When Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, commonly known as “Joe the plumber,” asked Barack Obama about his tax plan for small businesses, the Democrat candidate spilled the beans without even realizing what he had just said: “spread the wealth around.” These four words should be a political death sentence for any candidate running for office in America, a country built on capitalism and the rejection of European socialism.
As a result of his question, Wurzelbacher has been smeared, investigated, scrutinized, and disparaged by the Obama campaign and the left. Joe says this is dangerous when we can’t even ask a question of our elected officials. I too have a question for Obama: Where is all that $600 million in campaign money coming from? Obama won’t disclose it, and I suspect for good reason. There is just no way that that amount of money can all be from legal donations. Not even half.
Obama says his economic plan would increase taxes on any person or any small business making over $250,000/year. He also stated that 98% of small business would not be effected by the tax increase because they don’t make $250,000 in a year. And Obama says that John McCain is “out of touch?” It appears that Barack Obama knows very little about private businesses in America.
What world has Obama been living in? Except for a small mom and pop grocery store or donut shop, most small business cannot exist on less than $250,000 a year if they have employees. Obama says he doesn’t know any plumbers who make $250,000 a year. Obviously, he doesn’t know any plumbers who own their own plumbing business, they don’t live in his neighborhood.
A small business is defined as having up to 100 employees. Small businesses don’t get much smaller than the electrical contractor that I work for. We have 3 electricians, 3 apprentices, 2 office workers, and 4 service trucks - usually only 3 are used. That’s a total of 8 employees, less than one tenth of the maximum number described as being a small business.
Recently I asked the owner if Obama’s tax plan would raise the taxes on our business. The response was “absolutely.” In other words, we could not possibly run this small business on less than $250,000 a year, and we are barely getting by in this economy. The owner doesn’t even receive a paycheck. We wouldn’t be able to stay in business under the Obama tax plan, much less pay for healthcare or the fine he would impose for not providing it. Small businesses are the largest employers in the country. So who are these 90% of small businesses that make less than $250,000? It’s just not possible.
The other day, Obama said "I'm worried about people planning for their retirement... I'm worried about people planning for their child’s education... I'm worried about people finding their jobs shipped overseas..." If Obama is elected in November, we will all be worried about those things because a lot of us will be out of a job, and the rest will be paying even higher taxes.
Obama has this notion that taking money from those who achieve financial success and giving it to the poor will somehow result in “trickle up prosperity.” I cannot fathom how making people dependent on government handouts at the expense of the entrepreneurs is going to create wealth in America. It seems to me that this can only result in trickle up poverty for Americans. Wealth is created by entrepreneurship creating jobs, not by the government handing out money so that the poor can pay a plumber.
Is socialism taking over in America? Is that really what Americans want? We have a government addicted to deficit spending and a system that encourages citizens to live beyond their means and pile up debts on their credit cards. It’s the same policy that our government has been pursuing without a thought as to how we are ever going to pay back the debt.
At the same time, politicians want to hand out even more money - that we don’t even have in the treasury - to people who don’t work for it, then tell us taxpayers that we are responsible for the debt they have created. Wouldn’t you like to be able to go out and spend all the money you want, then charge it to someone else’s debt? Why do we put up with this? When will we demand that our government live within it’s means? The financial bailout is simply a reward to people who have followed the bad example set by the government.
Right now, and because of the policies of our government, Every man, woman and child in America now owes a debt to foreign governments of about $35,000.00 each. You paid off your home loan, your car, your credit cards, and thought you were finally out of debt? Think again. You still owe $35,000. This debt will not only become the liability of your children and your grandchildren, but future generations of children who haven't even been born yet.
Catholics believe that all people are born with the original sin on their souls. Our government has now imposed on newborns the "original debt" on their souls as well, and it doesn‘t apply only to Catholics. Eventually, the credit will run out, and the piper will have to be paid for all of the socialist programs that the government is now using our credit to provide.
