Archives for October 2013

Oct. 31, 2013, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement praising Senate Republicans for blocking Obama nominee Mel Watt to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, highlighting his past support of mortgage principal reductions for as many as 9.7 million borrowers who are $580 billion underwater on their mortgages, owing more on their homes than they are worth:

“More bailouts are the wrong answer for the American economy, and Mel Watt is the wrong choice to head Fannie and Freddie. Senate Republicans are to be praised for blocking him. Now they need to hold firm and insist on real reform. Instead of heading the agency with somebody dedicated to give away other people’s money, Congress should be working to bring an end to government-directed housing finance — the cause of the financial crisis — by bringing an end to Fannie and Freddie once and for all.

“Mel Watt’s past support of mortgage principal reduction raises major questions of fairness, as well as significant taxpayer concerns over reducing mortgage debt by as much as $580 billion for 9.7 million borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth. If they did it for everyone, it would put Fannie and Freddie back in the red, requiring a huge infusion of hundreds of billions of tax dollars to compensate.

“In the meantime, the program actually supported by congressional Democrats, the Making Home Affordable-Principal Reduction Alternative, would only ‘help as many as half a million homeowners,’ according to Watt. That is just 5 percent of the 9.7 million borrowers who are currently underwater on their mortgages, and yet would still cost taxpayers billions. It would just be a specialized bailout, likely tailored to prop up administration-favored favored constituencies. We don’t need it anymore than we need the government running housing finance.”

Attachments:

“Obama Taps Mel Watt for Fannie, Freddie to Push Mortgage Principal Reductions,” By ALG senior editor Robert Romano, May 2, 2013 at http://netrightdaily.com/2013/05/obama-taps-mel-watt-for-fannie-freddie-to-push-mortgage-principal-reductions/

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 23, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney saying that if people remain unable to access health insurance under Obamacare through Healthcare.gov they “will not be penalized” under the individual mandate:

“With the White House actively considering waiving the individual mandate for those unable to access health insurance at Healthcare.gov, congressional Republicans that fought to defund and delay implementation of the law for a year have been vindicated. This law was not ready for prime time.

“With the increasing likelihood that uninsured Americans will remain unable to sign up for Obamacare under the new regime, and up to 43 percent of them completely unaware they are required to carry health insurance under the law according to Gallup, a delay of the law was always the eminently reasonable fallback position.

“It is unconscionable that the administration would fine people for not being able to access a website it did not properly build. Moreover, nobody should be fined for refusing to purchase a product they never asked for. This was always going to be a problem under the individual mandate. Now, a delay of the entire law at a minimum is the only way to navigate the Obama administration’s incompetence.”

Attachments:

Oct. 21, 2013 Press Briefing with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/10/21/press-briefing-press-secretary-10212013

Q    I don’t understand the answer, though.  If the website is not fixed, will people still have to pay the fine?

MR. CARNEY:  First of all, we’re way still early in the process.  So you’re talking about a February 15th and a March 31st deadline; it is October 21st today.  So let’s be clear about that.  We’re three weeks into this.  And that’s number one.

Number two, as written, the law makes clear that people who do not have access to affordable care due to a state not expanding Medicaid or other factors will not be penalized.

Q    So other factors can be this website having the same problems?

MR. CARNEY:  Again, that’s how the law is written.

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 22, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement on the latest jobs numbers:

“As many people left the labor force in September as found jobs, casting doubt on whether we have at all turned a corner in this dismal labor market. Since 2009, 10.1 million people have left the labor force, while only 2.15 million found jobs, based on the household survey. In the meantime, the working age population has increased by 11.4 million in that time.

“Every year, millions of potential workers are being displaced in the Obama economy, with no end in sight. This is a depression of sustained high joblessness, and no amount of sugarcoating can change what going forward is a very bleak outlook.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 21, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement in response to President Barack Obama’s Rose Garden declaration that preventive care under the health care law will be “free”:

“President Obama’s laundry list of ‘free’ health care that is provided is either a willful disregard for the truth or an unfortunate display of his own knowledge about the cost of providing services. No medical service is free. Doctors, laboratories, and other health care professionals must be paid and those payments will be made either by the taxpayers or through the higher cost of premiums that are being forced on consumers. It is sad that Obama continues to cling to his outmoded belief that you can get something for nothing if he just says it is so.

“The hard facts of Obamacare are that it will turn full time employees into a nation of part-time workers, force millions of Americans off their employer-provided plans, drive up health premiums, and break the budget with tens of millions of people being added to the rolls of government-run, taxpayer-funded health insurance.

“Obama kept on calling his health care law a ‘good product.’ If the product is so good then why force everyone to buy it? The fact is the entire push for ‘universal’ health care in the U.S. is simply unbridled government coercion to force individuals to behave in a certain way. If they ever get their website working, and millions who qualify still do not sign up for a product they never asked for, we should expect they will at some point simply be auto-enrolled by an over-zealous bureaucracy convinced that it just knows better than the rest of us.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 17, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government vice president of public policy and communications Rick Manning today issued the following statement to President Barack Obama’s comment that “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election”:

“President Obama’s comment is an embarrassment to U.S. constitutional law professors everywhere, and reflects a unique lack of understanding of the United States constitutional system of government.

“The President should understand that every single House and Senate Republican won election to their office.  The House of Representatives has a majority of duly elected Republican legislators.  Americans chose divided government in 2012.  Obama’s refusal to acknowledge this fact is at the heart of his unwillingness to be part of the solution in D.C. and does a disservice to the nation.

