What the President Won’t Tell Latinos This Weekend

Israel Ortega - July 23, 2011 at 2:49 pm

Here’s what you won’t hear from the President this weekend when he addresses the largest Latino advocacy organization’s annual conference:
Latino unemployment is in double digits following a failed stimulus bill.
Nearly one out of every two Latinos will fail to receive a high school diploma, despite the federal government’s control over education policy in the past 50 years.
Unfettered government spending has led the national deficit to balloon to nearly $13 trillion, jeopardizing American economic security and quality of life.

Instead, President Obama is likely to use this opportunity before the receptive audience at the National Council of La Raza to recycle stale excuses and promises. The President will blame the previous Administration for the country’s pathetic economy and seek to portray conservatives as the enemy. The President will ask the Latino community to continue supporting his policies of increased taxing in order to pay for more government programs we cannot afford, all the while racking up even more debt.

Rather than looking to empower Latino communities, the President will encourage the audience to depend more and more on the government. From education to health care to energy policy, the President’s remarks will largely center on how the government is best suited to run more and more aspects of our lives.

The allure of an endless goodie bag of government programs and services is an attractive sell, particularly when coupled with the race-baiting and victimization that liberals have been so keen to perfect.

Unfortunately, liberals (including many in the Latino lobby) chose to ignore the fact that our country’s wealth was not built on government spending but by innovation, entrepreneurship, and free enterprise.

In fact, a recent poll commissioned by Generation Opportunity seems to confirm that Hispanics—particularly young Hispanics—understand this. They indicated that they prefer “reducing federal spending to raising taxes on individuals in order to balance the federal budget.”

While immigration is likely to figure prominently in this weekend’s discussions and forums, don’t expect any of the speakers to tell the audience how the President’s failed economic policies are likely to replicate the very same conditions here that countless Hispanic immigrants fled Latin America to escape.

This is especially timely as the U.S. finds itself at a critical crossroads in deciding how to reduce the national deficit to prevent bequeathing our children and grandchildren back-breaking debt. Rather than urging fiscal restraint, the President will likely pepper his speech with the word “investment”—to argue for greater government spending without explaining how he intends to pay for the growing bill.

Latinos, like the rest of the country, need a leaner and less intrusive federal government to pave the way for a much-needed economic recovery. The economic mobility that continues to elude so many Latinos will not be achieved by depending more and more on the federal government.

That’s the harsh reality that will likely be missing from this weekend’s gathering.

Israel Ortega is the Editor of The Heritage Foundation’s Spanish language page, Heritage Libertad: www.libertad.org