Pete Du Pont: 'Progressive' policies would cause economic regression

Economist David M. Smick's recent book,"The World Is Curved," shows that during the past quarter-century we have had a global"golden age of wealth creation and poverty reduction never before seen in the history of mankind." The global free market"experienced an unprecedented doubling of its labor force from 2.7 billion to 6 billion"; the U.S. had 40 million new jobs created;"the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed from 800 to over 12,000" (it is back under 9000 now); and, according to the Federal Reserve, U.S. households saw their net worth increase from $11 trillion in 1982 to more than $56 trillion today.

And due to the expanded financial globalization, America has been in recession only 5% of the time for the past 25 years, compared with 22% in the previous 25 years, when there were no global markets.

We have recently done well on other counts as well. There has been no terrorist attack on America since 9/11, and the surge has worked well enough in Iraq that the country is significantly improving. Here at home we had one of the best-executed presidential campaigns in several decades, and President-elect Obama's initial cabinet nominees have been experienced individuals.

But in the past few months our economy has significantly declined. We are now in the most serious recession since the 1970s, with perhaps the worst economic performance since the 1930s rapidly approaching.

So we began by bailing out the banking industry. One hundred eighty-seven banks have signed up for $246 billion of federal government support to help them recover from lending problems and mismanagement.

Now our automobile industry is desperate for a federal financial bailout. Not the foreign auto companies building cars in America--Honda, BMW, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai--whose sales are down but the financial situation is better-managed, but U.S. auto companies--Ford, Chrysler and, in the most trouble, General Motors.

But the $15 billion auto rescue plan failed in the Senate last week. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, the American taxpayer should not be asked"to subsidize failure."...