Today, I received a wonderful email and video from my US Senator, Ron Johnson, R-WI. After hearing president Obama's Job's speech the other night (here), my first thought was that Ron Johnson would set me straight on what to think about the president's oratory. And, today he did, invoking Albert Einstein to label the speech "insanity". From Johnson's email to me:
As Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." On Thursday night, I was saddened to see President Obama's latest government stimulus program fits this definition to a tee.
Now these are really novel thoughts that didn't occur to me while listening to the President's speech so I decided to watch Senator Johnson's video (above) for more enlightenment. And, to my surprise, it wasn't your typical bag of gassy political euphemisms but a very specific set of points from Senator Johnson's "pro-growth" agenda.
Now, Senator Johnson does get off to a bad start talking about, in Paul Krugman's words, the confidence fairy (businesses won't do anything unless they are 100% confident about everything that will happen in the future, forever). Even though whining about "confidence" is just playing to right-wing dogma, it did help me understand why entrepreneurship is dead in the US. And, Senator Johnson did quickly move on to explain to me what he wanted to have confidence about.
He and other business leaders (Senator Johnson always points out that he ran a plastics business) have now been very clear about what they want:
1) A credible plan to limit spending and the size of government. Evidently, the huge amounts of money spent on foreign wars, the war on terror and other Bush administration expansions of the Federal government must come to an end immediately. Who can disagree with this proposal?
2) A Regulation Moratorium. We have also solved all the problems of lax regulatory oversight during the Bush administration that created the Subprime Mortgage Crisis so we can now be sure that the private sector will never do anything unethical like liar loans or robo-signing again. I'm relieved that our government has acted so quickly to create a responsible regulatory environment.
3) Tax reform. The tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration must definitely be reformed. US corporations pay one of the world's lowest effective tax rates (maybe Somalia has a lower effect business tax rate). Businesses exploit massive loopholes enacted by congressmen and senators who are in their pocket. Millionaires and billionaires pay less taxes as a percentage of their income than the workers who clean their toilets. Bravo, Senator Johnson. This has to change.
4) Federal Hiring Freeze. The large expansion of the Federal government related to the War on Terror and the military adventures of the Bush administration (TSA agents, CIA agents, military personnel, defense contractors, etc.) should definitely be rolled back.
5) Budgetary Reform. This is really pretty simple. Any budgetary item that returns any money whatsoever to individuals who make less than $250,000 per year (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Social Security, Aid to Widows and Orphans, etc.) should immediately be eliminated. In fact, all forms of social welfare should immediately be returned to the private sector through a new Department of Corporate Welfare.
6) Create a Sunset Committee that will eliminate harmful laws and regulations. As a start, lets consider any legislation passed by the New Deal or the Great Society for immediate sunsetting. Some of these laws have been on the books for almost 100 years! For example, the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banking was passed in 1932 and repealed in 1999. It's repeal had a great effect on increasing business confidence that banking deposits could be used to make risky bets on the subprime mortgage market.
Well, that was all very enlightening but I guess I'm still a little confused by the insanity argument and by allowing the private sector to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Maybe Senator Johnson's next email will help me think this through.
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