Aug. 5, Fairfax,Va.—Americans for Limited Government will be taking to the airwaves opposing President Trump’s proposed Executive Order tying U.S. drug prices to those dictated by foreign socialist governments.

The $2.2 million dollar first phase cable TV ad buy starts on August 6^th focusing upon Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement regarding the TV ad buy:

“No one has been a bigger fan of President Donald Trump than I have been.  I have repeatedly defended him against repeated attacks from never Trump ne’er-do-wells, and will continue to do so.  But the issue of socialized medicine and the ramifications of the President’s proposed Executive Order are too serious to ignore.

“It is my firm hope that the President will reconsider this draconian step. Drug prices are a symptom of a deeper problem related to the high cost of bringing medicines to market ($2.6 billion according to the latest Tufts University study) and the length of time it takes to bring those treatments to market.

“The ad is respectful but extremely firm in making people aware of the danger of presidentially mandated prices based upon the whims of foreign governments.

“President Trump gets so much right, Americans for Limited Government implores him to reconsider this mistake.”

Background:

ALG statement, Executive order on drug pricing would be a disaster for future generations, July 23, 2020 at https://getliberty.org/2020/07/executive-order-on-drug-pricing-would-be-a-disaster-for-future-generations/

Government creates the high drug costs it then seeks to fix, By Rick Manning, July 28, 2020 at http://dailytorch.com/2020/07/government-creates-the-high-drug-costs-it-then-seeks-to-fix/

ALG’s Manning Attacks neverTrump grifters, July 5, 2020 at  https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bush-biden-trump-richard-manning

ALG’s Manning hits Bolton book, June 18, 2020 at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-bolton-book-trump-rick-manning

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

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Aug. 4, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement endorsing U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for Congress:

“U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar is the most effective conservative Congressman in Washington, D.C. The news this week that the Trump Administration is abandoning the Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing attack on local zoning is another victory for Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar. Rep. Gosar led the charge more than five years ago to defunding implementation of the rule that dictated local decisions by Washington, D.C. bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development using nothing more than Census maps. This was not an easy fight, and at times it was lonely. But it was Paul Gosar who stopped this federal abuse of power in its tracks. This is just one many instances where Congressman Gosar has taken on the tough battles while succeeding in passing substantive legislation. Arizonans can be proud to call Paul Gosar their Congressman.”

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

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July 31, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today in a statement praised the nine members of Congress who jointly signed a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia urging the end of private retirement investments into risky Chinese companies:

“Nine members of the House of Representatives took a bold stand in a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia asking that the Secretary ‘consider amending the proposed rule to require any company seeking eligibility for any retirement or pension investment meet U.S. statutory and regulatory transparency standards.’

“The letter led by Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) was signed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.), Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (R-Ariz.), Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) and Rep. Bill Hagedorn (R-Minn.).

“National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray have been unambiguous about the dangers to both our national security and financial security posed by China with O’Brien and Kudlow urging divestment of Chinese assets by the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board.  O’Brien and Kudlow also led the way for stopping the federal employee 401(k) plan, known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), from investing in Chinese assets.

“The Congressional letter boldly reminded Labor Secretary Scalia of his own opposition to the TSP plan to invest in Chinese assets when the Secretary wrote that these investments ‘would place millions of federal employees and retirees and service members in the untenable position of choosing between forgoing any investment in international equities or placing billions of dollars in retirement savings in risky companies that pose a threat to U.S. national security…’

“In the future those who stood up against child and slave labor in places like China will be hailed as heroes, even as today there are those on Wall Street who worry more about relationships with those who run the slave shops.  It is time for America to divest our nation’s retirement accounts from Chinese assets in their entirety.  Not only are they unsuitably risky due to their lack of any basic transparency standards, but they are also immoral.

“Reps. Webster, Gohmert, Rooney, Perry, Gosar, King, Riggleman, Posey and Hagedorn have shown that they are unafraid of standing on the side of both freedom and retirement security and in doing so, they are on the right side of history.”

Attachments:

Letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia by nine House Republicans, July 30, 2020 at https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/MOC-Letter-to-DOL-RE-Proposed-Rule-FINAL.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 30, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—A group letter urging divestment of private pensions from Chinese state-owned companies was sent to U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia today with signators headlined by former Attorney General Ed Meese, former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, former Congressman Frank Wolf, former Reagan National Security Advisor Vice Admiral John Poindexter, retired Lt. General Steven Kwast and more than 230 others.

