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A Draft Campaign Stump Speech from a Truthful Presidential
Candidate (who would never get elected)
Thank you. I’m glad to be here in _____________
today/tonight. I’m here to ask for your vote, but unlike many politicians I’m
not going to promise you everything you want, or try to shape my speech to
appeal to your particular concerns or hot buttons. I’m going to tell you what I
think needs to be done to save this country, and what I will try to do if I am
elected. You may not like it, it may be uncomfortable, but it will be, as near
as I can tell, the truth, and that might just be refreshing from a politician.
There are lots of things that need fixing in our system of
government, far more than I could possibly talk about here, so let me just talk
about a few of the top issues.
Let’s talk about the economy first, because the economy
drives everything else. A strong economy provide jobs, and jobs provide tax
revenue, and tax revenue is what pays to keep the potholes in our roads filled
and the water and electricity running, and the Social Security checks coming,
and..and…and…
The first uncomfortable truth is that we are going bankrupt
as a country, and we need to do something about it before it destroys our
economy and your jobs and savings. The federal government spends over half a
trillion dollars a year more than it takes in and we have a national federal
debt of about $19 trillion dollars, which is more that the entire country
produces in goods and service in an entire year. Politicians and some
economists have been telling you for years that it is nothing to worry about –
believe me, it is something to worry about. If we divided this federal debt
evenly across all the taxpayers in America, each one of you would already owe
over $150,000!
The second uncomfortable truth is that we need to either
raise taxes or cut government programs, or both, to stop growing the debt and
begin to bring it down to a more manageable level. The federal government is
simply spending way beyond its means. We all want lower taxes, and we all want
all sorts of nice, even essential, government programs. And politicians in both parties have been
telling you for decades that you can have both. You can’t. There is no free
lunch. If we want all those nice government program we have to raise taxes to
pay for them – and raise them a lot,
about 40% - to eliminate the deficit and begin to slowly, over say 20 years,
pay the national debt down to about 50-60% of our Gross National Product, so
that we have enough borrowing capacity left to deal with the next financial
crisis – and there WILL be another financial crisis from time to time. – you
can bet on it.
If elected I will work with Congress to find a balance between
reducing the size and cost of government and raising taxes that minimizes the
pain. But it won’t eliminate the pain.
You will be unhappy at the substantial tax increases. You will be unhappy when some of your
favorite government programs get cut back or eliminated. If you are a
government worker or contractor you may well lose your job. I’m sorry about it,
but that is the real world. If we can’t afford it, if we aren’t willing to pay
for it, we can’t have it.
Congress may of course balk at doing either, because most
politicians these days care more about getting re-elected than saving the
nation. That’s a harsh thing to say, but
it is another uncomfortable truth. And in fact most of you really already know
it. I can only urge you to elect people
to the House and Senate who care more about saving the nation than about
getting re-elected.
And in fact let’s talk now about our political system. It’s
broken, and it doesn’t work. Both parties are controlled by big money donors –
wealthy individuals, big corporations, powerful unions and special interest
groups. There is a reason the IRS tax code runs to about 75,000 pages – it’s
full of loopholes and exceptions and tax breaks for this or that special group,
all bought by campaign contributions and election support to this or that
legislator by this or that corporation or special interest group.
This is insane – in fact it is corruption. If you are rich
or a big corporation you can hire expensive lawyers and tax accountants who
will find loopholes to minimize your taxes or park your money overseas out of
reach of US taxes, but if you are an average American you get stuck paying the
full tax bill. That simply isn’t fair, and it time it stopped. The tax code
ought to be simple, and apply equally to everyone, big or small, rich or poor.
If elected I will work with Congress to try to achieve that. It won’t be easy – everyone with a tax break
now will fight it tooth and nail - but it is essential if we are to root out
the corruption in this system.
Another serious problem with our
political system is that it is divisive; it is based on setting one group of
Americans against another. This is
crazy, and self-destructive. Ben Franklin said it best: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” This nation is strongest when we all work
together, as we did for example during the second world war. It is weakest when
we let ambitious politicians and activists divide us and pit one group against
another. Working politics is not a winner-take-all proposition, it is the art
of compromise, of finding ways of letting everyone get some of what they want,
of representing all sides of the debate. We have lost that, and we had better
get it back or we are done in the long term as a powerful nation.
