DOJ quietly ends investigation into Southern California Edison, no charges for replacing American workers with H1-Bs

Feb. 23, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement calling for a moratorium on the H1-B visa program in response to the Department of Justice concluding its investigation into Southern California Edison with no charges for replacing American workers with foreign imports:

“If Southern California Edison followed the law, an immediate moratorium should be placed on the issuance of any new H1-B visas, because its effect now is to replace American workers with lower cost imports in the most outrageous way possible. Many of Southern California Edison’s 500 laid off information technology specialists complained they had to suffer the indignity of training their replacements in order to remain eligible for a severance package. This is not about doing the jobs Americans won’t do, it is about replacing hard-working Americans. If this is the deal globalization is now offering the U.S. economy, it is time the Congress finally stand up for American workers and say no 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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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Feb. 22, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to the Department of Justice’s decision not defend the Election Assistance Commission in the case League of Women Voters v. Newby by consenting to an injunction against the Commission:

“Americans expect that only those eligible to exercise the right to vote will be participating in our 2016 national elections, yet the Obama Administration’s lackeys at Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department are doing everything in their power to allow their new illegal alien power base to vote.

“The latest outrage is today’s Justice Department decision to not only deny the independent, non-partisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission the ability to legally defend themselves in federal court against a League of Women Voters lawsuit disputing their finding that Alabama, Kansas and Georgia’s state voter identification laws complied with federal law, but to actually support the plaintiff claims to the contrary.

“As Democrats whine that Senate Republicans are being unfair by unambiguously exercising their Constitutional right to not allow Obama to flip the Supreme Court in the last eleven months of his term, Lynch dutifully seeks to put her finger on the scales to taint the 2016 election process to pick Obama’s successor.

“Congress needs to provide immediate, directed funds to the Election Advisory Commission to defend their ruling. Moving federal funding from Lynch’s Civil Rights Division, an agency that sees itself as an adjunct of the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, and into the Election Advisory Commission as part of any bill that is passed to provide relief to Puerto Rico, would be an important step in re-establishing both Congress’ Article One authority and the rule of law within Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department.”

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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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Feb. 19, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for their clear oped in the Washington Post that it is the American people who should pick the president who will replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court:

“McConnell and Grassley have it exactly right. The American people should have a right to choose the president who will pick the next Supreme Court Justice, deciding the future balance of the nation’s highest court. This is a no-brainer. Every Senator should respect the will of the people at the polls in November as determining who will replace the irreplaceable Antonin Scalia.”

Attachments:

“McConnell and Grassley: Democrats shouldn’t rob voters of chance to replace Scalia,” By Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, the Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2016 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mcconnell-and-grassley-democrats-shouldnt-rob-voters-of-chance-to-replace-scalia/2016/02/18/e5ae9bdc-d68a-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html

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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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Feb. 11, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging Republican senators to join presidential contenders Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in supporting S. 1909, the “Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2015,” legislation by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that prohibits the use of federal funds to implement the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulation, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH):

“Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz agree that President Obama’s political bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development have no business overriding local zoning authority to impose their radical vision on America.

“Under HUD’s AFFH regulation, the federal government is imposing its will by conditioning the acceptance of $3.3 billion of annual community development block grants on 1,200 local governments being forced to acquiesce to rezone cities and counties along racial and income fairness guidelines. Local zoning only determines what can be built where, not who can live there, which is subject to market conditions including demand, location and availability. This has nothing to do with real housing discrimination, which has been illegal for almost 50 years, it is about nationalizing neighborhoods, giving the federal government the power to determine where people live and what will be built where. This may be Obama’s most far-reaching regulation yet, and that is why the Senate must stop it.

“There should not be a single Republican in the Senate opposed to the Lee, Rubio, Cruz bill that stops implementation of this radical rulemaking. HUD overreach is already impacting Dubuque, Iowa and Westchester County, N.Y. and this is only the beginning. The Senate needs to hold hearings, and join the House in passing an appropriations rider that stops Obama in the short-term.  Additionally, the Lee, Rubio, Cruz legislation should be brought up for a vote and passed. Every Republican Senator still running for president agrees with Mike Lee on this issue, making this a national issue worthy of every senator’s immediate attention.

“This is not a joke, it affects property owners in every senator’s respective states. Now is the time to take a stand, before the HUD racial and income rezoning regulation becomes a permanent weapon of mass destruction in the federal government’s arsenal against cities and counties.

“The House of Representatives, led by Representative Paul Gosar has passed defunding amendments of the Obamazone regulation in the HUD appropriations bill each of the past two years, and now it is time for the Senate to get on board and force an end to this noxious federal government overreach at once.”

