by Bobby Jindal
The success of America and the realization of the American Dream rely on our common sense of culture, a culture that admits some things are right and some things are wrong, a culture that respects and honors the dignity of the individual, a culture that defends the defenseless, values human life, and remains true to our Judeo-Christian ethic.
My parents came from a country that is quite similar to our own—India embraces free enterprise, it is a democracy, and it possesses substantial military strength. Certainly India is a great country and a good American ally. I have fond memories of visiting my grandparents there—but I’m only interested in visiting. My parents didn’t move to America for nothing. They were attracted to American culture, to our unique sense of unbridled freedom and opportunity.
There’s a quote, sometimes attributed to de Tocqueville, that says, “America is great because it is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” This is something we have to come to grips with as a people. The free enterprise system and democratic governance are gifts to mankind, but their goodness can always be undone by men behaving badly.
Simply put, our culture is crucial to our success as a nation. It’s not merely a luxury item that we can dispense with when our society becomes rich enough that we think we no longer need it.
You may also have heard another line attributed to de Tocqueville: “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” This of course is an unfashionable sentiment in today’s society. We like to believe that free enterprise and democracy will lead to success regardless of the status of the cultural underpinnings. Not true.
Good or harm will come to our country depending on what we value and what we reject. A robust economy, a brilliant political system, or unrivaled military strength can’t protect us from ourselves if we make bad moral choices.
CONCLUSION
NOW WHAT?
So you say, “Nice book Bobby. Now what?” I’ll tell you what—now go out there and take your government back. Or take it over. Take up whatever rallying cry you like. Just don’t take it for granted.
Conservatives are at a political disadvantage today. We tend to build our lives around chasing the American Dream, which to most of us means starting our own business, launching our careers, or raising our families. For most of us, it does not include running for office or working for the federal government. And there is a reason for that. We believe in citizen government. We believe in the old-fashioned notion that the government which governs best governs least. We think the Republic is most secure when the Legislature is out of session and the president is on vacation. We believe local government allows us to govern ourselves more efficiently than the federal government.
We think the greatness of America is found in the freedom to do whatever we want and in creating our own destiny. Our goal is to become the best rocket scientist or doctor or plumber or restaurant manager or musician or parent or teacher or soldier that we can possibly be. As conservatives we think of creating something with our own hands, or working our way up in the private sector. We think of creating wealth, not living off the wealth of others. For conservatives, it is the private sector that grows our economy, creates opportunity and jobs, generates wealth, and is responsible for America’s strength and vitality.
To put it in a more personal context, very few conservatives think of chasing the American Dream by going to work at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, the University of Louisiana System, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Congress, and the Louisiana governor’s office.
The view from the Left, however, is radically different. For most young liberals there is scarcely a higher calling than pushing your ideological agenda via government service. It’s right at the top of the queue, rivaled only by a career in journalism or higher education. (Before I get into trouble here, I will note that I know many reporters, or some, or a few anyway, who are not liberals.)
For most liberal ideologues the prospect of burrowing into the government and pushing their agenda is a dream come true. Government is doing more than ever, it is growing bigger than ever, it is costing more than ever, and it is spending more than ever. It has an insatiable appetite that will not diminish by itself. Government will never volunteer to be “The Biggest Loser.”
There will always be someone else with a new idea for government to try, and nine times out of ten that idea will cost money. There will always be another wrong for the government to set right. There will always be another snail darter to save, another study to fund, another regulation to pass, and another tax to raise. There will always be another government building to build and to name after someone who is very important, or who at least was very important in securing the funds to build the building.
While recessions, technological advancements, and other events sometimes reduce the size of the private workforce, there is no such downsizing pressure in the public sector. We seem to need more and more staff to collect more and more taxes to run more and more programs that spend more and more money.
So today, it takes far fewer Americans working on an assembly line to make a car, but it takes far more Americans to manage our incredible exploding government. The guy at the car plant is not thinking up ways to spend more of your money. If anything, he’s hoping to get a raise or a promotion by devising a way to make a better car. For the liberal working in the bowels of the Department of Education, it’s a different story. He’s trying to invent a new government program that will suck in more federal dollars and give him a chance to pursue some big idea. He may have the best intentions, but rest assured, the program he designs will cost money. And rest assured that you, the taxpayer, will pay for it.
Actually, that’s not quite right. You will not pay for that new federal program. You don’t have nearly enough money. We have amassed a debt so large that you will not live long enough to pay for it. But, if you have kids, and if they have kids, they will probably pay for it, unless of course China and the Middle Eastern countries call in the promissory notes before that. I don’t really want to think about what happens then.
