Facing up to the disaster of government spending.
Government spending and commitments to future spending have reached levels that will be catastrophic if we do not take action. Right now, every child is born with a debt of $170,000 – and this figure grows every year.
We cannot dismantle our entitlement programs, nor should we break the promises made that people grew to count on for their retirement. But we can face up to the fact that we are bankrupting future generations, and must reform the programs that cannot be sustained in their present form.
And we must turn around the growing tendency of government to bail out those who took a risk and lost, or who have a self-proclaimed need and an organization to lobby for them.
For most of our history, Americans took pride in our self-reliance. Most of us are descended from ancestors who came here with little besides the clothes on their backs; some came in chains. From these humble beginnings Americans created the freest and most prosperous society that ever existed. Yet in recent years the government has increasingly become the nanny and ATM card of the people instead of the protector of our rights and our land. We need to recover our self-reliance and our self-respect.
Americans are the most charitable people in the world. We can help our fellow citizens far more efficiently by making the best use of our private resources and minimizing government programs, which waste huge amounts of money, invite corruption, and usually fail to meet their goals.
