Posted on 06/22/2011 3:16:28 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Foreward By Newt Gingrich – August 2010
I wish this book had never needed to be written.
It almost came too late.
America is recklessly accelerating toward economic disaster. Fed Up! may be the last warning sign to the danger that lies ahead.
Rick Perry, Texas governor for the past decade, is uniquely qualified to offer a firsthand perspective on why the United States—the most successful civilization in human history—is being threatened with economic collapse.
First Principles
Faith, freedom, and free enterprise are the pillars of a strong, safe, prosperous society. Rick knows that when these principles are protected, America succeeds, and when they are undermined, America fails. But the Left has a different belief. The Left believes that most people are not capable of pursuing happiness and that a strong centralized government is best able to provide for them. While claiming compassion for humanity, the Left's policies are destructive to the human beings subject to them—as we have had to learn painfully again and again.
The Left's self-serving solution to every crisis, economic or otherwise, and many of their own doing, is always the same: inflict higher taxes on Americans to create more government programs with more rules and regulations that result in less freedom, less innovation, less safety, and less prosperity.
The problem with the Left’s one solution, as Rick forcefully explains in the pages that follow, is that it doesn't work. It's never worked, and it never will work. The record shows it.
But what the record also shows is that when power and freedom are returned to the people, when people are rewarded for work, and when government holds the line on spending, individuals and opportunity thrive. We have seen that result most spectacularly recently in Texas, and in the mid-1990s with the Contract with America Congress, when I served as Speaker of the House.
The Texas Record
Upon taking office, President Barack Obama repeatedly said that he was open to ideas on health care policy and on reversing the economic crisis. But he had to look no further than Texas to see ideas and policies that work.
Texas has no state income tax, no capital gains tax, and no tax on corporate dividends. In contrast, California taxes all three. It has the highest state income tax rates in the nation, with a top rate of 10.3 percent and with most income earners paying 9.3 percent. The California sales tax stands at 8.25 percent. In Texas, the state sales tax rate is 6.25 percent. With both the highest personal income tax and the highest state sales tax in the nation, California also has the largest budget deficit of any state.
Texas has economically outperformed California by any measure. Since 1998, economic growth in Texas has been nearly 20 percent higher than it is in California. Since the end of the tech boom, the rate of real economic growth in Texas has been 48.5 percent higher than in California. From 1998 to 2007, personal income in Texas grew 21 percent faster than in California. Since 2002, real personal income has grown 46 percent faster in Texas. From 2000 to 2007, California lost a net of 1.2 million residents. Texas, over the same period, gained more than half a million in interstate migration, the third highest in the country.
Prior to 2003, Texas was losing doctors at an alarming rate due to predatory practices of trial lawyers who were driving up the cost of malpractice insurance. In 2003, the Texas legislature passed a measure to limit medical liability. In that same year, a state constitutional amendment was approved by voters to cap noneconomic damages awarded by juries. These two provisions reversed the trend and improved care, accessibility, and the overall economy by making Texas a more attractive place to live, work, and own a business. Malpractice claims dropped, and physician recruitment and retention went up. Doctors saved more than $50 million on insurance premiums, and hospitals' insurance rates went down.
People in Texas, like anyone living in any state, have a choice. They can vote with their feet. Many living in California simply became fed up with their state's high taxes and regulations. Many who moved out moved to Texas, where on average they are safer, freer, and more prosperous. Competition among the states is a powerful incentive for states to keep taxes and the cost of doing business low. And as this California versus Texas example shows, conservative economic policies work and socialist policies don't.
Yet both the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress continue to ignore success stories like Texas. They are going in the opposite direction, passing a massive government takeover of health care while planning similarly massive tax increases to pay for it and for the rest of their job-killing agenda.
Now, it may not be surprising that a politician from Chicago would not naturally look to the Lone Star State for solutions. And you wouldn't expect a Texas governor to look in Illinois for answers (thankfully).
And that is precisely the point of this book. States have been called laboratories in democracy precisely because every problem potentially has fifty different approaches to solving it. Some solutions work in some states and not in others. Some states prefer some solutions over others. Some solutions may work in every state, and some just don't work at all. But the best way to find the best solutions is to allow the states to discover what works best for them, without the federal government interfering.
In today' s global economy, each state is competing not only with other states for businesses, workers, and investors but also on a global level. The fact is, with the right principles and policies, you can make any place rich, as happened in Hong Kong.
