KenH
Well-Known Member
LIBERTARIAN PARTY
From the Desk of LNC Chairman Steven Nekhaila
Last night, President Donald Trump declared that the state of our Union is strong.
He spoke of economic resurgence and a new Golden Age of America.
But strength measured in speeches is not the same as strength measured at the kitchen table.
Since 2020, Americans have absorbed over 20% cumulative price increases. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, thanks to Congressional spending, the highest in four decades, after trillions in COVID-era stimulus, and Federal Reserve asset purchases were injected into the system. We were told it was temporary. We were told it was necessary.
Prices did not return to baseline. They reset higher.
The decay isn’t just ‘inflation this year.’ It’s the accumulated loss of purchasing power, prices resetting higher and never retreating, while the debt load keeps rising.
The President cites growth.
Americans see grocery bills up double digits.
He cites job creation.
Americans see insurance premiums rising faster than wages.
He cites market resilience.
Americans see credit card debt exceeding $1 trillion.
He speaks of prosperity.
Young families see housing drifting out of reach.
Median home prices remain near historic highs. Mortgage rates more than doubled from their pandemic lows. The monthly payment on a median home is now roughly 80% higher than it was in 2020. Ownership has shifted from milestone to mirage, with younger generations completely giving up on the prospect of ever owning a home.
This is not happenstance. When over $6 trillion in emergency federal spending collides with a monetary system untethered from sound money and discipline, purchasing power erodes. Inflation is a law of nature. It is policy translated into rent, groceries, and tuition.
The President speaks of strength abroad.
We hear renewed warnings toward Iran. Military repositioning. Strategic language. Familiar drums of war.
We have heard those beats before.
Emergency. Deterrence. Escalation. Permanence.
Every administration promises that conflict will be limited, targeted, and temporary. Yet after two decades of the global war on terror, the machinery built under the banner of security has not receded. Agencies expand. The surveillance state turned inwards. “Temporary” powers calcify into permanent government programs.
War abroad centralizes authority at home.
It always has.
The President speaks of restoring order at the border.
But order enforced through federal militarization layered atop a dysfunctional immigration code is not reform; it is a band-aid on a broken system, which treats those in limbo as collateral. Neither Republicans nor Democrats wish to tackle the issue of true immigration reform, but rather oscillate between border chaos and domestic authoritarianism.
We have seen what happens when emergency enforcement becomes permanent architecture. Contractors and data firms are building enforcement and surveillance tools that never stay confined to their original targets. Those will soon be used against you.
The President promises discipline.
Yet the national debt now approaches $40 trillion. Annual deficits continue in the trillions, with the cost of servicing the debt reaching 8% of the budget. Both parties speak of restraint while appropriating expansion. Both condemn inflation while tolerating the conditions that produce it.
DOGE was ignored as soon as the waste, fraud, and abuse was exposed. One of the only Republican Congressmen to vote against the Big Beautiful Bill, Thomas Massie, was called a traitor and third rate Congressmen, and Trump backed his primary challenger.
The hypocrisy is palpable; look at one hand, and ignore what the other is doing.
Strength, in Washington, is often defined as the capacity to manage crises.
Liberty requires preventing them from becoming permanent.
The Libertarian Party rejects the premise that centralization is synonymous with stability. Economic resilience does not come from monetary manipulation. Security does not come from perpetual escalation. Prosperity does not come from debt financed by future generations.
Power, once granted, does not volunteer to recede.
That is the throughline from pandemic stimulus to housing unaffordability to the drumbeat toward another Middle Eastern conflict.
The question is not whether the Union can be declared strong.
The question is whether Americans remain free from systems that expand in every crisis and retreat in none.
True strength can only be realized when a country returns to sound money, a free market capitalist system, and stays out of forever wars.
There, the strength is wielded by the hands of the individual, not the state.
In Liberty,
Steven Nekhaila
Chairman, Libertarian National Committee
From the Desk of LNC Chairman Steven Nekhaila
Last night, President Donald Trump declared that the state of our Union is strong.
He spoke of economic resurgence and a new Golden Age of America.
But strength measured in speeches is not the same as strength measured at the kitchen table.
Since 2020, Americans have absorbed over 20% cumulative price increases. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, thanks to Congressional spending, the highest in four decades, after trillions in COVID-era stimulus, and Federal Reserve asset purchases were injected into the system. We were told it was temporary. We were told it was necessary.
Prices did not return to baseline. They reset higher.
The decay isn’t just ‘inflation this year.’ It’s the accumulated loss of purchasing power, prices resetting higher and never retreating, while the debt load keeps rising.
The President cites growth.
Americans see grocery bills up double digits.
He cites job creation.
Americans see insurance premiums rising faster than wages.
He cites market resilience.
Americans see credit card debt exceeding $1 trillion.
He speaks of prosperity.
Young families see housing drifting out of reach.
Median home prices remain near historic highs. Mortgage rates more than doubled from their pandemic lows. The monthly payment on a median home is now roughly 80% higher than it was in 2020. Ownership has shifted from milestone to mirage, with younger generations completely giving up on the prospect of ever owning a home.
This is not happenstance. When over $6 trillion in emergency federal spending collides with a monetary system untethered from sound money and discipline, purchasing power erodes. Inflation is a law of nature. It is policy translated into rent, groceries, and tuition.
The President speaks of strength abroad.
We hear renewed warnings toward Iran. Military repositioning. Strategic language. Familiar drums of war.
We have heard those beats before.
Emergency. Deterrence. Escalation. Permanence.
Every administration promises that conflict will be limited, targeted, and temporary. Yet after two decades of the global war on terror, the machinery built under the banner of security has not receded. Agencies expand. The surveillance state turned inwards. “Temporary” powers calcify into permanent government programs.
War abroad centralizes authority at home.
It always has.
The President speaks of restoring order at the border.
But order enforced through federal militarization layered atop a dysfunctional immigration code is not reform; it is a band-aid on a broken system, which treats those in limbo as collateral. Neither Republicans nor Democrats wish to tackle the issue of true immigration reform, but rather oscillate between border chaos and domestic authoritarianism.
We have seen what happens when emergency enforcement becomes permanent architecture. Contractors and data firms are building enforcement and surveillance tools that never stay confined to their original targets. Those will soon be used against you.
The President promises discipline.
Yet the national debt now approaches $40 trillion. Annual deficits continue in the trillions, with the cost of servicing the debt reaching 8% of the budget. Both parties speak of restraint while appropriating expansion. Both condemn inflation while tolerating the conditions that produce it.
DOGE was ignored as soon as the waste, fraud, and abuse was exposed. One of the only Republican Congressmen to vote against the Big Beautiful Bill, Thomas Massie, was called a traitor and third rate Congressmen, and Trump backed his primary challenger.
The hypocrisy is palpable; look at one hand, and ignore what the other is doing.
Strength, in Washington, is often defined as the capacity to manage crises.
Liberty requires preventing them from becoming permanent.
The Libertarian Party rejects the premise that centralization is synonymous with stability. Economic resilience does not come from monetary manipulation. Security does not come from perpetual escalation. Prosperity does not come from debt financed by future generations.
Power, once granted, does not volunteer to recede.
That is the throughline from pandemic stimulus to housing unaffordability to the drumbeat toward another Middle Eastern conflict.
The question is not whether the Union can be declared strong.
The question is whether Americans remain free from systems that expand in every crisis and retreat in none.
True strength can only be realized when a country returns to sound money, a free market capitalist system, and stays out of forever wars.
There, the strength is wielded by the hands of the individual, not the state.
In Liberty,
Steven Nekhaila
Chairman, Libertarian National Committee
