Sept. 12, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement urging the U.S. Senate to reject Dawn Liberi to be U.S. Ambassador to Burundi in a vote tomorrow, citing Inspector General reports of her record as mission director for USAID in Iraq from 2005 to 2006:

“Eight separate inspector general reports that cover the short time period that Liberi was running the USAID/Iraq Mission all cover problems with keeping track of property or making sure that contractors were doing their job. One is particularly embarrassing — $90 million for the development of local Iraqi governments was not properly monitored even after the inspector general had already complained about the way USAID was managing the contract.

“These reports on Liberi’s tenure in Iraq are rife with waste and mismanagement, and raise the legitimate question of her competency. She could not have done a worse job than if she were attempting to actively sabotage these programs. The Senate must vet this nominee, not rubberstamp her confirmation.”

Here are selections from each IG report:

“USAID/Iraq property valued at $23.5 million in its nonexpendable property database was not managed in accordance with USAID guidance…. We could not verify the existence of a projected $2.9 million in nonexpendable property included in the database. Furthermore, Mission vehicles valued at $2.3 million were not properly safeguarded.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy06rpts/e-267-06-002-p.pdf

“We could not determine if USAID/Iraq’s local governance activities achieved their intended outputs because USAID/Iraq did not require Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International to submit all reporting and monitoring documents specified in the contract.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy06rpts/e-267-06-003-p.pdf

“ADF’s [a USAID/Iraq contractor] Performance Monitoring Plan was neither complete nor achievable.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy07rpts/e-267-07-001-p.pdf

“USAID/Iraq failed to enforce contract requirements…. The audit also found that USAID/Iraq failed to perform the required contractor performance evaluations….The current audit found that the Mission’s actions taken in response to the prior audit to enforce the contract requirements and to complete the contractor performance evaluation were ineffective.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy07rpts/e-267-07-007-p.pdf

“It was not possible to determine if intended outputs were achieved for the remaining 22 activities [of 61 total activities] due to a lack of adequate supporting documentation…. During the audit, we also determined that OFDA [USAID Office of Foreign Disaster] did not properly designate cognizant technical officers [who oversee grants and cooperative agreements].”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy07rpts/e-267-07-006-p.pdf

“The lack of sufficient documentation was due to USAID/Iraq’s and Bechtel’s management oversight.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy07rpts/e-267-07-004-p.pdf

“the audit found that USAID/Iraq’s education activities achieved 7 out of 16 selected intended outputs…. It could not be determined if two of the selected outputs were achieved due to a lack of sufficient documentation….The remaining seven selected intended outputs were not achieved.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy07rpts/e-267-07-003-p.pdf

“USAID/Iraq did not properly administer its contract with Development Alternatives, Inc.”

http://transition.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy07rpts/e-267-07-002-p.pdf

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

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Sept. 12, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the German constitutional court’s decision to uphold the €500 billion European Stability Mechanism:

 “The ESM as drafted allows the board of governors to arbitrarily increase the amount of money each country must pledge for bailouts without any legislative approval. This was blatantly unconstitutional, and instead the court pulled a John Roberts and twisted the law to avoid their appointed responsibility, pretending this was not the case. This will forever be known as the Pontius Pilate decision; they can wash their hands forever, but they can never remove the stain.”

 Attachments: “Another Black September?” By ALG President Bill Wilson, Aug. 31, at http://netrightdaily.com/2012/08/another-black-september/

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

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Obama administration welfare-to-work waiver threatens future success.

Sept. 11, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on President Obama’s gutting of the welfare work requirements under the federal welfare law:

“Obama’s unilateral gutting of the welfare work requirements under the federal welfare law renews his attempt to create an entitlement society where individuals are dependent upon the largesse of government rather than on their own initiative to live and thrive.

“In looking closely at the specific changes that Congress will attempt to overturn in the weeks ahead, one ramification is that Obama’s changes would leave the door open for states to not only not require work, but could even go so far as to make college students eligible for government aid.

“This potential expansion of government dependency of students when they are supposed to be experiencing the growth that the independence of college provides is a disaster waiting to happen.

