Hon. Bob McEwen: Thank you all very much. Rich, thank you. I’m honored to be in your presence here today. We have just a couple of minutes to make us some observations. My desire is to make it such that all of you can listen to a candidate for office for 60 seconds and know whether or not that person has our country and your best interest at heart.

Quickly, to describe, our country is a unique place. We love to talk about poverty. But let me just put it in perspective to the rest of the world, the sixth largest nation on earth, Pakistan, 170 million people, if we want to speak about poverty in America, we go down and take black and white pictures of the people in the Ozarks, maybe which, down there in Arkansas, and we would say, “Isn’t this an area in which we need to expand?” The Gross Domestic Product, the wealth generated every year by the State of Arkansas is greater than the entire GDP of the sixth largest nation on earth. You say, “Well, wait Bob, now I saw those pictures of Katrina down there in New Orleans. Not everybody in America is wealthy. The fourth largest nation on earth is Indonesia. You’ve heard a lot about that. Our President reminds us repeatedly. When he spoke to the first grade he reminded them that’s where he grew up and it’s the, a member of OPEC, and the fourth largest nation on earth, the combined GDP is smaller than the state of Louisiana. So the question has to be asked, why are 3 million Oklahomans able to generate more wealth every year than 91 million Philippinos? This is a very unique and special place, and if there’s a – if there’s a widget factory on one corner that’s prospering and a widget factory on another corner that’s failing, there’s a reason, and if there’s a church on one corner that’s prospering and a church on another corner that’s failing, there’s a reason, and if there’s a nation on one side of a river that’s prospering and a nation on the other side of the river that’s failing, there’s a reason, and it’s essential that we know what it is, thus we allow people to vote to change it and then we have no place to go.

I give a presentation, a speech very simply called, Politics Easy as Pie. We only vote on 2 things. Politics equals integrity plus economics. I don’t have time to talk about the I part, we’re going to quickly go through the E part, and then we’re going to go to questions. If you’ll look at the presentation here, very simply, economics, I’m going to give you 95 percent of all the economics you’ll ever need to know. Just keep looking at your screen. It will appear momentarily. You just snap your fingers and your going, there it is, it’s coming, there it is. If you will look at that chart, let us say that that’s 100 percent of your income. Let’s say that that’s a hundred dollar bill, a hundred, the GDP of a city, a state, or a nation. Let us suppose that you walked into a Wal-Mart and the most expensive thing in the store is $100.00 and you have a hundred dollar bill, that means that you are completely free to choose anything in the store. Now, I’m going to give you 95 percent of all the economics you’ll ever need to know the rest of your life. It’s very simply like this. Let us suppose if someone walks in and takes 25 percent away from you and leaves you with 75 percent. Now 2 things immediately happen. Number one is you have fewer choices. Thomas Jefferson said, “Freedom is having choices.” The more freedom, the more choices I take away from you, the less freedom you have. Anyone that has a teenager understands this debate. I want to make my own decision. Not as long as I pay for those bills, young lady, and so the way that it works is that the fewer choices that you have, the less freedom that you have, and naturally you would have a lower standard of living. I mean this is really quite, if you’re not with the New York Times this will be very elementary. Now let us suppose that someone comes along and takes 50 percent away from you. What happens? Even fewer choices, less freedom, even a lower, suppose someone comes along and takes 75, leaving you with 25 percent. What happens? Fewer choices, lower standard of living. What happens if someone comes along and takes away everything? You work all day and you keep none of it. That person is called a slave.

Now, very simply, there are only 2 people that can take money away from you. One is a criminal, has a gun and can take money away from you. There is, the government has a gun and can take money away from you, and so you’re walking out, from the pay window across the parking lot to get into the car and a fellow comes up, puts a gun in your ribs, takes 50 percent away from you, you hop in the car, you open your paycheck and you say, “Uncle Sam’s already been here.” Here’s the point. They say in public speaking when you’re going to say something profound, you’re supposed to pause for emphasis. I am about to pause for emphasis because what I’m about to say is not Democrat, Republican, left-wing conservative, whatever, this is very simple. The impact is the same. Fewer choices and a lower standard of living. Regardless of whether the sons of whoever come in to the grocery store every Friday afternoon to say I want 25 percent of everything in that till, and I know that we’re running a criminal operation in this city but if you’re going to work here, we’re going to take money out of your till or if the city councilman walks in and says, “I want 25 percent of everything in the till,” the impact is the same. That is fewer choices, a lower standard of living.

Now, the United States of America is the richest, most powerful nation on earth for one reason. Because it is the free-est. If you will but look at that chart, that’s all you need to know. You show me the Gross Domestic Product of any nation, the percentage that is controlled by government and you can put them on that chart and here’s the principle. That is the greater the freedom, the greater the wealth. The greater the government, the greater the poverty. Now once you understand that, you can make any rich place poor or you could make any poor place rich. In the 1950’s the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation. Now you can go to Tagusagopos, you can go to Buenos Aires, you can go to Cairo, you can go to Philadelphia and all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater the government, the greater the poverty, and that’s all politics is about. Every day politicians say, “I can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself, and let me take your money away from you and make it on your behalf” and thus make the nation poorer.

I majored in economics. They explained to us that America was rich only because we had natural resources and temperate climate and we’re just hard working, have any problems then move further west, blah, blah, blah. I like the example of we used to use East and West Germany. Many of the young people wouldn’t remember the distinctions, same heritage, culture, climate, language when the wall came down, it’s one country. North and South Korea, same heritage, culture, climate, language, history. North Korea, at the end of the Korean War, got 75 percent of the arable land and socialism. South Korea got 25 percent of the arable land, all of the mountains and all of the refugees. Over the last 5 years, North Korea, over 2-1/2 million people, have starved. Starved. Now the first thing you do is you do food. Then you do houses and radios and cars and all, the first thing is you can’t even do food. South Korea, as I said, has the tenth largest GDP in the world.

