There¹s a fundamental difference between his vision and mine. I believe America should value work. He only values wealth. He wants the people who own the most to get more. I want to make sure everybody has the chance to be an owner.
For a man who made responsibility the theme of his campaign, this president sure doesn¹t seem to value it much in office. We¹ve lost 3.1 million private sector jobs. Over $3 trillion in stock market value lost. A $5.6 trillion budget surplus gone, and nearly $5 trillion of red ink in its place. Bill Clinton spent 8 years turning around 12 years of his predecessors¹ deficits. George Bush erased it in two years, and this year will break the all-time record.
Yet even with all those zeroes, the true cost of the administration¹s approach isn¹t what they¹ve done with our money, it¹s what they want to do to our way of life. Their economic vision has one goal: to get rid of taxes on unearned income and shift the tax burden onto people who work. This crowd wants a world where the only people who have to pay taxes are the ones who do the work.
Make no mistake: this is the most radical and dangerous economic theory to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners¹ circle.
This is a question of values, not taxes. We should cut taxes, but we shouldn¹t cut and run from our values when we do. John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan argued for tax cuts as an incentive for people to work harder: Americans work hard, and the government shouldn¹t punish them when they do.
This crowd is making a radically different argument. They don¹t believe work matters most. They don¹t believe in helping working people build wealth. They genuinely believe that the wealth of the wealthy matters most. They are determined to cut taxes on that wealth, year after year, and heap more and more of the burden on people who work.
Agree or not, that's good politicking.
