April 4, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today praised the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for ordering the Obama Administration to submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday addressing whether the Executive Branch believes courts have the power of judicial review:

“So alarming were Obama’s comments that the duly enacted health care law being overturned by the Supreme Court would be ‘an unprecedented, extraordinary step,’ the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals felt compelled to issue a homework assignment to the Obama Administration. It seriously wants to know if the White House even believes courts have the power of judicial review to strike down laws that exceed constitutional authority.

“This could be a constitutional crisis in the making. Obama may be setting the stage to defy the Supreme Court by refusing to comply with a ruling striking down the individual mandate or the law in its entirety. It would mean the executive views himself as supreme above the other two branches of government.

“Regardless which way the ruling on Obamacare goes, Obama needs to come out — immediately — and tell the American people that he will comply with the Court’s ruling.

“If the entire law is struck down, it will be up to Obama to direct affected departments and agencies, including HHS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA, the Department of Labor, and the IRS to rescind any regulations that might also be nullified by the Court. Appointments to the death panel must be rescinded and the Independent Payment Advisory Board deconstituted. The Treasury must rescind hundreds of billions of dollars of appropriations that were made under the original statute.”

Attachments:

“Obama’s court intimidation scheme nothing new,” ALG President Bill Wilson, April 4, 2012, athttp://netrightdaily.com/2012/04/obamas-court-intimidation-scheme-nothing-new/

“Obama’s Court intimidation scheme: Calls action against health care law ‘unprecedented’” Americans for Limited Government, April 3, 2012 at http://getliberty.org/content.asp?pl=10&sl=5&contentid=866

“The real judicial extreme,” ALG President Bill Wilson, April 2, 2012 at http://netrightdaily.com/2012/03/the-real-judicial-extreme/

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

April 3, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today responded to Barack Obama’s contention that “overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress” was “an unprecedented, extraordinary step:

“Woe unto law students who took Obama’s constitutional law class when he was a lecturer at University of Chicago Law School. His telling of history, where the Supreme Court would be ‘unprecedented’ in striking down a duly enacted law, ignores the entire 209-year history of jurisprudence since Marbury v. Madison. That was when the Court famously asserted the implicit power of judicial review to strike down acts of Congress that exceeded constitutional authority, writing in the words of Chief Justice John Marshall that the Court’s role was to ‘say what the law is.’ What was Obama even teaching?

“The fact is Obama had no problem when the Warren Court undid precedent—he even praised it while suggesting it did not go far enough.

“Now the Court is signaling it may overturn its 70-year experiment with the Commerce Clause dating back to Wickard v. Filburn, which was one of the first dramatic expansions of Congress’ power in that area. In that case, the Court invented the doctrine that even if commerce was not taking place among the several states — even if it was a farmer who was growing food merely for his own consumption — it could still be regulated.

“Obamacare is the natural extension of that doctrine, where even the passive decision to not purchase health care is being deemed to affect interstate commerce in some capacity. If the Court decides to undo this near-centurial expansion of totalitarianism, good for them. Godspeed.

“But for Obama to get on his high horse and complain that such a decision would be ‘unprecedented’ is just nonsensical. Now he is attempting to intimidate the Court by delegitimizing it. This is what you’d expect from a thug dictator like Hugo Chavez or Robert Mugabe, not from the President of the United States. Overtly attacking the Court in such a brazen way is beneath the dignity of his high office.”

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

April 2, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today reacted to a trial balloon floated by Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama to Reuters that House Republicans were considering reinstituting earmarks to help spending bills get passed:

“It is disappointing that within a mere 14 months into the House Republican majority, they appear to be giving up on the principles that got them elected in 2010. Rep. Mike Rogers has openly called for abandoning reforms to the appropriations process by potentially lifting the ban on earmarks.

“This is being proposed as a legislative sweetener so leadership has an easier time passing things like the transportation appropriations bill. This is an open acknowledgement that earmarks are nothing more than legislative bribery to buy votes. But what it represents is a further repudiation by leadership of the principles that got them into power in the first place. In 2010, Republicans pledged to ‘put us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt.’

“This trial balloon comes atop a minority of the House Republicans defeating a Republican Study Committee fiscal plan last week that would have balanced the budget in five years. It comes atop failures to enact significant reforms in the continuing resolution and debt ceiling debates. And the failure of the Supercommittee to achieve anything meaningful.

“Congress’ historically low approval rating is a warning that the American people will only put up with so much. House Republicans need to reconnect with the American people, and reject without delay Rep. Rogers’ earmark trial balloon.”

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

March 29, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today reacted to a House vote defeating the Obama budget 414-0:

“For two years in a row, Barack Obama has not generated a single vote in favor of his gargantuan spending spree. So toxic are the politics of bankrupting the nation that not even congressional Democrats who are supposed to be joined at Obama’s hip want to face voters and defend his catastrophic economic policies.

“But perhaps the real test will be to see how many votes the Republican Study Committee’s cut, cap, and balance proposal receives later today. Then, the American people will see just how many members take the fiscal crisis we are in seriously and intend to balance the budget this decade.”

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

March 29, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today reacted to the defeat of the Republican Study Committee’s “cut, cap, and balance” by the House of Representatives by a vote of 136 to 285:

“It is disappointing that the only proposal that would balance the budget this decade has been defeated by the House of Representatives, which pledged in 2010 to ‘put us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt’. The Republican Study Committee plan would have balanced the budget in five years, restoring order to the nation’s fiscal house before Washington, D.C., veers off the cliff into a European-like debt crisis.

