Archives for July 2010

“The American people have lost one more piece of their liberty, as the Senate has voted to create a hidden, permanent bailout that will enable faceless bureaucrats to levy taxes, bail out politically-privileged institutions and to seize and liquidate politically-unconnected ones, redistributing their assets to favored constituencies, like unions,” Wilson declared.

“There will be no votes in Congress like TARP ever again, as Congress has abdicated the power to tax and spend elsewhere,” Wilson explained, adding, “Which solves a political problem for members of Congress, but is really just a con game so that they don’t have to take responsibility for unpopular bailouts and government takeovers.”

Wilson said “the American people can thank these 60 senators that voted to invoke cloture on the Dodd-Frank bill,” which included all but one Senate Democrat and Republican Senators Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, and Susan Collins. The vote ending debate was 60 to 38.

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold was on the only Democrat to vote Nay, whom Wilson said “had the intellectual honesty to say he wanted to address the root causes of the financial crisis,” and thanked him for his votes to bring an end to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to audit the Federal Reserve.

Wilson called the bank tax by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on about 60 bank holding and insurance companies with $50 billion or greater in assets included in the legislation “taxation without representation”.

“The taxes which will finance the ‘orderly liquidation fund’, the cost of which will be passed on to savers, investors, and anyone who uses the financial system,” Wilson said, citing a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of a similar bank tax proposal by the Obama Administration, “the ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government. The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors, but the precise incidence among those groups is uncertain.”

“These taxes, bailouts, and takeovers will happen arbitrarily, by faceless, unelected bureaucrats at the FDIC, Treasury, and Federal Reserve. When there’s another bailout — not if, but when — and any of these 60 Senators dare attempts to condemn it, they need to be called out,” Wilson concluded.

Attachments:

“’Down a Rabbit Hole:’ The Threat Posed by the Dodd-Frank Bill to the Private Sector,” Updated June 28th, 2010, Americans for Limited Government.

“Big Brother is Watching You: The Threat Posed by the Dodd-Frank Bill to Privacy,” Updated June 28th, 2010.

Letter to the U.S. Senate, ALG President Bill Wilson, April 26th, 2010.

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

###

ALG Renews Call for FDA to Dismiss Science Panel Members With Conflicts

July 13th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson today called upon the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider the composition of a key science panel set to issue recommendations on tobacco regulations.

According to Wilson’s letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, “nearly a majority of the TPSAC voting members have received payments from special interests with billions of dollars riding on the outcome of the committee’s analysis.”

Wilson asked Hamburg to “reconsider the composition of this committee, either dismissing the conflicted members or requiring them to abstain from issues affecting their own financial interests.”

Wilson said four members of the committee have “clear conflicts of interest”. They are:

• Jack Henningfeld a voting member of the committee is a consultant to GlaxoSmithKline the maker of Nicorette gum who would stand to benefit financially from further restrictions on tobacco products

• Neil L. Benowitz was Pfizer consultant which makes the drug Chantix that aids people who want to quit smoking. Benowitz has also worked for GlaxoSmithKline and Nabi Pharmaceuticals

• Dorothy Hatsukami received grant support from Nabi Pharmaceuticals to study their nicotine vaccine

• The head TPSAC, Jonathan Samet, also received grants from GlaxoSmithKline and the organization he headed was funded by two different pharmaceutical companies

The law establishing the committee specifically states that the “membership of the advisory committee to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee;” and that the committee “contain appropriate provisions to assure that the advice and recommendations of the advisory committee will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest, but will instead be the result of the advisory committee’s independent judgment.”

Previously, the FDA had rejected the dismissal of the members, but Wilson’s letter urged reconsideration. The letter notes that the FDA “said it would continue to screen members for potential conflicts of interest on topics the committee would be considering. We can envision no greater conflict. We urgently request that you revisit these disqualifying conflicts of interest.”

In a statement, Wilson concluded, “It is up to the FDA to follow the law and to remove even the appearance of a conflict of interest from a ‘science’ committee tasked to investigate the regulation of tobacco products. Right now, the committee is skewed by anti-tobacco industry interests.”

Attachments:

ALG Letter to FDA, July 13th, 2010 at www.getliberty.org/files/ALGLettertoFDA.pdf .

###

July 7th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned Barack Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who Wilson said would be “ObamaCare’s rationer-in-chief”.

“Now that Obama is struggling to find a way to add 30 million people to the government health care rolls amid a worsening budget picture, he has appointed without any vote in the Senate a man who believes that health care rationing is inevitable,” Wilson said.

Wilson cited a 2009 interview Berwick gave when he said: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

“Making matters worse, Berwick believes that health care must be a form of so-called ‘social justice’ and that the redistribution of wealth is imperative to have an ‘equitable’ health system,” Wilson noted, citing Berwick’s previous statement that, “Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”

“This is pure Marxism,” Wilson declared, “and now it is the official policy of United States to take health care away from one person and given to another as government sees fit.”

