Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy Regina (Gina) McCarthyFormer EPA chiefs endorse Biden, criticize agency direction under Trump OVERNIGHT ENERGY: Energy Department proposes showerhead standards rollback after Trump complaints | Interior memo scaling back bird protections is 'contrary to law,' court rules | Former EPA chiefs call for agency 'reset' Former EPA chiefs call for agency 'reset' MORE told the truth in an interview with Mashable last week when she stated the Obama-Clinton policy that, "People have to start living a life that's commensurate with reductions in greenhouse gases."

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As I see it, this planned downward spiral of the U.S. economy as wealth is transferred around the globe under the guise of protecting the environment is the reason that America's annualized economic growth has not topped 4 percent since 2000, and incredibly has not been higher than 3 percent since 2005.

To put this dead-in-the-water economy in perspective, some economic forecasters as late as 2014 would project normal growth at the 3 percent level, with anything below that considered to be a sick economy.

Our 2016 growth rate is currently at an annualized, inflation-adjusted 1.7 percent, and while some will point to a single quarter as being indicative of our nation's economy finally coming out of its decade-long malaise (incredibly right before a presidential election — what timing,) the truth is that it is federal government policy to squash domestic growth.

America is on the verge of squandering a generation of talent. We have the best-educated workforce in our nation's history and our workers are being shunted to the sidelines as the federal government would rather export manufacturing and resource development and the professional and blue-collar jobs they create overseas.

McCarthy's actually stating what has been self-evident to anyone watching is the only surprise, and if Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonButtigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice Senate GOP sees early Supreme Court vote as political booster shot Poll: 51 percent of voters want to abolish the electoral college MORE is elected, it will only be worse.

She supports the EPA's devastating regulatory regime that will significantly increase the cost of electricity in America, a critical cost component to those who wish to build things here.

And while for political purposes, she currently denies it, those closest to her remain confident that she will push the job-crushing Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, ensuring the continued offshoring of U.S. economic might to countries such as Malaysia, which uses slave labor, and Vietnam, which pays textile workers about $100 a month on average.

The United Nations and the climate initiatives are President Obama and Clinton’s partners-in-crime in crushing the hopes and dreams of those who want a better economic future for themselves and their children.

Christiana Figueres, then the executive director of the U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, bragged to reporters in 2015 that "This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history."

Figueres continued with the stunning admission of the climate change goal: "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution."

America's sickly economy is not an accident; it is a poisoning. An economic poisoning with the full participation of Obama and Clinton.

The victims are the young people who find that the best job they can get coming out of college is the one they could have had if had they never went. The victims are the blue-collar workers who find their jobs exported as a matter of government policy. The victims are families who are forced into a desperate paycheck-to-paycheck struggle to survive as the promises of the American dream become a national hoax. The victims are information technology workers who increasingly find themselves training their own legal H-1B immigrant replacements under threat of losing their severance benefits if they object.

The system is rigged. It is rigged by our very own government, which, as a matter of policy, is attempting to change the world's economic system away from the free enterprise capitalism that created the middle class to a global elite-dominated system of rationing and no growth.

A global economic redistribution system which cannot stand unless America declines.

Our nation would never put a figurative gun to our heads and vote for the economic downward spiral that is being sold as "growth," so instead politicians like Obama, Clinton — and President George W. Bush before them — use every government-created crisis to put a little more poison into the system until we finally wither and give up the expectation of a better life, instead settling for scrambling just to get by.

This year, we have a choice. A choice between a continued downward spiral, acceptance of the new normal that Obama and Clinton espouse, or a resurgence to restoring America's confidence and economic health by increasing production here.

Albert Einstein is reported to have once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

Voting for Clinton is voting for Obama's legacy of constantly lowered expectations. To expect anything different would be insane.

We need growth, and Hillary Clinton wants the opposite.

Manning is the president of Americans for Limited Government.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.