Congressman Jason Chaffetz: Pledge for America will Restore Trust
Congressman Jason Chaffetz Vows that Republican Pledge for America will Restore Trust by American People in their Representatives.
Neal Asbury opened the show by facetiously asking if his audience was celebrating the news from the National Bureau of Economic Research that the recession was over, and has been, for more than year. He wondered what the millions of unemployed think about the recession ending, especially after the news that the United States economy has lost more jobs than it has added since the recovery began over a year ago. In fact, the 2007-9 recession was not only the longest post-World War II recession, but also the deepest, in terms of job losses.
Asbury noted that the news of the end of the recession was probably met with suspicion by the millions without health insurance, or a small business owner who is drowning in taxes and can’t get a loan to reinvest or hire. Or a homeowner who is drowning in debt because he owes more on their house than it’s worth.
“Did you notice that the Obama Administration is not celebrating? That’s because if the recession ended a year ago, it’s hard for them to take say they ‘inherited’ the recession and to take credit for ending it,” said Asbury.
This news, Asbury added, may explain why top Obama advisors Larry Summers, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel have announced they are leaving the administration.
“It’s like they’re leaving a sinking ship, but it’s a ship that is shot full of holes as a result of their policy decisions That’s why it’s sinking so quickly,” concluded Asbury.
Joining “Neal Asbury’s Truth for America” was Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), representing Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. To win the election in 2008, Chaffetz knocked out a 12-year Republican incumbent. He has already created a “buzz” as a hard- working representative by sleeping on a cot in his office and airing chats on YouTube.
Chaffetz recounted how a chance meeting with Ronald Reagan convinced him to switch his allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party.
Although a junior congressman, Chaffetz was asked to participate in the drafting of the Republican’s “Pledge to America,” which Chaffetz described as an “action plan that puts our plan in black and white. It’s a good starting point to convince frustrated Americans that we’ve learned from our mistakes and that we are ready to put this country back on the right direction,” said Chaffetz.
He bemoans the custom of legislators passing important bills without even reading them first. That’s why Chaffetz related that one of the tenets of the Pledge to America is that every proposed bill will be posted online so the public can review the bill before it is voted on. It also will require that any bill proposed must be vetted so that it meets constitutional standards.
The Pledge to America also tackles three major issues, according to Chaffetz:
1) Jobs – “We have to stop running through so much money. It creates uncertainty which isn’t good for business. This is coupled with regulatory uncertainty (i.e. proposing that every business must file a 1099 form for any expense over $600); as well as uncertainty connected with the Obama health plan, taxes, and Cap and Trade. We are proposing an immediate 20 percent tax relief for every small business,” said Chaffetz.
2) Immigration – “We need to enhance the operations of our border security, and fix legal immigration. It’s terribly immoral the way we treat immigrants. The government is way behind on this. As an example, I’m on the immigration committee and we have only met ten times in 21 months. We can’t fix immigration like that,” suggested Chaffetz.
3) Obama Care – “We need to institute a three part plan: Defund the program; repeal; and then replace it with a plan that will work,” proposed Chaffetz.
“The people in Utah are devastatingly concerned about the growth of government and the size of the debt. To help them grasp the size of the debt, I explain that we could spend $1 million a year for 3,000 years before we hit $1 trillion in debt. And since Obama took office we added 130,000 non-military federal employees. We have to stop this,” said Chaffetz.
Chaffetz may be a new member of congress but he doesn’t anticipate overstaying his welcome on Capitol Hill. “Even George Washington knew that it wasn’t a good idea to keep legislators in office too long. We need to flush the toilet every so often to get rid of unproductive legislators. We need new energy so we can keep the country on track. If you want change, you need to elect new people,” concluded Chaffetz.
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While I, personally, appreciate the congressman’s alusion to ‘flushing the toilet,’ it would, nevertheless, seem he has short recall of past Republican campaign tricks. Newt Gingrich and a Republican majority rode into town in 1994 on the back of the horse called “Contract with America.” Unfortunately, most of the contract’s tenets were soon abandoned since it had achieved its result: The election of a Republican-controlled congress. While Chaffetz may have approved of the congressional term limits so eloquently espoused in the “Contract with America,” he must realize that few Republicans voluntarily followed up with that promise. Democrats, ever the opportunists, had quickly jumped on the Republican failure to comply with their own stated goals and the much ballyhooed “Contract with America” became the “Contract on America.” By the time George W. Bush was elected president a mere six years later, little, if anything, remained of the contract. If we are to believe Republicans, who have seldom kept campaign promises or followed up on electioneering, then this new “Pledge to America” would have some meaning. Judging from past history, that’s not likely. A political party that believes, as Republicans seemingly do, that “What’s good for business is good for America” has, obviously, been asleep for these past few decades. Business has been at fault in the problems that have confronted us and likely will continue to do so. Sure, it is easy to fault people who overextended themselves financially but it is the financial market that allowed and then subsidized that overextension. Wages for the most wage earners has been stagnant (adjusted for inflation) since the 1970s while prices have skyrocketed – with a Republican president in the White House well more than half of that time frame. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”