Wilson concluded, “Barack Obama is a coward who could only get Berwick into office by skipping the Senate confirmation process, robbing the people’s representatives a voice in this process. Health care rationing and redistribution is now inevitable.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

###

“Nancy Pelosi’s House has shown its true colors through the attachment of a non-essential $10 billion political slush fund to the war supplemental, which will be used to bail out bankrupt states like California and New York that refuse to make necessary cuts to balance their budgets, and whose teacher unions have run up an unsustainable tab for taxpayers.

“The final passage of the war supplemental remains in doubt in the Senate so long as these bailouts are attached. Pelosi was barely able to muster the votes necessary for passage, and even then only got what she needed through the passage of a House rule ‘deeming’ the supplemental to have passed.

“The end result is a piece of legislation that cannot pass the Senate, leaving critical resources for our fighting men and women uncertain. Defense Secretary Bob Gates that Congress’ failure could result in a failure to pay active-duty military, and General Petraeus has called the supplemental ‘essential for the conduct of this mission.’

“Yet Nancy Pelosi’s House is willing to put the mission in jeopardy by holding the supplemental hostage to a bailout of their favored political constituency. This is unacceptable to the American people, who expect troops in harm’s way to be funded without controversy. The Senate must do its part to remove any public union bailouts and pass a clean war supplemental.”

Attachments:

Troops’ Funding Held Hostage by Public Sector Union Politics, by ALG President Bill Wilson, June 28th, 2010.

ALG Urges Congress to Reject $100 Billion Handout to Public Employee Unions, June 22nd, 2010.

“Driving Right Off the Cliff,” by ALG President Bill Wilson, June 16th, 2010.

ALG Letter to Congress Against States Bailout, May 27th, 2010.

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.
###

“House members have voted to not address the real causes of the financial crisis that government was responsible for,” Wilson said. “Instead, they have created a new, radical regime to seize disfavored financial firms, bail out favored ones, monitor finances, and levy unlimited taxes on the American people, all without any vote in Congress or the opportunity to object in court,” Wilson said.

Wilson warned that “bailouts and takeovers under the so-called ‘orderly liquidation fund’ will never end, and the American people have 237 members of the House to thank.”

The final vote in House was 237 to 192.

The “orderly liquidation fund” would be financed by “risk-based” assessments levied by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on institutions totaling $50 billion or more in assets, proceeds from securities issued by the FDIC of seized firms, interest and other earnings from investments owned by the fund, and “repayments to the Corporation by covered financial companies.”

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of a similar bank tax proposal by the Obama Administration, “the ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government. The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors, but the precise incidence among those groups is uncertain.”

Wilson noted that the bill still includes a controversial Office of Financial Research that empowers the office, according to the legislation, to “collect, validate, and maintain all data necessary” to maintain financial stability “obtained from member agencies, commercial data providers, publicly available data sources, and financial entities.”

“Members voted to create the Office of Financial Research, which will have the ability to know about every transaction in the country it deems it necessary for the sake of financial stability. That’s the power to monitor everyone’s finances, if it wants,” Wilson said.

According to the bill, the OFR would “require the submission of periodic and other reports from any financial company for the purpose of assessing the extent to which a financial activity or financial market in which the financial company participates, or the financial company itself, poses a threat to the financial stability of the United States.”

The legislation also outlines that the Director of the OFR would be given subpoena power to require “the production of the data requested … upon a written finding by the Director that such data is required” to maintain financial stability.

Wilson also condemned the Dodd-Frank conference bill for what he said was “its inherent failure to address the root, government causes of the crisis. For example, the bill does not audit the Federal Reserve, whose easy money, low interest lending policies fueled the housing bubble,” citing research by Stanford economic professor John Taylor stating that “the Fed’s target for the federal-funds interest rate was well below what the Taylor rule would call for in 2002-2005. By this measure the interest rate was too low for too long, reducing borrowing costs and accelerating the housing boom.”

Wilson also cited research by former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae, Ed Pinto, demonstrating that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weakened mortgage underwriting standards and mislabeled high-risk mortgage-backed securities, defrauding investors; that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lowered down payments on mortgages; and that the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Community Reinvestment Act regulations and “affordable housing goals” reduced lending standards and forced banks to give loans to lower-income Americans that could not be repaid. “None of these root causes are addressed, either,” Wilson said.

“The Dodd-Frank bill even prohibits the liquidation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the ‘orderly liquidation’ authority, a provision that was only added in conference,” Wilson noted.

Wilson concluded, “Members who voted for the Dodd-Frank financial takeover have signed off on an unlimited bailout-takeover authority, unconstrained bank taxes, financial privacy violations, and have ignored the root, government causes of the financial crisis. They must be held accountable.”

Attachments:

“’Down a Rabbit Hole:’ The Threat Posed by the Dodd Bill to the Private Sector,” Updated June 28th, 2010, Americans for Limited Government.

“Big Brother is Watching You: The Threat Posed by the Dodd Bill to Privacy,” Updated June 28th, 2010.

Letter to the U.S. Senate, ALG President Bill Wilson, April 26th, 2010.

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.