Back in the era of the Great Depression, our newly-elected liberal Democrat President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, proposed and persuaded Congress to pass the Social Security act. He thought that old people should have something to live on in retirement. All the speeches people heard at the time made them believe that if this act passed in Congress, each worker in the US would have his own retirement account where his withholding tax plus his employer’s match would be saved to fund his very own retirement. What a boondoggling lie that turned out to be.

In fact, the payroll tax is plopped regularly into the budget money of the US to prop up activities that might otherwise not get done. The payroll tax is simply one of many sources of money which the Congress slurps up to fund whatever it darn well feels like.

Only in recent years, with the predicted failure of the Social Security promise, have we taxpayers fully realized what a lie it was that Roosevelt told. When I first learned about Social Security in high school history, I truly and actually carried away the image of a little savings account somewhere with my name on it. Oh, I had never even held a job at age 15 when this image hit my consciousness, but I looked forward to it. I wasn’t alone. Lots of people my age thought we had something to look forward to. We were faithfully paying that payroll tax. Our employers were faithfully paying their part. Congress wouldn’t lie to us, would it? Ha. Of course it would.

During George Bush’s first term, he proposed that we start fixing this problem. Bush proposed that a small percentage of the withholding tax be invested in a private account that actually did have the worker’s name on it. President Bush suggested that a small amount of money invested in a well-managed mutual fund would grow over a worker’s lifetime to an amount that would belong to the worker, be a real benefit during his retirement, and be an asset that could be passed on to his heirs. What a great idea! Instead of 7.3% of every paycheck going to Washington to be used who knew how, some of that money would go into an account with the worker’s name on it, and that money would belong to the worker until the day he died. Liberal politicians opposed this idea with the argument that it was simply a ploy to enrich Wall Street investment counselors.

Today, if you log on the Obama website and go to http://www.barackobama.com/issues/family/#strengthen-retirement you can see Obama’s proposal to help people prepare for retirement. You will see that he proposes that every employee have a retirement account that he funds by depositing something every payday. Obama includes a provision that allows the employee to opt out, but whether the employee opts in or out, one thing is sure: his entire 7.3% payroll withholding tax still goes to the government for whatever purpose the government chooses. The employee pays just as much as if the promise of Social Security were real. All Obama is doing is creating yet another government requirement. The employee is still out 7.3% of his gross pay. Obama only offers more pressure to save money over and above that 7.3% that supposedly goes to Social Security. In other words, the government currently steals from employees and employers at the rate of 7.3% for each paycheck, but that has resulted in no money for people to live on in retirement. So now we will compel people by law to save for retirement, and we will set up a bureaucracy that will monitor and supervise this requirement and it will produce a neat form the employee can sign if he chooses not to participate.

Obama is clearly a liberal politician. If we had some doubts before, we have no doubts now. He has come up with yet another way to reduce the amount of money a worker takes home after working hard all week.

Please do not think that I oppose the idea of a worker saving for retirement. I believe it is a wise move for anyone. I just don’t think the government has any authorization in the Constitution to require people to do it. The Constitution envisioned a voting population who were all adults who took responsibility for themselves. If they wanted to save for retirement, they could do so. Even in the benighted days of yore, before Social Security, the employee who wished to accept the discipline of saving for retirement could do so. Even without the government requirement, any employee today who wants to save for retirement can do so. It is a free choice anybody can make.

Liberal politicians seem to believe that nobody will accept the self-discipline of saving for retirement unless the government requires it. In fact, liberal politicians don’t believe the voting public has the sense to make any decisions without government instruction. We can’t decide to take care of our medical needs. We don’t know what to eat or how much to weigh without the government to tell us. In addition, we can’t and won’t plan for retirement unless the government pushes us to put some money into a real retirement account even though the government has been taking 7.3% of every paycheck for as long as any of us has been working ostensibly for our retirement.

I applaud retirement planning, but I don’t applaud a government requirement on that subject. If the government begins to tell us we should save and we must sign a paper to say we don’t want to, then the next step is to tell us we don’t have the option not to. Then we must save a certain amount. Then we must save more. Then we must pay a fee to some government inspector whose job is to make sure that we save what we are supposed to save. When the camel of government sticks its nose under the tent, it does not stop until it is sitting in our laps eating bonbons that we have been required to provide.

I will not be voting for Obama in the fall. I will vote for John McCain. I am not sold on John McCain’s commitment to personal freedom for all, but I intend to make sure he knows that is what I expect. I hope a lot of other people will give him the same message. We cannot afford a socialist in the White House. We must not elect Obama.

We don't have the best choice, but we do have a choice. I will vote for John McCain.