This dichotomy—that liberals are drawn to public service while conservatives are repelled by it—is nothing new. But the result is that most of the bureaucracy is controlled by people who are ideologically vested in expanding the government. So the question is what to do about it. I have two suggestions. The first conservatives will like, the second they may not.
First, we need to insist that our government functions in the way it was originally intended. We need a government, composed of part-time citizen legislators, that is not seen as the answer to every problem. Too many people today are asking the question, “How can the government solve our problems?” Here is the answer: it can’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I think competent, efficient government is essential. That’s what I strive for every day. But even the most well-functioning government cannot guarantee our nation’s success. It’s entirely possible to have a great government and a lousy country. American greatness is not defined by our government. America is an idea based on freedom. When government grows too large, it begins threatening freedom. It has always been that way, everywhere.
The folks in Congress need some outside-the-beltway thinking on our problems. In fact, if the Republican Party really wants to reconnect with the American people and regain their trust, it needs to commit itself to something I call the Grandchildren Debt Relief Package, but that you could just as well call A Promise to the American People. That promise would be that every Republican elected to Congress would work to restore America’s future with a seven-step recovery program. Here it is:1. INSTITUTE TERM LIMITS, to force members of Congress to think of our nation’s future rather than their own reelection.
2. MAKE CONGRESS A PART-TIME LEGISLATURE. Congress does less harm when it’s not in session, so it should be out of session more often.
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sp; 3. PASS A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. Nothing threatens our future more than Washington’s runaway spending, which is bleeding America’s financial lifeblood and weakening our national security. It has got to stop, and this would help.
4. GIVE THE PRESIDENT A LINE-ITEM VETO, to prevent the sneaking in of pork barrel projects. Most governors have it, so should the president.
5. FORCE CONGRESS TO HAVE SIMPLE UP OR DOWN VOTES ON SINGLE-ITEM LEGISLATION, to prevent Congress from hiding bad policy in “must pass” legislation. These are more than infuriating examples of government waste; they are placing unbearable burdens of debt on our economy and our children’s future.
6. LEGISLATE PAY-AS-YOU-GO BUDGETING, so that every government program doesn’t dig us into a deeper hole. Politicians pay lip-service to this principle; it needs to be put into law in a way that makes it unavoidable.
7. REQUIRE A SUPER MAJORITY TO RAISE TAXES. We didn’t get into this economic mess by not taxing the American people enough; we got into it by letting Washington become Fedzilla, a wealth-eating monster of unimaginable proportions.
If we commit ourselves to enacting these seven reforms, it would be the greatest act of improving our children’s future since Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.
Sure there are other important reforms, many of which I have detailed in this book. But I am convinced these seven simple steps would put Congress on a radically different path than the irresponsible course it’s on now. And since Congress has the power of the purse, once we turn Congress around, we can turn the government around.
So we should demand that our elected officials adhere to these minimum steps. Democrats really should get behind this program since it is geared toward saving America from fiscal oblivion. But since they’re leading us into the abyss, it’s doubtful they’ll get on board. Our best hope is for Republicans to reclaim the mantle of limited, competent, results-oriented government they once upheld.
Nevertheless, I have to point out that the Republican Party failed to pass these reforms when they had the chance in the 1990s. Still, they took a good shot at many of them. Most notably, Congress fell just one vote short of passing a Balanced Budget Amendment in 1995. Just think about that. The amendment passed the House with more than the necessary two-thirds margin, and the Senate fell a single vote short of a two-thirds majority. Think of how different things would be today if they had found one more vote.
On the whole, the Republican Revolution of 1994 will go down in my book as a great movement that yielded some fruit, but which ultimately fell short of its promise. That does not mean we have to fail again, however. We can learn from our mistakes, and I believe we will.
My second proposal to fight big government may not be welcomed by many conservatives. As we move our policy proposals forward, I believe conservatives should adjust an important aspect of our philosophy. As much as I lament of the growth of government, I do not believe conservatives should roundly condemn the very concept of government service, as is often the case today. We should consider the possibility that government service might in fact be a noble calling. It shouldn’t be viewed as a way to get rich or to make a comfortable life-long career with great employment benefits. But there are many noble and worthwhile public service callings that some people really do enter with selfless motives. Teaching and public health are two that come to mind.
We need conservatives in government positions who are devoted to changing government without letting government change them. We need people of strong resolve who will resist the temptation to go native in Washington, D.C. You don’t have to do it as a career, but you might consider giving some time to it. Consider it missionary work.
