In Sonny Perdue's own words, this is a portion taken from his published speech, our Governor realizes that stimulus money does have a price to future generations
What stands out most is to me each generation’s willingness to pick up the yoke and move our nation forward. It has not always been pretty,but what has never happened in this nation is for one generation to drop the yoke and wait for the next to pick it up, never have they weighted them down with unbearable burdens!
This is our time to carry a heavy load and do the hard thing now for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
For our generation, the economic storm we now find ourselves in is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. These are hard times for Georgians, many have lost jobs and others are working harder and longer for less and checkbooks are harder to balance.
Here in this chamber, this time has forced tough decisions on us.
We spent the first six years of this administration, before this recession even began, making government more responsive … more efficient … more value-driven. And then came the biggest state revenue drop since the Great Depression.
Together, we've worked hard to find the best solutions and we asked our state team members through out our state for more, in an effort to maintain services with fewer resources. But, ladies and gentlemen, if we fail to do the hard thing now, our government will be spread far too thin to ensure that Georgia is more educated, healthier, safer and continues to grow.
It would be easy to sit back, as we sometimes do, point fingers at Washington, but even here in Georgia, we must remind ourselves that we need to avoid the temptation to serve the needs and wants of today at the expense of tomorrow. We must reject the course that promises the next generation little more than an expensive bill ,crushing entitlements and unfunded mandates.
We cannot vote ourselves ease and comfort at the expense of our children and grandchildren. Alexis de Tocqueville said it well, frighteningly, almost prophetically two hundred years ago:
“A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that from that moment on the the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury. With a result that a democracy always collapses over lousy fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.”
There has never been a cautionary tale so well-suited to a time and place as this one is to America, today here and now.
I love this one story that Thomas Paine recounted from the days of the American Revolution. He told of a tavern keeper at Amboy, who happened to be a closet Tory, for whom Paine had little respect. Paine described the scene:
“He was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, ‘Well, give me peace in my day … Give me peace in my day.’”
Thomas Paine goes on to say that a loving parent should have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” And Paine is right … “This single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.” We must recover the spirit of that loving, sacrificing father.
I believe I stand with most Georgians, when I say, I am for doing with a little less if it means a lighter burden and a brighter future for the next generation. There is an honor in sacrifice and we must never pervert it into the distain of dissatisfaction!
I’ve talked a lot over the last few years about building a culture of conservation here in Georgia, using only what we need and being better stewards of our natural resources. At its core, that culture of conservation is a simple call to be satisfied with only what we truly need and it extends to every aspect of our lives. Going forward, we must forego the excesses of our time and reject the gluttonous instinct of this age.
These times demand that we worry less about bringing home the pork, and more about empowering our people to grow their own hogs. These times call for true leadership in our communities, calling people to create a better Georgia … elevating them out of the easy way of dependency. We have to call every Georgian to build rather than consume … to give rather than take.
And we must begin that transformation here!
.jpg)
