June 14, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement reacting to a leaked version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact with Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam:

“These new trade agreements will place domestic U.S. firms that do not do business overseas at a competitive disadvantage.  Based on these leaked documents, foreign firms under this trade pact could conceivably appeal federal regulatory and court rulings against them to an international tribunal with the apparent authority to overrule our sovereignty. If foreign companies want to do business in America, they should have to follow the same rules as everyone else. No special favors.

“It is telling that the only apparent way these Pacific nations will enter a free trade agreement with the U.S. is if they are exempt from our onerous environmental and financial regulations that make it cost-ineffective to do business here. Instead of making these foreign firms exempt from these burdensome rules, they should just repeal the regulations and make it cheaper to do business here.

“This poses an even wider problem, though. Obama is negotiating a trade pact that would constitute a judicial authority higher than even the U.S. Supreme Court that could overrule federal court rulings applying U.S. law to foreign companies. That is unconstitutional. The U.S. cannot be allowed to enter a treaty that would abrogate our Constitution.

“This tribunal needs to be removed from this agreement, and no foreign company doing business on our soil should have a competitive advantage, created by some a dumb agreement, over American companies. What is Obama thinking? He is placing international organizations above the interests of our own country.”

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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June 14, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on a House plan to extend current tax rates for a single year:

“If House Republicans believed in anything, they would vote to make the current tax rates permanent, send that to the Senate, and make that the only option to prevent the nation from driving off the fiscal cliff at year’s end. And if Harry Reid doesn’t want to go along with it, then it’s on him.

“It is obscene and immoral to set tax rates every 12 months. Set the rates, all of them, make them permanent. Give people and businesses certainty in this weak economy, instead of one more year of uncertainty that will not get us out of our doldrums. Rather than even attempting to clean up the mess we are in, Republicans are guaranteeing another lost year economically. Temporary tax breaks have never worked before, and they won’t work now.

“We’re supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of whims. By going along with these temporary extensions year after year, Republicans are accepting this arbitrary, psychotic rule that is hurting the national economy. It 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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June 8, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement challenging Obama’s declaration that the “private sector is doing fine”:

“The private sector is not doing just fine. It is growing, just barely, in spite of Obama and his policies. Obama lauds the 4 million private sector jobs created in the establishment survey, but that is just happy talk.  That is not recovering nearly fast enough to retrieve the 8 million jobs that were lost in this recession since 2008. It does not even keep up with the growth of the working age population, which has increased by 10 million since that time.

“For all of Obama’s ‘stimulus’ and overregulation and government expansion, the fact is that only 21.9 million people work for the federal, state, and local government, or 15 percent of the 142 million people employed nationwide. Obama says the problem is that government jobs are not growing fast enough, but we could never have a government big enough, growing fast enough to help the 27 million Americans out there who cannot find full-time work in the Obama economy.

“What Obama fails to understand are that all public sector jobs are consumption, they are a net cost to the economy. In and of themselves, they create nothing.

“We need robust private sector expansion to get out of this hole. And right now we’re not getting that with Obama, contrary to his happy talk rhetoric. We’re overregulated, overtaxed, overspending, and overindebted — and Obama has done nothing to stop the bleeding. So, unless Obama gets robust, private sector job growth, he won’t have the money to pay for his army of government employees. Not even Ben Bernanke can print enough money to satisfy Obama’s lust to expand the government payroll.”

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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June 7, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement responding to French President Francois Hollande’s plan to lower France’s retirement age to 60 at the same time Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke promised that the central bank was “prepared to take action as needed to protect the U.S. financial system and economy in the event that financial stresses escalate”:

 “At a time when a European collapse caused by too much debt is the very thing that is weighing down markets, French President Hollande’s big plan is to throw fuel on the fire by lowering France’s retirement age, placing more strain on an already threadbare system. Meanwhile the financial elites have engaged in a whispering campaign to have the U.S. prop up Europe and the rest of the global economy with more quantitative easing money printing. Ben Bernanke says he’s ‘prepared to take action’ if that’s what it takes.

“This is obscene. The American people are being forced to pay, through higher inflation and direct bailouts through institutions like the IMF, to enable the French to work less, the Greeks to default on their debts, and to prop up insolvent Spanish banks.