“Our young people are our next great hope in this nation.  To put them into the cocoon of government entitlement when they should be struggling through the growing pains of independence is disastrous for the individual students and our nation as a whole.  The struggle of college independence, making budgets, making mistakes and learning from them forges character and the confidence that a person can overcome adversity.

“This is the fundamental quality that defines success, and Obama’s changes open the doors for transforming our college students from strivers to dependents.  This is just one reason why Congress must overturn Obama’s attempt to waive the welfare work requirement under the law.”

ALG Note:

Morna Murray, Special Counsel to Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), suggests in the Huffington Post that states may use this waiver to expand what qualifies as a “work activity” to include post-secondary education. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morna-murray/welfare-work-the-facts_b_1855286.html)  HHS’s Guidance states as much where it says the Administration would consider “[p]rojects that improve collaboration with the workforce and/or post-secondary education systems to test multi-year career pathways models for TANF recipients that combine learning and work.” (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/policy/im-ofa/2012/im201203/im201203.html) This would be accomplished by—instead of waiving the mandatory work requirement section of the law (42 U.S.C. sec. 607), which is not allowed under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1115—waiving a state’s requirement to submit a written plan, under 42 U.S.C. sec 602, for how it will comply with the work requirement section.  This tenuous legal justification is merely a facade that masks the Departments attempt to disregard the law.

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

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Sept. 11, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today responded to the threatened credit downgrade by Moody’s should the U.S. not stabilize and then reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term:

“AA will be Obama’s scarlet letter. Moody’s has set out very real metrics for lawmakers and Obama to avoid another credit downgrade. The debt-to-GDP ratio must be stabilized and then reduced over the medium term as a result of this year’s budget negotiations.

“Right now, although the budget deficit will be about $1.2 trillion this year, the nation’s full borrowing obligations will be more like $1.45 trillion once certain off-balance sheet items are taken into account. However, the economy is only growing at an annualized pace of about $570 billion.

“Therefore, just to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio this year alone would require a full $890 billion of deficit reduction. S&P has already taken the drastic measure of eliminating the triple-A status of U.S. treasuries. Since Obama and Congress will come nowhere near to cutting $890 billion from the budget or raising that much revenue, they will undoubtedly fail to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio, so everyone should begin pricing in the downgrade. It’s an inevitable national shame.”

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

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Sept. 10, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the teachers union strike in Chicago:

“The Chicago Teachers Union is striking to protect the jobs of bad teachers.  This is all you need to know about the priorities of the teachers unions.  They are the problem in our education system and if we want our nation’s children to be competitive in the international economy, we have a responsibility to wrest control of the public schools from the AFL-CIO affiliated American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and their local cohorts.

“Parents need to be given real choices to opt their children out of the schools, and good teachers should be allowed to deny the mandatory collection of their dues money by local and state government.  We know when parents have choices, everyone benefits because public schools must compete to survive, and when teachers have the choice of whether to pay union dues, and they are empowered to say no to their union bosses.

“In the end, it is about the children and our nation’s future.  We can no longer sit idly by and allow teachers unions to put the security of terrible teachers ahead of the education of children.

“It is truly sad for the 350,000 children in Chicago who are being denied an education while the local teachers union throws a temper tantrum.  Hopefully, a national outcry will come from this example of the union’s bad priorities, and it puts one more nail in the teachers union coffins, so our nation can get back to teaching kids how to read, write and do arithmetic free of union coercion.”

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

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Sept. 7, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following analysis of today’s unemployment report:

“Since January 2009, the labor force participation rate has dropped from 65.7 percent to 63.5 percent, the lowest it has been in a generation. As a result, some 5.37 million people have given up looking for work since Obama took office or never even entered the labor force, with 368,000 leaving the workforce last month alone. That explains the drop in the unemployment rate. People are not finding work; they’re giving up. Hardly a measure of prosperity. This is a depression, and Obama has done nothing to make it better.

“If those 5.37 million people had been included in today’s unemployment report, the unemployed rate would be reported at 11.2 percent and the underemployed rate would be 17.5 percent. All together 28 million people cannot find full-time work in the Obama economy or have given up.

