Tom Mcclintock

Our modern military should have the latest technology and best equipment our nation can produce.  It should have the trained manpower necessary to repel an attack from wherever it may come, launch retaliatory strikes and make hot pursuit in response to provocations.  Most of all, it must maintain the structure necessary to expand rapidly in time of actual, congressionally declared war.  No less, but also no more.

Reagan rightly said that defense is not a budget issue – we spend what we must to defend our nation.  But we should not spend in excess of what is required either, for it is equally true that we cannot provide for the common defense if we cannot pay for it.  Nations that fail to maintain an adequate defense do not survive very long, but neither to those that maintain excessive forces, overextend their military and bankrupt themselves.

Traditionally, America has not attacked another country unless it has attacked us first.  When we have faced hostile powers in the past, we instead have surrounded them with superior force and waited them out.  Usually, this has proven sufficient, and when it hasn’t we have been prepared.  When we have had war forced upon us and have placed our military in harm’s way, Congress has declared war, as the Constitution requires, and we have backed our troops with the full might and fury of the nation and gotten it over with as quickly as possible.

Since the Korean War, we have largely abandoned these principles, and the result has been 70 years of stalemate and the gradual diminishment of our nation’s resources, international respect, and public will.   We need to get back to the ancient principles that worked: a small, agile, professional and well equipped military that can fulfill core peace-keeping functions with the ability and structure to expand rapidly and decisively in time of war.

The fundamentals necessary for economic growth are a stable currency, the enforcement of contracts, the security of property rights, the accuracy of information in the market, and above all, the freedom of individuals to enjoy the fruit of their labor and to negotiate freely with others to exchange their goods and services under mutually acceptable terms.

We know how to fix an economy because we have done so many times before. Whenever we have reduced the tax and regulatory burdens on the economy, it has thrived and expanded. And whenever we have increased those burdens, the economy has withered and declined.

Obamacare has caused premiums to skyrocket for millions of Americans and, at the same time, denied them the health plans and doctors that they had, they liked, and they were promised they could keep.  It has caused the equivalent of 2.5 million American lost jobs, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.  It is, in short, an unmitigated disaster that I have opposed every step of the way.  There is no substitute for its complete repeal.

Once we have done that, there are many reforms to improve access and affordability.  We should provide the same tax advantages we currently give to employers to the employees themselves so that they can select and own a plan that best meets their own needs. We should provide the freedom to shop anywhere in the nation for the best plan.  We should expand Health Savings Accounts, so that people can meet their health care needs with pre-tax dollars; reform cost drivers like malpractice; and strengthen assigned risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions.

The principal problem with our immigration laws is that they are not being enforced.  We already have a “pathway to citizenship” that is taken by millions of LEGAL immigrants who have obeyed our laws, respected our nation’s sovereignty, waited patiently in line and done everything our nation has asked of them, while 15 million ILLEGAL immigrants attempt to cut in line in front of them.

Our nation of immigrants is only possible because of assimilation: as immigrants come to America, they come with a sincere desire to be Americans – to acquire a common culture, a common language and a devotion to American constitutional principles.  Our immigration laws were written to assure assimilation.  ILLEGAL immigration undermines assimilation and makes a mockery of the rule of law.

I favor the strict enforcement of our current immigration law as a prerequisite for any other reform.

 

I believe the single greatest peril to our nation is our national debt – now exceeding $19 trillion.  That debt grew by $595 billion this year – think of that as more than $4,000 added to an average family’s credit card bill.  Interest on the debt is now the fastest growing component of the federal budget and the Congressional Budget Office warns that on our current trajectory, interest costs will exceed what we are currently spending on our entire defense establishment in just six years.

Obviously, the current budget system is not working.  We need a balanced budget amendment to constrain borrowing, while restoring budget procedures that will allow Congress to regain control of the purse strings.  The explosion of mandatory spending – mainly entitlements over which Congress lacks direct control – are the crux of the problem, and I believe that two simple reforms in the budget process can go a long way to fixing it: placing mandatory spending programs under the same annual review as discretionary spending and forbidding appropriations not authorized by law.

We once enjoyed the finest highway system in the world, built around the automobile, which offers efficient, economical, convenient, comfortable, adaptive, doorstep-to-doorstep, 24-hour per day on-call service.  We financed this remarkably simple system through fees, taxes and bonds paid for by highway users in proportion to their use.  But beginning in the 1970’s, we abandoned all these advantages for rigid, inefficient, inconvenient, bureaucratized mass transit systems.  We diverted highway taxes for purposes unrelated to our highways and squandered billions of dollars on government transit.  The result is crumbling and chronically congested highways and breathtakingly expensive mass transit systems that the masses don’t use.

I believe that we need to restore our highway taxes for our highways, and undertake the long-overdue modernization of our once vaunted highway system.