Paying for government is a lot like paying for a cell phone. A basic phone can be bought for under $20.00. But wait, you want a camera in the phone. That will cost you more. Then along comes text messaging with additional costs. You don't like the ring tone? Pay for a different one. What about internet access? No problem, but will cost more. Touch screen, more expensive. Want video games on your phone? No problem, if you can afford it. Want to make calls from some remote desert island, use the internet, receive email, play games and take pictures to send home from the phone? We can do that too.
There is an endless number of features you can incorporate into a cell phone, but by the time you add all of them, your $20.00 phone now costs you nearly $600.00, plus all the monthly service fees that go with all of those extra features. What if the cell phone companies discontinued all but the most expensive phone with all the service fees attached, and then told you that if you want a phone, you have to buy one with all of the features that you don’t want and will never use?
That is precisely what we are being told by our government. The government that began like a simple cellphone, according to the Constitution, but over the years began adding features upon features until we have the huge bureaucratic behemoth that has taken over our lives and our country. We are not given a choice of what features we want to pay for, but instead are forced to pay for the whole package.
Isn't it time to tell our government that we only want to make simple phone calls; that we only want the government as described in our Constitution - which is the calling plan we originally signed up for? Not only do we not want all of these extra government features, we can’t afford them. The time has come to cut down on the size of government and trade this one in for one we can afford, one that is accountable to the Constitution and the people it is supposed to be serving.
As if it weren’t enough that government has been taking over education and healthcare, for which it has no constitutional authorization, now we have politicians nationalizing (or as Maxine Waters would say “socializing”) Wall Street and the banking industry. By government helping itself to a financial stake in these industries with our money, they gain control of those industries.
That is the same way Joseph Stalin imposed communism on Russia. If we allow government to continue down this path, soon there will be little left in America that is not controlled by the government. There will be little left of America. Freedom and liberty will become a thing of the past. Washington tells us it is for our own good and necessary to save the economy from disaster. These are the same people who got us into this potential disaster in the first place. Do we really want to trust them to get us out of it and control even more of the economy?
Barack Obama has said he will create jobs by rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure with new roads, bridges, and the power grid. But wait a minute……. the power grid? The power grid doesn’t belong to the U.S. government; it belongs to the power companies and energy providers. It is their job to maintain and improve it. Does Obama plan on taking over the nation’s power grid too, so that he can turn off our lights and tell us when it’s time to go to bed?
I hope his road and bridge building is confined to federal highway roads and bridges, or we’re going to be feeding a lot of piggies on capitol hill. But how are we going to pay for it when the last thing we need right now is more government spending and more people on the government payroll?
The clear answer is to reduce taxes on businesses so that they can hire more people to do the work that needs doing, and turn a profit in the process. Obama doesn’t want more private enterprise jobs and profit. He wants more government jobs and more people dependent on government. In spite of his populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, Obama is clearly a Marxist Socialist who has more in common with Kim Jong Il than he does with Americans.
George Bush has been governing like a Democrat on economic and domestic issues, and most congressional Republicans have supported him out of party loyalty, I suppose. These are the very policies that have angered the people who are demanding “change” and blaming Republicans, but these are not conservative Republican policies.
The size of government has grown by 50% since Bush took office. The federal budget has grown by one third, and the national debt has now doubled. While McCain says he wants to reform government, cut spending, eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, and reverse this expansion of government, Obama wants to raise taxes and spending; increase the size of government; and add more government bureaucracy. In other words, Obama wants to do exactly what Bush has been doing - only more of it. Democrats calls this “change,” I call it George W. Bush on steroids.
It may have been a gaffe in the last debate when John McCain referred to Barack Obama as “Senator Government,” but truer words were never spoken by McCain. “Senator Government” describes Barack Obama perfectly. As government grows, free enterprise and the free market suffer, as does our personal freedom and liberty. “Senator Government” isn’t concerned with that, but it should certainly concern all Americans who may end up living under socialism if the voters in our country don’t wake up and smell the coffee, and if the Republican party doesn‘t return to it‘s founding conservative principles.
