What's On My Mind Headed Into Tuesday - Part 1

Four days out from the election, and I admittedly have some very great concerns about the direction this country may take over the next four years as a result of the outcome of Tuesday's vote. Regular visitors to my blog know that I try extremely hard to examine issues from both sides and not jump based on my conservative gut, and I have tried to do that in thinking through how I feel about this election. Over the next few days (and perhaps even several times each day), I'm going to lay out some of what concerns me and what will be on my mind as I head into the voting booth next week.

In this installment:

1. Single-party control of the government. I'll be the first to admit -- even as a conservative -- that the eight years of the Bush Administration overlapped with the 12 years of Republican control (at varying times) of the House and Senate have been a disaster. The party which came in on the heels of the 1994 Republican Revolution, whose leaders proclaimed that they were heralding the beginning of an era of smaller government, completely lost its way. Any surpluses which existed (side bar: the surpluses of the Clinton years were the result of Congress and the Administration working together; trying to give credit solely to Clinton is incorrect, since it takes both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to get legislation enacted) are long gone, and yes, spending has increased dramatically. The past year alone has seen falling GDP, rising unemployment, and the revelation that our national economy is much more fragile than we were led to believe (or than the experts such as Alan Greenspan even expected). The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 did work, and revenue flowing into D.C. actually increased; it just couldn't keep pace with the checks the government was having to send out of D.C.

But is swinging the pendulum completely to the other side going to make things any better? I don't believe it will. Just as the Republicans during the past several years threw bipartisanship out the window, the Democrats since 1996 have done no better (even with Speaker Pelosi's pledge to bring both sides of the aisle together to work for the common good). And putting control in the hands of a party who I fear will ignore the members of its more moderate segment and throw the situation even further left will do just as much harm as the ultra-conservatives who have tried to guide the agenda since 1994. Any hope of "Washington coming together for the common good" is close to being completely gone for many years, and unlike the previous eras of Democrat control of Washington (the years when the Sam Rayburns and Tip O'Neills actually worked with Republicans) I fear that the hands of bipartisanship extended across the aisle will be completely withdrawn.

2. New taxes and wealth "redistribution." Ever since Senator Obama made his now-famous comment to Joe Wurzelbacher about spreading around the wealth to ensure that those behind him have a fair opportunity, folks are quick to throw around the word socialism. I'm not worried about what word is used to describe it, be it socialism or anything else, but I am worried about why the government feels it necessary to determine who I help and to what extent I help them. I used to consider myself middle class, but with the moving-target definition we've gotten of that lately (Is it $250,000? Is it $200,000? Is it $100,000?) I'm not so sure anymore. Depending on what number folks finally decide on, I may find myself suddenly (and quite unexpectedly) in the upper class.

My family and I contribute quite a bit to charity each year, and would in fact like to be able to do more. The reality is there are other financial obligations and debts that we must eliminate first. With increased taxes, how are we going to do that? It will take longer to pay down the debt, and we'll have less coming into our household that we can in turn give to those churches and charities that we choose to help. So point one: higher taxes will restrict our ability to give. And I have always believed that it is not government's responsibility to be the sole source of public assistance; the American people should take that upon themselves to help their fellow man, while at the same time recognizing that we should strive to give a hand-up, not a hand-out. It seems to surprise a lot of folks, but poverty also existed in the time of the founding fathers; however, mandating that the government address these problems was not something they included in the Constitution. They relied on the inherent good nature and goodwill of man to address these problems; why has it shifted so much in the 221 years since the drafting of the Constitution that we now expect government to hand us everything? Instead of giving candidates nearly one billion dollars for attack ads and staff salaries, think about what good we could have done with that money on the streets of our inner cities, our shelters, our food banks, and our charities.

Point two: even if we do ultimately fall into the category of receiving a further promised tax cut, I'm certainly not fool enough to ignore the fact that the taxes passed on instead to small businesses will hit us just as much as if we had more money being taken directly out of our checks. Sure, we may (hypothetically as an example here) have an extra $100 a month coming in, but that money will in turn have to go to our childrens' daycare expenses (increased taxes on them will drive up their fees), food (increased taxes on farms and food producers will drive up their overhead, and those costs will be passed on to us), fuel (the small, independent gas station owners will have to pay more and increase their portion of the gasoline cost -- as will we), utilities (taxes applied to companies providing our electric, water and gas services will increase our rates) -- and on and on and on.

(Side-bar: It really aggravates me when politicians and the American public rail on oil companies for what they term "obscene profits." For me, God love them for their success!! Why should we penalize anyone for working hard and achieving great success, whether they be a small business or a multinational? And I certainly think it's ridiculous to focus on the oil and gas industry alone: in 2005, per dollar of sales, the oil industry made eight cents of profit, and yet you never seem to hear that the biotech industry made nearly 20 cents profit per dollar, or that banks and lending institutions made nearly 18 cents per dollar. Even technology firms during that time made about two cents more in profit per dollar. Why aren't they being targeted for increased taxes? Why aren't the Democrats hammering them about windfall profits? My answer: it's not sexy to increase taxes on Microsoft, but it sure looks good to stick it to Conoco Phillips or ExxonMobil.)

Next installment in my pre-election series: card check and the military.