In the aftermath of the passing of one of America’s great defenders of freedom, Andrew Breitbart, we need to take a moment and reflect. His passion was exceptional, his vision undaunted. His energy must be our motivation. Outside of Breitbarttv.com and Breitbart.com his other sites were common in their message Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Peace. The message here was “Big” . He, as many of us also realize, understood that all of these things were part of the problem other than Big Peace. Big Peace cannot exist with the massive expansion of the others, especially Big Government.

Our government is out of control. A National Debt soon to reach $16.3 trillion with no end in sight is consuming the very fabric of our Republic. Unfunded Liabilities of $117 trillion are even more unimaginable.  In 2000 when Bush came into office there were 4.129 million non-uniformed employees, in 2008 there were 4.206 million non-uniformed employees. So, in the 8 years of the Bush administration they added a total of 77,000 employees. As of 2011 there are 4.443 million non-uniformed employees. So in the first 2 1/2 years of the Obama administration they have had a 237,000 employee increase. In 2010, federal civilian workers had an average wage of $83,679, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. By comparison, the average wage of the nation's 101 million private-sector workers was $51,986. When benefits such as health care and pensions are included, the federal compensation advantage over private workers is even larger, according to the BEA data. In 2010, federal worker compensation averaged $126,141, or double the private-sector average of $62,757. How long can the private sector keep supporting the public sector at this rate?

Last summer we watched the pathetic battle of nit-wits between the GOBP (Good Ole Boys Party) and the Liberal/Progressive elitists about the debt ceiling. The drama was intense, the debate exhausting, the rhetoric fulminant, the results unfortunately were the same as always. We are burning through money even faster than was initially predicted. As the Bipartisan Policy Center study, released last Friday, now anticipates the nation will reach its $16.4 trillion debt limit as early as late November rather than mid 2013. This is due in part to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined corporate tax receipts are coming in substantially lower than anticipated. Imagine that, over 24 million Americans under/unemployed, our largest trading partner the European Union is in the throes of economic calamity, and the government forgot to calculate the revenue shortfall due to decreased sales.

We helped the GOBP retake the House in 2010. We sent them with a very simple mandate, STOP SPENDING! As we have embarrassingly watched, the party of Tammy Faye Boehner  and the criminals on the Left, have been unable to find anything that can be cut of substance to stop the tsunami-like spendathon our government has been on for decades. Interestingly, government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent (22%) of them, costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually, did not show any positive impact on the populations they serve. More than 1-in-5 of our massive federal programs are basically useless. We can just keep finding $123 billion to waste rather than eliminate these programs. This is appalling for two reasons. First, for the obvious reason that this massive bureaucracy still exists. Second, that it took auditors 5 (FIVE!) years to do the study. Anything that takes that long to just assess must be TOO BIG TO SUCCEED! In 1984 Reagan created a special commission called the "Private Sector Survey on Cost Control”, better known as the “Grace Commission”. This was a similar study and it took 3 years then to find out there were 963 different social programs. Amazingly the OMB estimated that only 250 programs existed. The commission found nearly 2,500 cost-cutting and revenue generating recommendations that could save the government almost $425 BILLION Dollars in the first 3 years. With complete incorporation the plan was reported to be able to save nearly $2 TRILLION Dollars by 1999. Not surprisingly over 90% of the recommendations were ignored by Congress. If ever there is a reason for “Sunset Clauses” being applied to each piece of legislation, this is it.

The vision that Andrew Breitbart had was for smaller government. The TEA Party was built on this same principle. His, and our, message is unified. Unfortunately we have a European Socialist President and a Marxist Democratic party followed closely by the dysfunctional establishment GOBP. What should be astonishing to everyone is a recent study done by the European Central Bank (ECB). Europe is in the midst of a massive fiscal crisis caused by too much government. As has been their and our compulsion, they just feel spending more borrowed money, rather than any austerity measures to reduce the size of government, is the solution. The study finds that government spending is unambiguously harmful to economic performance.

…we analyse a wide set of 108 countries composed of both developed and emerging and developing countries, using a long time span running from 1970-2008, and employing different proxies for government size… Our results show a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth. …Interestingly, government consumption is consistently detrimental to output growth irrespective of the country sample considered (OECD, emerging and developing countries).

Evidence shows that the problem is government spending, and that problem exists regardless of whether the budget is financed by taxes or borrowing. This underscores the fact that their, and our, policy makers fail to understand the distinction and erroneously focus on the symptom (deficits) and ignore the underlying disease (BIG GOVERNMENT). God Bless you Andrew Breitbart and TEA Party for your vision. This brings us to the recurrent insanity in government where one bad government policy is used to justify another bad government policy. The ECB study shows that the only good solution is to reduce the burden of the public sector on the private sector.

… economic progress is limited when government is zero percent of the economy (absence of rule of law, property rights, etc.), but also when it is closer to 100 percent (the law of diminishing returns operates in addition to, e.g., increased taxation required to finance the government’s growing burden – which has adverse effects on human economic behaviour, namely on consumption decisions).

The key here is that government is too big in the United States and other industrialized nations. Finally, the ECB study analyzed different budget process reforms.

…we use three indices constructed by the European Commission (overall rule index, expenditure rule index, and budget balance and debt rule index). …The former incorporates each index individually whereas the latter includes interacted terms between fiscal rules and government size proxies. Particularly under the total government expenditure and government spending specifications…we find statistically significant positive coefficients on the overall rule index and the expenditure rule index, meaning that having these fiscal numerical rules improves GDP growth for these set of EU countries.

WHEW! If this seems like a bunch of economic gibberish, that’s because it is. Basically what it says is that spending limits are better than balanced budget rules. This is important because it shows that rules focusing on deficits and debt are not as effective because it allows politicians to use them as an excuse to raise taxes. Basically, the simple solution is that government spending must grow slower than the private sector, or more simply, spending cannot exceed revenue. You and I live by this golden rule in our own lives, government MUST do the same.

Notice that none of the media have covered this study. A study this significant should be the main topic of discussion until the election. Of course the media will hush this up as it is antithetical to Obama's class-warfare and tax-the-rich according to his "fair share" initiative. Republicans should be throwing this in the face of the Democrats over and over in an effort to promote the mandate we sent them with in 2010.

Rest in Peace Andrew Breitbart. Your Conservatism, passion and commitment will be truly missed. Our strongest remembrance of your effort is to simply mimic it.

Finally, we need to embrace these words:

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” – Thomas Jefferson