September 20th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—In his weekly radio address, Barack Obama claimed that “foreign-controlled corporations seeking to influence our democracy are able to spend freely in order to swing an election toward a candidate they prefer,” prompting Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson to call him to task for “misleading the public.”

“It is already illegal for foreign nationals or corporations to donate to political organizations, period, or to engage in electioneering,” Wilson said.

“Any organization, whether or not it engages in electioneering must file tax returns to the IRS, which include who donates,” Wilson explained. Organizations must file form 990’s, which include Schedule B’s for disclosing donations over specified amounts depending on the type of organization. Minimum net donations which must be included in the forms can range from $1,000 to $5,000, depending on the group.

“The IRS can already trace where money comes from, so Obama is wrong,” Wilson said, adding, “If Obama is accusing organizations engaged in electioneering of accepting foreign donations, the law already provides the mechanism to enforce the ban on foreign money being used. It’s called an audit.”

Obama was attempting to generate public support for the so-called DISCLOSE Act, which would force donations to be also posted publicly.

Wilson said that was not necessary to enforce the ban on foreign money, concluding, “Barack Obama is wrong. No change in law is necessary to enforce the ban on foreign involvement in elections. It’s already illegal, and the IRS is fully capable of conducting audits if there is an accusation that a political organization engaged in electioneering is accepting foreign money.”

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

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September 17th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as a special assistant to Barack Obama in order to avoid a tough confirmation battle in the Senate.

“Rather than engage in the constitutional process of Senatorial advice and consent, and nominate Warren to the post of Director of the Financial Protection Bureau, Obama has simply created a new financial czar post to avoid a bruising Senate battle over her radical views,” Wilson said.

Warren’s potential nomination has been sidelined amid objections by the Senators of both political parties, including Senator Chris Dodd, one of the principal architects of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Warren has advocated for moratoria on foreclosures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages and supported court-ordered cramdowns on the principal owed on mortgages.

Wilson said that the appointment violated the language of the Dodd-Frank financial bill, because the Director of the CFPB is supposed to be confirmed by the Senate. According to Section 1011(b)(2) of the new legislation, the Director and Deputy Director of the agency “shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

“The Bureau cannot function at all without a director, under the law Obama signed,” Wilson said. “The Director is responsible for whatever rules and regulations the Bureau produces, for staffing, for any reports crafted by the Bureau; in short, everything. The law does not contemplate the agency functioning without a director.”

But, as reported by the Washington Post, “Warren is expected to take on a dual role as assistant to the president and special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, giving her primary responsibility for shaping the consumer watchdog in the coming months.”

Geithner, it appears, would actually have the role of “acting director” in lieu of a Senate confirmation. Wilson said the only reason it was possible legally for Geithner to head the agency was because the Vacancies Act allows for an “acting director” of an “executive agency” to be appointed. The CFPB was dubbed an “executive agency” under the Dodd-Frank bill.

Warren is ineligible under the Vacancies Act to be named “acting director” because she is not a currently serving confirmed official, a senior agency employee who served for 90 days or more, nor the Deputy Director of the agency. Wilson said her ineligibility to be appointed acting director was “most likely the real reason for her being named advisor, which means this was the only way they could get her in there over Senate objections.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” said Wilson, “because the Vacancies Act is clearly unconstitutional. It allows for appointments to confirmable positions without any confirmation while Congress is in session. The Constitution only allows non-confirmed appointments in the context of being recess appointments. If Obama has a nominee for this agency, and Congress is in session, he only has one option: nominate her and await the Senate’s judgment.”

“If the agency operates without a confirmed director, the legitimacy of the acts of the agency will be called into question,” Wilson said.

Wilson called for Congress to repeal to the Vacancies Act, saying, “In the Vacancies Act, Congress may have abdicated its constitutional authority for the Senate to confirm appointments, but that doesn’t make it constitutional. Barack Obama is completely ignoring what the Constitution says. The American people are crying out for the rule of law, but their pleas appear to be nothing more than an annoyance to the White House,” Wilson said.

“The White House can dress this up however they want. They can pretend Warren’s not leading this agency, whose task will be to run the financial sector into the ground, but everyone knows that she will be heading the agency,” Wilson concluded.

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

Fairfax, VA – Americans for Limited Government (ALG) expressed extreme disappointment that the U.S. Senate failed to allow a vote that would have eliminated a provision in the recently passed Obamacare law which requires businesses to report expenditures with another business that exceeds $600, but praised Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns for introducing the amendment to repeal of the measure.

Bill Wilson, ALG president praised Johanns for offering the amendment saying, “Senator Johanns is to be commended for trying to fix this problem. It is simply outrageous that this Congress continues to ignore the damage that they are doing to our nation’s job producers through massively expensive paperwork burdens, it’s almost as if they don’t want people to get jobs.”

