Dear Congress, Stop Trying to Help Me

Dear Congress,

Please stop trying to help me. I don't want your help. I don't need your help. In fact your help is hurting me.

Our country has, depending on the estimate, between 50 trillion and 100 trillion in unmet obligations. The principal obligations are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare Part D, a relatively new program, will represent a bigger part of the unmet obligation than Social Security soon, if it doesn't already.

This situation would be slightly better had Congress acted responsibly and not spent the so-called Social Security Trust Fund, but it did. I have no expectation that I will ever see any Social Security benefits and would gladly welcome the transition to a privatized system, but I doubt that Congress will take this step unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

Now we face a huge housing and financial crisis. Congress wanted to “help” the economy and extend home ownership as widely as possible. Usually when Congress intervenes in loans, it is to bring in less qualified, and more risky loan recipients. If the market were allowed to work unfettered, the banks and mortgage companies would not make loans to people who don't qualify. However, the implied government guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were too tempting, and loans were extended with the thought that, even if they went bad, government would pay them off.

This crisis has cascaded throughout the economy generally, and now Congress faces the decision of what to do about it. My answer is to step back and stop trying to help. The law of unintended consequences is always at work in life and economics. Government intervention in the markets, in the long run, makes markets less safe and less liquid. Government intervention in the markets will decrease confidence that our markets are fair. This will result in investors choosing to invest their money in foreign markets instead of our markets. Government intervention in our economy will make us less prosperous, will depress our economy over the long-term, will drive up our deficit, weaken our dollar and maintain prices at artificially high levels. The abandonment of our free market principles will ultimately cause foreign holders of our debt to abandon it and this will be devastating to our economy.

It isn't enough that for years Congress has not acted to ensure that our energy needs were met through exploration, refining, developing nuclear energy, and encouraging alternative energy. Instead, Congress allowed the situation to grow worse. It isn't enough that Congress did precious little to confront our national debt and reduce the size of government so the country would live within its means.

Now, after proving itself incapable of properly managing the assets which it has been entrusted with, government wants to control more and more of our “free market” economy. Worse, the Treasury Department, wants Congress to give it a blank check so it can not only bail out U.S. Banks, but also foreign banks.

This proposed solution isn't a solution at all. You are driving a crippled economy the wrong way down a one-way street. You are driving away from the free market principles which made our country great. These principles don't change based on circumstances, but are constant. What worked at the foundation of the country works today.

Liberty is indivisible and consists of both Economic and Individual Liberty. Congress has done great damage to both Economic and Individual Liberty already. The restrictions on our Individual Liberty through the Patriot Act, FISA, Telecom Immunity, etc. have already been quite egregious. This proposed Treasury Bailout would be equally, if not more, egregious. Following the Hoover/Roosevelt model of intervention in the economy is a fundamentally unsound idea.

I think government has done enough already to help me. I already own a big chunk of the national debt. An increasing percentage of my overly burdensome taxes goes towards the servicing of that debt. Government inaction on energy further saps my economic well-being through high fuel prices. Monetary policy secretly taxes me through a weak dollar, higher costs and a lower real wage. Now the Congress wants to help me some more? I don't see how raising the debt ceiling another 700 billion is going to help. Please stop helping me. You have done enough – more than enough – already. If you want to help me, please recess the Congress. Take a nice long break. Maybe brush up on economics by reading Rothbard, Hayek, vonMises and others from the Austrian School. Slow down and think about the long-term consequences of your actions will have on me and millions of others. You have not only an obligation to those of us alive today, but also to future generations. You would do well to consider that before acting rashly in the face of the current crisis.

Sincerely,

Terry Kinder