Bob Walsh's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Key
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Bob Walsh has provided voters with clear stances on key issues by responding to the 2020 Political Courage Test.
New Mexico Congressional Election 2020 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| We have a right to privacy in all of our activities. Interactions among consenting adults in private spaces are not public matters, provided that they respect the rights of others. Private matters are beyond the reach of law enforcement or courts. Sources are protected. Hate cannot be illegal. Our conversations with counselors, doctors, and other health care providers are private. Our medical procedures are private. Therefore, laws prohibiting medical procedures cannot be justly enforced and must therefore be null and void. | |||
| No | In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket? | ||
| No | Do you support expanding federal funding to support entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare? | ||
| Reduce military to $300B, still the world's largest. Abolish Health, Housing, and Education, which our Constitution does not authorize. They provide neither doctors, builders, nor teachers. They return tax money with rules that restrict health care, limit housing choices, and hamper schools. Similarly, abolish Energy, Homeland Security, and NASA. Abolish Medicare and Medicaid, returning authority over medicine to the states. The savings of $1400B would create a small surplus in a normal year. SS does not invest premiums, it just transfers money from workers to retirees. Let's transition to a voluntary system before our changing demographic makes it impossible. | |||
| No | Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions? | ||
| We should never limit our access to new ideas. | |||
| No | Do you support the protection of government officials, including law enforcement officers, from personal liability in civil lawsuits concerning alleged misconduct? | ||
| When there is a threat of injury or death, everyone has a responsibility to act. Government officials should not have more protection from personal liability than is available to everyone. | |||
| No | Do you support increasing defense spending? | ||
| We should cut defense spending in half and still have the largest military budget in the world. We should bring our military home to protect our borders. On 9/11, our military mistakenly thought we were being attacked from the Atlantic, but had only two fighter planes ready to scramble. | |||
| No | Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| No | Do you support lowering corporate taxes as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| No | Do you support providing financial relief to businesses AND/OR corporations negatively impacted by the state of national emergency for COVID-19? | ||
| Government spending usually tries to restore an earlier supply/demand balance, thereby discouraging innovation and invention and reducing economic growth. That is how the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression until WWII ended it. Lowering corporate taxes without reducing government spending will not promote growth. Reducing government budgets promotes growth. COVID-19 is a long-term problem, not an emergency. Taxpayers should not pay businesses that failed to adapt to the changing needs of their customers, such as failing to provide deliveries of groceries, meals, or entertainment. Unsuccessful ventures must fail in order to make room for new ideas. | |||
| No | Do you support requiring states to adopt federal education standards? | ||
| No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Education standards should be controlled as locally as possible, starting with the family. | |||
| No | Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| No | Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| Climates change. There is such a thing as climate science, but predictions are not science. They require assumptions about the future world economy and predictions about future technologies. These go into crude models of complex processes. The model outputs, such as average global temperature, are highly uncertain. Further, there is no agreement on the benefits or detriments of changes, no agreement on an optimum temperature. Because of the compounding effect of growth, the world economy could be ten times larger at the end of this century. Restricting our growth now will impact our future wealth and our ability to adapt. | |||
| No | Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | ||
| In a totalitarian state, the government controls the people. In a democracy, the people control the government. Although we like to believe that the people in our democracy control the government through elections, that is only because the people are a greater military force than anything available to the government. We avoid any test of the military balance, any violent confrontation between the people and the government, by assuring that the people maintain an overwhelming military superiority. Therefore the public should possess any weapons available to the government, and the government may not disarm persons on any grounds. | |||
| Yes | Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")? | ||
| No | Do you support requiring businesses to provide paid medical leave during public health crises, such as COVID-19? | ||
| Regulation of insurance is reserved to the states by our Constitution. Libertarians favor a free market health care system. We recognize the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health insurance they want (if any), the level of health care they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use and all other aspects of their medical care, including end-of-life decisions. People should be free to purchase health insurance across state lines. Similarly, regulation of local businesses is not a power granted to Congress. | |||
| No | Do you support the construction of a wall along the Mexican border? | ||
| No | Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship? | ||
| Good fences may make good neighbors, but they should define borders, not intimidate. Our Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce at the border, but not the power to regulate immigration; that power was the invented by the Supreme Court. Everyone has a right to liberty, which includes a right to travel. Laws restricting immigration are both immoral and unconstitutional and therefore null and void. As a consequence, no one is unlawfully present. | |||
| No | Should the United States use military force to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a weapon of mass destruction (for example: nuclear, biological, chemical)? | ||
| Yes | Do you support reducing military intervention in Middle East conflicts? | ||
| The people of the United States should prohibit our military from possessing weapons of mass destruction and encourage all other peoples to do the same. Our military should be used to secure the rights of our people. It may also be used to secure the rights of people in other countries, but only if we have a mutual defense pact with that country and that country contributes its fair share to the effort. | |||
| Yes | Do you generally support removing barriers to international trade (for example: tariffs, quotas, etc.)? | ||
| We should remove all barriers to international trade except for fees necessary to support import/export infrastructure. Tariffs are a known cause of economic recessions. Foreign competition means lower prices and more sales, both for the foreign companies and for the more efficient American companies that can meet the competition. American buyers pay less, so have more money to spend on other goods and services, creating new American jobs. Foreign workers and companies have more income, so can purchase American stuff, creating still more new American jobs. | |||
| 1) Require IRS to provide each individual a draft tax return, using publicly available data. The individual may accept his/her return, avoiding invasion of privacy, or modify it. Additional IRS effort will be balanced by reduced effort processing returns. (until the tax is repealed) 2) Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to create an independent immigration court within the Judicial branch, outside of the control of the Executive branch. Transfer funds from ICE to pay for this. (until immigration laws are repealed) |
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