Unfortunately, the opposite applies as well. With the wrong principles and the wrong policies, you can make any place poor, as happened in Detroit. In 1950, 1.8 million people called Detroit home. It ranked first in median income of all major cities in America. But after Detroit's political leaders, ignoring the principles of freedom and free markets, governed with runaway government spending and taxes, Detroit shrank by more than half. Today, the Motor City is number 66 in median household income in a list of 68 major American cities. One-third of its residents are living below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate is the highest of any major metropolitan area in the country.
The Record of the Contract with America Congress
The Left's willful ignorance of the historical record concerning principles and policies that work is not limited to Texas. The Left also ignores the success of the Contract with America Congress from just fifteen years ago.
Beginning in 1995, after the Republicans gained the majority in both Houses of Congress, the policies generated by the Contract with America set out to put America back on the road to prosperity and keep it there.
Among the historic accomplishments of this Congress were congressional accountability, welfare reform, fewer regulations, the lowest increase in federal spending since the 1920s, the first tax cuts in sixteen years, and the first four consecutive balanced budgets (reducing the public debt by over $400 billion) since the 1920s.
The federal deficit went from $107.4 billion in 1996 to a $125.6 billion surplus in 1999. During that time, unemployment dropped 1.4 percent, from 5.6 to 4.2 percent, with the creation of 8.4 million new jobs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rose 140 percent, from 3,834 to 9,213, between January 1995 and January 1999.
By comparison, since 2008, the Democrat-controlled Congress has added an astonishing $4.6 trillion to the public debt, including $1.6 trillion in 2010 alone. Nearly 7 million jobs have been destroyed under the Pelosi-Reid Congresses between January 2007 and June 2010. Unemployment has risen 4.9 percent, from 4.6 to 9.5 percent. And would be 10.4 percent if it included discouraged workers, those individuals who are unemployed but are not actively seeking employment, usually because they have had no success finding a job after searching for a long time. The total number of unemployed and underemployed workers in July 2010 stood at an astonishing 26 million. Between January 2007 and August 2010, the DJIA dropped 1,823 points.
During the 1990s, at the same time that the Republicans were cutting taxes, we were also cutting spending. As a share of the gross domestic product (GDP), federal spending fell from 20.2 percent in fiscal year 1996 to 18.5 percent in FY 1999. But even as the economy grew dramatically from 1994 to 1999, federal revenue as a percentage of GDP actually increased. That is, even with lower taxes and a higher GDP, more money came into the federal treasury.
The Pelosi-Reid Congresses have increased spending as a share of the GDP from 20.7 percent in FY 2008 to 25.4 percent in FY 2010, the highest since it spiked in FY 1945, at the end of World War II. Between FY 2007 (the last Republican budget) and FY 2011 Congress has increased spending by a total of $1.105 trillion.
Since World War II, the average duration of a recession had been ten months, with the longest lasting sixteen months. July 2010 marked thirty-one months since the current recession began, and we're still losing jobs. Yet despite this fact, the Pelosi-Reid Congress has set in motion comprehensive, across-the-board tax-rate increases for next year on both businesses and investors that will extend the downturn indefinitely.
Moving Power Back to the People
The evidence of what works and what doesn't is empirically irrefutable, yet the ideologically stubborn Keynesians in the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress refuse to acknowledge it. They ignore both the Texas success under Governor Perry's leadership and the Contract with America success in the 1990s.
Instead of pursuing the policies that have time and again demonstrated success, the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress insist on following job-killing economic policies rather than the job-creating policies that we know work. Chief among these job-killing policies are a failed trillion-dollar stimulus package and the bound-to-fail “Obamacare.”
Unfortunately for America, the Obama administration is creating a job-killing economic system based on an ideology of centralizing power, which most people considered a failure after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These failed policies have brought us to the edge of the cliff. This gets us back to the importance of moving power away from Washington and back to the states and the local level.
For most of our history, Washington was a far-off place that had little inf1uence on the daily lives of most Americans. More recently, the federal government has usurped or seduced enormous power away from local and state governments. There are in the United States today 513,000 elected local, state, and federal officials, but only 537 are elected on the federal level, or about one-tenth of 1 percent. Yet so much power has been consolidated in the hands of federally elected officials, as well as in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and federal judges. We need to reverse this trend or we will suffer lasting consequences.
Devolving power out of Washington is critical to our long-term survival.
Rick has done a great service by explaining how we got here and what we can do about it. His position as governor of Texas gives him a tremendous platform for helping us change course and return to sound conservative fiscal policies. But he can't do it alone. Every American has a duty to rein in the out-of-control federal government. Fed Up! is your handbook. It will arm you with the facts so that you can inform your family, friends, and neighbors. An informed citizenry is the best tool we have in the arsenal to defend our Republic.