So the very simple question is why do people do this, and Thomas Jefferson said there’s a starting point for everything and all dispositions of every kind there are certain primary truths or first principles on which all subsequent reasoning must depend, and that is that if we believe in freedom or other people making the decisions for us. Those on the left want more government. They invent new ways to spend money for us. We believe in limited government. The other side always believes in more taxes, an infinite way of increasing ways to take money away from you. We believe in fewer taxes. They believe in a weak defense. Why? Because every dime they spend to defend the country is one less program that they can hand out. We always believe in strong defense. Now this causes Katie Couric and the others a great deal of distress. They say, “You folks always believe in limited government but you always vote for a strong defense.” The answer to that is, “Yes,” because limited government protects our freedom. Fewer taxes protects our freedom. Strong defense protects our freedom, and our goal is freedom.

Finally, thank you, three minutes and I’m through. Finally, the left believes that they have power because of their group and they always are some group of some kind. Either their gender or, I’m an American American by the way. If we want to have, if we want to have a, if we believe in hyphens, my hyphen is I’m an American American and those people believe that their rights come from whatever group they belong to, because I’m this or because I’m that. Well let me tell you, we believe our rights don’t come from our group. We believe that God endowed our rights.

My time is up but let me close just for a quick moment. To especially the many, many young people that are here and that are under age 30 or so. Let me say that what you’re hearing can be distressing about the condition of our country. What you need to understand is that those folks on the left don’t know how to run a 2 car funeral. They will foul up whatever it is that they try to do, and since you don’t know what to do, you are always afraid. You’re always afraid. People that can save and invest and build, when they have a problem, you go to grandpa. What did you do when the plague hit? What do you do when the spiders do this? What do you do when whatever happens? You fix whatever has to be done and we’re always looking forward to opportunity.

Now the last time the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency for four years, was under Jimmy Carter, and so what happened? Exactly the same. That is, we’re all going to run out of this or that or the other thing. We’re all going to run out, we had gas lines, we’re all going to freeze to death. He had his little sweater on and said you had to wear your sweater to ride your bicycle and turn your thermostat down because America’s coming to an end next Tuesday, a week, and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it. Those folks don’t know how to run anything. So therefore, and the night before the election in which Ronald Reagan went on television and said, “There’s nothing wrong with America that the proper leadership won’t cure.” Now the first thing that they did was to take all of those crazy regulations from the oil industry and throw them in the Potomac, and in 24 hours, in 24 hours gas stations that had been closed night after night, for year after year, when I drove back and forth from Ohio to Washington, I knew I had to have a full tank of gas by 4:00 in the afternoon because there wasn’t a single filling station between Washington and Ohio that was open. When we, when my wife and I drove home in March 1981, she was asleep on the seat and we drove up into Hillsborough, Ohio, and there the lights were on at the filling station where they’d been closed for nearly 3 years, and I woke her up, I said, “See sweetheart? Had we not won the election, this never would have happened.”

Now the truth of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with this country. Please. The message I want to leave with you is that there’s nothing wrong with this country that the proper leadership won’t cure. We’ve been here before. In 1787, in 1787 the economy of our nation was in absolute chaos and as a consequence, they met in Philadelphia to form a new country, and when they did, they did the right things, and in the second State of the Union address, which was written at that time by George Washington, he said the foundations, the economic foundations of our nation are on such sound footing that it would have been a madman would have suspected 3 years ago. The fact is that the chaos that they’re creating doesn’t mean that America can or has to be in decline. It means that we need to remove them as rapidly as possible and get people that know what to do and America will continue to climb.

We are-final point. Let’s take one quick question if everybody’s ready and while you’re doing that I’ll give this closing thought about taxes and that is that the rest of the world learned from us in the 1980’s. I sat with Vaclav Klaus at that point was going to be the Defense, was going to be the Finance Minister for Czechoslovakia. Tonight at this moment he is the President of the Czech Republic, but as we’re having dinner we’re talking about, I asked him, I said, Vaclav what sort of capital gains tax do you anticipate? Now remember what a capital gains tax is. Capital is the money that is needed to create jobs. The tax on sales is a sales tax. The tax that you put in your pocket is an income tax. A tax on getting the money necessary in America, about $330,000.00 for each new job you wish to create. A tax on capital to create jobs is a very foolish thing to do, and here’s what the Finance Minister for this newly freed communist country said to me. We’re having dinner, he takes his spoon, and he stops and I said, “What sort of capital gains tax are you looking at, Vaclav? And he stopped and he said, “Congressman, we’re not stupid.” And so in China and in Korea, and in all of the central and Europe and eastern European former Communist countries, capitals gains tax is zero. In America it’s one of the second highest and the in the budget introduced by the President last week, he has 145 percent increase in capital gains. Now let me tell you this. United States is Number 1 in natural gas. It’s Number 2 in coal, it’s in the top 3 to 5 in oil. We have an unlimited capacity for nuclear power. If we had a zero capital gains tax, if we cut the corporate franchise taxes, to just the average just in Europe, we’d begin to produce energy here at home, well this country would take off like a rocket and leave the rest of the world behind.  The only question is, what kind of leadership we will have to do it?

http://www.speakwrite.com/cpac/