“Now is the time for House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Spencer Bachus to send HR 2313 to the floor of the House, which would roll back $108 billion of additional commitments the U.S. made to the IMF in 2009. With U.S. lending to the fund topping $32.7 billion, direct bailouts to Europe now account for most of that at $24 billion. Action is needed quickly to prevent any more bailouts from going out the door.

“There also needs to be a clear prohibition on the Fed from engaging in any more backdoor bailouts to Europe, including its continued dollar liquidity operations to help expand European lending. Defunding the IMF will do little good if, in the end, the bailout just comes from the central bank. For good measure, a real audit is needed at the Fed while we’re at it to see just how many trillions of dollars have gone out the door since the European crisis began.”

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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June 6, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement supporting an amendment to HR 5325 by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) that would cut $3.1 billion from the budget:

“The Mulvaney amendment to HR 5325 would save taxpayers an additional $3.1 billion from the energy and water budget while protecting critical functions such as the Army Corps of Engineers and nuclear safety. These cuts are the type of low-hanging fruit that should be easy for the House to enact, and represent the types of cuts that a majority of members have supported in the past. If House Republicans are truly committed to restoring order to our nation’s fiscal house, Mulvaney’s $3.1 billion of sensible savings will be enacted post-haste.”

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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June 6, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement praising the calls of Bill Clinton and Larry Summers to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax rates, going further by calling for the current rates to be made permanent:

“When the Obama White House loses allies like Clinton and Summers on an issue as central to Obama’s reelection campaign as taxes, there is blood in the water. This episode indicates that the smart money is beginning to price in an Obama defeat, and now Democrat members in Congress will likely be seeking to distance themselves from Obama.

“Congressional Republicans should take full advantage of this growing fissure in the Democrat party leadership, and demand not just that the current tax rates be extended for a year or two, but be made permanent. And the vote should be on its own merits in an up-or-down vote, not as a trade-off for another payroll tax holiday that will further bankrupt Social Security. Nor should it be tied to another continuing resolution that accepts up front trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

“The vote should simply be on making the current rates permanent, and members can choose whether they want to destroy the economy with the largest tax increase in American history, or give the economy the certainty of where rates are going to be for the foreseeable future. And then the American people will know who stands with Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress, and who stands with Barack Obama and the radical fringe spending lobby.”

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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June 5, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government president Bill Wilson today issued a statement on the impact of the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall elections on the willingness of elected officials to vote to limit government:

“Big labor has gone all-in in their attempt to defeat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker through a recall election, and in spite of spending tens of millions of dollars over the past year and a half, the election is too close to call on election day.

“Every freedom-loving Wisconsinite needs to vote today, because the outcome of this recall will determine the willingness of politicians across the nation to take on and defeat the seemingly all-powerful public employee unions.  Public employee unions have transformed public servants to the taxpayer’s masters in local, state and federal government, and if Governor Walker wins the recall vote, it will be the first step in restoring the consent of the governed.

“The recall is so important to Big Labor that they have gone all-in and put their national credibility on the line.  Incredibly, the unions oppose Governor Walker in spite of the fact that his reforms actually saved their member’s from layoffs that were scheduled to take place if they had not passed.

“Big Labor’s support for laying off its members over reasonable reforms is just one more bit of evidence that they are more in favor of maintaining power rather than supporting their members’ true interests.

“Today, the people of Wisconsin can send a shockwave to elected officials across the nation in favor of putting the taxpayer back in charge of the government budget process and wresting control from those unions who are driving our nation’s local, state and federal governments into bankruptcy.”

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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June 4, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement urging the House Financial Services Committee to move HR 2313 to the floor of the House for an immediate vote:

“It is not up to U.S. taxpayers to prop up a failed currency like the Euro, nor was the International Monetary Fund ever intended to be used to bail out economies as large as Europe’s. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Spencer Bachus is running out of time to send HR 2313 to the floor of the House, which would roll back $108 billion of additional commitments the U.S. made to the IMF in 2009.

“Already, U.S. lending to the fund has topped $32.7 billion, with bailouts in Europe accounting for most of that at over $24 billion. If the House does not wish U.S. taxpayers to be on the hook for propping up Greece, Portugal, Spain and the rest of the Eurozone, now is the time to withdraw what remains of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama European bailout fund.”

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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