Staying Engaged

With the war in Iraq well underway, I wanted to share some of CSE ‘ s perspective on these events. As a grassroots group dedicated to lower taxes and less government, CSE does not take a position on foreign affairs issues. We’re focused entirely on reducing the size and scope of government here at home. As patriots, however, we do strongly support the fighting men and women of the United States military. We know that our country and our values are being well represented by the bravery and professionalism of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We continue to hope and pray that this conflict will end quickly with a minimal loss of life on both sides.

Although the war in Iraq has rightfully captured everyone’s attention, there’s still pressing business to attend to in the United States. The president has asked the nation to continue with our daily lives, and by and large we are. For example, Congress is still moving forward with work on the FY 2004 budget. The House of Representatives has already passed a budget resolution that includes $729 billion to use for a tax cut over the next ten years. The Senate hasn’t fared as well; their budget resolution provides only $350 billion in tax relief. Still, the Senate debate was lively and they almost managed to pass a resolution with a much larger tax cut number.

Considering that just a year ago, Tom Daschle’s Democrat-controlled Senate did not manage to even pass a budget resolution for FY 2003, things are moving along quite nicely. This has been amazing– in less than three months, the President’s package has gone from “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill to having a good shot to clear the first of three major legislative hurdles. That’s because grassroots activist and American patriots like you are pounding the pavement and lighting up the phone switchboards to let Congress know that Americans needs tax relief.

So, we’re still on track to deliver a tax cut to the American people sometime around Memorial Day. CSE members need to stay engaged through this process. We need to continue to let Members of the House and Senate know that we support the President’s tax relief package as proposed, and oppose any initiatives to reduce its size.

Even with the war on Iraq, it is important that the nation’s business continue in this way. We must remember that nation-building and nation renewal must also continue here at home. The American experiment in liberty and limited government requires constant vigilance and hard work, because the future of our nation cannot be left to the politicians and bureaucrats.

There’s a great book called Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs that convincingly demonstrates that government grows primarily in response to military and economic upheaval. The result is ever-increasing government power which endures long after each crisis has passed, impinging on both civil and economic liberties and fostering extensive new networks of corporate welfare and pork-barrel programs. As government power grows, wrote Higgs, it achieves a form of autonomy, making it ever more difficult to decrease its size and scope. The only hope to resist further growth in the size and reach of government is a citizenry informed of its true effects.

That’s why passing a tax cut this spring is especially critical to America’s future economic growth. We’ve learned the hard way that the only way to slow spending in Washington D.C. is to keep more money back home in taxpayers’ pockets. Funding the war in Iraq should come from cuts in existing spending, not from reducing long-term tax cuts that will grow the economy. Further, infrastructure rebuilding and related nation-building efforts in Iraq should be funded by the Iraqi people using their oil resources.

Here at home, we citizens and patriots have our own mission of national renewal. Our Founding Fathers began a unique experiment in individual liberty that has made our nation and our economy the envy of the world. Today, and every day, we are all called to defend this 227-year American experiment in liberty. That means all citizens need to stay involved in the debates that are still underway about the size and scope of government in Washington, D.C., and your state capital.

And, over the next weeks and months, as you gather at CSE Club meetings or when you are just talking to your family or your neighbors about Iraq, don’t forget to talk to people about the personal freedoms and economic liberty enshrined in our Constitution that keep America strong.