This Independence Day, we celebrate the 235th anniversary of our freedom. Our sacred liberty was born out of the hard-fought struggle of our ancestors to break free from the chains of tyranny that oppressed the inherent drive of the American people to provide for ourselves and our families without government control and interference.
This freedom is being threatened today by crushing debt and unemployment, and policies that have grown government at the expense of the rugged individual spirit of our people.
The political theater we see in Washington is remarkable. Day after day, the administration goes before us and has the nerve to say that the economy is actually improving. They tell us that if we just authorize another spending and tax increase to fund more failed stimulus, or approve new government programs, we will come out of this recession.
The administrations persistence in sticking to a failed playbook with a track record of 28 consecutive months of unemployment over 8 percent, an annual $1.4 trillion deficit, and an anemic 1.8 percent economic growth ratewhen we should be seeing 6 percentis absurd.
I invite the president and Democratic leadership to come with me to the 3rd Congressional District where people who care about their families, who are worried about their childrens future are struggling everyday to find ways to put food on the table. We arent experiencing a recession in most of the 3rd District; we are experiencing a depression. The families and businesses in my district have a different story then the one the president is selling.
Theirs is the narrative that we now face in this country with one in seven Americans receiving food stamps just to survive.
Our founding fathers envisioned a self-sustaining nation of individuals who rely on their own abilities to provide. They set up a system of government that put control in the hands of the states, in the hands of the people.
On this Independence Day I cannot help but lament how far government has strayed from this vision. The current administration and Democratic leadership continue to engage in the largest expansion of government in history. What they fail to understand is that the solution to the economic crisis is not to provide more handouts and government intervention, but to reduce that size of government, cut spending and allow the free enterprise system to work.
The millions of Americans looking for jobs dont want another bailout or government welfare program. They want government to get out of the way so they can get to work.
Time and again, as I walk through the communities hit hardest in my district, the city councils, county commissioners and small businesspeople all tell me that they are being inhibited from creating jobs and expanding opportunities because of oppressive government regulations and taxes.
There is hope. I see an America that can rise again and become the economic power that we all know that it can be. But this will not happen as long as we try to build reliance on government rather than on the rugged individualism that has made this country great. The success of our country lives with our people.
We have an opportunity. We have a challenge. The question is, will we rise to meet that challenge?
We have put a tremendous burden on the backs of our children in the form of a $14.4 trillion debt that they can no longer afford. The recipe to recovery is not the Keynesian economics embraced by this administration. The answer is going to be found in the very solutions that made us the richest, the freest and the most powerful nation on the face of the earth in the free enterprise system. We must encourage it and get our people back to work. Lets create those opportunities once again.
This is the real challenge that we face. We have an oppressive, convoluted tax code that is stripping American business of the opportunity to create wealth in this country. Lets simplify the tax code and eliminate the loopholes so everybody pays their fair share. We must improve responsible access to capital for businesses. Lets not punish success, but reward growth and job creation.
These are the challenges, and we have very distinct choices to be able to make. Will we continue to follow the pathway to poverty of government programs, government taxation and government solutions?
Or will we follow the path that our founding fathers laid out for us, and get the American people back to work?
On this day as we celebrate our nations liberty, let us commit ourselves to embracing those exceptional American values of creativity, innovation, hard work, family and individual liberty. May God bless each American this day, as we celebrate the gift endowed to us by our Creator of Liberty.
Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, is the U.S. Representative to the 3rd Congressional District. Contact Rep. Tipton by calling (202) 225-4761, or log on to http://tipton.house.gov.