April 24, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement praising Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal for urging the Louisiana legislature to block Medicaid expansion under the new federal health care law in a recent oped, “Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is bad for Louisiana”:

“If the Louisiana legislature listens to Governor Jindal, Louisiana taxpayers will save $337 million from 2014 through 2019, and federal taxpayers another $7.3 billion over the same period, according to a Kaiser estimate. They will be helping to defend taxpayers across the country from an unsustainable expansion of the entitlement state.

“While some governors have caved on this issue, Bobby Jindal has stood on principle, and for that, he deserves the thanks of every taxpayer in the nation. Hopefully the legislature will listen to him, but should members vote to expand Medicaid, we urge Governor Jindal to veto it.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Robert Romano at (703) 383-0880 ext. 106 or at robert@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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April 23, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government General Counsel Nathan Mehrens issued the following statement on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempt to throw sand in the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline through issuing a comment to the State Department’s draft review of the project that complained that the report included “insufficient information” on environmental issues:

“The Senate has overwhelmingly made it clear that they want the Keystone XL pipeline built and they want it built now.  The EPA’s attempt to further delay this project on specious grounds is evidence of just how far this rogue Agency will go, and how little they care about what Congress thinks.  It is time for the Senate to send a clear message to the EPA that they need to get out of the way.

“It is time for the Senate to reject the nomination of Gina McCarthy to be the EPA Administrator.

“This would send a powerful message to the EPA to rein in their radical policies, but would also be doing what needs to be done by rejecting McCarthy who appears to be failing up through the ranks of the EPA.

“Absent the EPA’s meddling in the Keystone XL issue, there have been multiple other serious and legitimate reasons to reject McCarthy’s nomination.

“It was McCarthy who was tasked with maintaining the nation’s air radiation monitoring systems. After, the Japanese nuclear power plant failure, it was discovered that McCarthy had failed to do her job as the system suffered near catastrophic breakdowns directly due to her apparent incompetence.

“Anyone else would have been fired in the wake of this failure, but Obama is attempting to promote McCarthy to lead the entire EPA.

“McCarthy also is actively encouraging American automobile manufacturers to use an air conditioning refrigerant that has proven to be dangerous under the guise of helping combat global warming.

“Gina McCarthy is a radical, extremist intent on expanding the power of the EPA.  This latest incursion into the Keystone XL pipeline debate is further evidence of how far the EPA’s tentacles extend, and the Senate needs to send the Obama Administration a direct and powerful message by rejecting Gina McCarthy’s nomination to be the EPA Administrator.

“Failure to reject McCarthy may effectively abdicate the last opportunity for Congress to rein in this power grabbing Agency that is sucking the life out of the U.S. economy.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG General Counsel Nathan Mehrens.

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April 11, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the Obama budget’s economic expectations:

“The economic assumptions in the 2014 Obama budget are simply devastating. If true, nominal economic growth will never again reach its postwar historical 6.5 percent average rate of increase. Instead, it will only grow an average 4.8 percent a year this decade. This will have negative implications on the nation’s financial picture for a generation.

“The Obama economic team has already been proven wrong about everything. In 2009, it overestimated GDP by a whopping $1.046 trillion in its first term. It overstated revenues by $1.1 trillion. But for sequestration and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing and low interest rate bailouts, the debt would be much larger today.

“Yet, despite those bailouts, in 2013, the national debt will grow by 7.5 percent — above its 7 percent historical growth rate. If sequestration over the coming decade is cancelled and/or if inflation strikes, forcing interest rates to spike, and if the low growth assumptions going forward prove correct, by 2042, debt to GDP could rise to be as high as 189 percent, if not higher.

“Until the economy starts growing faster than the debt, we are skidding down a slippery slope to certain insolvency.”

Attachments:

“Obama’s amateur budget,” By Robert Romano, Senior Editor, Americans for Limited Government, April 11, 2013 at http://netrightdaily.com/2013/04/obamas-amateur-budget/

“What will the debt be in 2042?” By Robert Romano, Senior Editor, Americans for Limited Government, March 15, 2013 at http://netrightdaily.com/2013/03/what-will-the-debt-be-in-2042/

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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April 5, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the latest job numbers:

“663,000 Americans dropped out of the workforce last month.  206,000 fewer Americans were employed.  290,000 more Americans were unemployed.

