The Freedom Revolution; The New Republican House Majority Leader Tells Why Big Government Failed, Why Freedom Works, and How We Will Rebuild America by Armey, Richard K - 1995

Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc, 1995. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. 24 cm. xi, [1], 318, [6] pages. Armey's Axioms. Publisher's ephemera laid in. Signed by the author on title page. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Richard Keith Armey (born July 7, 1940) is an American economist and politician. He was a U.S. Representative from Texas' 26th congressional district (1985-2003) and House Majority Leader (1995-2003). He was one of the engineers of the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s, in which Republicans were elected to majorities of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Armey was one of the chief authors of the Contract with America. Armey is also an author and former economics professor. After his retirement from Congress, he has worked as a consultant, advisor, and lobbyist. Majority Leader Dick Armey explains the collapse of the Left and offers a prescription for the future of Republican leadership. What lifts this book above the pack is extensive use of Armey's Axioms-witty though incisive truisms on public policy, from a man in a position to know. The author is the House Majority Leader, a champion of the flat tax, and a former economics professor at the University of North Texas. Case in point is U.S. farm policy. The apt Armey Axiom here: "One bad government program creates the need for a worse one." The U.S. Agriculture Department starts out by benevolently guaranteeing the farmer ample price supports on his crops and thus a high return on his investment. The unsurprising upshot is overproduction or vast farm surpluses that become unmanageable, that cram government storage bins. This leads to an even more bizarre consequence. The bureaucrats then pay farmers not to farm. Literally. And the amount of land taken out of production is prodigious. Other targets of Armey Axioms include the Small Business Administration (with a 20 percent default rate on SBA loans), U.S. job training programs (the Job Corps program nips taxpayers for $30,000 per trainee), Rural Electrification Administration (its mission was over in the 1950s but it keeps on draining taxpayers), Legal Services Corporation (its tax-financed lawyers sue state and local governments on behalf of violent criminals evicted from public housing), and so forth.