By BRAD GASKINS / Staff Writer

BIRMINGHAM – Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said he had good news and bad news Saturday night at a fundraiser for the Shelby County Republican Party.

“The American Dream is under attack, that’s the bad news,” Cain said. “The good news is, it’s not too late to take it back. You’ve already started here in Alabama when you took back the state house.”

Cain made his remarks at the Grand Cahaba Conference Center during the annual Reagan-Lincoln Dinner.

“The American Dream is under attack because unfortunately this nation has turned into a nation of crisis,” Cain added.

He said America has a “moral crisis.”

“You got people out there that are trying to take God out of our culture, but God inspired this great nation and inspired the men who wrote the Declaration (of Independence). Our founding fathers were godly men inspired by godly principles.”

He said America has an “economic crisis.”

“The International Monetary Fund has already estimated that based upon purchasing power, in five years the average Chinese citizen will have the same purchasing power that we have here in America, if we continue to grow at this anemic rate.”

Cain cited the “economic meltdown” in 2008 but added, “this president and this administration have simply made it worse because unfortunately they nor the president understand that the business sector is the economic engine that drives economic growth.

“Now,” Cain added, “the debate over the crisis of what do we do about the debt ceiling. I can tell you what to do about the debt ceiling – leave the sucker where it is!”

Cain said if he were president, there wouldn’t be a debt ceiling crisis because he would have addressed it a year ago.

“They should have saw this coming,” Cain said. “That’s what business people do. That’s what leaders do. You don’t sit around waiting for the train to go off the cliff.”

Had he been president a year ago, Cain said he would have determined how much revenue would come in the next year.

Cain said he would have “made sure we pay the interest on the debt, paid our men and women in uniform and their families, send out the social security checks, pay Medicare and Medicaid and everything else is on the table.

“You sit down,” Cain added, “and figure out the deep cuts you need to make to in order to stay under that debt limit.”

Joiner honored: The Shelby County Republican Party celebrated Judge Michael Joiner as its Republican of the Year.