A top-down, command style organization works in the military but not in government. Whether the issue is education, healthcare, energy, you name it—a one-size-fits-all solution is rarely the best one in a nation of 300 million people. Enhancing local power, promoting the free market, and allowing people to make their own meaningful choices—in other words, expanding freedom—is the traditional American way because it’s the way that works best.
We are trying to live this way and govern this way in Louisiana. It’s not easy—old habits die hard, as they say. And quite often the complex rules and regulations coming from Washington tie the hands of local government and make it even harder to change.
President Obama won election in 2008 with a brilliant campaign that convinced people that change was on the way, that he was going to do things differently. There was a sense of newness, of freshness, a sense that the little guy was going to get a chance to help in a grand effort of national improvement. The campaign fed off grassroots energy and the idea that no one needed to wait for instructions from central command.
Less than two years into the Obama administration, reality has set in. Betraying his people-power rhetoric, this president has ushered in the biggest expansion of the old, top-down, centralized government model our country has ever seen. More than ever, power is concentrated in a few hands in Washington. Obama’s young campaign workers and grassroots enthusiasts, it turns out, were not empowered at all.
The biggest change we’ve seen, in fact, is that it almost seems like you can add another zero to everything—to the number of jobs lost, to the deficit, to the debt, to our foreign obligations. Instead of “change you can believe in,” it’s “change you hoped you’d never see.” The Democrats, seemingly to their own surprise, are discovering the government can’t spend us into prosperity.
Americans have a certain tolerance for ideology and rhetoric, but underneath it all they expect to find policies that work. So it’s up to us to turn our conservative principles into practical solutions that empower people and that will keep America the greatest and freest nation on earth.
I believe government can and should function at an extremely capable level. We need to root out the casual toleration of mediocrity in government. It should be embarrassing that the phrase “It’s good enough for government work” has become the ultimate slacker motto. We would often feel blessed just to get basic competence out of government—ask anyone in line at the Post Office or at the DMV. But that is setting the bar too low. We must demand from government not just competence, but something more—a commitment to excellence.
I’d like to end this book by asking you to do something: I want you to get in the game.
There are many ways you can make a difference. You can run for office; serve in government; volunteer on a campaign; donate to a candidate who wants to get our country on the right track; start going to townhall meetings and tea parties; or just talk to people you know about ways to get this country moving forward again.
This much I know: we will not take our government back by sitting on the sidelines.
My mom and dad had a simple goal for their kids: to make whatever sacrifices necessary to ensure that we had more opportunities than they did. Millions of American parents have made and kept that same promise. But my generation of Americans could be the first to leave fewer opportunities for our children than we enjoyed. It’s hard to think of a bigger example of national failure. We must not let that happen.
Let me close by recalling a scene from the movie Hoosiers. A kid on a high school basketball team is called up from the bench by the coach and told to go into a big game. The kid is a reserve who hadn’t received much playing time, but this is a crucial time, and his team needs him. The kid, being of strong faith, stops on the sidelines and kneels down to pray. The coach walks up to him and says, “Son, God wants you in the game.”
There you have it. It’s time to get in the game. Do it now—your country needs you.
[Let’s continue the conversation. Visit me at bobbyjindal.com]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, even though they don’t know it, the people of Louisiana helped me write this book. From my neighbors growing up, to my teachers in school, to the many good folks I have met in my thirty-nine years, the people of Louisiana have helped
to form and shape me as a person. I thank them.
Let me first point out how much I appreciate the input I received from folks who work on my staff. They work long hours for the people of Louisiana, and it was really above and beyond the call of duty for them to give me a few of the precious hours of free time they have to provide feedback. Timmy Teepell, Melissa Sellers, Stephen Waguespack, and Kyle Plotkin all provided excellent suggestions and criticism. I also want to thank their families for letting them help out.
Many others agreed to look over the initial drafts and give suggestions, and I even listened to some of their ideas. Among those are Wes Anderson, Alex Castellanos, Ben Domenech, Garret Graves, Blaise Hazelwood, Alan Levine, Brad Todd, and Sam Van Voorhis. Well done, and thank you all.
Curt Anderson and Peter Schweizer were crucial to this book. Peter is an accomplished author in his own right, and Curt is a close friend who knows how I think.
My brother Nikesh is irreplaceable in my life, many thanks to him for his friendship and assistance. My parents, Amar and Raj Jindal, are responsible for me. If you don’t like me, take it up with them. I could not have written the book without their help.
My children, Selia, Shaan, and Slade, did not help on this book, and at times did their best to stop the process altogether. But what they have done is give me a much better understanding of what life and love are all about.
What can I say about Supriya? We are inseparable, we do everything together. She’s my biggest defender, and in private my best check and balance. To say that she helped me on this project is an enormous understatement.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