“The investment of private retirement funds into Chinese companies that do not comply with basic transparency standards, and in many cases rely upon child- and slave-labor, is incompatible with fundamental American values and must be discontinued,” the letter states.

The diverse group includes religious leaders like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association to business leaders like Capital Management CEO and President Keith Sirois and USA Radio Network CEO Fred Weinberg as well as China critics Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, the Executive Director of the Global Alliance Against Communist Propaganda and Dr. Jianli Yang, founder of Citizen Power Initiatives for China.

The letter urges Secretary Scalia to amend a proposed Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments rule to explicitly disallow any private retirement funds from investing in non-transparent assets which are not subject to the rigorous independent auditing requirements faced by U.S. public companies.

Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government and a former Labor Transition team member for President Trump, previously sent another letter directly to Secretary Scalia on July 9 arguing for ending private retirement investments in China writing:

“I want to assure you that I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment and decision on excluding risky Chinese assets from the federal employees 401(K) Thrift Savings Plan. Your statement that stopping the inclusion of Chinese assets was necessary because it, ‘would place millions of federal employees, retirees, and service-members in the untenable position of choosing between forgoing any investment in international equities or placing billions of dollars in retirement savings in risky companies that pose a threat to U.S. national security’ is exactly on point.

“The obvious question is if these assets are too risky for inclusion in the federal TSP, why would they be allowed to be included in private 401(K) investments where the same argument directly applies? The answer is that they are not, and under ERISA it is the Labor Department’s job to protect private sector retirement specific investments or pensions from choices that are unsuitably risky.”

The letter itself points to the repugnant practice of making unwitting private U.S. retirees investors in Chinese companies which use child- and slave-labor, “effectively making individual 401(k) owners or pensioners parties to and profiteers from the exploitation of the victims of such cruel abuse.”

The comment period for the Labor Department regulation ends today, and Americans for Limited Government implores that it reflect the fiduciary concerns about the security of investments in Chinese assets by disallowing them under the provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

Attachments:

Letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, July 30, 2020, from 240 conservative leaders, https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/China-Pensions-Letter-7-30-20.pdf

Letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, July 9, 2020, from Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning, https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/DOL-Letter-Private-Pension-Investment-China.pdf

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

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Seeks to silence white lab coats that don’t agree with them

July 28, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting Facebook, Twitter and Google for removing a press conference video by frontline doctors featuring U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and organized by Tea Party Patriots:

“Facebook, Twitter and Google (through YouTube) have all colluded to suppress a discussion by doctors about studies and their clinical experiences which show that the medicine Hydroxychloroquine when used with zinc and arithromycin may be helpful when it is used either prophylactically or in the early stages of the Chinese-originated COVID-19 virus.  The efficacy of HCQ is not a surprise to those who have been paying attention as more doctors around the world who treat the virus have ranked it as the most effective treatment than any other medicine, and very recent, honest study from Henry Ford Health Systems showed that the use of the drug cut the death rate among COVID patient users ‘significantly.’

“So the question is simple. Why would the three social media giants collude to ban doctors from discussing scientific studies as well as their own clinical experiences from the public?  And the only conclusion is that they have decided that they don’t want alternative experiences to be discussed on their platforms even when it comes to scientific debate and public inquiry over treatments for the COVID virus.  There can no longer be any doubt that these three platforms are effectively joined at the hip, apparently acting in concert in actions counter to our nation’s antitrust laws. It is time to break up big tech, before it breaks 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 23, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising HUD Secretary Ben Carson and President Donald Trump for ending the Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation and protecting local zoning with a new rule that states “It must be local governments, not HUD, that exercise control of administering local housing policies, including zoning and development policies that are unique to a particular community”:

“Secretary Ben Carson and President Donald Trump have rightly chosen to terminate an Obama era rule that federalized local zoning under the guise of fair housing along income and racial guidelines. This important decision will take federal bureaucrats out of the zoning process as Congress clearly intended when they defunded the zoning portion of the Obama rule in the 2017 omnibus, the 2018 omnibus, the 2019 omnibus, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020.

“Americans for Limited Government has always urged aggressive enforcement against individual cases of proven racial housing discrimination. However, the Obama administration Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation created an unfair presumption of discrimination based on zoning without any proof beyond Census maps. This was an absurd expansion of federal power and put the most important local government decisions in the hands of those with no stake in the outcome.

“Secretary Ben Carson today has ended one of the primary tools that former Vice President Joe Biden was looking to use in his war to abolish the suburbs. Every American owes Secretary Carson and President Trump a great big thank you for standing up both against discrimination and for our local ability to govern our communities.”

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

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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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