Debate Responses: April 23, 2012, Carmel, Indiana

Debate

I recently had the joy of debating with six of the Republican candidates for U.S. Congress in Indiana's 5th district. The debate was held on April 23 in Carmel, Indiana. In case you were unable to attend, I have provided the questions we were asked along with my responses below:

FIRST QUESTION: How would you interpret the limit and scope of your powers as a Member of Congress?

It is important to remember that the federal government only exists because the states agreed to grant it limited powers through the Constitution. In their wisdom, our Founding Fathers only gave the federal government seventeen specific powers, and they clearly stated in the 10th Amendment that all other powers would be reserved to the people and to the states.

In essence, the 10th Amendment is a leash on our federal government that prevents it from getting outside of its realm of authority. But a leash is only as good as the person holding it. For the past 150 years, the Republicans and Democrats have proven that they are altogether unworthy of holding the federal government accountable to the Constitution, and quite frankly, it's time to pass the leash on to someone who is more principled in their stance for liberty.

As we discuss the major issues tonight, it will become increasingly evident that the six gentlemen on the stage with me are like six different brands of plain vanilla cookies. Sure, they may have different packaging and a different marketing strategy, but they were all made in the same factory with the same basic ingredients. Furthermore, they will all leave the same taste in your mouth --disappointment.

If you are satisfied with how our federal government is currently run, then you should probably vote for one of these respectable gentlemen because they will continue to maintain the status quo.

But if you're like me, you understand that the United States is way past the point of needing minor adjustments. Rather, it is time to completely restructure the size and scope of our federal government. It's time to reclaim our roots of limited government and reassert our natural rights to life, liberty, and property. I'm Chard Reid, and a vote for me this November is a vote to fundamentally simplify government!

SECOND QUESTION: The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (shown overhead) reads:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Give your thoughts about the meaning of the First Amendment in the 21st Century.

Our Founding Fathers tried to ensure that future Americans would have the autonomy to exercise their religion freely without government interference. Consequently, they used very explicit language in the 1st Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…"

Our freedom of speech and freedom of religion are under attack more now than they have been throughout the history of our country because too many of our legislators have confused "freedom of religion" with "freedom from religion". As a result of this mentality, they have tried to remove religion from every facet of our lives.

The truth is that government has absolutely no authority to prevent me from standing on a street corner and proclaiming that we are all sinners, that we all deserve hell, and that only Jesus Christ can forgive our sins and save our souls. The 1st Amendment protects my freedom to say that. However, you should have the freedom to stand next to me and disagree with everything I proclaim. That's the beauty of the First Amendment.

As citizens, we must insist that our government fully recognize our God-given freedoms of speech and religion. But let me take it a step further: We must insist that people of all faiths are given the same protection under law. Many of my Protestant and Catholic friends fight hard for Christian freedoms but they are perfectly comfortable with restricting the freedoms of law-abiding Muslims and atheists in our community. This approach violates the 1st Amendment by unofficially establishing Christianity as our nation's religion.

I once heard Pastor Tony Campolo explain it this way: "Mixing the politics and religion is a lot like mixing cow manure and ice cream. It doesn't hurt the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream." I interpret that to mean that any time government gets involved in religion, things get messy. So as your representative in Washington, I pledge to keep government out of your life and out of your faith!

THIRD QUESTION: The U. S. Constitution is incorporated into state law. Will each of you, again within two minutes, favor us with your understanding of this incorporation and how that understanding allows for hand gun restrictions in some cities, but not all and the prohibition on prayer in public schools in all such places?

The Bill of Rights was written to prevent the government from abusing its power by officially recognizing that all men have inalienable, God-given liberties. Furthermore, it clearly denies our federal government the ability to infringe upon these natural rights.

Take for example the Second Amendment. It states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, this is very explicit in its meaning: Government cannot take away our rights to keep and bear arms. Did you hear me? No government is allowed to make laws that take away your God-given freedoms! According to the Constitution, you don't need a gun permit--the 2nd Amendment is your gun permit.

