Talking Points For Use in Letters to the Editor

by John F. McManus, President, The John Birch Society

1. The Obama administration recently announced a $51 billion foreign aid program for the current year. Already facing a deficit that will soar past the $1 trillion mark, the plan to give away billions is madness or worse. Foreign aid has always been unconstitutional, not merely when there is a deficit. And foreign aid has always been given to governments whose leaders use the funds to increase the numbers dependent on them. Few if any hungry children or needy adults ever benefit from the money. It is obvious that all foreign aid should cease, but as the deficits become greater, so does the spending for this incredible program.

2. During the late 1970s, headlines told Americans that our nation was in peril because we had become dependent on foreign sources for one-third of our energy needs. President Carter announced a plan he called "the moral equivalent of war" to reverse the situation. In short order, Congress created the Department of Energy that has spent untold billions addressing the problem. Now, in 2009, our nation is importing approximately 60 percent of the energy we need. And the Energy Department along with numerous federal agencies continue to impede domestic production — in Alaska, the Rocky Mountain states, and offshore our coasts. As with so many problems, abolishing appropriate federal agencies would solve the problem and help to lower the monstrous deficits.

3. The federal government injected itself into education in the 1950s when the quality of the public schools was highly commendable. Taxpayer dollars began flowing into the nation's school systems. The late 1970s saw the creation of the federal Department of Education, and the money spigot opened even wider. After all these years of federal involvement and federal financing of education, the quality of the output has plummeted so far that our nation now ranks at or near the bottom of student ability in math and science when measured against all of the world's industrial nations. One can search the Constitution from beginning to end and not find any authorization for the federal government to have anything whatsoever to do with education. Congress should abolish the Department of Education and remove itself entirely from the field. Doing so would save tens of billions annually and teachers, freed of federal requirements, would lead students to a higher degree of proficiency.  

4. Americans are repeatedly being urged to expect Washington to "do something" to wrest the nation from its economic doldrums. What is needed, however, is just the opposite. Washington should "undo" much of what it has done in the past and eliminate many programs such as foreign aid, and the Departments of Education, Housing, Energy, Health, and more. And while Congress and the president are at it, they should abolish a host of federal regulatory agencies such as OSHA, EEOC, NAFTA, and many more that are not authorized in the Constitution. The taxation and regulation facing America's producers make it difficult for them to compete with foreign firms that don't face such impediments. Actions such as these would help not only to pull the nation out of the recession, they would lead to job creation here at home.