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Responsibility Increases Value Of Freedom

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2009

Tradition requires President-elect Barack Obama to give his top supporters a big party on Inauguration Day. Unfortunately, the nation's business owners and laid-off workers are in no party mood, whether they voted for him or not.

The financial turmoil and confusing federal response to it have created feelings of uncertainty that have nothing to do with Obama's campaign message of change. His major obligation in the inaugural address is to reassure the nation in plain language that grownups are in charge and rational ideas will prevail.

It's no wonder business, especially small business, is rattled. The Washington Post headlined the central debate three months ago with a troubling question: "Is this the end of American capitalism?"

There has been no clear official answer, just scare tactics to convince taxpayers to accept "capital injections" to restore "credit flows" to avoid a "financial meltdown." The short answer seems to be: "Who knows?"

One consequence is that average people no longer understand the risks of buying a home or investing in stocks. They don't know where the billions of tax dollars poured into the banking system have gone. They don't know what to expect next.

Obama's inaugural theme is, "A New Birth of Freedom." Let us suggest it also include a few thoughts on how to renew a sense of responsibility.

Requests for bailout money have gotten out of control. Just about anything you can think of has been put forward by someone as economic stimulus. Congress is being urged to buy old clunkers from the public at inflated prices so their owners can replace them with cleaner, newer automobiles. Tax credits are being proposed for employers to provide workers with longer vacations. Obama himself has proposed tax credits for employers to hire more workers.

On one blog a bewildered worker wrote, "Perhaps I can employ myself and then not lay myself off to get a one-time $3,000 payment, or would I get $6,000? I think I'll pull the wife and kids in too. Do I get $3,000 for each one I don't lay off? I'm thinking I'm 'not going to lay me off' a new truck."

Obama has also proposed allowing an income-tax write-off of this year's losses against profits made in earlier years.

A business owner responding to a BusinessWeek story explained why the idea doesn't work for her: "We had a strong 2008 and so I don't need any carry-back extension... There is no need to hire anybody else ... now that revenues have dropped 30 percent since the beginning of December ... I don't believe the consumer will budge one inch with the debt piling on in Washington. I think all those numbers are freaking people out."

Both Democrats and Republicans have endorsed running up larger deficits to stimulate the economy. Obama needs to reassure us that he will use his veto to impose some limits.

The chairman of the Libertarian Party, William Redpath, poses a question Obama should answer: "President George Bush did more to increase government spending during his administration than any president in American history. Yet, this is the same period in which we entered into economic decline. Is there any reason then to believe that more government spending will pull us out of this decline?"

We think there is, if stimulus money is invested wisely in projects that will increase a community's economic output.

Obama, in a recent speech, described recent times as "an era of profound irresponsibility."

So let's get responsible about soaring federal spending and what it means for the next generation. Let's lower corporate tax rates that are some of the world's highest. Let's approve fair trade deals with friendly countries that Congress has put off until after election season.

And let's not define freedom as freedom from responsibility at either the personal or public levels.

Obama should help the nation understand that free enterprise must be the main player in recovery and that government will have only a supporting role.

The nation needs stability, not another layer of tax rules that reward poor decisions. Businesses owners already have the freedom to make mistakes, and they have hope or they wouldn't be risking their own money in their enterprises.

What they need to help end the recession is confidence, and neither hope nor freedom is a substitute for it.

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