“Elected Senators and House members have every right and indeed a responsibility to represent their constituents’ interests, and for this president to say otherwise underscores his apparent misunderstanding of how our government system works.

“Unfortunately, Obama’s imperial attitude revealed in this arrogant victory lap should come as no surprise given the statement attributed to him by the New York Times reported in 2011, ‘it would be so much easier to be the president of China.’

“It is a shame that Obama doesn’t appreciate America’s unique and brilliant republican form of government designed to protect minority rights while preserving majority rule.  America owes a debt of gratitude to members of Congress like Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and Representative Tom Graves, who chose to lawfully and constitutionally fight the expansion of federal government power and reject the ‘Do what I tell you’ model advocated by the current occupant of the White House.

“Perhaps Obama should crack open those dusty unopened constitutional law books and do a quick review of our nation’s representative form of government.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 16, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement urging the House of Representatives to defeat a Senate-proposed continuing resolution that will fail to defund Obamacare:

“One week ago, Speaker John Boehner characterized a vote on a continuing resolution that did not deal with Obamacare as an ‘unconditional surrender’.  Today, House Republicans will be voting on just such a bill.

“No Republican who votes for the Harry Reid surrender bill will ever be able to credibly claim that they truly oppose Obamacare, because when push came to shove, they chose to fund and implement it, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is indeed a train wreck.

“Americans for Limited Government urges the House of Representatives to put down the white flag and reject Harry Reid’s surrender terms.  Failure to reject this bill destroys any leverage that House Republicans might hope to wield in the proposed future joint committee, as it will have been proven that the Democrats have no need to negotiate so long as they are willing to shut down the government and potentially breach the debt ceiling.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 16, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement urging the House of Representatives not to wait for Senate action to move on legislation raising the $16.699 trillion debt ceiling:

“The House is under no obligation to wait for the Senate to act on the debt ceiling and then to simply rubber stamp whatever they come up with. House leaders can act first to raise the debt limit and guarantee that interest payments always be made no matter what when it is reached again in the future. This would remove the threat of default once and for all and guarantee the full faith and credit of the U.S. It would also separate the debt ceiling debate from the continuing resolution.

“The alternative is to wait for Senate legislation that nobody has read and likely will be laden with special interest handouts, Obamacare exemptions, reopens the government, and allows funding for the health care law to take effect. In short, the alternative is complete surrender.

“Any member that votes for such a ‘compromise’ that funds Obamacare, will own it.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

 

 

 

 

 

Oct. 15, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement in response to competing House and Senate proposals to pass a continuing resolution, raise the debt ceiling, and to fund Obamacare:

“There is now no disagreement between House and Senate leadership, between Republicans and Democrats, on the most critical issue facing the nation, and that is funding Obamacare.

“On the Senate side, Republican leaders have signed off on not only funding Obamacare, but exempting labor unions from some of its harmful provisions. Meanwhile, House Republican leaders similarly have agreed to allow funding for Obamacare to take effect, and to bail out General Electric and other corporate interests who are faced with the onerous medical device tax.

“The only apparent difference of opinion is which special interest should get an exemption from the health care law. When both houses are through negotiating, they’ll likely agree that both big labor and General Electric should be exempted. This comes atop big businesses getting a one-year delay on the employer mandate, members of Congress and their staffs getting a lifetime exemption from the law from the Obama administration, and other labor unions who also got a four-year waiver from the so-called Cadillac insurance plan tax.

“Apparently, when all is said and done, everyone except for the American people will have an Obamacare waiver.

“These carve outs for special interests once again prove why we need to get rid of health care law in full. Rather than playing the traditional D.C. carve out game, House Republicans need to go back to square one and demand that everyone be treated the same by defunding the entire law.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

October 11, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement responding to new Senate Republican offers to pass both a continuing resolution and a debt ceiling increase, meanwhile allowing funding for Obamacare to take effect:

“Senate Republicans in a panic move are attempting to make small changes to solve big problems in order to resolve the government shutdown and debt ceiling. At a time when even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has come to the conclusion that Obamacare needs to be delayed in its entirety, Senate Republicans are proposing to allow it to be funded. All this, after Senate Republicans were making such a big deal about how they were voting to ‘defund’ Obamacare two weeks ago.

“As Americans receive notification of increases in their health insurance cost directly related to Obamacare, or are dropped from their employer plans entirely, it is becoming more and more clear across the country that the health care law needs to be stopped.

“Unfortunately, Senate Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Lamar Alexander still have no plan to stop Obamacare. Their white flag strategy will leave America stuck under the burden of Obamacare for generations to come. It is a shame that those elected to big things are choosing to play small ball and in fact their continued carping in the media has provided support to those who would see Obamacare implemented across the land.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###

Oct. 10, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement in response to a Daily Mail report showing only 51,000 people have signed up for Obamacare via Healthcare.gov in its first week:

“With more than 85 million Americans who now qualify for Obamacare, whether through Medicaid or the insurance exchanges, at Healthcare.gov’s current pace, it will take approximately 32 years to sign everyone up for government-subsidized insurance.  This administration has spent billions of dollar preparing for the launch of Obamacare with co-ops, advertising, and stakeholders amongst those tasked with convincing America to sign up.

“The first week’s results prove that a bad product just can’t be sold no matter how much money is spent to fool the consumer.  With Wolf Blitzer urging that Obama accept the Republican proposal to open the government while delaying Obamacare’s implementation in full for a year, there is no excuse for the President to continue to his shutdown any longer. The incredibly low response rate is an embarrassment to this administration and the only way for this President to save face is to agree to the one-year delay.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at (703)383-0880 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Nathan Mehrens.

###