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)!
