March 28, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising President Donald Trump’s energy independence executive order:

“Although it does not call for rolling back the 2009 EPA carbon endangerment finding or pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, the Trump executive order wisely calls for agency reviews of Obama-issued regulations restricting the use of coal electricity and other unnecessary impediments to utilizing the nation’s abundant energy resources. Americans for Limited Government is confident that such a review will provide ample basis for revising and rescinding these regulations ensuring that utility prices can come down for consumers.

“We urge the Trump administration to work with Congress in defunding as many of these regulations as possible in the upcoming continuing resolution and debt ceiling bills. The election of a new president does not absolve Congress of its Article I responsibilities to defund harmful regulations. Members need to provide President Trump with every tool and direction related to any regulations that need to be rescinded or reworked.

“It is our fervent hope that President Trump will in the future review the carbon endangerment finding and pull the U.S. out of Obama’s bad Paris climate deal.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 24, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising the House for delaying the health care replacement proposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan:

“Americans for Limited Government praises the House for standing on principle and defeating the deeply flawed Ryancare proposal. We urge Congressional leaders to sit down with conservatives to craft a new free market alternative that lowers costs and does have the votes to pass. At a minimum, proposed legislation must repeal Obamacare, respect the states, protect patients who do not want to be locked into federally mandated insurance plans, allow consumers to go across state lines to buy plans and eliminate any and all government-mandated penalties for not holding insurance.

“The truth is Obamacare is still collapsing, and the only thing that has changed is that one alternative to it has been rejected. That is no reason for Congress to stop working on this issue. We urge members to come up with a fresh approach that can be supported by a majority of members of Congress.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 23, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging House Speaker Paul Ryan to take a more expansive view of what can be done to repeal and replace Obamacare under budget reconciliation:

“Sen. Mike Lee did an unusual thing in Washington, D.C. He checked the reconciliation assumptions around the health care debate by going directly to the Senate parliamentarian. Stunningly, Sen. Lee discovered the fundamental premise of the Ryancare legislation that insurance regulation could not be overturned is false. This revelation leads to only one legislative conclusion. Ryancare falls far short of what can be done even under a restrictive view of reconciliation, and should be sent back to the drawing board.

“Many Americans have been questioning how Ryan could not have a plan in place to repeal and replace Obamacare that was fully vetted. The only conclusion is that Ryancare is the result of false assumptions and not doing your homework. The House of Representatives should have never attempted to construct legislation based upon mere assumptions of what Senate rules might allow, and instead, should craft a health care law that meets the needs the needs of the free market, respects states and makes health care accessible and affordable to all Americans.”

Attachments:

“Mike Lee: Senate parliamentarian told me it’s possible to push harder on repealing Obamacare regulations,” By Philip Klein, March 22, 2017 at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2618154

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 22, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting the 30 percent “continuous coverage” penalty in the health care replacement bill that, according to Kaiser Health News, “increases premiums for people who buy insurance if they have gone 63 consecutive days without a policy during the past 12 months. Their premiums would rise by 30 percent and that surcharge would last for a year”:

“Republicans promised to end the tyranny of the individual mandate but instead, House Speaker Paul Ryan has made it worse, by punishing those who lose their coverage because they lost their job or discontinued it because premiums got too high. This massive increase has a perverse effect of making it harder to get health insurance for those who drop for whatever reason, by hiking premiums of those who attempt to reenter the insurance market by 30 percent as a matter of law.

“This is unbelievably bad. And unlike the individual mandate, there isn’t even a hardship exemption.

“The House needs to stop what they are doing this instant and start over. The 30 percent continuous coverage penalty alone should be reason enough to go back to the drawing board with this bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan does not incentivize purchasing insurance by making it cheaper through market reforms, it punishes those without insurance by making it even more expensive when they want to go buy it.”

Attachments:

“GOP Scraps Individual Mandate But Sets Up New Penalty For Those Skipping Coverage,” By Anna Gorman and Jordan Rau, March 21, 2017 at http://khn.org/news/gop-scraps-individual-mandate-but-sets-up-new-penalty-for-those-skipping-coverage/

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 22, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging 27 House Republicans to hold firm who are said to be opposed or strongly leaning opposed to the current Obamacare replacement now under consideration:

“It is now clear that the current health care replacement is not ready for primetime, and it is better to get the Obamacare repeal done right rather than done quick. We urge the members of the House who have expressed reservations about this legislation to hold firm. That will force a real negotiation that will improve the proposal and pass a repeal bill that respects the states and voters who don’t want to be forced into costly federal government mandated health plans any more. There is nothing wrong with improving this legislation, and no rush, frankly to get this done on Thursday. The House should be dedicated to a proposal that unites the Republican conference, not rushing a bill that falls far short of the campaign promises that brought them into the majority.

