July 23, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging President Donald Trump not to issue an executive order on drug pricing for the International Price Index:

“The White House is considering an Executive Order on drug pricing which would be a disaster for future generations.  The proposal being considered is known as IPI (International Price Index) and it would tie U.S. drug prices to those paid in foreign, socialist countries.  What the heck are they thinking?

“One of the hallmarks of the Trump administration is to create an America First policy, and now on drug pricing, the White House is considering tying the prices Americans pay for medicines to foreign government dictates? Beyond the obvious destruction of innovation by drug companies that will harm today’s seniors and generations to come, one of the prime lessons from the Chinese-originated virus crisis has been that America needs to bring the drug manufacturing sector home.  Foreign fixed pricing incentivizes pharmaceutical companies to skirt U.S. safety and cleanliness standards in favor of cheap foreign manufacturing because if they are price controlled on one end, they will need to cut costs on the other.  Rather than decreasing our dependency on foreign-made drugs, this will dramatically increase it. Just exactly the opposite of what the President is hoping to accomplish with this critical supply chain.

“What’s more, if you ever wanted to create a pathway to socialized medicine then offshoring domestic drug prices to foreign governments will certainly take the market out of a major part of the health equation.  When combined with the Democrats attempt to create one-sized fits all health care rates across the nation under the guise of ‘Surprise Medical Billing’ the impediments to a complete federal takeover of our nation’s health care system will have been paved.

“If the Trump administration wants to actually help flatten or lower prescription drug costs, they should engage in a full review of the Food and Drug Administration regulations which empower bureaucrats to impose millions of dollars of costs on prospective new drugs simply because they can.  In 2014, Tufts University found that the average cost of bringing a new drug to market is $2.6 billion.  With patent lengths of approximately twenty years, the long, drawn out FDA approval process eats up approximately twelve years from the laboratory to the pharmacy shelf, and once the patent life starts ticking, the drug developer is in a race against the clock to be able to recoup their costs and make a profit. While this is a little bit apples to oranges, a twenty year patent life and a twelve year timeline to get to market provide less than a decade for the drug inventor to make it worthwhile to have spent a lifetime developing a cure.

“To cut drug costs, the administration should mandate a comprehensive review of FDA approval requirements with a focus on those that drive the cost of bringing drugs to the market through the roof. Small, innovative drug manufacturers simply cannot compete when there is a regulatory-driven $2.6 billion cost to bring their cures and treatments to market. The answer to high drug prices is not found in foreign socialist government pricing models but instead in making the cost for new drug development dramatically lower so there will be more competition in the marketplace.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 21, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today sent the following letter and comments to U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oreg.), U.S Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) urging reconsideration of objections to the Pebble Mine project in Alaska:

“The tundra wasteland that is the site for the proposed Pebble Mine was originally federal government property.  However, the federal government decided to swap this less valuable land with the state of Alaska for the acreage that subsequently became Lake Clark National Park and Preserve via the Cook Inlet Land Exchange. The land was fine to give away when it had zero value for land that was suitable to be declared a national park, and it takes an incredible amount of hubris for the federal government to put additional restrictions on the use of the barren wasteland after more than hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent by private companies to create a plan to responsibly extract the strategic minerals that the federal government chose to trade to the State of Alaska.

“No one is urging that the NEPA process not be followed to ensure that the mine meets federal requirements, and once it does, then turn the decision over to the authorities in the state of Alaska.  However, your complaints amount to little more than grandstanding as you want the goal posts to be moved in an obvious effort to renege on the original agreement when the land for Lake Clark National Park was obtained.

“After almost a decade, it is time to allow the owners of Pebble deposit to have their opportunity to present their engineering studies and mining plans for fair and honest federal scrutiny.  When, and if, the NEPA process is successfully completed, the decision will lie where it rightfully should – with the state of Alaska which traded for this land and zoned it for mining in the first place.”

Attachments:

Letter and Comments to  U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, U.S Rep. Jared Huffman, U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal and U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, July 21, 2020 at https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PebbleMineLetter7-21-20.pdf

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 21, 2020, Fairfax, VA.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising President Donald Trump executive memorandum to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to discount illegal aliens who are subject to legal removal from the U.S. Census:

“The constitutional concept of one person, one vote and the basic rights of citizenship are shredded when states like California create policies that encourage residence by illegal aliens who are otherwise subject to legal removal. The apportionment of members of the House of Representatives is unfairly skewed toward illegal alien sanctuary states and away from those states that follow the laws of the United States. That is why the President is absolutely right to attempt to create equity for all states and protection of the rights of all legal residents.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 16, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising President Donald Trump’s record of deregulation:

“President Donald Trump has been the greatest cutter of federal government red tape and regulations in the history of our country. His record of streamlining a still overly burdened federal government has been one of the keys along with cutting taxes and smarter trade policy to the rejuvenation of the U.S. economy and will play a large role in helping the nation to recover from the Chinese originated virus downturn.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 15, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising the Trump administration’s new rule from the White House-based Council on Environmental Quality streamlining environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act so that infrastructure can be built in a timely manner:

“Environmental reviews are meant to make certain that environmental concerns about an infrastructure project are heard and in many cases mitigated. But these environmental reviews were never supposed to be never-ending death sentences for infrastructure and other projects that our nation needs. The Trump administration’s announcement today of the final rule modernizing and accelerating environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act creates balance between valid environmental concerns and our nation’s growth. As America’s economy rebounds from the Chinese-originated virus downturn, streamlined regulatory approval processes will pave the way for investment in rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure and finally allow shovel-ready jobs to be created in a timely manner.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 15, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the Trump administration Labor Department to block private pension investment in Chinese securities following the blocking of federal employee pension investment in China:

“The President, National Security Advisor, Director of the National Economic Council and the Department of Labor Secretary have all made it clear that investments in non-transparent, Chinese state-owned company securities are too risky and dangerous for federal employee retirement investing. The President’s statement yesterday effectively ending the Obama-Biden China exemption to investment transparency rules on U.S. exchanges is an important step to protecting American investors from Chinese vapor companies. Now, the administration and state governments need to take a series of simple but important steps to protect retirement investors and pensions from foreign investments that do not conform to basic auditing standards.

“First, the Labor Department should immediately begin by imposing these transparency rules on private pensions and investments. Second, the Labor Department should also divest all funds in non-transparent investments under the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Third, federal employee defined benefit plans should be directed to divest from non-transparent assets as well. Fourth, state governors and financial officers should take immediate action to divest state employee pension funds from these same unsuitable assets.

“If an individual investor wishes to put their money into Chinese state-owned companies on the Shanghai Composite Index, that is a choice with all the risks that choice entails. However, retirement funds are held to a higher standard under the law and given the administration’s recognition that Chinese assets do not conform to that standard it would be irresponsible for state officials to not follow suit to protect their employees’ future financial security, too.

“Let me be clear, this is not only a fiduciarily sound approach but a morally necessary one as well as investing in Chinese companies that engage in child and slave labor effectively makes our nation’s pensioners involuntary slave owners. This is repugnant and it must end.”

Attachments:

“If risky Chinese investments are unsuitable for federal pensioners, they’re unsuitable for private pensioners, too.” By Rick Manning, July 10, 2020 at http://dailytorch.com/2020/07/if-risky-chinese-investments-are-unsuitable-for-federal-pensioners-theyre-unsuitable-for-private-pensioners-too/

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 13, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement endorsing Jeff Sessions for U.S. Senate in the state of Alabama:

“Tomorrow is election day in Alabama and the decision for the U.S. Senate is a choice between Jeff Sessions, a genteel man who has spent his legislative career fighting for Alabama’s workers by opposing illegal immigration, opposing bad trade deals and opposing the kind of get out of jail lunacy that afflicts our nation.  His opponent is a football coach who would be the first to kneel if it meant the difference between getting a 5-star recruit or not.  While doing what it takes to get top players on your team is fine in the SEC, it is not okay to put short-term interests ahead of America in the U.S. Senate.  Jeff Sessions holds tightly to his and your principles, and as the left foments revolution in the streets, America needs people like Senator Sessions in the Senate now more than ever. If you receive this and don’t live in Alabama, please forward it to someone you know who does.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 8, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the Department of Labor to block U.S. private pension plans from investing in China after FBI Director Christopher Wray called China “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property”:

“Yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray called China’s counter-intelligence and economic espionage, ‘The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property’ of our nation, a statement which was tweeted out by former CIA Director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Given this, why are U.S. private pension funds still investing in Chinese assets?  The U.S. Labor Department has a legal responsibility under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to make certain that pension funds are only invested in fiduciarily sound investments. What most people don’t know, perhaps the Labor Department included, is that in 2013 the Obama-Biden administration issued a Memorandum of Understanding waiving the transparency requirements that U.S. companies must comply with to be traded on the stock exchanges for Chinese companies and bonds.  This fact alone makes every Chinese asset that does not have annual audits and open books to be unsuitable for U.S. private pension fund investment.  What’s more, ten days ago, the Pentagon named twenty Chinese companies as owned and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. These companies, which include Huawei and China Telecomm are little more than Chinese spy agency extensions and yet, the Labor Department is ignoring their responsibility to require the divestment of the pensions of millions of Americans’ pensions from these dangerous firms.

“In May, the Senate acted to require transparency for Chinese firms listed on American exchanges, and hopefully that becomes law, but right now the Labor Department is seeking comments on a regulation defining the suitability of certain investments for private pension portfolios, and the simple addition requiring pension investment assets to be subject to the same transparency requirements that every U.S. investment must meet, is a bare minimum standard.  The Labor Department has been doing yeoman’s work on many issues and indeed the regulation defining suitable pension investments is a needed and welcome change, but it would be a shame if my good friends at Labor didn’t take this opportunity to join with the Senate, the Secretary of State, FBI Director and the President by specifically amending the suitable investment language to include a requirement that basic transparency requirements be followed.