I am not running as a Republican or a Democrat, or even as a
third party candidate. I am running as an American, and if elected I expect to
work with both parties, with both liberals and conservatives, to find
compromises. That means neither side
will get everything it wants, but both sides will get some of what they
want. You may well be unhappy at some of
the compromises – if both sides are equally unhappy than it was probably a fair
compromise.
Finally let’s talk about the federal bureaucracy. The
founders of our nation were smart. They could see how other systems of
government worked and didn’t work, and they could see how easily power can be
abused, so they tried to build a system of government that limited abuse. They
created three branches of government – the executive with the president,
Congress, and the courts. Only Congress
could write new laws, but the president could veto them, and the courts could
make sure they didn’t violate the constitution. The courts could make sure the
president, in running the country, didn’t overstep his or her boundaries, and
Congress had a say in who got appointed to the federal courts. So each of the
three branches can limit the abuses of the other two. And then the founders of our country left a
lot of power to the states, so that the states could act as a guard against
abuses in the federal system.
What the founders never expected was that a fourth branch of
government would emerge – the federal bureaucracy – that was largely outside of
all the safeguards they put in place. President George Washington had a
bureaucracy of three – three cabinet secretaries. But starting in the 1930s the
federal bureaucracy has grown explosively, so that it now numbers over 430
departments, agencies and sub-agencies. Actually, no one really knows exactly how
many agencies, departments and sub-agencies there are, but it directly employs
over 2.6 million people, and indirectly employs many more contractors, and
controls a budget of about $2 trillion dollars a year. And it all operates largely outside of any
effective oversight by Congress or the president, simply because it is so vast.
The annual Code of Federal Regulations, which lists all
federal regulations in effect, as of 2014, the last count I can find, stood
at 175,496 pages in approximately 200 volumes. It is no doubt larger yet today.
This is absurd. It takes batteries of expensive lawyers for a business to
ensure that it meets all the regulations in effect, and vast staffs of people
to manage the paperwork and filings involved. It is a drag on businesses.
Now we need some regulations and we need some agencies to
create and enforce these regulations, but this whole federal bureaucracy has
simply gotten out of hand. If elected I
will work with Congress to find a way to prune the federal bureaucracy back to
a more sensible size – which we need to do anyway to bring down the enormous
federal deficit each year – and to bring some rationality to our regulatory
system, so that business aren’t just swamped with paperwork from the federal
government. Again, this won’t be easy. Bureaucracies fight hard to keep their
turf and their budgets, and there will be lots of pushback from special
interests. But it needs to be addressed.
There are lots of other things that need to be done, but
these are a couple of the biggest issues. Now if I were a traditional candidate
I would make all kinds of promises about fixing them, but the truth is the
president has relatively little real power; it is Congress who holds the real
power, just as the founders of our nation intended. So just electing me isn’t
going to solve these problems. As president I can propose things to Congress,
and help with negotiations, but nothing will get done unless you also elect to
Congress Senators and House members who are willing to do the hard things, who
are willing to negotiate compromises even at the risk of not being re-elected, who
are willing to lead and educate their constituents instead of pandering to
them, and who are willing to put the long-term health of the nation above their
own short term political calculations.
We are a great nation, unusual for our generosity, for our
strong work ethic, for our entrepreneurial spirit and inventiveness, and for
our commitment to human rights for all humans, of whatever race, gender, or
nationality. The world needs us. But we
are of no use to the world if we are going to descend to petty bickering among
ourselves, or if we are going to ruin the nation economically by spending
beyond our means. I ask for your vote to begin the process of saving our nation
from these ills. I won’t sugar coat this message - the path will be hard and
painful for many in the short run, and will require sacrifices from all of us,
but if we see it through we can perhaps save our great nation in the long run,
and that is a noble cause worth sacrificing for.
Thank you.
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