“Since January 2009, the working-age population has grown by 8.8 million, but the civilian labor force has only grown by 409,000. At full employment, the labor force should have grown by 5.8 million, but it has not. This in part represents younger Americans who are simply not entering the workforce — a lost generation—with more than half of recent college graduates unable to find work. If this trend continues, we are going to look like Spain or Greece in a matter of a few short years, where the youth cannot find work because there are no jobs in the economy.

“This sorry state of affairs will not be addressed by Obama’s tepid, fraudulent ‘green’ energy jobs program, as if millions of Americans are going to work on building windmills and harvesting algae.

“We need real jobs here in America, and we need them now, and that can only happen if we aggressively work to make the nation more competitive globally. That means eliminating the corporate income tax all together, which is currently the highest in the developed world, bringing an end to environmental and energy restrictions that make it impossible to access natural resources or to use land in a productive manner, repealing much of the labor laws that handcuff employers and restoring sound money. None of that will happen with Obama.”

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

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Sept. 7, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today responded to the August unemployment report:

“86,000 fewer Americans have a job today than when Obama took office in January 2009.  That is the indisputable fact that this Administration cannot deny in any media spin.  In August alone, another 580,000 people left the workforce entirely.  That’s more than half a million people giving up hope of finding the American dream in Obama’s economy last month alone.

“These are not just bad numbers; they are disastrous for our nation.  While the top-line drop of the unemployment rate may seem like a positive.  It is entirely driven by people leaving the workforce.  In August alone, 119,000 fewer Americans have a job.

“Going forward with the failed Obama economic plan is a recipe for economic suicide, and August’s jobs report, no matter the spin or manipulation, is just another proof point that this President’s policies have damaged our nation’s economy more than anyone since Jimmy Carter.”

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

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Physician-owned hospital ban costs nearly 30,000 health care jobs

Sept. 5, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson called on the Obama Administration to issue a waiver to the portion of the Obamacare legislation that prohibits the development of new physician-owned hospitals.

Americans for Limited Government’s Obamacare Reg Watcher reports that up to 84 physician-owned hospitals that were at some stage of development have had to be abandoned due to the law.  As a result, nearly 30,000 jobs that would have existed have been wiped from the books, and patients are suffering due to losing the increased access to health care that these hospitals would have provided.

“The wreckage of Obamacare is beginning to work its way throughout the U.S. economy, and this exclusive report in Obamacare Reg Watcher reveals that up to 30,000 jobs have been cancelled directly due to the laws’ ban on the development of physician-owned hospitals.

“This Administration should issue an immediate waiver to those groups that want to develop physician-owned hospitals to recover these jobs, and ensure that patients have increased access to the health care system.

“Obama has issued waivers for the unions and other political cronies, and now it is time for him to do the same for the physician-owned hospitals, which will actually create both jobs and increased health care for patients.”

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

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Sept. 4, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the national debt increasing to more than $16 trillion:

“The national debt has now topped $16 trillion, a monument to Obama’s failure to rein in the deficit.  We’re still borrowing over $1 trillion a year to pay for the massive explosion of government spending since he took office, growing at a pace far faster than the economy.

“All this ‘stimulus’ was supposed to bring the economy along with it. Instead, since Obama took office, the national debt has increased by a whopping $5.3 trillion, but the economy has only grown by $1.68 trillion. That’s 3 dollars of debt for every dollar of growth. It seems the Keynesian multiplier has been turned on its head, as debt overwhelms our economy. This nation needs new leadership on the fiscal crisis that has become an economic crisis.”

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

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Sept. 4, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today responded to the manufacturing Purchaser Managers Index (PMI) published by the Institute for Supply Management showing a contraction in manufacturing for the third straight month:

“Obama’s recession is unmistakable, with manufacturing decreasing for the third straight month. Two months out from a presidential election that will be determined by the state of the economy, slowing production does not bode well for the incumbent. It is now up to Obama to explain why after trillions of dollars of ‘stimulus,’ unemployment is still high and we are not growing our way out of this. The economic contraction we are experiencing is inexcusable.”

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

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