“It is time for American pensions to stop capitalizing Chinese companies seeking to destroy us, and forcing transparency in pension investments will effectively end our nation’s private pensioners from providing the money needed for China to continue its long war against the United States of America.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 2, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement on the latest jobs numbers:

“Almost 5 million Americans got a job in the month of June, marking the second straight month of economic recovery after our nation’s economy was ravaged by the after effects of the Chinese-originated virus.  Since the bottom of the temporary, but dramatic economic slowdown almost 8.8 million Americans have gotten jobs, meaning almost one-half of the COVID job losses have been erased since the two-month economic shutdown sidelined a between a little more than 17 million workers.

“With many Governors in states like New York, Illinois and California effectively continuing to turn a blind eye to the economic ravages of the shutdown response, and many Americans remaining cautious about re-entering the normal day to day activities that were taken for granted in February of this year, it is almost a miracle that the our economy has risen so rapidly.

“As President Trump’s landmark ending of NAFTA, replacing it with the new USMCA trade deal with Canada and Mexico, which protects intellectual property, ends currency manipulation, allows more dairy products to be sold to Canada and makes manufacturing in America even more desirable, took effect yesterday, the economic pieces are coming into place to create a robust second half of 2020.

“It is important to remember that from April 2019 to February 2020, fewer Americans were unemployed than at any time since January of 2001, even though the civilian labor force was almost 22 million people larger in February 2020.

“The economy was very strong when China lied to the world about the COVID virus, continuing to allow flights from the Wuhan Province to Europe and Asia, even as they shut down domestic travel from the site of the virus’ origin.  Now, because of that underlying strength, the economy is recovering.  Let’s hope that those Democrat operatives and their gubernatorial allies who have publicly worried that a recovering economy helps President Trump’s re-election for once put the economic well-being of the people above their petty political interests.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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July 1, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to reports that hundreds of former George W. Bush officials are planning to endorse Joe Biden for President this year:

“As a former political appointee of President George W. Bush, I strongly urge Americans to vote for Donald Trump’s re-election.  President Trump has cut taxes and significantly lowered the regulatory burden on our nation’s economic engine which created the greatest jobs economy since jobs data was recorded.  And President Trump has been unafraid to reposition America in the world. Our NATO allies are now paying more of their fair share for the defense of their own countries, we have dumped the disastrous NAFTA deal for a much more America friendly U.S-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, we have new trade deals with South Korea and Japan, the U.S. Embassy to Israel has moved to Jerusalem, and most importantly, President Trump has resisted the call by the foreign policy elites for more endless wars.

“President Trump has appointed and had confirmed 200 federal judges remaking the formerly liberal judiciary in under one term.  Between 2021 and 2025, there could be two or three additional Supreme Court appointees, and a Trump presidency ensures that some sanity may be restored to our nation’s highest court.  A Biden presidency would mean higher taxes, the New Green Deal and more liberal judges and justices.

“The globalist vision of America has completely and utterly failed Americans.  Donald Trump has changed course away from our nation serving as the donor state for the socialist dreams of Europe and the communist Chinese government’s aggressive expansionist policies. The China policy is the most glaring example of this failure. The futile hope that by enriching China, they would embrace capitalism has collapsed, as China has used the wealth gained from their trade advantage, the intellectual property that they stole from our companies, universities and government, and the labor that they enslaved to build a military designed to defeat us in battle combined with their engaging in grotesque human rights abuses of Muslim Uyghers and their burgeoning Christian population has turned this hope to a nightmare.

“Donald Trump has changed this course, and those who have benefitted most from the failed American trade policy of the two Bush presidencies, Clinton and Obama, or are too dumb to recognize its failure would rather have the radicals on the streets take the levers of power in our nation and lead the way to China’s hegemony in the world than to see President Trump serve four more years.

“Personally, I feel sorry for those so engorged in hate and fear of the common sense changes that President Trump has brought forward that they cannot see that America is the world’s best hope for freedom and that beacon shines most brightly when our people are prospering. Prior to the unleashing of the Chinese-originated virus, Americans were working and making more money with very low inflation.  The wage growth was concentrated on those who made the least, and truly lifted all boats.  Record low unemployment for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians showed that the Trump economy knew no colors.  An economic expansion was made possible due to sensible trade policy and tried and true Republican principles of lower taxes and less government intrusion into our lives.  Yet, some former of my former colleagues in the Bush administration are now rejecting these very principles in their endorsement of an empty suit Biden who has promised to strangle America energy independence with his Green New Deal, impose nationalized health care, raise taxes on 83 percent of Americans by repealing the Trump tax cuts, and roll back our historic friendship with Israel.

“I understand that President Trump’s rough demeanor seems so coarse to the erudite Ivy crowd, but the world is a coarse place and America is better and stronger when we are free rather than knuckling under to two-bit thugs whether they be foreign or domestic. I stand with President Trump and invite the thousands of former George W. Bush political appointees to publicly join me.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.

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