Lessons For Obama From Silent Cal

[Valin]

The American Spectator:

Frugal, laconic Calvin Coolidge instinctively applied his conservative principles. The result was just what we need today: low debt and rising prosperity.
Charles C. Johnson
Nov. 2011

When President Obama demanded in September that "millionaires and billionaires" "pay their fair share," he laid a claim to justice, albeit justice wrongly understood. America's tax code is unjust, he argued--not because everyone doesn't pay the same rate, but because the "rich" don't pay enough in federal taxes. Dropping his g's, stomping his feet, seducing crowds, he was in full campaign mode. "If you love me, then you gotta help me pass this bill," he told a swooning crowd. The campaigner-in-chief was back, still wanting to "spread the wealth around," insisting that taxes must be raised. It was all about "living within our means."

But if Obama is serious about living within our means, he would do well to study President Calvin Coolidge--the last Republican president to pay down the debt while simultaneously growing the economy. There's never been a better time than now for a return to the Coolidge perspective. Often wrongly dismissed as a "do-nothing" executive by New Deal activists, Coolidge showed what true conservatism could produce. He brought Washington's fiscal house into order. He balanced budgets, cut spending, slashed taxes, and helped expand the economy to produce prosperity. In other words, exactly what we need today.

Unfortunately, Obama's philosophy of government couldn't be further from Coolidge's. "The wisest and soundest method of solving our tax problem is through economy [spending restraints]," Coolidge said in his inaugural address in 1925. His concept of our republic differed markedly from Obama's. "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required," he argued, "which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this Republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. Americans, he reminded us, "are politically free people and must be an economically free people." But with President Obama, America has become less economically free, falling in the indexes of economic freedom.

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