Why We Need Small Government Proposals
When a storm knocks a tree down in your yard, the debris won’t clear itself out. You must get a chain saw, chop it up, and haul it away.
When government gets too big, it won’t go away on its own. We must carve out pieces of it that don’t belong, that cost too much, or that do more harm then good. We must remove them the same way we get rid of a fallen tree: One piece at a time.
How do you take away a piece of government? By proposing specific measures to repeal, remove, and reduce Big Government Programs. Cut taxes. Cut government spending.
Then campaigning on those small government proposals.
Big Government politicians constantly propose to expand government. They propose tax hikes. New Big Government Programs. Higher spending for programs already in place.
Small government advocates, including candidates, usually neglect to put any small government proposals on the table. Or they neglect to highlight them and rally voters behind them. They spend most of their time and energy fighting against the latest Big Government proposal — instead of for small government proposals.
We spend 99% of our freedom activists’ energy, time and money staving off our opponents’ Big Government Agenda – rather than formulating and advancing a Small Government Agenda.
For a small government proposal to have even a remote chance of being enacted into law, it must be a feature of a campaign – a key platform issue for a candidate or a ballot measure that directly enacts the law.
Small government measures rarely have a chance of being enacted — because almost no one’s proposing them or running for office on them. Elections are dominated by proposals for more Big Government, variations on Big Government Proposals, reforms of Big Government (that don’t shrink government), and opposition to these proposals. No small government proposals.
Should we be surprised that Big Government grows and grows and grows? And almost never shrinks?
What’s the chance of getting a tax cut – if no one proposes to cut one? No one rallies for it during an election?
What’s the chance of seeing a Big Government Program go away – if no one proposes to repeal it? Or merely footnotes it on a campaign website – where few will see it?
What’s the chance of total government spending going down – when every politician is proposing to increase it? Or keep it at the same level? And few candidates are calling for lower spending levels than what we have today?
To get less government, lower taxes, and smaller budgets, we must propose less government, propose lower taxes and propose smaller budgets.
Then talk about them, campaign on them, and rally around them.
We can allow Big Government politicians to dominate the news with proposals like these:
- Require everyone to buy medical insurance (whether they want it or not)
- Hand out taxpayer “cash for clunkers”
- Bail out banks, auto companies, state governments, mortgage holders – and just about anyone who wants to be on the dole, or stay on the dole
- Allow scheduled tax increases to take effect
- Build another overpriced, unnecessary school or library
- Build a transit system doomed for failure
- Raise the sales tax
- Raise property taxes
- Raise “sin” taxes
- Raise meals and hotel taxes
- Implement the new ObamaCare tax on houses
- Continually raise the income level on which Social Security tax must be paid
These endless proposals for more Big Government keeps it big – and growing.
We have a much better alternative. We can talk up, campaign on and rally around small government proposals like these:
- Remove regulations that drive up the cost of medical insurance and medical care.
- End the income tax.
- Cut the sales tax.
- Cut property taxes.
- Prohibit or curtail government borrowing. Require lawmakers to pay for projects funded by current tax dollars.
- Prohibit government price-fixing of insurance plans and medical laboratory testing.
- End the Social Security tax and phase out Social Security altogether by selling off federal assets to give seniors dependent on Social Security a private pension plans that is completely within their own control.
- End mandatory minimums for victimless crimes.
- Bring government employee retirement packages in line with what private sector workers get.
- Close down the federal Department of Education.
- Roll back the local, or state, or federal government budget to the level it was in 2000. Or 1990. Or 1980.
Small government proposals keep voters, politicians and the media focused on making government smaller than it is today — rather than on more Big Government.
Small government proposals help us to use our time and energy to advance our small government agenda — rather than merely defend against a Big Government agenda.
Small government proposals make the idea of shrinking Big Government real. Cutting taxes. Cutting back government regulatory powers. Cutting overall government spending.
Small government proposals allow us to chop up excess government — and haul it away.