Let's be very clear about this--I'm a Constitutional Libertarian, not an anarchist. As a law abiding citizen, I have jumped through the hoops, I have given the government my fingerprints, and I have a pink slip of paper in my wallet that says that I can carry a firearm. But let's be honest. The presence of gun permits doesn't prevent criminals from acquiring guns or using guns. Rather, it discourages law-abiding citizens from carrying guns because it is a hassle to fill out the paperwork, and it is expensive to do so. So we have allowed local governments to restrict our 2nd Amendment rights, but we are tragically no safer than we were before. In fact, we are probably less safe because the ratio of gun-carrying criminals to gun-carrying citizens has increased.

The Constitution is also very clear about prayer and other religious expressions of our faith. They should not be restricted. That being said, I believe students should be allowed to pray before, during, and after school on school property. And I think they should be allowed to say "Merry Christmas" instead of being forced to create "Season's Greetings" cards.

But I do not think teachers at publicly-funded schools should be leading prayer or teaching religion during school hours. That job is best left for the family and the Church. Furthermore, as a Christian, I do not want my little ones being indoctrinated in grade school with the religious opinions of a teacher who may be an atheist or of another faith. Nor do I think prayer should be administered by the school. I want my kids to learn to pray to God the Father through the name of Jesus Christ, but it is my responsibility to teach them that--not the school's responsibility.

Some of you want prayer in schools, but would insist that only Christian prayer be allowed. But that would clearly violate the 1st Amendment because it would give the government power to restrict prayers of other faiths and to unofficially establish a preferred religion.

FOURTH QUESTION: By a show of hands, how many believe Medicare and Medicaid may remain essentially as they are currently? For those who indicated these programs need change, what would you cite as the most fundamental problem with one or both of them?

The Medicare program is the greatest fiscal challenge facing America, both today and over the course of the coming decades. If the American people do not demand quick and decisive reforms, the program will most likely become an unbearable burden on our economy and will act to further destroy the value of our dollar. Most of you know that our national debt now exceeds $15.6 trillion. But did you realize that we have $102 trillion of unfunded Medicare liabilities? And that number doesn't even include our unfunded Medicaid obligations.

The gentlemen with me on stage will each have their favorite scapegoat to blame for the problems of Medicare. But the fundamental problem with Medicare is the fact that the Republicans and Democrats alike are unwilling to make necessary reforms to the program. Our representatives from the two parties care more about reelection than doing what's best for our country. They fear the backlash of upset voters who are addicted to government programs. So instead of coming clean with the American people and admitting that they made promises that they are unable to keep, they have decided to pretend that the problem doesn't exist. I call this mentality "Santa Claus Economics". In fact, I have an entire video series called "Santa Claus Economics" that examines the lies government that government has convinced us to believe. (You can find those on YouTube or at www.ChardReid.com.)

For decades, this monster we call healthcare has been growing at an alarming rate, but our elected officials have been more concerned with reelection than doing the right thing. So year after year, they have kicked the can down the road in agreement with John M. Keynes' famous quote: "In the long run, we are all dead." Even this year, instead of trying to make the program more sustainable in the long run by reducing federal subsidies to Medicare Part B, our federal government has increased its portion of monthly premiums by 15%.

To be honest with you, we cannot tackle the problems of Medicare in a two-minute response, so I encourage you to check out my website. I have committed 1,700 words to describing how we got into this mess, why we must reform Medicare, and three of my solutions that Congress can initiate immediately to put Medicare back on a path to sustainability.

For the record, Wayne Seybold, Jack Lugar, Susan Brooks, and Bill Salin do not even mention the Medicare program on their websites. David McIntosh dedicates one sentence on his issues page to Medicare Part D, but ironically he tries to associate President Obama and Nancy Pelosi with the program instead of acknowledging that it was actually created under President Bush. Dr. McGoff wants to increase government's influence in health care by giving subsidies to hospitals for residency slots to meet the rising demand of an aging population. None of them offer real solutions. Instead, the Republicans focus on their favorite scapegoat--Obamacare--because they know it is an emotionally charged topic. Fellow candidates, stop dodging the issues and step up with some real solutions to the problems our nation faces.