“Yet, the headline will be that the unemployment rate dropped in March to 7.6 percent.

“Never has the lie of the improving Obama economy ever been more starkly revealed than in today’s March unemployment report, where the consequences of the destruction of the American workforce by policies that promote government dependence over work are hidden behind a statistical drop in the percentage of workers who are unemployed.

“At this rate, Obama may just make history by achieving a 0 percent unemployment rate because nobody’s in the workforce. You might just call that full unemployment. ”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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April 4, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement blasting a push by the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve to once again loosen mortgage lending standards to increase the pool of eligible homebuyers:

“To suggest that lowering credit standards is the solution to the financial crisis is to ignore the past 20 years of history. The fact is, borrowers can already get loans from Fannie and Freddie for as little as 3 percent down, and from the Federal Housing Administration for as low as 3.5 percent down. Prices have not been this low since 2003. And interest rates have never been this low.

“The problem in the housing market is not a lack of lending capacity, which is virtually limitless as banks are sitting on $1.6 trillion of excess reserves. It’s that even with it as easy as it is to get a loan, demand is still very low in the weak economy, and therefore it’s not easy enough for the central planners, so the push becomes to lower credit standards.

“The same thing happened after the 1991 recession when credit slowed down. By 1992, Congress had agreed to institute and expand the GSE ‘affordable’ housing goals, which required an increasing percent of government-backed mortgages to be of lower quality, which contributed substantially to the housing bubble. Since the economy is addicted to credit expansion, in order to grow, the incentive is for lending standards to become progressively weaker over time. By 2007, when the bubble popped, those goals had expanded from 30 percent of Fannie and Freddie’s portfolios to 55 percent.

“This is what happens every time the government wants to facilitate credit expansion to bolster asset prices. After the stock of available borrowers based on current credit standards is exhausted, the only recourse left to policy makers is to weaken credit standards. When this leads to asset bubbles and credit collapses, as it already has, then the American people are told that the banks that made the loans must be made whole through bailouts whether from Congress or the Federal Reserve. We’ve seen this movie before. It is a fraud and it will only lead to a repeat of the 2008 meltdown.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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April 2, 2013—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today called on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade to take up legislation that would begin the formal process of removing the U.S. from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Wilson’s call came after the IMF produced a study calling for the U.S. to implement a $500 billion a year carbon tax on consumers to offset what it calls “underpriced” oil, coal, and other energy products.

This “mispricing” is supposedly leading to “excessive energy consumption,” which is “accelerating the depletion of natural resources” and contributing to climate change.

“The IMF is lobbying on behalf of environmentalist radicals, arguing that not implementing a half-trillion dollar a year carbon tax is a de facto energy subsidy,” Wilson wrote in a letter to members of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade.

The IMF study, published on Jan. 28, states, “Consumer subsidies include two components: a pre-tax subsidy (if the price paid by firms and households is below supply and distribution costs) and a tax subsidy (if taxes are below their efficient level)… The efficient taxation of energy further requires corrective taxes to capture negative environmental and other externalities due to energy use (such as global warming and local pollution).”

Wilson also criticized the IMF for bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland with $86.6 billion of bailouts, which the U.S. has contributed about $17 billion to, and the IMF’s role in levying a €5.8 billion savings deposit tax in Cyprus.

Wilson said the U.S. “should have nothing more to do with this radical outfit,” and called on Congress to reject the Obama Administration’s budget request to double the nation’s quota subscription in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to $130 billion from its current $65 billion level, converting part of the nation’s current $100 billion line of credit to the IMF.

If the Obama request was fulfilled, it would keep the nation’s total stake in the IMF at $165 billion.

“Not only should that request be rejected, but Congress ought to withdraw our quota subscription altogether, along with the $100 billion line of credit,” Wilson added in his letter to the House subcommittee, concluding, “Taxpayers should not be propping up bankrupt socialist states and the banks that fund them, let alone financing the lobbying efforts of radical environmentalists.”

Attachments:

ALG Letter to House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, April 1, 2013 at http://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMFLetter-4-1-13.pdf

“Energy Subsidy Reform: Lessons and Implications,” International Monetary Fund, Jan. 28, 2013 at http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/012813.pdf

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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March 19, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement in support of a House Republican Study Committee proposal to balance the budget in 4 years:

“The Republican Study Committee’s Back to Basics Budget rolls back the massive growth of government since Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress in 2007 and puts us on a sustainable path for the future.

