NRD Editor’s Note: This column first appeared at TheHill.com.
By Rick Manning — Tonight, we will hear President Obama give a defense of big-government liberalism and make an argument that growing government is good for America. He couldn’t be more wrong.
Almost 1 in 6 Americans depends upon the government for food assistance. To put the enormity of this dependency into perspective, the number of people on food stamps is more than the combined populations of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Or in political terms, the astonishing number of food stamp recipients equates to 74 electoral votes.
Any questions why our president doesn’t think government dependency is a problem?
Obama doesn’t think this is a problem because in his mind, it is free money to be given to those who he hopes will trade just a little bit of freedom in exchange for the “generosity” — “free” money that he can throw to those he has deemed to be have-nots, all under the mantle of fairness.
Traditional Keynesian theory suggests that this spending should be accelerating the economy, particularly combined with extremely low interest rates and the billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve is pumping into the economy, but the facts tell us something else.
In spite of the spending and monetary policy, private sector growth the last quarter only rose by just over 1 percent, anemic by any standard.
Yet, the nanny state’s answer is to create more regulations designed to impede those sectors of the economy that actually are thriving in spite of D.C. These regulations coming out under the banners of labor fairness and climate change seek to stifle job creation in economic sectors that are not politically favored and encourage them in sectors that Obama and his minions like or control.
Tonight for the sixth time since he became president, Obama is announcing that he is turning his eyes toward jobs. Now that the election is over, let’s not be fooled again.
Let’s be clear. Based upon his actions, Obama clearly does not want job growth in the private sector. Instead, he wants to increase jobs in the government sector, nice union-dues-paying voters who support his political machine. If you have any doubt, just look at how stimulus monies were spent to offset state and local government spending cuts, which is the real reason they failed.
He does not view government dependency to be a bad thing but instead a natural way to build political constituencies who fear the loss of big government, much like the captor who bonds with his kidnapper and refuses to leave the safe, knowable confines of slavery even when free to go.
So, tonight we will hear about how growing government is good and how budget cuts threaten to throw us into a recession.
We will likely hear the lie that we cannot afford to cut the budget now, when the reality is that this might be the last chance to do so.
And we will hear how after four years, America is finally on the path to recovery, even though Obama guru Paul Krugman accurately says our economy suffers from depression-like conditions.
Our nation was founded on the principle that the people needed to be protected from the government, and the one initial campaign promise that Obama has kept is that he is fundamentally transforming America.
And that is the Nanny State of the Union.
Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is the Vice President of Public Policy and Communications for Americans for Limited Government.
