Stephanie
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- Jul 11, 2004
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By Alan Caruba
A comparison between Ronald Reagan's and Barack Obama's first inauguration speeches reveals the gap between their understanding of the role of government and how much America has declined from January 1981 and January 2009.
In 1981 Reagan told Americans that "These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from one of the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people."
In 2009, the nation was reeling from the financial crisis brought on by two government entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who had not merely purchased mortgages of dubious value, but had pressured banks to make such loans. It was a crisis made by the government, based on liberal programs intended to ensure that even people who could not afford a home, could have one.
In 1981, there was another burden as well. Reagan told Americans that as "great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present." He warned that "to continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals." Those upheavals arrived in 2008, requiring the government to bail out banks and other financial institutions with billions of public funds.
In 2009, Americans could not have even imagined that the Obama administration would increase the national debt by six trillion dollars or that it would grow to $16 trillion within a scant four year's time.
Obama told Americans that the economy "is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some," by which he meant the victims of government programs and policies the nation's banking system but he also blamed "our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." We now know that his "new age" was a shift to a socialist approach in which government would select winners and losers in the previous free market, the failure to reform "entitlement" programs going broke, and the vast expansion of government programs that would put nearly half the population on the public dole.
Reagan had warned against this in 1981. "You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" Obama would be the first President to see the nation's credit rating, the best in the world, reduced.
Reagan said, "We are a nation that has a government not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows no signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed."
all of it here
Comparing two inaugural speeches, Reagan's and Obama's
By Alan Caruba
A comparison between Ronald Reagan's and Barack Obama's first inauguration speeches reveals the gap between their understanding of the role of government and how much America has declined from January 1981 and January 2009.
In 1981 Reagan told Americans that "These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from one of the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people."
In 2009, the nation was reeling from the financial crisis brought on by two government entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who had not merely purchased mortgages of dubious value, but had pressured banks to make such loans. It was a crisis made by the government, based on liberal programs intended to ensure that even people who could not afford a home, could have one.
In 1981, there was another burden as well. Reagan told Americans that as "great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present." He warned that "to continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals." Those upheavals arrived in 2008, requiring the government to bail out banks and other financial institutions with billions of public funds.
In 2009, Americans could not have even imagined that the Obama administration would increase the national debt by six trillion dollars or that it would grow to $16 trillion within a scant four year's time.
Obama told Americans that the economy "is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some," by which he meant the victims of government programs and policies the nation's banking system but he also blamed "our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." We now know that his "new age" was a shift to a socialist approach in which government would select winners and losers in the previous free market, the failure to reform "entitlement" programs going broke, and the vast expansion of government programs that would put nearly half the population on the public dole.
Reagan had warned against this in 1981. "You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" Obama would be the first President to see the nation's credit rating, the best in the world, reduced.
Reagan said, "We are a nation that has a government not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows no signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed."
all of it here
Comparing two inaugural speeches, Reagan's and Obama's
