How did we get where we are and where do we go from here? It is obvious that our government shares much more of a burden of responsibility than Wall Street for the economic crisis that our country is enduring.

This crisis is a result of many years of Washington’s excessive spending, an array of legislative mandates and government involving itself in the financing of the housing industry. The privatization of Fannie Mae (1968) and Freddie Mac (1970) by a liberal Congress with no regulation, no oversight and no income taxes to pay on their profits basically gave these two institutions a blank checkbook (no limit) to create chaos in our nation’s economy.

In 1977, to add fuel to the fire of an already spiraling debt of home financing, the liberals in Congress passed the “Community Reinvestment Act,” which mandated that our banks make substandard, high-risk loans to many who, unfortunately, could not afford to repay them. One can easily see that those three programs where trillions of dollars have been loaned constituted a recipe for disaster from the beginning. Undoubtedly, they will go down in history as the nation’s greatest financial rip-off of the taxpayers.

Several decades of this activity along with runaway, out-of-control government spending, excessive regulation and congressional dictates have now led to a crisis so critical that Congress, at the urging of the president, passed a $700 billion rescue bill to hopefully avert an economic catastrophe.

All of the above and many other liberal legislative congressional actions are presented to us as the “genius” of government in Washington. They really believe that we are so inept that they must tax and spend our money to make our lives better.

It is obvious with the economic crisis our country is facing, the liberal Washington legislators who write and pass these laws, though well intended, have lost their economic compass. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that our workers have to compete in a global economy. The more mandates and taxes they put on the backs of American workers and our economy, the harder it is to maintain a competitive edge against workers from other countries. Unfortunately, if the current trend continues, we may end up with laws that were intended to enhance our lives resulting in exactly the opposite!

We may wake up one day with volumes of fancy laws written on paper in Washington only to realize that jobs have been shipped to other counties around the world. Our government should focus on providing an environment that unshackles the burden of congressional dictates, excessive taxes and regulations so that American workers can be free to have the opportunity to compete with the rest of the world on a level playing field in this global economy.

There is no doubt that we are still the greatest country on earth. However, one has to wonder if the current economic crisis that we are experiencing might be our last warning to reverse the liberal agenda of socializing America before it’s too late. That is, if it is not already too late!

– O’Neal Laird, Lexington

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