Johanns’ amendment would have repealed a portion of the new health care law that requires businesses to file paperwork (known as 1099 forms) with both the IRS and the business that provided services or sold products to them that exceeded $600 over the course of a year. Additionally, the company that received the services or purchased the products with a purchase price in excess of $600 would have to file 1099 forms with the IRS and their business customer.

“The failure of this Congress to fix this single, obviously destructive provision, shows just how out of touch the current leadership is,” Wilson concluded.

The blizzard of paperwork is scheduled to begin in January 2012.

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

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Fairfax, VA – Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government released the following statement in response to report in The Hill newspaper that Senator George Voinovich of Ohio is strongly considering supporting a massive increase in taxes for a majority of Americans.

“Supporting the single greatest tax increase in our nation’s history would be disastrous for all Americans, killing job creation, putting family farms on the auction block, and plunging America back into recession, Senator George Voinovich is completely out of touch with the economic realities Ohio and our nation as a whole face.”

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

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September 10th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement demanding that Barack Obama identify and fire 41 White House political appointees that have not paid their taxes and owe over $831,000:

“Barack Obama should give these 41 appointees thirty days to pay their taxes or be dismissed. It’s outrageous that people who vociferously argue for big government refuse to pay for it. First it was Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner. And then Charlie Rangel. Clearly, there is an endemic problem amongst government officials who think they are above the people.

“They are not above the law. Obama needs to identify all officials and aides who are delinquent in paying their taxes, and if they refuse to pay up, to fire them. This is a very poor example to be setting.”

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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September 9th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Yesterday, speaking in Cleveland, Ohio, Barack Obama said, “I believe government should be lean; government should be efficient. I believe government should leave people free to make the choices they think are best for themselves and their families, so long as those choices don’t hurt others.”

“This is like a drunken sailor calling for moderation,” Wilson said.

“This is the most bloated government in human history. It hoards 650 million acres of federal land, has nationalized housing finance, health care, and the rest of the financial industry. It has taken over GM and Chrysler. It has spent itself into a $13.4 trillion hole of debt that is weighing down the economy, and its only solution to spend even more,” Wilson explained.

Wilson continued, “Under Obama’s watch, government now has seized the power to force individuals to purchase health care. It seeks the power to restrict energy usage. It has locked up the nation’s natural resources and limited energy production, including nuclear. It continues to blackmail states into accepting federal funding, uses the tax code for social engineering, and utilizes the threat of government regulation to shake down privately-operated businesses.”

“Barack Obama has no credibility at all on this issue. The federal government is not lean. It is not efficient. His statement is nothing more than electioneering, smoke and mirrors by a very desperate administration,” Wilson added, saying that the rhetoric was intended to minimize damage to Democrats in the November elections.

Wilson also noted that Obama “has it exactly backwards when he says government should leave people free to make choices. The government does not have the rightful power to restrict choices by the people in the first place.”

Wilson called Obama’s philosophy of rights “troubling because it implies that the individual right to choose to better themselves comes from government.”

Wilson concluded, “The people do not derive their rights by the license from the government, as Obama implies. Instead, individual rights are derived by virtue of one’s existence. A former professor of constitutional law ought to know that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. It’s the government that should be on a leash, not the people.”

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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September 8th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Another proposal by the White House to spend $50 billion for so-called infrastructure projects today drew sharp criticism from Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson.

“This is just the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” Wilson said. “Of the original $814 billion ‘stimulus,’ $55 billion was dedicated to transportation.  About $36.5 billion in infrastructure spending remains unspent, and its impact on the economy has been negligible with growth slowing and unemployment rising. Now Obama wants to add another $50 billion to the national debt for one more dose of the same ineffective medicine.”

Speaking in Ohio today, Obama outlined his plans for $30 billion temporary tax credits to businesses and $50 billion for infrastructure spending Wilson said would be diverted to construction unions.

“At the top of their lungs, the American people are shouting, ‘stop spending,’ and yet that’s the only prescription Obama has for our ailing economy,” Wilson noted. “This is a misallocation of resources away from other productive areas of the economy into yet more public debt. The people are saying enough is enough.”

“This goes beyond tone-deafness or a casual disregard of the best wishes of the American people. He is knowingly proposing to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t even urgently need,” Wilson added, saying, “If it were urgent, the Administration would have already spent the last ‘stimulus’ that didn’t work.”

The original “stimulus” included $53.6 billion that went to states to balance their ailing budgets, $45 billion of which boosted education spending, $50 billion in green energy subsidies and tax credits, $87 billion for Medicaid, and $55 billion for transportation projects.

Since then, Congress has passed another $16.1 billion for state Medicaid spending and $10 billion for state education spending.

Wilson said all of the money was “nothing more than a pay out to public sector unions, who in the case of the infrastructure spending are once again being subsidized with funds we just don’t have.”

“With the 2010 midterm elections less than two months away, congressional Democrats are increasingly growing desperate to put a positive spin on an ailing economy. This new $50 billion ‘stimulus’ is just yet another handout for public sector unions who they expect to vote for them,” Wilson concluded.

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

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