Americans Fight to Win

Today is the 8th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. But there is another war taking place and these same politicians have, in this instance, applied their full force. They don't have to have town hall meetings or take polls for this war — they know what they have to do to: get elected.

This is a war on the U.S. dollar.

The only ones to be left in the wreckage of the battlefield are you and your children. For some reason no one in the media will tell you this — you're too stupid to understand it. It's way too complicated to explain.

Let me tell you something: You're not too stupid and it's not too complicated to explain.

In the 24 hours since we last met, here is what our government has done to defeat the American dollar:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a value-added tax is on the table. The VAT taxes manufacturers at each stage of production based on how much each producer adds to a product.
Speaker Pelosi emphasized, of course, that any reworking of the tax code would not result in an increase in taxes on middle-class Americans.

Of course not.

Next, we turn to the Wall Street Journal. The FAA has granted $272-million in stimulus funds — or roughly 25 percent of the $1.1 billion provided to the agency for airport work — to projects that fell below the agency's own threshold. For some background, according to the Journal, the FAA steers money to projects that get a 41 on a scale from 1 to 100. On the stimulus, they raised their threshold to sixty-two. So tens of millions of dollars are going to these airports that scored low on their own scoring system.

In Detroit, thousands of people lined up Tuesday, some of them falsely thinking they were registering for $3,000 in stimulus checks from the Obama administration. Officials say the city was granted $15 million to help residents pay bills and rent or temporary homes for the homeless.

From New York, Representative Steve Israel held a town hall meeting where the fire marshal had to shut the doors because so many people wanted to attend. He was stopped several times by the people chanting "Stop printing the money." Israel said the federal government would administer a public option just like Medicare and Medicaid and the days of insurance companies dropping you for being sick are over.

The Obama administration announced a $35 million construction project in New Hampshire which requires union representation and makes non-union workers pay dues and contribute to a union pension fund. By the way, in New Hampshire, just 8.7 percent of construction workers are unionized.

And, coming soon the ASPIRE Act, where every baby born gets $500 according to US News and World Report; low income children would be entitled to even more money.

Oh, and before I forget, the CBO just released its estimate for health care costs. The estimate includes a projected net cost of $518 billion over 10 years for the proposed expansions in insurance coverage. That net cost itself reflects a gross total of $829 billion in credits and subsidies provided through the exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program and tax credits for small employers.

You see, it's either a series of incompetent errors so epic in scale that Cecil B. DeMille and Jesus himself couldn't film it to make it believable or somebody has another plan.

I've seen incompetence in my life. I've spent the last eight years looking into the government and studying what they do — I know incompetence. Is it incompetence or has it only been orchestrated to look that way?

Uh-oh, here we go down the crazy hole again.

But how can you have this list from just the last 24 hours and then have anyone tell you with a straight face that we're OK; that we're doing well.

Meanwhile, anyone with a little financial understanding will explain to you that there comes a time when there is no way out: It's called a death spiral.

There is good debt and bad debt.

A truck driver goes out and buys a house he can afford — good debt.

A truck driver buys a house that he can't afford and racks up $100,000 in credit card debt and signs on to purchase the St. Louis Rams — bad debt.

And that's where we are: We've promised so much — we've racked up so much debt — that even if we go back to good times, no even great times, we can't pay it off.

We are the truck driver and we're about to lose our job and possibly start working part-time at a convenience store.

Now how much confidence are the banks and China going to have in us? Remember, China only sees us as our politicians and our dollar. Our dollar is a stock certificate and, just like the stock in a company, if the shareholders believe that the company is not going to turn itself around, people will stop investing in it, they stop buying the shares and then even the best company can't turn itself around.

And there is no bailout of this company. There is no bankruptcy court for America. The creditors come and take the assets.

So, why aren't any of the politicians telling you any of this? I contend because some of them are cowards and have a fundamental misunderstanding about you; about the American people.

You are not stupid and you are not a coward. You figure things out and hell, you've changed the world. And when the going gets tough, the Americans arrive.

I say it's time for Washington to tell us the truth and to trust you with your own future.

Who cares about your future more Washington or you? They think you won't make the sacrifices required. They think you just can't cope with bad news and with troubled times.

And what evidence do they have of that?

We fought and won against the biggest nation in the world as ragged farmers in the American Revolution; we defeated slavery by fighting each other; we defeated Nazism, fascism and communism. But we can't pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and win this? Of course we can!

The only evidence they have that we are stupid, incompetent and can't make it without Washington, is that we keep electing them, we keep taking their money and we don't hold them accountable.

The people in Washington fall into two camps. The first camp is made up of greedy or stupid politicians just going along and winning elections. To those people let me ask this: Have you read history? Have you read the history of the Weimar Republic?

The second question is for the second group of people: Those who want to change the Republic. They want to change our system of government; they are radicals and revolutionaries.

Let me ask those people: Have you read the history of the American people lately? Because no matter how destitute we are or how hard you come down on us, you will never win. Unlike the way you want us to fight in Afghanistan, real Americans fight to win.

— Watch "Glenn Beck" weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on FOX News Channel