We Can Only Hold On For So Long

I am a small business owner in the state of New York. I am one of a dwindling number of my peers whose business has remained fully functional. I pay my bills and my workers on time and for the most part, I stay out of the red. My business, in terms relative to the dismal state of the economy, remains a successful enterprise. So how did I achieve this? How is my business one of a growing minority in New York that has managed to maintain its functionality? The answer is simple in theory, yet easier said than done. I have maintained this functionality by sacrificing my own prosperity.

For nearly two years, I have been working my traditional eighty hour work week while earning minimal profit for myself. During this period, I have consistently paid my employees more than I take home to my family. In September of 2008, at the beginning of the economic downturn, I made a conscious decision that I would not raise my prices while the economy was still in a state of fragility. This decision, I believe, has enabled me to retain my customer base. I chose to temporarily sacrifice my personal profit because of my belief in free market capitalism. I had assumed that the recession would create a period of economic cleansing which is sometimes necessary in an economy based on free enterprise. People would be forced to reign in their debts; there would be a brief period of economic austerity; then, in due time, the age old tradition of American ingenuity would lead us back to prosperity. For six months to a year, I presumed, I would have to tighten my family budget, perhaps dip into my savings, and soon enough my business would be bigger and more profitable than ever. But alas, this was not to be.

Beginning in January, 2009, government policies were systematically applied that amounted to an attack on the American private sector. The nearly $1 trillion in “stimulus” funds proved only to increase unemployment; the most massive entitlement program in American history was initiated in the guise of healthcare reform; the federal government proceeded to take over many formerly private industries; new taxes and regulations were applied to virtually every aspect of the economy. All of these measures, in eighteen short months, have devastated American business.

And how were these policies to be paid for? How does a nation riddled with debt and a 10% rate of unemployment justify this government expansion? Thousands of businesses, just like mine, are now being taxed beyond reason. Day by day and month by month, the burdens of big government are decreasing our ability to function. We cannot expand or create jobs under these conditions; we can merely do our best to survive. In January, 2011 the first round of Obama-Care taxes will be implemented and the Bush tax-cuts will expire. This will result in the largest tax increase on American business in the history of our great nation. We entrepreneurs, who have maintained functionality thus far, will be obliged to massively reduce our workforce. It will simply be a matter of survival. I write these words, not as a businessman complaining of my own economic hardship, but as a patriot with deep concern for my country. My experience is merely indicative of the private sector as a whole. Across this land, American industries are falling apart at the seams. The most frustrating aspect of this entire debacle is that it did not have to be this way.

Had our federal Congress and our Commander In Chief lowered, rather than raised our taxes at a time when we could least afford them, things may have turned out differently. Had they cut government spending rather than triple our national debt, unemployment may surely have been reduced. If the size and the scope of our federal government had been contracted, rather than expanded at a record pace, these warnings would not be necessary. The policies of American lawmakers, in the course of eighteen months, have resulted in a virtual public takeover. As the private sector is drowning in a sea of federal bureaucracy, the big government sharks smell blood. America’s job creators are gasping for air and the redistributionists are encircling them.

Free market capitalism is a fitting system for a nation rooted in freedom. If our federal government continues to infringe upon our constitutional right to the freedoms of commerce and of trade, what liberties will they seize upon next? Those who control the money, by default, control the people. A private sector economy necessitates a government beholden to its citizenry; a state run system, based on wealth distribution, contradicts the tenants of Americanism.

America needs new leadership; this is an incontrovertible truth. Without drastic change in our current fiscal policy, our economy will soon collapse. Tens of thousands of businessmen and women, just like me, cannot withstand much more. We have tried our best to keep our communities intact, but we can only hold on for so long.

Jeremy Pitcoff
Smithtown Republican Committeeman