Jack Kemp: A Champion of Small Business

Jim Blasingame

America lost a great leader this week. Small business lost one of its champions.
       
Jack Kemp was a leader in all of his endeavors. He was an NFL quarterback, Congressman, HUD secretary, Vice Presidential candidate and Republican Party thought-leader.
       
Kemp didn't win all of his games, nor all of his campaigns, but he was a winner in life because he won the hearts of those who agreed with his ideas as well as the respect of those who disagreed. What better could be said of anyone?
       
Jack Kemp didn't just believe in
America's free-market economy; he was a zealot. He wasn't just an outspoken advocate for supply-side economics and the phenomenon of dynamic scoring; he was one of the forward thinking minds that created, birthed and nurtured these policies into reality.
       
By the way, dynamic scoring is where the government actually increases tax revenue as a result of lowering taxes, which creates an environment that fosters risk-taking by entrepreneurs and, therefore, increases productivity and economic growth. This isn't some esoteric theory; it has been proven in the past 30 years. 
       
Indeed, a 1994 report by President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers included this statement: "It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth." It's gratifying to Kemp's disciples that he lived long enough to be proven right.
       
No right-wing ideologue, Kemp was sometimes referred to as a "bleeding heart" Republican. That means he believed in how government could actually help people who really needed it, but not in making government's beneficiaries into victims and hand-out addicts. Notwithstanding his VP nomination with Dole in 1996, one of the great mysteries to me, and perhaps an indictment of the Republican Party, is why Kemp wasn't even more prominent in national politics in the past 20 years.
       
Jack Kemp cared about small businesses, and he believed in the importance of American entrepreneurship. For those small business owners who, like me, just want the government to not take too much of our precious capital away in taxes and get out of our way as we attempt to serve customers, create jobs and achieve financial success for ourselves, we've lost a champion and a friend.
       
America has lost a great leader, intellectual honesty has lost a valiant debater, free-market capitalism has lost a vociferous voice and reason has lost an irreplaceable advocate.
       
Write this on a rock... The energy level of planet Earth has dropped now that Jack Kemp has passed.


Jim Blasingame is creator and host of the Small Business Advocate Show.
Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved.




Print page