warn about Freddie Mac. It failed to warn about Bear Stearns. It failed to warn about Lehman Brothers. It failed to warn about AIG. And yet, while being a total failure in every big case, it adds $3 million dollars a year to the cost of a startup company having to hire accountants and take care of paperwork when they actually should be focused on growing, hiring people, and being productive. The result has been in the second quarter of this year, we had zero new public offerings by new companies, and in the third quarter we had one. We used to have thirty or forty every quarter. That’s how bad Sarbanes Oxley is weakening this economy.
In the name of national security Congress adopted a visa law which cripples America’s ability to attract successful people, crippled our international tourism business, and weakened our ability to attract first class students in math and science.
Congress insists on education policies which prop up failed bureaucracies, trap children in institutions which destroy their future — and in some neighborhoods making prison much more likely than college. These failed policies guarantee the continuing decay of America in both economic and national security competition with China and India.
Americans still put up with a failing healthcare system. They still pay too much for too little quality, too little choice, and too little convenience. Congress has thus far failed to improve safety by investing in electronic health records, failed to crack down on fraud, and failed to find a way through tax credits to make sure everyone can have health insurance.
In the name of limiting legal immigration while ignoring the millions of illegal immigrants in America, the Congress refuses to adopt policies to increase the number of smart, educated and successful people who can come to America to work. This refusal leads to high value jobs being exported to, India, China, Canada, and elsewhere while low paying illegal jobs grow in the United States.
For too long, Congress has failed to stop the practice of using surplus Social Security funds for other purposes, including pork barrel spending. This continued raid on Social Security makes it more and more difficult to achieve real reform for Social Security.
Congress compounds our long term weakness in economic competition by sustaining the world’s second highest corporate tax rate (three times higher than Ireland’s), sustaining a legal system which is the most economically destructive on the planet, and taxing capital gains. All this while the world’s best competitors encourage savings and investment with low corporate tax rates and zero taxes on capital gains.
Faced with the economic mess they have made, most Congressional politicians then call for protecting the very jobs they are killing by adopting economically unsustainable but politically attractive demagoguery.