FIFTH QUESTION: What is the single best way to "get money out of politics'?

According to PolitiFact.org, the U.S. tax code is 3.8 million words long. That would be over 11,000 pages of a single-spaced Word document with standard settings. There are nearly 775,000 words in the Bible. That means that the U.S. tax code is almost 5 times longer than the Bible.

There are two obvious reasons for this ridiculous amount of detail and complexity. First, the federal government has grown drastically in size and scope over the past century, and it has needed additional sources of tax revenues to fund its ridiculous levels of spending.

But there is a second and more important factor at play here: Our elected officials have developed a side-business in Washington through which they give sweetheart tax deals to a variety of special interest groups and in return they receive political contributions and under-the-table bribes. Because these deals are done behind closed doors, they are very hard to regulate.

However, there is one piece of legislation that will simplify our tax code and take the money out of politics. It's called the FairTax, and it completely eliminates the IRS and every federal tax currently in place. That means you would no longer be forced to pay income taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, gift taxes, estate taxes, or self-employment taxes.
The FairTax replaces our 3.8 million word tax code with a 133 page document. Furthermore, it allows you to save your money tax-free, invest your money tax-free, and give your money away tax-free.

The FairTax is a consumption tax on all final goods and services. Essentially, that means that you do not have to pay taxes on used goods and businesses do not have to pay taxes on intermediate goods that are used to create a final product. The beautiful thing about the FairTax is that it will eliminate special interest groups from the tax code because every final good is subject to taxes with no exceptions. By eliminating loopholes, the FairTax will effectively discourage bribes from special interest groups.

In addition, it is important for me to point out that the FairTax would highly discourage illegal immigration because every purchase illegals make would now be subject to taxes.

SIXTH QUESTION: The U. S. Senate has failed to produce a budget for some 1,000 days now and has no intention of doing so this year, according to the Majority Leader. If, indeed, the Senate failed to act, what would you do?

Unlike the gentlemen on stage with me, I will not have to answer to John Boehner and the moderate House Republicans. Therefore, I will have freedom to oppose every continuing resolution and demand action to pass a budget immediately. As a finance and economics teacher, I have stressed the importance of budgeting and living within one's means to every student I've had in class throughout my career. Likewise, I believe that our government must live within its means and according to a budget. Allowing our elected officials to operate without a budget is similar to giving your twelve-year-old daughter a credit card, dropping her off at the mall, and telling her to get any new clothes that she needs.

We have to remember whose money the federal government is using. Every tax dollar collected comes from the fruit of your labor, and it is being squandered and redistributed to less productive members of society on a daily basis. What about all of the money government is borrowing? You are also paying for that through future taxes and inflation.

So yes, I am prepared to take drastic actions to make sure that government is held accountable for how it spends our hard-earned and easily-transferred money. I am prepared to vote against continuing resolutions and to shut government down. But I feel like I should be perfectly clear about what shutting the government down entails because I don't want you to buy into the scare tactics. People on Social Security will still receive their checks, active duty military personnel will still receive their paycheck, and all "essential" employees will still show up to work.

Please remember, I am the only one up here talking about massive spending cuts and immediate entitlement reform. These other gentlemen are going to fall into line and do everything John Boehner tells them to do. They can verbally promise to shutdown government, but Mr. McIntosh voted with the Republican Party over 90% of the time when he was actually present to vote, and I expect more of the same from each of these men.

When you send me to Washington, I will refuse to play by their rules. Instead, I will vote according to the timeless principles of the Constitution on every issue that comes up for a vote.

SEVENTH QUESTION: If a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced budget which could only be overridden by a 2/3 majority in each chamber were to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives, how would you vote?

