COMMENTARY: Hard to tell Nevada’s top Republicans from the Democrats

Remember the XFL? It was a one-year wonder that tried and failed to compete with the NFL. The only thing memorable about the league was a running back named Rod Smart, who featured a fake name on the back of his uniform: He Hate Me.

I feel a lot like Rod Smart. I feel like I have a target on my back. Like millions of business owners and taxpayers, it seems the government hates me. Government makes my life more difficult every year.

Remember when President Barack Obama said, “You didn’t build that”? Obama believed that business owners owed our success to government.

Obama had it backwards. Government owes its very existence to us. Government earns no money. Government just has the right to take from others through taxes. Government could not exist without business owners such as me working 16-hour days, creating jobs and paying taxes. Government couldn’t build bridges, highways, airports, schools and hospitals — or fund welfare and food stamps — without business owners and other taxpayers paying for all of it.

So, I have news for Obama: Government didn’t build that. We paid for it all. Government owes business owners and taxpayers a debt of gratitude.

My life gets worse every year because of government and big-government politicians. I expect Democrats such as Obama to be the bad guys. But in Nevada, it’s often big-government Republicans who are the bad guys. Exhibit A is U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and Gov. Brian Sandoval.

Take Sandoval. In 2013 he cut a “sales tax deal” with Amazon. Sandoval made certain that Amazon would collect sales taxes from Nevada online customers from that day forward. Sandoval described it as “great news” for Nevada. He acted as if Amazon would pay the taxes. But Amazon only collects the taxes. You and I — the citizens of Nevada — pay them.

Guess how that affected my life? My family buys almost everything in our household online from Amazon — we have done so for years. Up until Sandoval’s deal, we saved the sales tax. I had extra money in my pocket. But greedy government politicians such as Sandoval don’t like that.

Thanks to Sandoval, my rough math says I spend an extra $2,000 per year on online sales taxes. How is that good for me and my family? That’s $2,000 extra out of my pocket. That’s $2,000 less for my family; less to give my kids a better education; for spending at local Vegas casinos, malls and restaurants; for a down payment on a new car at a local Vegas car dealer. Is any of that good for the Vegas economy? Is the quality of my life better thanks to Sandoval?

Now let’s move to Heller. He was instrumental in killing the repeal of Obamacare. Obamacare badly damaged my life. It raised my taxes and my health insurance premiums dramatically. It was a vicious one-two punch that almost finished me off. But Heller fought to stop the repeal in order to protect the massive government expansion of Medicaid (i.e. welfare paid for by redistributing my money).

Now Heller has signed onto a new repeal of Obamacare. But the bill he supports keeps the Medicaid expansion in place (which is bankrupting America); keeps all the taxes in place (which are crippling our economy, killing middle-class jobs and busting my budget); and — worst of all — does nothing to expand consumer choice, thereby allowing premiums, co-pays and deductibles to continue to explode.

In other words, thanks to Dean Heller, middle-class Nevadans and Nevada business owners are screwed.

And get this: Sandoval opposes the new Heller-supported Obamacare repeal that does too little and cuts almost no taxes. Sandoval thinks it does too much.

Someone needs to explain to me why I would elect a Republican to make government bigger, steal more of my money, limit competition for consumers and make the quality of my life much worse.

Thanks, Gov. Sandoval and Sen. Heller. With friends (and Republicans) like you, who needs enemies?

Contact Wayne Allyn Root at Wayne@ROOTforAmerica.com.