“America faces an unprecedented debt crisis that threatens our very future as a sovereign nation with our national debt now larger than our entire economy, with the gap growing increasingly wider.  In the past three years, the debt has grown by an average rate of 10 percent each year while our economy has only grown nominally by 3.8 percent.  This debt spiral is not sustainable, and immediate, aggressive action is necessary by Congress to bring it under control.

“The Back to Basics Budget goes a long way toward reversing the financial emergency induced increase in the size of government since 2007, which has been funded by an almost $8 trillion increase in the national debt.   Continuing this debt cycle under any guise is simply unacceptable.

“It is inevitable that interest payments on this massive debt will rise, and an increasing percentage of our tax revenue will be spent on paying off bankers and foreign governments making it all the more difficult in the future to bring the budget under control.

“Rather than consign future generations to being debt slaves to foreign powers around the world and the banks that fund them, every member of Congress who cares about our children’s economic future should not just support, but vocally argue in favor of the Back to Basics Budget which gets to balance in four years.

“As a contrast, the Senate Democrat Budget Committee released a budget last week that never gets to balance, increases the national debt by trillions and calls for another 60 percent growth in government.

“The alternatives are clear, and the Back to Basics Budget provides the most direct pathway to breaking the chains of debt that threaten our nation’s very economic future.

“Americans for Limited Government urges a yes vote on the Back to Basics Budget.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

 

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March 13, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement in opposition to Obama’s likely nominee to head the Labor Department Thomas Perez:

“President Obama’s likely nominee for Labor Secretary Thomas Perez’s attempted cover up of the involvement of Obama political appointees in the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case makes him unfit to serve in any further capacity in this or any other Administration.

“Perez knowingly lied to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission when he insisted under questioning that political appointees were not involved in overturning the decision to not to prosecute two New Black Panther Party leaders who were caught on camera threatening voters at a Philadelphia polling place.

“Even U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton found in Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice that documents in the case, ‘appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’ testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.’

“It is shocking that Obama would consider appointing someone who should be prosecuted for perjury rather than promoted to Labor Secretary.

“Sadly, that Perez is even being considered to be the nominee reveals a great deal about Obama’s arrogance and utter disregard for the  constitutional advice and consent process that he would even consider, let alone offer up, someone as unfit as Perez .

“If it is left to the Senate, they must do their constitutional duty and reject Perez.  At a time when our nation is in a jobs crisis, the public has a right to demand better than a political hack who has proven that he is willing to do or say anything regardless of truth.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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March 11, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement praising Florida Senate and House committees that have killed Governor Rick Scott’s proposal to expand Medicaid:

“Both these Senate and House committees have saved federal taxpayers some $20 billion from 2014 to 2019, and Florida taxpayers another $1 billion by 2022 by not following Governor Scott’s ill-advised proposal to expand Medicaid by 1 million people. This should set the stage for other state legislatures, like Arizona, Michigan, and Ohio, to break ranks with their governors by refusing to implement Obamacare.

“Overall, if every state were to expand Medicaid, it would increase spending by more than $117 billion a year in additional costs just for starters. In this case, not implementing Obamacare is the best medicine for what ails the U.S. economy: too much debt.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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Labor Participation has not been this bad since 1981

March 8, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement in response to the latest job numbers:

“Private employers continue to move forward in creating jobs in spite of regulatory headwinds and higher taxes.  Incredibly, while the number of jobs created by the private economy continues to grow, the number of people who are abandoning the workplace also continues to accelerate.  In February alone, almost 300,000 more workers left the workforce and the percentage of workers in the labor force dropped to its lowest level since 1981 at 63.5 percent.

“It is stunning that in spite of running a consistent trillion dollar plus deficit, with the Federal Reserve propping up the housing sector to the tune of $40 billion a month, that we are still seeing a mass exodus from the workforce by Americans in Obama’s economy.  In fact, almost twice as many Americans just said no to the Obama economy than got jobs in February.  This stark rejection of hope for a better future by so many, stands as a bright red warning sign about our economy’s long-term future.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Adam Bitely at (703) 383-0880 ext. 126 or at media@algnews.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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