Letter to the Editor: Contrasting Messages
Osky News
Editors Note: The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are not necessarily the views or opinions of Osky News.
Last week, Iowa played host to both President Obama and Paul Ryan. In visiting our state, they shared their two visions for America. And what a contrast we saw.
Congressman Ryan talked about growth, which he identified as the key to creating jobs and growing a stronger and more secure middle class. That’s the focus of the Romney-Ryan agenda for America. They’ve made this clear through their policy proposals. Their plan has five main parts: promoting energy independence, ensuring trade policies that serve American interests, providing good education for every child, reducing the deficit, and helping small businesses.
Their message is fueled by a profound faith in the ability of regular people to accomplish extraordinary things. It draws on the immoderate optimism of the American people. Instead of complaining about today, we plan for tomorrow. Dreaming, building, and taking risks are all part of the American experience, and we don’t shy away when times get tough. Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan channel, reward, and encourage that kind of optimism. That’s why their policies will
create 12 million new jobs by the end of their first term. That’s why their policies will result in more take home pay for middle class families.
President Obama takes a very different view. He notoriously once told business owners that they didn’t build their businesses. Their success, he explained, was not the result of their innovation or hard work. Thankfully, he didn’t repeat these fateful words here in Iowa. His rhetoric, however, was marked by a theme: fairness. We are all for fairness – but President Obama’s record doesn’t live up to his rhetoric.
President Obama’s version of “fairness” has proved to be anything but fair. There’s nothing fair about the fact that 23 million Americans continue to struggle for work each day. There is nothing fair about soaring poverty rates that take us back several decades. There is nothing fair about anemic economic growth and year after year of trillion-dollar deficits.
President Obama’s warped view of “fairness” is also evident in his policies, which for four years have expanded the size and reach of government and picked winners and losers in the marketplace. He borrowed nearly a trillion dollars to spend on an ill-advised stimulus, giving away money to companies like the now-bankrupt Solyndra. He’s even been willing to sacrifice programs like Medicare, taking over $700 billion from the program to help pay for his federal takeover of health care. That’s hardly fair to seniors who planned their retirement around the investment they made through tax dollars in their future health needs.
And President Obama has been supremely unfair to the next generation, who will be saddled with trillions in added debt and disappointed by the broken promises of a new kind of politics. For them, this is not hope. This is not change. It’s merely the same old thing we’ve come to expect from Washington.
Here in Iowa, we know that we need a new direction. Four more years of the same policies will not bring about a different result. We are hungry for real leadership: leadership that doesn’t shrink in the face of big challenges. Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan will deliver that. And that’s why I’m proud to be supporting them.
Curt Block
Oskaloosa, IA