As the most fiscally conservative candidate in this race, I will joyfully pass a balanced budget amendment, but I honestly don't think it will hold Congress as accountable to unchecked spending as most conservatives may think. In fact, it may actually serve as a scapegoat for raising the overall tax burden on the middle class and the wealthy in the long run.

In addition to voting for a balanced budget, it is critically important that we send someone to Washington who is going to fight against the two-party system to drastically cut spending across the board. I have already developed my own proposal that will balance the budget within two years. Obviously, I understand that such a budget will not pass, but it will serve as an honorable starting point for budget discussions. Perhaps more importantly, my budget will clearly reveal Representative Paul Ryan's plan for what it is--a complete joke and a slap in the face to every conservative in America. Most Republicans in Congress are perfectly content with signing onto Paul Ryan's so called "Path to Prosperity" even though it will not produce a budget surplus until the year 2040. That means our debt is going to continue to accumulate for 28 years and that the government is going to continue to fund its spending through massive levels of inflation and borrowing. In light of that, I believe Mr. Ryan's plan should be renamed the "Path to Global Mediocrity," and that anyone willing to support his plan should turn in their "conservative card" immediately without hesitation.

To be even more clear, I will vote against every budget proposal that does not cut spending by at least 20% during my first year and every budget that does not provide a legitimate game plan to balance the budget within the next five years.

Although all of the gentlemen up here will most likely express a desire to pass a balanced budget amendment, I suspect that they are either uninformed about the ramifications of their position or they are lying straight to your face. For decades, Republicans and Democrats have been unwilling to make necessary reforms to Medicare and Social Security, and I do not believe that any of my opponents have committed to reforming either program in the next session of Congress. That being said, allow me to generalize their positions for you:

They adamantly promise to not raise your taxes, they have implicitly agreed to not change your precious Medicare and Social Security programs, they are very unlikely to reduce spending on the military, and they cannot do anything about interest on the debt. Those four programs represent nearly 65% of our federal budget, and they are unwilling to touch them. So by suggesting that they will balance the budget, they are either revealing their ignorance in this area or they are suggesting that they will literally cut almost every other federal program (leaving only $22 billion for everything else). In other words, if you don't reform the big four programs and you don't want higher taxes, you will be required to completely zero out spending on things like veterans' benefits and interstate highways in your quest to balance the budget. So my question for the gentlemen on this stage is simple:

Are you blissfully uninformed about the ramifications of your position, do you really want to cut every other program, or are you just flat dishonest?

EIGHTH QUESTION: If a Constitutional Amendment limiting House terms to 6 -- 8 and Senate terms to 2-3 were to come up for a vote in the House, how would you vote?

We already have term limits--they're called elections. And the beautiful thing about elections is that they're Constitutional. Term limits, on the other hand, restrict our freedom of speech by preventing us from electing the candidate of our choice. I cannot support any legislation that prohibits our First Amendment rights.

Let's not insult the American people by suggesting that they are too ignorant to elect the right candidate. I am around people every day that understand the issues--they just don't believe that their vote matters. Americans as a whole have seen the way the two-party system restricts competition through the straight-party ticket and how the two parties try to marginalize third-party candidates. And as a result, they feel incapable of making a difference.

But friends, this year can be different. As you have heard this evening, I am the only candidate in this race who will honor the Constitution with my voting record, who will fight to restrict the scope and size of government, and who reassert our God-ordained liberties. Let's show the young people in this country that their vote does matter and that the two parties don't own our votes.

If there was ever a district to experiment with my theory, this is the one. Dan Burton won over sixty percent of the vote for consecutive years, and the Democrat only won 26% last year. This is your golden opportunity to show America that voting still matters.

NINTH QUESTION: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have guaranteed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars towards mortgages that have defaulted or may soon default. What would the best way out of Fannie and Freddie's problems be?

The role of the federal government is to protect our lives, our liberties, and our property. It was never intended to provide those things to us. The 10th Amendment states very clearly that power not granted to the federal government should be left to the states and to the people. Therefore, government should have absolutely no role in the housing market.

