Tuesday, Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, accused socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, with economic ignorance in response to her attacks on the free enterprise system.
Congressman Mo Brooks delivered his comments in a forceful speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“A prominent American Socialist politician recently proclaimed that “capitalism is irredeemable,” Rep. Brooks said. “Mr. Speaker, capitalism, better known as free enterprise, is based on freedom, and liberty, not government dictate. The claim that freedom and liberty should give way to government control and dictatorship is astonishing, sad, and alien to the America that I know. It is a betrayal of the freedom and liberty Americans have fought and died for, a freedom that has given America the best Gross Domestic Product . . . the most wealth, of any nation in history!”
“The argument that free enterprise is bad and “irredeemable” is the height of economic hubris, economic ignorance and economic stupidity!” Brooks said, “It is one thing for an argument to be economically ignorant and stupid, it is another thing for it to be dangerous to human life. In that vein, the argument that socialism is better than free enterprise is not only a betrayal of America’s foundational principles of freedom and liberty, it is also dangerous and must be dealt with quickly and severely.”
“History is replete with examples of dead or dying nations that have paid a heavy price for succumbing to socialist politicians who cared more about personal and dictatorial power, who cared more about being “the Boss”, than the welfare of their own people,” Brooks stated. “For those who choose to not learn from history, I suggest reading George Orwell’s prophetic book, the “Animal Farm.” It explains all you need to know about how and why Socialism fails, and who rules in a Socialist society.”
Brooks pointed to Venezuela as just the most recent example where socialism has led to enormous suffering and persecution of a once prosperous people.
“Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian catastrophe is a present-day, glaring lesson that warns all tempted by the siren song of Socialism,” Brooks warned. “Thousands of Venezuelans are dying from malnutrition, disease, and lack of food and medicine. The result? Deadly riots. In 2018 alone, a staggering 7,523 civilians were murdered due to clashes with military and state police forces. Mothers are forced to choose which child to feed and which child goes hungry. In 2017, The average Venezuelan lost 24 pounds because they could not get the calories necessary to maintain their body weight. Today, there are Venezuelans searching for food in trash cans who are fortunate if they can eat once a day. As Venezuelans lose hope, suicide rates has skyrocketed to almost twice the global suicide rate. Venezuela’s socialist economy has collapsed. 2018’s inflation rate soared to 80,000 percent. Nearly 90 percent of the population is living below the poverty line. Even electricity is unreliable, as Caracas suffers from sporadic, total power failures, casting Venezuela’s capital city into darkness.”
“Worse yet, Venezuela’s socialism promotes crime and lawlessness by desperate citizens,” Brooks continued. “According to a 2018 report by the World Economic Forum, Venezuela is the second most dangerous country in the world, with Caracas coming in as the second most dangerous city overall with 111 homicides per 100,000 residents. Venezuela’s suffering even extends beyond its borders, as thousands of refugees flee to neighboring countries that can’t take care of them. Venezuela is a man-made catastrophe brought about by tyrannical dictators and self-proclaimed “bosses” that are always the result of socialist policies.”
“America must learn from Venezuela, a country that succumbed to evil Socialist sales pitches even though history proves Socialism has failed every single time,” Brooks said. “I urge my colleagues, and America, to reject Socialism, lest America go down the same path of financial self-destruction as Venezuela. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I urge America to reject self-proclaimed dictators and bosses who seek to deprive America of our hard-fought and hard-won freedom and liberty.”
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said recently, “And so I do think that right now we have this no-holds-barred, Wild West hyper-capitalism. What that means is profit at any cost. Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world. When this country started, we were not a capitalist [nation], we did not operate on a capitalist economy.”
The freshman Congresswoman from New York has also called for a World War II style effort to fight climate change, “What we had was an existential threat in the context of a war. We had a direct existential threat with another nation, this time it was Nazi Germany, and the Axis, who explicitly made the United States as an enemy, as an enemy. And what we did was that we chose to mobilize our entire economy and industrialized our entire economy and we put hundreds if not millions of people to work in defending our shores and defending this country. We have to do the same thing in order to get us to 100 percent renewable energy, and that’s just the truth of it.”
Congressman Mo Brooks is in his fifth term representing Alabama’s Fifth Congressional District.
