Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (10 page)

Paul has been warning for over a year that the end result of Washington’s spending binge will be a European-style value-added tax (VAT). And sure enough, just days after Obamacare became law, Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker said a VAT may be necessary to keep up with entitlement spending. After all, someone needs to pay for all of their big spending programs.

The much better way to restore confidence in America’s economic future is for a new Congress to demonstrate a commitment to lowering the deficit without raising taxes by cutting discretionary spending rather than increasing it by 12 percent as Democrats proposed (before the president decided to freeze it at its new, much higher level).

Another, better way to create more jobs here at home
and
reduce our dependence on foreign oil is to remove unnecessary barriers to domestic energy production. No single source of energy will make us independent of the sheiks and autocrats who don’t have our interests at heart. Republicans have developed a comprehensive strategy to develop new domestic sources of oil, gas, nuclear, shale from coal, wind, and solar. The Democrats’ promises of magical new “green” jobs from shutting down domestic production of traditional energy sources are pie in the sky. In the past twenty years, Democrats on the national level became wedded to the ideology of the radical left—which looks at America’s natural reserves and sees toxic waste sites. I believe that most Americans look at our energy reserves and see valuable natural resources that will help to ease drivers’ pain at the pump and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. They understand that if we focus on developing all of our domestic sources, both traditional and renewable in environmentally secure ways, we can create jobs and increase our national security.

Speaking of jobs and economic growth, another critical area is education, a key driver for a more productive and vibrant workforce. In Virginia, this concern took the form of improving our schools and increasing access to education through helping families save for college. But Washington has a different role in education than the states and it has become too involved. These days, that role consists mainly of taking money from the states, bringing it to
Washington, and encouraging the earmarking and lobbying cultures that apportion education dollars according to muscle, not merit. Democrats can often be seen trying to allocate more and more federal tax dollars to our schools, and their intentions may be noble. Yet, despite the billions upon billions of federal dollars spent, achievement scores for American students are not where they need to be. Despite the fact that parents are constantly being taxed at the federal, state, and local levels, our children seem to be less and less equipped to compete with their foreign counterparts. Why? A big reason is because our dollars are going through lobbyists, middlemen, and bureaucrats before they ever reach our students and our classrooms. Considering America’s more than 70 billion–dollar federal education budget, that’s far too many dollars ending up away from our children.

So let’s get education dollars out of Washington and back, closer to our communities. My colleague Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania has a “Dollars to the Classroom” bill that would require that 95 cents of every federal education dollar go to the classroom, not the bureaucracy and the special interests. This is a commonsense, twenty-first-century approach to education that would provide immediate benefits to our children. But, I believe we should go further. We can and should do the same with federal spending on transportation, housing, and other needs best left to the states and communities. The more Washington spends, the more bureaucracy and special interests are attracted like
flies to the nation’s capital to demand even more spending, perpetuating the cycle of big government.

Want to drain the swamp in Washington? Stop the culture of cronyism and keep more of those dollars on the local level.

On jobs, the economy, energy and education, Republicans have put forward real solutions over the past year and half. But there is no more egregious example of our ideas—as well as the opinions of the American people—being overlooked by the current Washington majority than fixing our health-care system.

From the passionate town hall meetings of the summer of 2009 to the concerned citizens who converged on the Capitol as the Democratic majority maneuvered and manipulated its plan into law in 2010, Americans have sent signal after signal to Washington that they’re listening and they’re engaged. They’ve been telling Washington that they understand that health-care reform will have a profound effect, not just on themselves, but on generations of Americans not yet born. Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will pay the price for government health care in jobs and wages lost, in higher taxes, and in rationed and diminished quality of care.

This is the message that America has been sending the powers that be in Washington DC for over a year now. And for over a year, Washington has refused to listen. Instead, Democrats wrote the bill in secret without allowing input from dissenting Democrats or Republicans. They coerced wavering members for their votes with smarmy sweetheart deals like the $300 million “Louisiana Purchase.” They resorted to legislative trickery and arm-twisting when they couldn’t get enough legitimate votes to pass their bill. They forced through a trillion dollar overhaul of one sixth of our economy literally in defiance of the people they represent.

Overwhelmingly, Americans believe in building upon what works in our health-care system so that they can continue to enjoy the best care in the world. This health-care bill does the opposite. It destroys the system it purports to save.

Paul, Kevin, and I agree with the need to take action on health care. We do not accept the status quo. That’s why we are committed, not simply to repealing Democratic health-care reform, but replacing it with a system that works for all Americans by focusing first and foremost on lowering costs.

What does a health-care system that works for all Americans look like? Republicans believe in providing individuals and families with more affordable options without costly mandates by expanding insurance market competition. We would allow families to buy insurance across state lines and give every individual and small business the same access to tax incentives and pooling opportunities
that unions and corporations have today. We would end discrimination against Americans with preexisting conditions by creating state-based high risk pools, not by forcing everyone to pay more. And we would do something the Democrats will never do: reduce health-care costs by taking on the trial lawyers who force physicians into defensive medicine, which drives up costs for everyone.

