January 10, 2014, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens issued the following statement on December’s job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

“Another half a million people dropped out of the American labor force in December.  You can ignore every other statistic and spin coming out of this Administration about the job market, this is the only data point that matters.  That is a half million more dreams shattered as Americans give up on traditional, legal paths to economic success and wealth.

 “Since Obama became president, the number of people who are considered to be in the civilian job eligible population has increased by just shy of eleven million people, but the number of people who have entered the work force has only increased by about 730 thousand people.  Quite simply our nation cannot survive when fewer than sixty six out a thousand working aged people are entering the workforce.  Of those sixty six who want a job, about five of them are unemployed.

“That is Obama’s economic legacy.  Political spin and economic shills can put whatever face they want on his economy, but any rational person can see, that this is not a sustainable model.  That is the takeaway from the December employment report, and it is ugly.”

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.

Jan. 9, 2014, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement urging Senate Republicans to block cloture on a $6.4 billion three-month extension of unemployment benefits:

“It has been six years now of long-term unemployment benefit extensions, up to 99 weeks, then up to 73 weeks. In some instances individuals need only work a couple quarters to qualify for benefits, receiving far more than they ever paid into the system. Is that fair? That makes these long-term unemployment benefits extensions not any sort of insurance, but a debt-creating welfare program.

“It shouldn’t be renewed at all, since it is only treating the symptoms of what ails the economy. Instead, the Senate should be working at undoing the policies that are really holding the economy back and preventing people from finding work.

“That said, if it is renewed, it better be paid for. And not with spending cuts that occur years from now, but with cuts that occur this fiscal year. If the Senate wants to increase spending on extended unemployment benefits by $6.4 billion in 2014, then members should find $6.4 billion of spending cuts in this fiscal year. Anything less will be a fiscally irresponsible failure that adds to the debt and will do nothing to help people get back to work.”

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.

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Jan. 7, 2014, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement urging Senate rejection of Debo Adegbile as the next Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division:

“The Senate should reject Debo Adegbile from being confirmed as the next Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.

“Adegbile is best known as the man who headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s voluntary racial assault on the integrity of a dead Philadelphia police office in a quest to get his murderer off of death row.

“The attack on the character of the dead, defenseless officer was so egregious that the Fraternal Order of Police has come out against the nomination writing:

‘We are aware of the tried and true shield behind which activists of Adegbile’s ilk are wont to hide – that everyone is entitled to a defense; but surely you would agree that a defense should not be based upon falsely disparaging and savaging the good name and reputation of a lifeless police officer.  Certainly any legal scholar can see the injustice and absence of ethics in this cynical race-baiting approach to our legal system.’

“Adegbile has also supported Equal Employment Opportunity Commission efforts to prevent the usage of criminal background checks to screen potential new hires.  As the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Office, Adegbile would be in a position to bring legal action against employers who engaged in the commonsense practice of ensuring that convicted thieves weren’t hired to oversee inventory or rapists weren’t serving as parking attendants.

“The nomination of Adegbile is an affront to the concept of moving toward a non-racial society, and he should be rejected on a bi-partisan basis by the United States Senate.”

Attachments:

Nominee Alert for Debo Adegbile, Americans for Limited Government, Jan. 7, 2014 at http://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Debo-Adegbile-NomineeAlert-January-2014.pdf

Letter of Opposition to Debo Adegbile, National Fraternal Order of Police, Jan. 6, 2014 at http://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/FOP-Opposition-to-Adegbile-Nomination.pdf

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.

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Jan. 7, 2014, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement condemning Senate action to extend unemployment benefits by $6.4 billion for 3 months, including the votes of six Republican senators, Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Bob Portman (Ohio), Dean Heller (Nev.), and Dan Coats (Ind.) who helped Democrats get to the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture:

“These six Senate Republicans that voted with Democrats to extend unemployment benefits are doing nothing to lift the economy out of its continued doldrums, and are only feeding the Obama Administration’s class warfare agenda. Instead of treating the symptoms, it is time to begin undoing the policies that are really holding the economy back and preventing people from finding work.