I believe that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should immediately sell all of their mortgages that are currently up-to-date to private institutions at market value. They should begin intentionally liquidating their properties that are currently in default, starting with the ones whose market values are above or within 10% of the principal value of the outstanding loan. It would be a mistake to sell all of the properties at one time because the drastic increase in supply would decrease the value of all homes. That would not be fair to homeowners or taxpayers who should demand that Fannie and Freddie return as much to the federal government as possible. As the market continues to recover, we as taxpayers will have more of our money returned to the government if we are patient with the process. This process should be completed by December of 2015.

Furthermore, they should not be allowed to issue any new mortgages.

Although the Democrats and the media want you to believe that the subprime housing crisis was created by "greedy banks", the truth is that it was produced by short-sighted politicians. By guaranteeing high-risk loans, the government encouraged banks to make loans that they would not otherwise have made. At first, this policy served to increase the demand for homes, and the price of homes across the nation rose at unprecedented rates. But that's how bubbles work--there's always a boom before the bust. A plan that seems too good to be true is probably too good to be true.

It doesn't take a Ph. D to see that in its quest to increase home ownership among middle to lower class families, the Republicans and Democrats did not consider how their actions would affect the rest of the housing market. As a result, many homeowners in this room who did things the right way have mortgages that are under water. So who is to blame? I want to be clear again that this was not something that only Democrats were promoting. There were plenty of Republicans who liked the idea of making home ownership more attainable for the poor and middle class. But their "group think" mentality lacked the wisdom to understand the long-term consequences of their legislation.

TENTH QUESTION: If the U. S. Supreme Court were to uphold the Patient Safety and Affordable Care Act (aka, ObamaCare) and either a Democrat-run Senate or Mr. Obama's re-election make repeal impossible, what would be the single plank in ObamaCare you would fight to eliminate?

Government should not be in the business of making decisions on our behalf. Rather, government should be as far removed from your life as humanly possible. Let me remind you that the 10th Amendment puts a leash on what the federal government has the power to do. Healthcare is completely outside the realm of government's authority. It vexes me to consider that our elected officials, who are supposedly educated, can imagine for even a second that our Founding Fathers would have approved of giving government the right to force Americans to purchase something they did not want.

By a show of hands, how many of you own a business? Just think about all of the red tape you have to deal with to comply with government's regulation of your business. Now put yourself in the shoes of a small insurance company. Should the government be able to tell you what percentage of insurance premiums you are required to hold in escrow? Should government be allowed to make rules about who qualifies for coverage? Should it be able to regulate other aspects of your business? Of course not. Government should never involve itself in the market for any good or service.

If the recent financial disaster has taught us anything, it's that government intervention in the marketplace perverts market signals, creates massive asset bubbles, and eventually causes the market to crash.

But friends, let's remember, Obamacare is not the biggest threat facing our nation. Rather, it is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Our elected officials have completely disregarded the Bill of Rights, and as a result, government has been increasing in size and scope for the past century. Most of you are probably agreeing with me right now, but in your mind you are blaming only Democrats for the problems we face. Let me ask you a few questions:

Who passed Medicare D and effectively added $20 trillion to our future budgets?
Who drastically increased the power of the department of education?
From 2003 -- 2006 when the Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency, did they not pass four of the biggest deficits in the history of our country?

The Republicans! We have to wake up to the fact that they are just as much to blame for big government as the Democrats. If we truly want to fix government, we have to break the two-party system. Allow me to close with a few simple questions:

Are you ready to reassert your natural-born rights to life, liberty, and property?
Do you want to balance the budget in five years or less?
Do you understand that Social Security and Medicare cannot last in their current form?
Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired of how Washington operates?

If you answered yes to those questions, than I am your man. Vote for Chard Reid in November. But don't stop there. I need your help today to get my message out to all of Carmel, Hamilton County, and the entire 5th district. Will you join me in my quest to simplify government?

Source