What our economy really needs is less federal debt, fewer regulations, and a predictable tax structure that allows businesses to make long range decisions. We need policies that encourage businesses to create stable, long-term, private sector jobs. More taxes, regulations and government-related jobs are not the answer, and they must be held to a minimum. Mandates and subsidies have to give way to consistent government policies that enable the private sector to get back to the job of building Colorado, and America.
Currently, as a legislator and more particularly as a member of the Joint Budget Committee, I see many of the ways government regulations stifle economic growth. Further, when subsidies and mandates are applied, to stimulate growth, it inevitably distorts the market forces that are so necessary to guide economic growth toward the most efficient path. As state treasurer I will keep a close watch on the public policies that affect our economic prosperity and serve as the “watchman on the wall” for our state.
Here are some examples of what I am talking about.
Free-market Solutions
When I learned that four dollar prescription drug programs and ten cent per gallon gas discounts were prohibited by Colorado law, I worked with both political parties to end those unreasonable regulations. It took two bills and two years to eliminate all the laws that stood in the way of retailers choosing what prices they think best for their customers, but we got the job done.
Taxes, Spending, and Debt
Even as we see on the horizon the elements that could translate into a strong economy, there is still the strangle hold of a bloated, $20,000,000,000,000+ national debt and even more uncontrolled federal spending driving our debt ever higher. This trajectory will make us look like Greece, and even worse, with no one big enough to bail us out. We have to stop the spending at every level of government and hold the line on taxes.
Energy is an Essential Key to Economic Prosperity
Conventional energy production is a key to our nation’s economic prosperity. Renewables are great when they make economic sense, but our policy needs to be “all of the above.” With recent drilling technologies and new discoveries of oil and gas reserves we are at the beginning stages an economic recovery of historical proportions. Asserting a national resolve to empower our free market economic system to develop our energy resources is essential.
Limited, Constitutional Government
A final component for a healthy economy is insisting on limited, constitutional government: moving the Federal government back into its constitutionally enumerated box. The federal government has a significant role to play, in both our systems of government and our everyday lives, but that important role should never exceed the authority the Constitution identifies as the powers of Congress. As our Bill of Rights declare: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
We cannot prosper if we allow the state and federal government take over more and more of our lives. The free-market, competitive nature of limited government must be reestablished as the standard for our constitutional republic.