Just days after the Democratic health-care bill was signed into law, American companies began to announce the higher costs they will experience under the law—costs that will be passed on to their employees and their customers. Before America’s competitiveness is reduced, our taxes raised, and our health-care system irreparably damaged, we need to repeal Democratic health-care reform and replace it with a better way. Paul, Kevin, and I are already on the job.

America’s challenges at home are real and pressing. But the job of a leader is to keep his or her eye on the bigger picture. And whether our current leaders in Washington always remember or not, America has real enemies in the world—enemies who don’t care if they’re read their Miranda rights or get a civilian trial, just that they kill as many innocents as they can.

As an American Jew, I am acutely aware of the existence
of evil in the world. In 2006, my cousin, Daniel, was killed in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. I’ll never forget when then-House Speaker Denny Hastert invited Daniel’s family up from Florida to hear Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speak to a joint session of Congress. After the speech, I invited Daniel’s family, along with two representatives from south Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to my office for coffee. It was there that Daniel’s father, Tuly, told us the story of his son’s death for the first time.

He and Daniel had been sitting in a café in Tel Aviv, Tuly said, when the terrorist walked in with a backpack. As the security guard asked to search the terrorist’s pack, Tuly watched as the terrorist detonated the bomb inside. The next thing Tuly knew, the power of the blast forced his son back into him. Daniel caught all the shrapnel and, in doing so, saved his father’s life. By the time Tuly had finished, we were all in tears.

No one needs to tell me about the bad guys out there. But being an American Jew has also given me a unique perspective on the good guys. Unlike some in Washington today, I don’t have any doubt about the moral strength of America. We have our flaws, it’s true. But we’re the good guys. We make mistakes, but we never set out to do evil or do harm to other people.

Contrary to what the conspiracy theorists say, America doesn’t have any imperialist impulses; we’re not out to conquer the world for power, oil, or any other trophy.
Unlike European colonial powers, America’s museums aren’t stocked with artifacts and works of art plundered from abroad. What we do have, though, is a set of beliefs. We believe in government by the consent of the governed. We believe in freedom of speech. We believe in full and equal rights for women. We believe in the economic freedom to work hard and see your work rewarded. We believe in the freedom to worship as you choose or not to worship at all. Make no mistake—it’s these beliefs, not any real or imagined offense that America has committed—that our enemies resent.

Unlike some of our current leaders in Washington, I know we have real differences with our enemies, and that these differences can’t be negotiated away. There is always a time and a place for diplomacy, of course. But I subscribe to the fundamental soundness of what the author Primo Levi said when he was asked what he learned from the Holocaust.

He said, “When a man with a gun says he’s going to kill you—believe him.”

Today, the head of state with the most dangerous gun pointed at the head of the United States is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tyrant of Iran. Under Ahmadinejad and his cronies, in just the past year and a half Iran has stolen an election, brutally crushed a democracy movement, and, most seriously of all for the United States and our ally Israel, ramped up its effort to develop a nuclear program.

The stakes are too high for us not to recognize that
the policy of engagement with Tehran has failed. Ahmadinejad has simply used the time spent in further, futile negotiations to bring his nuclear program closer to fruition. In just the time we have spent “reaching out” to Ahmadinejad, secret Iranian nuclear enrichment sites have been discovered and Iranian officials have promised that there will soon be more. Even toothless United Nations nuclear inspectors have come around to believing that Iran’s nuclear program isn’t “peaceful,” as Iranian officials have laughably claimed. It’s not hard to see the writing on the wall. No matter how many times Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that the Obama administration views the Iranian development of nuclear weapons as “unacceptable,” the unacceptable keeps happening. It’s looking for all the world like this administration is preparing to accept the reality of a nuclear armed Iran.

In fairness, administrations of both parties have done little to stop Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons, even as they have loudly complained about the “unacceptability” of it all. But the time for talk—even tough talk—is over. We would be lying to ourselves if we believed that a nuclear Iran could be deterred. A nuclear weapon in Ahmadinejad’s hands will allow the world’s most notorious state sponsor of terrorism to commit nuclear blackmail against whomever it pleases. It will pose an existential threat to the state of Israel, precipitate a full-fledged arms race in the Middle East, and gravely damage the national security of the United States.

There is a better way to deal with the tyrant of Tehran. America has to treat Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime like the thugs and agents of terror that they are, not like the trustworthy and compromising leaders we all wish they were. That means real sanctions, with real teeth. It means sending the message to the world that if you deal with Iran, you are not welcome to deal with the United States. It means empowering the brave Iranians who oppose the regime instead of leaving them to be shot on the street. And it means making sure Tehran understands that the option of force
is
on the table. We cannot and should not delude ourselves into thinking that Ahmadinejad will change course unless threatened with anything less.