Attachments:

Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2015 cosponsors at https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1909/cosponsors :

Sen. Vitter, David [R-LA]
Sen. Cotton, Tom [R-AR]
Sen. Enzi, Michael B. [R-WY]
Sen. Sessions, Jeff [R-AL]
Sen. Rubio, Marco [R-FL]
Sen. Daines, Steve [R-MT]
Sen. Cruz, Ted [R-TX]

Time for Congress to defund Obama’s racial zoning quotas, By Robert Romano, Dec. 3, 2015 at http://netrightdaily.com/2015/12/time-for-congress-to-defund-obamas-racial-zoning-quotas/

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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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Feb. 10, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—8 conservative organizations sent a letter to Republican lawmakers today, encouraging Congress to take a global approach to reigning in the agricultural subsidies that are distorting global markets and harming U.S. consumers.

The letter, which was spearheaded by Americans for Limited Government, singled out the sugar market and noted that there are two competing conservative ideas of how to achieve reforms.

“One side wants to immediately and unilaterally end the current [U.S. sugar] program…even if it means increasing dependence on unreliable foreign food supplies,” read the letter. “The other side wants to end the current sugar program, as well, but not without simultaneously ending the market-distorting foreign government subsidies that unfairly place American farmers at a competitive disadvantage.”

The signers — which include American Legislative Exchange Council, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, 60 Plus, Less Government, Citizen Outreach, Institute for Liberty, and Institute for Policy Innovation, among others — explained that a strategic “zero-for-zero” policy where all countries simultaneously end subsidization is the preferred policy path. And they noted that such an approach is a viable option given the World Trade Organization’s focus on agricultural subsidies during trade talks in Nairobi, Kenya, this December.

“As such, we the undersigned free-market conservatives urge Members to reject calls for immediate ‘unilateral disarmament’ as it relates to the U.S. sugar program and instead embrace the more measured and reasoned strategic approach of a negotiated ‘zero-for-zero’ reform proposal among global competitors,” the letter concluded.

Attachments:

Open Letter to Republican Members of Congress on Reforming the U.S. Sugar Program, Feb. 10, 2016, Americans for Limited Government, Hispanic Leadership Fund, Institute for Policy Innovation, 60 Plus Association, Institute for Liberty, Citizen Outreach, Less Government, and American Legislative Exchange Council at https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Zero-for-Zero-Letter-8-Conservative-Groups-2-10-16.pdf

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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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Feb. 5, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to the latest jobs numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

“Since 2007, the population of 16 to 64 year olds has increased by about 10 million to 205 million. Yet, the number of people with jobs that age has remained unchanged at 140.4 million. As a result the employment-population for 16 to 64 year olds has dropped, from 71.8 percent to 68.5 percent, the labor force participation rate from 75.3 percent to 72.4 percent — accounting for 6 million people in the prime working years of their lives who simply gave up looking for work. If they were included in today’s unemployment report, the unemployment rate would be 8.9 percent and not the reported 4.9 percent.

“The economy never recovered from the Great Recession, and if we continue on this path of ignoring the real problem, it never will.”

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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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Feb. 4, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today praised the 10 early cosponsors of the Consolidated Appropriations Amendments of 2016 offered by U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.):

“The surest, most effective way to stop Obama’s continued usurpation of congressional authority is to defund those overreaching regulations and executive actions using Congress’ power of the purse. Americans for Limited Government thanks Representatives Paul Gosar, Jeff Duncan, Mark Meadows, Glenn Grothman, Barry Loudermilk, Pete Sessions, Matt Salmon, Marlin Stutzman, Scott DesJarlais and Louie Gohmert for being early co-sponsors of Representative Ken Buck’s Article One bill which defunds some of President Obama’s most onerous executive overreaches.

“The Article One supplemental includes many provisions that have already been vetted by House appropriations committees and included in underlying appropriations bills, as well as those that have passed the House of Representatives on the floor. These riders were unfortunately left on the table during the omnibus negotiations, but 2016 provides a fresh opportunity to rein in the last 11 months of the Obama administration — before he does any more damage to the nation and the constitutional separation of powers which are fundamental to our freedoms.

“In addition, the bill would prevent President Obama from enacting any ‘midnight regulations’ as his Administration thankfully winds to an end.

“Rhetoric about Congress reasserting its Constitutional prerogatives has become a standard talking point for many in the House Conference, Representative Ken Buck and these ten early co-sponsors are demonstrating that tough talk is not enough, Congress must act. We strongly urge other Members to join the growing momentum in favor of real assertion of Article One authority by cosponsoring the Consolidated Appropriation Amendments of 2016.”

Attachments:

“Stand up for the Constitution and roll back executive power,” By U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Washington Examiner, Feb. 1, 2016 at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/stand-up-for-the-constitution-and-roll-back-executive-power/article/2581734

Consolidated Appropriations Amendments of 2016 cosponsors:

Rep. Gosar, Paul A. [R-AZ-4]
Rep. Duncan, Jeff [R-SC-3]
Rep. Meadows, Mark [R-NC-11]
Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
Rep. Loudermilk, Barry [R-GA-11]
Rep. Sessions, Pete [R-TX-32]
Rep. Salmon, Matt [R-AZ-5]
Rep. Stutzman, Marlin A. [R-IN-3]
Rep. DesJarlais, Scott [R-TN-4]
Rep. Gohmert, Louie [R-TX-1]

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 including ALG President Rick Manning.

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