One hopes in 2012 for a campaign that levels with the American people about the brute, mathematically certain dangers of our indebtedness and that trusts them enough to present a program of change, specific and sufficiently bold to restore the promise of upward mobility for all.
The advocates of change should stress our commonality, never our divisions. Every American, regardless of category, will be harmed if we continue following Europe into debt disaster. Every American, regardless of ideology, has a vital stake in a private economy that grows far faster than current policies permit and thus provides opportunity to each individual and revenue to fund whatever level of public activity we decide is appropriate.
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Tax reform, domestic energy production and a regulatory pause must be advocated as indispensable for poor people, unemployed people and, especially, young people. All ties must be broken in favor of private growth. Today’s blind, anti-growth zealotry must be contested as the cruel, pro-poverty policy it is. Prospective reforms to save the safety net must be advanced with aggressive confidence. With survival literally at stake, and broad consensus required to enable major changes, arguments about secondary issues should be muted.
The absence of an alternative world currency and investment havens has given this ever-fortunate nation a precious, maybe final, chance. Those who would lead us after 2012 should campaign to govern, not merely to win.
HERMAN CAIN
Former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza
This year is the time to get bold. Bold tax reform must be on the lips of every politician, the media and every voter. Americans have been victimized by a tax code that has corrupted our free-market economy by doling out favors, picking winners and losers, and dividing our nation with class warfare. Likewise, they have been victimized by the idea that we can spend our way to prosperity.
The bold solution is my 9-9-9 plan. It’s simple: a 9 percent business flat tax; a 9 percent individual flat tax; and a 9 percent national sales tax. An official in the Reagan Treasury Department said that, in addition to being simple, 9-9-9 is “fair, efficient, neutral and transparent.” My 9-9-9 plan allows Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money and to trust the government to be good stewards of the money it takes.
We also need a bold energy policy. America has an abundance of natural gas and oil that is trapped — not by soil and rock but by excessive regulation and politicians too timid to take on the environmentalists’ attack on energy independence and prosperity. Remove these shackles, and the United States could become the world’s top energy producer.
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