Paul's Speech to the President

His Dreams for When He Grows Up...

Paul wants to be an architect.

Here is One Young Man's Plea [click to watch] to the President. I hope that DC Opportunity Scholarships will survive the political process. I hope the private sector where Paul will work survives as well. At our Town Hall Meeting Without Senators I remarked that I couldn't afford employees. As the government creates well-meaning mandates on businesses they increase the cost of compliance and that leads to lost opportunities.

In the past I've had young people work in the studio, helping me build architectural models and various other tasks. One former helper just graduated from architecture school last Spring and is still looking for a position. You can't blame it all on the previous administration either. Freddie Mac faltered under the leadership of Franklin Raines, no Bushie by a long shot. If you hate big CEO salaries you should be outraged that this man took his 90 million as the mortgage industry crashed and burned. Well-intended policies initiated in the late seventies led to the meltdown. Any honest analysis of the problem will show you that there is plenty of blame to go around. Perhaps it is of little use to focus on any individual's contribution and it would do us a lot of good to look the solutions square in the eye.

First of all it is a very bad time to make drastic changes to our healthcare system and energy taxation. It does not create a lot of confidence when politicians attempt to pass thousand page bills that contain the framework for government to take over entire portions of our economy but fail to address simple solutions such as tort reform and increased competition that would directly lead to much of the desired reform.

Cap and trade -- the 'Carbon Tax' will only enrich Goldman Sachs. It will further dull the competitive edge of American industry. That means fewer jobs. We need to become more energy independent. We need to let a variety of technologies come to market -- including nuclear power. We need to be creative. Conservation alone will not take us to where we want to be further into the 21st Century. Efficiency will, diverse sources will, wind alone won't.

Three decades into the Nineteenth Century there came a need to tie the young republic together. The rivers were the first network but they did not reach all the desirable places. Roads were limited and the railroad was to become the unifying infrastructure. The first rail cars were pulled by horses! The rails made it easier to move the cars. The Baltimore and Ohio actually tried wind power but that required a light wicker car for passengers and then, as now, wind is not constantly available. Steam was necessary for the railroads to become competitive.

Today we need to allow energy to remain competitive. We need to reward creative methodologies rather than penalize those that have reached an economy of scale. We need to take steps so that we decide our own future and not have it forced upon us by the Middle East and China.

Only then can we offer our children the full scope of opportunity that we need to.

That's why we're coming to Washington Saturday!