Big Government Is the Problem, Not the Solution

“When a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for.”
—Richard Weaver, 1962

Woodrow Wilson created the first government-sponsored enterprise to economically uplift people he thought were being ignored. Franklin D. Roosevelt created Fannie Mae with a similar goal, giving an implicit guarantee that defaulted loans would be subsidized by the government, safe from the perils of the free-market. In 1977, Jimmy Carter created the Community Reinvestment Act, requiring banks to lend money with less regard for creditworthiness. Government-sponsored programs have promoted the crisis we face today. Recent financial turmoil has caused some to question the validity of the free-market capitalist system.

We are in danger of turning toward what Friedrich von Hayek called “the road to serfdom,” or the path to the welfare state. Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) stated, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.” Obama has decided we can’t live like this—big government must save us from being too “selfish.” As a solution, Obama suggested in Colorado a $500 billion “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the military.

Obama is an amazing politician who wants to improve the country. Yet the intentions of policy should not be confused with the effects of their implementation.

In 2006 Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) stated, “I join as a co-sponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act ... if Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

The bill, however, was blocked by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who insisted that the government-sponsored enterprises were “not facing any kind of financial crisis.”

Dismissing reform, the government dramatically expanded. Since 1965, Heritage Foundation notes median incomes have increased 35 percent, yet federal spending has ballooned 334 percent. No wonder Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) recently called paying taxes “patriotic.” McCain has a history of consistently voting against massive government spending, including Medicare Part D, one of the largest increases in federal power, ethanol subsidies and the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.”

When high gas prices increased Alaskan state revenues, Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) sent $1,200 back to every citizen. This is a basic concept that soaring rhetoric can never touch: the people’s money is their own. A government that can arbitrarily decide what it can and cannot take from its citizens no longer feels the need to earn the public trust.

Milton Friedman, looking upon massive increases in federal power, opined, “the glimmerings of change that are already apparent in the intellectual climate are a hopeful augury.” Fifty years later, Obama merely echoes the past policies of collectivism. We too want “hope” and “change”: hope to live in a world where individuals are free to change their lives without bureaucratic control, lifted from the yoke of federal encroachment.

The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science. He is a member of the Columbia College Republicans.