“The House GOP should hold Paul Ryan to his 2012 promise that ‘we can get 85 percent of this, for sure, repealed in reconciliation’ and ensure every bit of Obamacare that can be repealed via reconciliation is.”

Attachments:

“Repeal Obamacare via reconciliation, Speaker Ryan,” By Robert Romano Oct. 26, 2015 at http://netrightdaily.com/2015/10/repeal-obamacare-via-reconciliation-speaker-ryan/

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 21, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows’ (R-N.C.) support of a full repeal of Obamacare and opposing the now-proposed replacement on the table:

“House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows is a man of unusual character and integrity in Washington, D.C.  Most would bend to the whim of a newly elected President, and compromise core principles to give him an early win. But Mark Meadows understands that restoring our health care system to a free market orientation is too important to play politics over.

“Representative Meadows gets it right when he says that any new health care law must lower costs for the average consumer and rid itself of Obamacare mandates. The Ryancare legislation fails both these key principles.

“The people of the 11th District of North Carolina owe their Congressman a great debt of gratitude for standing firm, even as the President who he campaigned for so vigorously is pushing him to support the disastrous Ryancare legislation.

“Meadows is exhibiting the kind of courage that Americans expect but so rarely receive from their elective representatives.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 20, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting unnamed sources in a Politico story for suggesting that the health care legislation under consideration cannot be changed in any meaningful way despite ongoing negotiations between Congressional conservatives and the White House:

“Unnamed sources in a Politico story state that ongoing White House negotiations with conservative legislators on the health care bill are coming to a close with only a few minor concessions. The reporter concludes that the White House realizes that the bill cannot pass the Senate if conservative concerns are met.  Ironically, at this juncture, the Ryan bill does not have the support of at least four GOP Senators and possibly more, due to concerns that it fails to meet the basic promise of repealing Obamacare.  This means that in the unlikely event that the House were to gather the votes to pass Speaker Ryan’s slightly modified bill, it would still fail in the Senate without Democrat votes.

“Given the current impasse, Americans for Limited Government urges the House to scrap the current proposal and to keep their word and pass a repeal bill that respects the states and voters who elected a GOP majority, ensuring that the people aren’t still forced into costly federal government mandated health plans. Then, the Senate will be free to pass that, or modify it.

“The current iteration of Ryancare fails to meet this basic criteria and should be voted down if brought up for a vote. For those who confuse insurance coverage with health care, it needs to be made clear that health care is a relationship between a patient and doctor, not one between a patient and an insurer.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 16, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement on the discretionary budget proposed by the Trump administration:

“Americans for Limited Government praises the discretionary budget proposed by the Trump administration, which makes tough choices in determining the nation’s priorities. President Trump ran on increasing defense spending, and the budget does so, by increasing it by $54 billion, and is now accompanied by $54 billion of responsible, offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

“However, Congress’ job is to cut the size and scope of the government. Since 2008, the overall budget has increased from $2.9 trillion to $3.8 trillion, all the while so-called discretionary spending was actually held even at $1.1 trillion. Meaning, over the course of the past 8 years, there was an average annual increase of over $100 billion in outlays thanks to increases in so-called mandatory spending even as interest rates were dropping, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

“This points to the true budget challenge facing our nation with the debt now near $20 trillion. We either come to grips with the so-called mandatory spending, or that spending will eat away our capacity to have a strong national defense or much of anything else.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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March 16, 2017, Fairfax Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting a ruling from U.S. district court judge Derrick Watson of the District of Hawaii that temporary travel restrictions issued against any Muslim-majority countries somehow violate the First Amendment if issued by President Donald Trump:

“This is anarchy from the bench. No man is above or below the law. Judge Derrick Watson has commandeered executive powers that were duly conferred by Congress on the president decades ago on immigration — based on his own political perceptions of campaign statements made by the Trump campaign in 2016. We are left to assume that without  such an examination, not of the executive order itself, but of campaign speeches, that this same exact executive order would be deemed constitutional if issued by any other president.

“If it would be constitutional if issued by former President Obama, then it must then be constitutional under President Trump. The rule of law means equal application of the law and by the judge’s own words, that is not what we have here.

“If courts cannot apply and interpret laws, orders and regulations as written, then they should not exist. That is Congress’ purview, to create courts, or eliminate them if they do not serve their intended purpose and then just sell the building and at least help solve the debt crisis. Additionally, Congress can limit the jurisdiction of federal courts not to examine travel restrictions. It can also cut the pay of any federal employees working at the courts to $1 or just eliminate them.

“It is now clear that federal courts do not intend to hold the acts of President Trump to the same standards as other presidents past or future, instead imposing a separate body of law simply for his administration. In essence, by denying the powers of the president to Trump, the courts are attempting to render their verdict on the outcome of the 2016 election, an intolerable abuse by the judicial branch that Congress must now rein in.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.

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