An Open Letter to Barack Obama

Congratulations on your declaration as a candidate for the presidency. I wish you luck.

I just finished your book The Audacity of Hope, and want tell you how relieved I am to have someone in public office finally make an issue of the degeneration of politics in this country. You are right to imply that the purpose of political discourse these days is not to solve problems, but to grind one’s opponent into the dust. Our political process has devolved into tribalism. As you put it, our politics are smaller than the challenges we face. It helps restore my own faith in the American public and in our democracy that someone like yourself can rise quickly to the national Senate largely as a result of his ideas.

Your commitment to reforming our political culture is appreciated and apparently embraced by millions of Americans. As a middle-aged white, wealthy conservative I have to say that if any politician had put forward the individual proposals in your book without tying them to an overarching goal of unity and fairness, I probably would have voted against him or her. As it is, you make me feel hopeful that the policies I don’t like will be balanced by policies that I do like. I have a warm fuzzy feeling that we may all may be capable of making reasonable compromises if our leaders present them to us.

Your message and your candidacy could not come at a better time. The Republicans had two terms of office to show the country who they were and what they could do. They left us mired in a badly planned war; struggling with an exploding Medicare and Social Security deficit; and facing new threats to our privacy and freedoms from our own government. Worse, they have pandered to the fundamentalist right and blurred the important distinction between public policy and private morality. They have deliberately confused the important distinction between science and religious belief, and used the state to promote a Christian agenda. This undermines the safeguards that our founding fathers wrote into the Constitution when they separated church and state. The Neo-Conservatives' moral agenda undermines the principle that powers not specifically given to the national government devolve to the states. Under Republican leadership, we are creating a Christian Leviathan.

So I write to offer my congratulations on your success and my hopes for the realization of some of the reforms you promote in your book:

1)      “ a beefed-up universally available pension system,”

2)      refocusing our educational goals on a core curriculum; reforming the certification process; and raising the pay for teachers,

3)      making our country more competitive and energy independent by increasing federal funding for research and demonstration projects, without resorting to tariffs and other protectionist measures,

4)      lastly, to “fix our broken health care system,” which as you point out is a patchwork of the worst elements of public and private systems.

I have voted Republican for 30 years in the belief that the Republican Party stood for fiscal responsibility and individual freedom. With that myth exploded, I am ready to turn to a “progressive” such as yourself in the hope that you can salvage something from the political and financial morass we have created for ourselves. I will vote for a Democrat in 2008. I have to, as the Republicans have done more than disappoint me: they frighten me.

You will have my vote for the 2008 presidential election. I promise to send you a campaign contribution as well. Please keep my address and just have your staff send me one reminder when you need the money.

In return, I would hope that you have the time to read this letter, or perhaps to ask one of your staffers read it, and include it in a future briefing, perhaps for a time when you are trapped on a long flight between DC and Chicago – in coach.

Before I end, I would like to address the issue of opportunity, and the class war rhetoric that has been a staple of Democrat politics for years. It kept me from voting for John Kerry in 2004, as Kerry felt obliged to include a class warfare plank in almost every issue he addressed on his website, including foreign policy. I am not evil, selfish or morally suspect because I have been financially successful. I deserve to keep as much of what I have made as possible, and I ask that my government respect the value of my time by respecting the value of my money. I look forward to the day when I feel that our taxes are spent wisely.

You use your discussion with Warren Buffet as a springboard for an attack on the fairness of our tax system – from the unfairness of the 15% tax rate on investment income to the unfairness of the limited scope of the estate tax. I hope you will reconsider your position on the estate tax. Money that has already been taxed when it was earned should not be taxed – or confiscated – to appease a society that has lost the ethic of individual accountability. There is no moral defense for taking wealth that has already been taxed so that people cannot leave it to their children.

I know we have budget problems, but we will not be able to tax ourselves into prosperity.

The popular myth that rich people and corporations avoid paying their fair share of taxes, or avoid paying taxes at all, is just that – a myth. Our income tax works the way it was designed. It is both progressive and it applies to everyone (with the exception of a retiree who has his or her investments entirely in tax-free muni bonds). The top 20% still pay about two thirds of all federal income taxes, as they have for years.

Secondly, don’t blame the federal budget deficit on the President’s tax cuts. That is not factually correct. Over the last two years the federal budget deficit has shrunk from $319 billion in September 2005 to $260 billion in September 2006. The reason for the surplus is that tax collections have been increasing faster than spending. That's right. In the face of Bush's tax cuts, government revenues increased by 14.6% in 2005 and by 11.5% in 2006, according to the OMB. Federal government spending increased by 7.9% and 9%, respectively, and the difference generated the revenue to pay down the budget deficit. Arthur Laffer is vindicated. Economic growth incentives stimulate investment and grow the economy. The result is more total tax revenue.

The budget deficit is the result over-spending – period. It is the result of Congress and the President not having the courage to prioritize and say “no” to any important constituency – from seniors to farmers to the military. Consequently, we have become a society with an exaggerated set of expectations and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. It will take some political courage to communicate to the American people that we cannot afford to satisfy the needs of every special interest that has a legitimate need for money.

We do not have the resources to provide universal protection from accidents and disability; income security; a university education; free and unlimited health care to every individual, and a growing list of military and homeland security expenses. Confiscatory tax policies will result in reduced economic activity, fewer jobs, and perhaps even capital flight as those who worked to earn an inheritance for their children move their assets out of the country where they will be safe from confiscation.

Furthermore, it does not serve a dynamic democracy to create a nation of dependents, and we have traveled far enough down that road already. If we create even more inflated expectations among the electorate that the government will provide for them, who is going to pay the bill? Do you really believe we can simply get the trillions of dollars we would need by raising taxes on “the rich?” We cannot even finance the $13 trillion Medicare deficit through taxes on the rich. John Kerry and George Bush tacitly acknowledged that by evading the question when it was put to them directly during their presidential debates.

Where in the Democrat platform, or in your own platform, is the provision for encouraging (or should I say renewing) a sense of responsibility for our own lives, and an acceptance of responsibility for our own actions? This goes far beyond economics. It is a matter of parents taking responsibility for their children’s educations, and supporting more rigorous standards in our high schools. It is a matter of people accepting responsibility for their own dumb actions instead of seeking a class action lawsuit when they fall off a ladder or spill hot coffee in their lap. It is a matter of college graduates accepting the possibility of doing blue-collar work instead of whining that our economy only offers them “crap jobs” (as Anya Kamanetz put it) working behind a counter. It is a matter of distinguishing between private and collective responsibilities. It is a matter of making people accountable for their own actions, as citizens of a democracy must be.

And yes, at the end of the day, there should money available for the child who needs a liver transplant. I am will happily give up a portion of my income every year for the truly needy.

Thank you or your staff for taking the time to read this. I look forward to your candidacy in 2008, and hope to hear from you sometime.

Yours truly,

Rob McGregor