Today's Rousing Rhetoric

Newt Gingrich:

We should have seen it coming. Way back in November, when the Obama team was still flush with victory in the election, Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel laid out what he called "Rule One":"Never let a crisis go to waste."The Obama budget plan unveiled last week is proof that the goal of the administration is not economic recovery. The goal is an unprecedented shift of power to politicians and bureaucrats.

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Ronald Reagan believed that at the center of American life was the individual. The entrepreneur. The worker. The doer. The family man and woman.The Obama budget reveals a very different vision of the men and women at the center of American life. They are the politicians. The bureaucrats. The interest groups that support an ever expanding government sector.And so the American people are presented with a real choice: Which America do we want?An America in which citizens and entrepreneurs are free and hold the power? Or an American in which politicians and bureaucrats dominate and are in charge?

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Concentrating more power in Washington politicians and bureaucrats means government dictating what it deems are the "right" choices to individuals and businesses, rather than giving them the freedom and incentive to make their own choices.For example, in his address to the joint session of Congress last week,the President announced his intention to punish "corporations that ship our jobs overseas."The United States imposes the second highest business taxes of any industrialized nation in the world. While countries like Ireland tax corporations at 12.5%, and even our neighbor Canada is moving its national business tax rate to 15% (the lowest among the G-7 countries), the United States taxes businesses at a whopping 35%. And a number of states have corporate income taxes on top of that. Inevitably, high taxes in the U.S. cause some businesses to locate some or all of their business in lower tax countries overseas.

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Now that President Obama has revealed the direction in which he wants to take the country, let's have a debate. Let's choose up teams.If you believe the best way to create jobs is to give more money to bureaucrats in Washington and more power to politicians in Congress, you have a team. If you think the best way to create jobs is to make life easier for people who want to work hard, take risks and create businesses and wealth, you have a team. If you think America should be a place where politics trumps economics and religion, you have a team. But if you think America is a place where freedom trumps it all, you have a team. Let's let the American people choose.

Which America do you want?