Democracy and Power 105: The Politician seeks power

When a person enters Congress or the Presidency, they seek and use the coercive power of government.

Cowardice asks the question—is it safe? Expediency asks the question—is it politic? Vanity asks the question—is it popular? But conscience asks the question—is it right? … There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

-Martin Luther King

America’s economic crisis is the result of two political wrongs:

Government does not provide a stable and predictable legal order allowing people – especially small businesses – to make educated economic and personal decisions.

Government has spent years recklessly accumulating debt by politicians and leaving it as an unpaid tax bill which is now due.

Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, knows banks and businesses have plenty of money. However, an unstable and uncertain legal order prevents these institutions from hiring and investing. Obamacare, tax policy and regulatory uncertainty stop businesses from hiring. Fisher states:

I maintain that no matter how much cash you have on your balance sheet, or how compliant your banker might be, or how cheap the cost of money, you will not commit substantial capital to expanding your payroll or investing significant amounts to expand plant and equipment until you know what it will cost you to run your business; until you know how much you will be taxed; until you know how federal spending will impact your customer base; until you know the cost of employee health insurance; until you are reassured that regulations that affect your business will be structured so as to incentivize rather than discourage expansion…

Worse, Fisher knows that Presidents and Congresses have willfully and recklessly caused the debt crisis.

All I know is that the “honorable” members of Congress and presidents past, Republicans and Democrats alike, have conspired over time, however unwittingly, to drive fiscal policy into the ditch. They purchased their elections and reelections with popular programs so poorly funded that they now threaten the economic well-being of our children and our children’s children. Instead of passing the torch on to the successor generation of Americans, they have simply passed them the bill. This is the opposite of honorable.

Fisher believes We the People must force the politicians to pass legislation that is right for America.

The Christmas spirit may be overwhelming my judgment, but I believe that the American people—from the mainstream to the Tea Party to the unemployed and disaffected who have taken to the streets—are in the process of forcing politicians to get their act together. There is a loud, distinct, clarion call for leadership—for the people we entrust to right the rules that determine our economic future, cast away cowardice, expediency and vanity, and get on with leading us out of our fiscal wilderness.

For the economy to recover and prosper major fiscal corrections must occur. The Tea Party Budget is the only serious proposal. The Budget cuts over $9 trillion, devolves most social programs to the states and puts Social Security and Medicare on a path to solvency.

Join FreedomWorks and support the Tea Party Budget. As Fisher strongly implies; only We the People can force the politicians to do what is right. If We the People fail, our future is dismal. Fisher also alluded to the horrors of war:

But the face of both the economist and businessman turn into something akin to Edvard Munch’s Scream when contemplating the frightful consequences of indecision and political mischief at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

America has suffered too long from political cowardice, expediency, and vanity. We the People must unite behind the Budget and force politicians to do what is right. Only We the People can force the DC politicians to be responsible and honorable.