Newt Gingrich, August 2010
The Liberals allowed that in England. Big deal. I do not want an ex-Democrat that work for ALGORE. He is a snake that lies. You have been fooled. He is not what he seems.
Ronald Reagan was a Democrat too, before he was a Republican.
I am, you are a fool.
Why couldn’t you answer my simple question...WHO do you want to win? Obama??
Ex-Democrats are usually people who have converted to conservative principles for a reason. People DO change. They DO mature.
What lies has Perry told?
How is he not what he seems?
Have Rush and Palin been “fooled” too?
“Texas has no state income tax”
...but we more than make up for it in property tax to support the illegals in our sanctuary cities.
I believe you mean "SECURE COMMUNITIES.
*****Aug 28, 2007 - [excerpt]....Perry, in Mexico with a Texan trade mission seeking opportunities in areas like renewable energy, said the federal government's plan to build a wall along much of the border to keep out illegal immigrants was "idiocy."
"We need those individuals to continue to grow our economy," Perry told a briefing with reporters.
"If you show up illegally, without your card or you're here as a criminal element, I'm for throwing the book at those folks, but the issue of people who want to legally, thoughtfully and appropriately come to America to work and help us build our economy -- we should quickly come up with a program and an identification card to do that."
Congress failed to pass a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws in June despite heavy lobbying by President George W. Bush.
Following the reform failure, Washington is concentrating on border enforcement -- building a security fence along the Mexican border, deporting undocumented immigrants and trying to prevent companies from hiring illegal migrants..
Perry, a Republican, said it was important to separate immigration from security issues, which Texas has dealt with on its stretch of the Mexican border by deploying more guards.
"We know how to deal with border security, and you don't do it by building a fence," Perry said, ahead of a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.... [end excerpt]
**********
EXPAND! EXPAND! EXPAND Secure Cities [TX legislature meets every 2 years]
As Texas moves toward expanding Secure Communities, several northern states are dropping out of the program that matches the fingerprints of those arrested against a U.S. [ICE] database.
Last week, before Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that the expansion of Secure Communities would be on the agenda for the Legislature's special session, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced his state will not take part in the program. [end excerpt]
LLS
‘Trail’ lawyer? If they worked against FASCIST Gardasil Perry on that, then they did good and were more conservative THEN he.It wasn't the trial lawyers who stopped Gardasil... but then you know that, don't you?
Good post. I am voting for the person who can beat obama. Four more years of him and we won’t recognize our country. Right now, Perry looks like the one who can beat the commie POS. He’s been at the helm for ten years and Texas is the one state which has weathered the storm and come out on top. Is he perfect? No. But this is not the election for perfection. Give him a shot. If he doesn’t uphold conservative principles, we vote him out in four. We know he is in our corner when it comes to the big three - God, guns and country.
LLS
Thanks for looking it up!
And JOBS!
Thanks, I listen to Rush and was aware of this too. I am still looking at Perry....but what I see is something I like so far.
Who is Rush Limbaugh’s Dream Candidate for 2012? (video)
Rush Limbaugh tells Greta Van Susteren that his dream candidate for 2012 is Texas Governor rick Perry.
http://www.bluegrasspundit.com/2011/05/who-is-rush-limbaughs-dream-candidate.html
[snip]
Illegal immigrants entering Texas’ higher education system are direct beneficiaries of a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler vs. Doe. Parents in Tyler sued after the state began charging tuition for illegal immigrant children. The court ruled that Texas and the rest of the country must educate illegal immigrant children free of charge in public schools.
Some of the most vocal illegal immigration opponents don’t oppose the decision. But they say higher education is different, because it is tuition-based.
Suit challenges law
A lawsuit was filed in December challenging Texas’ law providing the students in-state tuition and state aid. The students are not eligible for federal aid such as Pell Grants.
Attorneys for the Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas sued the University of Houston, Houston Community College and Lone Star College systems in Harris County District Court, but the case was moved to federal court. “It’s not like we’re swimming in budget surpluses,” said attorney David Rogers. “It’s the responsibility of the government of Mexico to educate Mexican citizens.”
Challenges to similar laws are also occurring in California and Nebraska. Arizona bans illegal immigrants from receiving in-state tuition.
Rogers argued that taxpayers suffer because of the law. It’s unfair, he added, that the state gives benefits that students from Oklahoma or other states can’t receive.
A challenge to a similar law in Kansas failed in 2005 after a federal judge found that out-of-state college students had no standing to challenge the law there, since they had not been harmed by it.
Rogers said states are not supposed to offer benefits to illegal immigrants that are not offered to eligible U.S. citizens.