“Americans for Limited Government had hoped for a bold response to the oncoming freight train of debt that threatens our nation. We strongly appreciate the efforts of Representatives Jim Jordan, Scott Garrett, and the majority of House Republicans who voted for this common-sense alternative.”

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

March 29, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement responding to the House of Representatives passage of the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan:

“The House has made a small step in the right direction, adopting a budget that will reduce deficits to just $166 billion by 2018, a fraction of the current trillion dollar deficits we see every year from the Obama Administration. It would actually result in net cuts to the budget in 2013 and 2014 by $94 billion and $54 billion, respectively.

“However, it may be too little, too late, to save the nation from flying off the cliff of insolvency.

“Spending will still rise after cuts in the first two years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the budget will not be balanced until 2040 under this plan. The debt under this proposal will still rise to a staggering $21.8 trillion by 2022. It could even be worse than that, as the House budget relies on governmental economic projections that, if they prove too rosy, could have the debt rising as high as $26 trillion.

“While the House is to be praised for offering a proposal that is relatively better than Obama’s, that is not the measure of good policy. The fact is, this would still increase the debt by more than $5 trillion over 10 years, compared with Obama’s plan to increase it by $10 trillion. I am concerned that this is the equivalent of driving off the cliff at 60 miles an hour instead of the current 80 miles an hour.”

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

March 28, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the likelihood of the Obamacare statute being overturned in full:

“Today’s oral arguments show the Court may be accepting the premise that the individual mandate will be struck down. What remains is the rest of law, and the justices appear to be pretty evenly split on that matter. This may indicate that a split decision is in the works, wherein a wide majority finds the mandate to be unconstitutional, and a narrow majority strikes down the entire law.

“The entire law should go. The Pelosi-Reid-Obama law is so shoddily put together, and so blatantly unconstitutional in so many areas, in the end, it will be impossible for the Court to discern which parts Congress would have wanted severed and which it wouldn’t have — impractical to separate the tolerable from the putrid.

“The safer route is to throw the whole thing out, and allow Congress to figure out what to do. Putting a few ripe apples into a bushel of rotten fruit does not make the entire lot edible.”

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

March 27, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement responding to Barack Obama’s candid statement to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev saying he needed “space” and would have “more flexibility” after the election to deal with missile defense:

“There is no space needed when it comes to missile defense, something Russia has never supported since the Star Wars program was initiated by President Reagan in the 1980s. Obama either supports the nuclear defense shield or he doesn’t. The only thing he would need flexibility for is to weaken the U.S. position on missile defense without electoral repercussions.

“In 2009, Obama already cancelled plans for the wider shield in Poland and the Czech Republic that would have provided protection to our allies from Russian and other missiles. The Administration foolishly claimed long-range missiles were not a threat. Really? At the same time, the State Department this year said the Administration is ‘committed to pursuing missile defense cooperation with Russia’. Does that include further dismantling of our capabilities and leaving our allies in no-man’s land?

“Making matters worse, this year, it was revealed the Administration is also exploring the possibility of reducing the nation’s nuclear stockpile to as few as 300 at a time when Russia and China are expanding their nuclear capabilities.

“It is one thing to pursue mutual arms reductions among major powers and to further halt nuclear proliferation, as in the Reagan-Gorbachev era, but to do so unilaterally — in exchange for nothing — is suicidal. Missile defense is not something we should ever be flexible with. It’s non-negotiable. The U.S. will not be subject to nuclear blackmail. What is Obama thinking?”

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

March 26, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on the beginning of oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Obamacare statute:

“This is one of the most important weeks in the national debate over Obamacare. The oral arguments at the Supreme Court over these three days will give valuable insight into what many of the justices’ thinking on the important issues surrounding the law are, including the individual mandate and its severability from the rest of the legislation.

“The fact is the mandate is so thoroughly tied into other parts of the law, that if it is found to be an unconstitutional exercise of the Commerce Clause, the Court may be forced to strike it down in its entirety. Given the hurdles to an outright repeal through Congress, including the ability to reach 60 votes in the Senate, this may be the only opportunity the American people have to get rid of this abominable law.

“The Court is the last line of defense of the Constitution. This is one of those times it must exercise its authority in a sweeping way, to save the American people from the scourge of government-run health care, rationing and intruding on decisions best left to doctors and 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.

March 22, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement responding to the Obama Administration’s decision to “approve” the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline:

“The latest installment of the Obama theatre of the absurd plays out today in Cushing, Oklahoma, where Obama, who personally stopped the building of the pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, is now attempting to take credit for the private company, TransCanada, decision to build the southernmost portion of the Keystone XL.

“It is clear that $4 a gallon gasoline in an election year will wake up the politician in even the most ardent environmental extremist. Next thing you know, Obama will be claiming to support all of the above approaches to energy development including opening up additional deep water offshore oil drilling leases.

“If Obama were a private company making similar claims as he is making today, he would be fined by the FTC for false advertising. But like any other con man, he knows he only has to fool some of the people for a short while longer.”

Attachments:

“TransCanada moves forward to build the southern half of Keystone XL pipeline…Obama says ‘OK’ ” by Rebecca DiFede, March 22, 2012, http://netrightdaily.com/2012/03/transcanada-moves-forward-to-build-the-southern-half-of-keystone-xl-pipeline-obama-says-ok-2/

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