“It has been six years since the financial crisis and the recession that followed, and yet here we are still acting as if it is 2008. In total unemployment benefits have been extended 11 times since 2008. Meanwhile, the government has done nothing to get out of the way of the economy and let it grow.

“Instead, Washington, D.C. has piled on an excess of regulations via the EPA’s carbon endangerment finding, new industry takeovers via Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and a diversion of investment resources away from the private sector to government bonds by running such high deficits.”

 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.

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Dec. 19, 2013, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government today launched studentfirstnews.com, a website dedicated to raising awareness of alternative education options across the country. The group’s president, Nathan Mehrens, issued the following statement about the new project:

“Studentfirstnews.com is dedicated to promoting alternatives to the current failed education system, whether its private school choice, charter schools, or magnet schools within the public system. We’re going to let the American people know who is fighting for students first. We’re going to name names and pull no punches against those who are desperate to keep the current disaster in our schools in place just to service a few narrow interests, leaving our children as pawns in a high stakes game competing for tax dollars.

“We need more alternatives in our schools, not an inquisition into those fighting the good fight against a corrupt, failing system. It’s time we put students first and put an end to the nonsense that prevails in the education establishment that clings to the status quo that is failing our children.”

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.

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Dec. 19, 2013, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government Foundation released a paper today by Dr. Bradley Gitz, Arkansas’ Bates College’s William Jefferson Clinton Professor of Political Science, which found that Obamacare nullification actions pending in the South Carolina state legislature are unconstitutional and will do harm both to the people of the state of South Carolina and to those who oppose the President’s signature health care legislation.

Dr. Gitz makes this last point writing, “… at present there is no better way to raise Obamacare from its deathbed than to do what the South Carolina Senate is contemplating doing (and the South Carolina House has already done). Rather than having let Obamacare die from its many self-inflicted wounds, they will have unintentionally aided and abetted its recovery and entrenchment in our national life. The struggle against Obamacare is both important and necessary, and South Carolina appears poised to only make it more difficult.”

Americans for Limited Government Foundation president Nathan Mehrens affirmed Gitz’s findings saying, “We wanted an independent scholar to review the nullification effort in South Carolina, and Dr. Gitz’s findings should be a sobering wake up call to anyone seriously considering pursuing state nullification of the disastrous Obamacare law.”

The full report is available on the Americans for Limited Government website.

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.

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Dec. 17, 2013, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government today issued the following statement blasting a 67 to 33 Senate vote to advance the Ryan-Murray budget deal:

“When anything is deemed better than a government shutdown, everything is on the table. This bad deal that will increase spending in violation of sequester by $63 billion over the next two years, includes more than $32 billion of revenues and fees in the next decade, and will make it easier for the Senate to break spending limits in the future by lowering certain voting thresholds from 60 to 51 votes.

“The only question now is what future extortions the anything-but-a-shutdown caucus on the Republican side will accept. When you have no capacity to say no, you’ll agree to anything no matter how awful. This is a lump of coal for taxpayers.”

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.

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Dec. 16, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement urging Senate Republicans to block the Ryan-Murray budget deal:

“If Senate Republican leaders are sincere in their opposition to the Ryan-Murray budget deal then they would block cloture on it. It will breach sequester spending limits by $63 billion in its first two years, it raises fees and revenues on the American people by more than $32 billion. It destroys a 60-vote point of order for Senators to block further spending increases beyond sequester. It’s a bad deal. Taxpayers would be better off with a basic continuing resolution that changed nothing.”

Attachments:

“Budget deal is even worse after you read it,” by ALG senior editor Robert Romano, Dec. 12, 2013, at http://netrightdaily.com/2013/12/ryan-budget-fraud-even-worse-read/

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.

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