But University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas said federal law clearly allows states to draft their own policies, and he believes the Texas case is similar to the Kansas one.
“It is a matter for states to determine,” he said. “In-state status is a state issue.”
Illegal immigrant students were never barred from enrolling in Texas colleges, but the higher tuition price tag for nonstate residents often meant they couldn’t afford to attend.
The Texas law requires students to attend school in the state for at least three years before graduation from a Texas high school. Students also must file an affidavit saying they plan to apply for permanent residency as soon as possible. State officials have argued that the treatment is not preferential in comparison to residency requirements for other students.
State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has tried sponsoring a bill denying education benefits to illegal immigrants in the past, but he later realized that went against the Plyler precedent.
“I have concerns about the expense for taxpayers,” Berman said. “We’re not providing enough grant and loan money to our own U.S. citizens.”
Carlos Hernandez , 27, was an illegal immigrant when he graduated from the University of Texas in 2005 with a degree in petroleum engineering. He has since become a U.S. citizen through marriage. He moved from Mexico to Texas when he was 9 years old.
He said many parents and students already pay taxes, and that he hopes immigration reform will create a “return on investment” for the state.
[snip]
And, the Bush clan despises Perry. I’m quite happy to learn more about this fellow, because I’m fed up with the Bush brand.
Rick Perry’s Tenth Commandment [excerpt] Speaking of presidents: Rick Perry has a complicated relationship with the Bushes, which is to say that he’s hesitant to criticize them and they hate his guts. W. stayed well away from Perry’s gubernatorial-primary melee against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose oatmeal-mushy Republicanism has a distinctly Bushian savor to it. But the mark of W. was all over the campaign against Perry. Former president George H. W. Bush endorsed Senator Hutchison, an unusual step for the habitually reserved retiree, who usually stays well removed from the dirty business of vote-grubbing, surveying the groundlings from the heights of his eminence. Bush père was joined in his support by former vice president Dick Cheney, who offered an endorsement and called Hutchison “the real deal.” Hutchison was further fortified by the Bush clan’s in-house Machiavelli, former secretary of state James Baker, who led the Florida recount fight in 2000 and remains their go-to fixer. W. mouthpiece Karen Hughes came out of the political woodwork to support the insurgency, along with W.’s secretary of education Margaret Spellings. Karl Rove advised Team Hutchison. The gang was all there: All this in a primary challenge to unseat an incumbent Republican governor with one of the most conservative — and most successful — records to be found: Que paso, Bushes?
Part of that was payback. Perry, generally circumlocutious on the subject of W., gave himself a little time off the leash during the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. Often caricatured as yet another snake-handling southern social conservative, Governor Perry backed thrice-married dress-wearing pro-choice lapsed Catholic Rudy Giuliani, on the theory that Rudy would be a badass commander-in-chief abroad and a reliable constitutionalist at home. Politics being politics, the Texan and the New Yorker met up in Iowa, where more than a few Hawkeye conservatives were already getting restive about out-of-control federal spending on the Republicans’ watch. Governor Perry let loose the observation that “George” — and the Bushies hate it when Perry calls him “George” in public — “has never been a fiscal conservative.” Never? “Wasn’t when he was in Texas . . . ’95, ’97, ’99, George Bush was spending money.” He also criticized Bush as being limp on immigration.
The truth hurts, but there’s more to the Bush-Perry friction than that. One longtime observer of Lone Star politics described the Bushes’ disdain of Perry as “visceral,” and it is not too terribly hard to see why. The guy that NPR executives and the New York Times and your average Subaru-driving Whole Foods shopper were afraid George W. Bush was? Rick Perry is that guy. George W. Bush was Midland by way of Kennebunkport. Rick Perry’s people are cotton farmers from Paint Creek, a West Texas town so tiny and remote that my Texan traveling-salesman father looked at me skeptically and suggested I had the name wrong when I asked him whether he knew where it was. (Governor Perry confesses that one of the politiciany things he’s done in office is insisting that the Texas highway atlas include Paint Creek, making him the hometown boy who literally put the town on the map.) Bush is a Yalie, Perry is an Aggie. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard, and Perry was a captain in the U.S. Air Force, flying C-130s in the Middle East. Bush has a gentleman’s ranch, Perry has the red meat. The irony is that Perry, a tea-party favorite, personifies the hawkish new fiscal conservatism that has allowed the GOP to find its way out from under George W. Bush’s shadow, but he himself remains in the shade of that politically poisonous penumbra. [end excerpt]
I do not need a lawyer... except for business contracts and government red tape. I can fend for myself... I have all my life.
LLS
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