Editor-at-Large

When I

started my adult life, seems like just a year or two ago,

it wasn't the best of times.

Vietnam was

going on, and then all of a sudden it was over and tens

of thousands of angry, disillusioned soldiers came home

to an angry, disillusioned nation. Gas prices shot up,

inflation set in, and the economy went south.

Between

taxes and inflation, folks like yours truly were being

eaten alive. Every time I got a small pay raise, Uncle

Sam was there for his piece of it, and in one case my pay

actually went down after a teeny raise bumped me into a

higher bracket.

After

studying the situation, it seemed obvious to me -

still does - that the size of the federal debt and

the speed at which it was increasing was hurting the

country - hurting me. Interest rates were so high

that a young struggling family like mine couldn't hope to

own a home, and the heavy demand placed on the money

market by the federal government was a big factor.

Early on, I

took comfort in the political debate of the day. In this

state, we elected people who were conservative, who

promised to go to Washington and get spending under

control... not to throw out the baby with the bath water,

but definitely to throw out the bath water.

At that

time, a Republican in the Georgia delegation was a rare

thing. In fact, the entire Southeast was solidly in the

Democratic Party (though we often voted for Republicans

for president and vice president). But they were

conservative Democrats, and in fact the majority in the

Democratic Party were conservative in that they believed

in a balanced budget and reasonable taxation.

I tried to

vote for folks who sounded reasonable... who wanted to do

good things in Washington but who understood that all

those good things have to be paid for.

But a funny

thing kept happening. We kept sending folks to Washington

to balance the budget, and the budget kept getting more

and more unbalanced.

Finally, we

sent one of our own to occupy the White House. Jimmy

Carter had looked us squarely in the eye and promised to

balance the budget in four years. I couldn't believe it

was possible. The debt had gotten pretty far out of whack

but I sure wasn't going to let a chance like that pass

by. With a conservative majority in Congress and a

conservative in the White House, I felt we had a really

good chance to get things straightened out.

Bitter

disappointment. I believe Carter tried, and I believe he

could have done it but for one problem: While the

majority of the country and the majority in Congress

wanted a balanced budget and lower taxes so that people

like me would have a better chance at making ends meet,

the leadership of the Democratic Party did not.

I finally

figured out that the leadership of the majority party has

a lot of power, especially with the size majority that

Democrats had in those days, and the young, eager

Democrats that we Georgians were sending to Congress were

finding that they carried the leadership's water or they

didn't get the committee positions they wanted, and their

bills didn't get to the floor, and the big spending

projects went to other states.

How do the

leaders get to be the leaders? You do me a favor, and I

do you a favor. We all do each other enough favors, and

eventually somebody gets big enough to do a favor for the

speaker of the House, gets noticed and gets a key

committee assignment, a vice chairmanship, a

chairmanship.

The point

is that you climb the ladder by spending money, not

saving it.

I listened

to congressman after congressman come home after a year

or two and try to explain what had happened to those

promises to balance the budget and reduce spending and

cut taxes, and it became clear that we would never see a

balanced budget as long as Democrats controlled Congress.

That's not

because Democrats were evil. It's because they wanted to

do good things for the poor, the environment, etc., and

they built a constituency of poor folks, environmental

activists and others who wouldn't reelect them unless

they pushed spending past the point of reason. Add the

pork barrel to that, along with the occasional war and

the inevitable corruption, and you've got a wildfire out

of control.

The answer,

of course, is to return to a smaller government that

controls less of the economy, i.e. a less socialistic

government. Then we can lower taxes so people don't spend

half of their lives slaving for the government, and

everyone will benefit - poor, rich and the rest of

us in the middle.

The basic

moral belief behind my political philosophy is simple:

people have a right to keep most of what they earn

through their labors and their ingenuity. And a

government that takes more than half of the average

person's income in taxes is not a government of the

people, by the people and for the people.

Help the

poor get educations and find jobs and become productive

citizens? Absolutely. Provide a strong defense and

regulate interstate business so that everyone has a fair

chance? Definitely.

As long as

you establish a reasonable, low taxation rate and amend

the Constitution to forbid borrowing our children's

income to pay for today's programs, there is much good

that we can do as a nation.

Anything

more, and we've become an authoritarian, socialist nation

and our dreams of individual freedom are out the window.

<!-------------