We must focus or lose the republic. My old boss, Ronald Reagan, said: “You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy, and still be for the little guy.” Concentrated power steals liberty and dignity; it’s a zero-sum game. Democrats forget we know this. Unchecked spending produces unpayable taxes.
In Washington, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy has Reagan’s wit. On America’s wild overspending and $38 trillion in debt, he recently said: “If you don’t believe were going to have to cut spending substantially…You shouldn’t be driving.”
The same can be said for irresponsibility at the state level. Spending and taxes in blue states are driving working people to their limit, making housing unaffordable, and many are going under. From California to Maine, reckless leaders wreck dreams.
Both states are hemorrhaging talent, young people, businesses, and their tax base. If this continues unabated and uncontrolled, both states will bleed out taxpayers.
In Democrat California, taxpayers – leaving in droves – face a budget deficit of $32 billion, education costs doubled over ten years, failing education metrics, inflation six percent higher than the nation, third highest taxes in America.
Democrats in Maine are worse, rampant insider contracts (6,500 sole source, non-competes for friends), Medicaid fraud (hundreds of millions), one-party control of all branches, fourth-highest tax burden, and 41st education system in America.
Reagan and Kennedy point to sources of federal failure – and of blue state mediocrity: Wild spending, wild taxes, unchecked mandates, no accountability.
Many years ago, my family kept rabbits, lots of rabbits. We put them in hutches to slow their propagation, no luck. We chicken-wired the hutches, no luck. We finally let them out, allowing nature and foxes to thin their numbers, which they did.
Unchecked government spending and taxing are like that – go on until stopped, bureaucrats and corrupt politicians in cahoots. Reagan said government programs multiply like rabbits and, when they are out, you cannot catch them. So true!
Today, conservatives aim to rein in overspending and overtaxing, restore fiscal responsibility – even as they battle alligators of other kinds. We must do this.
As in Reagan’s day – only it is now worse, since Reagan’s debt was one trillion – conservatives, those who see “limited government” as central, are facing the fight of their lives at the federal level. We also face the same fight at the state level.
In the end, only by reminding people what fiscal sanity, sustainable taxes, and survival of the taxbase look like can we preserve the American Dream. This election cycle – federal and state – the issue is critical to our nation’s future.
As Reagan said, everything reduces to downsizing government, because “as government expands, liberty contracts.” Simple as that, zero-sum game, more of one, less of the other; less of one, more of the other. We have to stop concentrating power, reverse it, and no more unchecked overspending and overtaxing. We just must.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
Senator Kennedy and the other jokers in Congress didn’t have any problem passing the budget busting Big Beautiful Bill.
That was the time for true spending restraint. It doesn’t do any good crying about it after the fact.
Mr. Charles, I so wish you were running for governor in my state. We pretty much have clowns on the left side, jokers on the right.
Maine and MA, two wonderful, beautiful coastal New England states are being sacrificed on the altar of excess government spending, high taxes, leftwing politics, association with protection of illegal aliens to the detriment of these citizens who are supposed to be living in a constitutional Republic, by governments which ignore the tenets of the Declaration of Independence: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.” Excerpt from Calvin Coolidge Speech, July 1926, Philadelphia.
What took 50 years to develop and ripen can’t be fixed overnight, let’s be realistic, we have now generational welfare, whole segment of the society that has no clue what an alarm clock is, what budget is and that you can’t spend more than you bring in, that living off credit cards will end up in bankruptcy. Personal responsibility and accountability is an unknown, politicians encourage dependency and who is to pay for it all and with what is never asked or discussed, bottom has fallen out finally , no one wants to admit that fact, never mind the responsibility for it. There would be money, if spent reasonably on necessities only and personal responsibility installed, I can hear the howling, all the useless politicians who milked the system for decades would have to go, who will initiate that step?
There is no fiscal responsibility when you’re spending money using someone else’s checkbook. Politicians and bureaucrats are never held responsible for bankrupting states, counties, cities and towns. Instead they don’t employ what ordinary people have and must do, CUT the spending and eliminate unnecessary expenditures. It hurts but that’s reality. Somehow this simple solution always equates to them and their sponsors keeping their jobs and ignoring the obvious. They keep raising taxes and spend more until the next time. Stop the spending and do your job or get someone who will. Unfortunately no one exists that can or will. There will be a breaking point. People already are experiencing it.
RBC, agree with you the government needs to get spending under control. Even under President Trump, the debt continues to grow. I just an article where Senator Cory Booker, Democrat Senator of New Jersey, is going to introduce a bill for more tax reform to increase the standard deduction to like 37,500 for an individual, 75,000 for a married couple, etc. If this was to be passed, where will the money come from to run the government? Of course, this reminds me about how NYC mayor Mamdani duped the voters to put him into office. Senator Booker is eyeing to run as a 2028 presidential candidate for the Democrats so one has to wonder if the electorate will fall prey to his antics. Only time will tell.
Still debt grows at an alarming rate, and the government has not come up with a viable solution from both sides to combat this problem.
The government should not be able to borrow money, period. If they can’t pay the bills then they need to downsize like every other American