Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/
Veterans have sacrificed to ensure our nation’s security.
Many of our finest soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen have been wounded in the wars our nation has had to fight. Many more will be in the fights necessary to defeat the terrorist networks and other enemies.
Preserving our Second Amendment Rights
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/preserving-our-second-amendment-rights/“Every state and the District of Columbia will be required to honor the concealed carry permits issued by every other state and DC. There will never be an assault weapons ban during my presidency. As the Constitution says, our Second Amendment rights shall not be infringed.”
I am committed to the individual right to keep and bear arms by every American who has not forfeited that right by criminal conviction or other action. The right own, carry and keep a gun is under relentless attack and pressure. As President I will be committed to standing up for our rights under the Second Amendment.
There is far too much violent crime in America. But that fact does not arise from the right of Americans to keep and bear arms.
The real reasons for violent crime – especially crimes in which guns are used – is that it’s easier for politicians to huff and puff about the need for more gun control rather than deal with the real problems. You can see that in cities such as Baltimore and New York where the mayors scorn the police and don’t want to face the facts that are causing their people to suffer from so much crime.
We know what the real problems are: the need for easier involuntary commitment of the dangerous mentally ill, the dangers brought about by Obama’s open borders policy and surer appropriate punishment of criminals.
I know these are the real issues because I am a member of the National Rifle Association’s Board of Directors. I have defended Americans’ Second Amendment rights throughout my career and will continue to do so because the Second Amendment is just as important as any of the other rights preserved for us by the Constitution.
Every tragedy such as the Newtown school massacre, the killings in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater and the mass murders at Virginia Tech have one thing in common. They were all perpetrated by people who were mentally ill and dangerous to everyone around them. That problem isn’t going to be solved by gun control and background checks.
For decades, the states have made it harder and harder to involuntarily commit the dangerous mentally ill. Psychiatrists and psychologists owe it to our society to devise effective tests, and states need to adopt better laws, to ensure that to the greatest extent possible the dangerous mentally ill can be identified and involuntarily committed for however long they remain a danger.
We need to do a lot more to protect our children in schools. Not every teacher should be required to be armed, but those who choose to be should be specially trained with Tasers and firearms. We need to put ballistic-resistant doors and locks on classrooms and protect first-floor windows with ballistic glass. Teachers need to have the training and means to save children’s lives until police arrive to deal with a shooter.
Gun-free zones serve only to tell potential murderers and terrorists where their most vulnerable victims can be found. We need to arm our off-base military, all of whom are terrorist targets. Failing to do so is irresponsible and puts our troops at risk.
Gun control advocates need to face the fact that their efforts will hurt far more than they help. And our minority community should realize that, as Justice Scalia’s brilliant opinion in DC v Heller showed, the American gun control movement began in post-Civil War years when southern states chose to prevent blacks from owning firearms. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.
Gun control is not the answer to our society’s problems. Effective methods of institutionalizing the dangerously mentally ill, protecting our school children and ensuring the enforcement of our laws to imprison criminals and protect our borders are the answer.
Winning the War
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/winning-the-war/We need to win the war the terrorists and terrorist nations are waging against us. The only way to do that is to defeat them not only on the battlefield but by defeating the ideology of radical Islam at the same time. My experiences – as governor of a state attacked on 9-11, as a counterintelligence agent in the Cold War – give me the necessary skills to lead America forward to victory.
We are fighting the longest war in America’s history. It is being waged against us by the terrorist networks and the nations that sponsor them such as Iran.
This war has been going on at least since the 1979 seizure of American diplomats in Tehran, Iran. It has continued through many other attacks, including the 1982 bombing of the Marines’ barracks in Beirut, Lebanon by the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah terrorists and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia and the airliner that crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It is a cliché to say that we cannot kill our way out of this war. That statement is correct as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. We must – and as president I will – apply the weapons of war necessary to win any fight. But we also have to win another fight: the ideological war no other candidate apparently understands.
Radical Islam is an ideology to the same extent that Islam is a religion. Radical Islam is an integrated system of beliefs and religious laws upon which a form of government is intended to be based. It’s not like American conservatism or liberalism, but it is very much like Communism, Nazism and Shintoism, ideologies we have defeated in the past.
Like the Nazis, the radical Islamists play on the sense of persecution and cultural inferiority that many people in underdeveloped nations have because they are truly oppressed. And, like the Nazis, the Islamists have convinced their followers that the problems of their world are the fault of others. The Islamists blame every ill of their world on America, the West, the Jews and Israel.
Like the Soviets, the Islamists believe that their enslavement of the world is inevitable (though, unlike the Soviets, they believe it is God’s will that they must succeed). Radical Islam’s adherents, like the Nazis and the Communists before them, believe their victory is both inevitable and irreversible. That is a powerful ideology which we have yet to engage with the necessary weapons.
Our military – comprised of many of the best people our country has ever produced – is winning every fight it enters. But it can’t win the war only by bombing and shooting. Our politicians have to do their share by fighting the ideological war.
When he first became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2005, Marine Gen. Peter Pace demonstrated that he understood this better than any of our politicians. In his “guidance” to the Joint Staff, published soon after he took the job, Pace said, “Our enemies are violent extremists who would deny us, and all mankind, the freedom to choose our own destiny. Finding this distributed, loosely networked enemy is the greatest challenge we face. We must find and defeat them in an environment where information, perception, and how and what we communicate are every bit as critical as the application of traditional kinetic effects.”
Pace was precisely correct. What we say and write is just as important in this war as how well we shoot. Unless and until we defeat the ideology of radical Islam we cannot defeat the terrorists who use it to propel their war. We cannot win the kinetic war without winning the ideological war.
So how do we do it?
There are two predicates to winning the war against terrorism and the nations that sponsor it.
First, we must have the strong presidential leadership that can lift up the American people and bring them to understand that in this longest war the enemy will have some successes, even in future terrorist attacks on our homeland. But instead of living in fear of such attacks, we can – and I promise to do – whatever is necessary to produce a victory over the terrorist networks and the nations that sponsor them.
I know how to do this. My experiences as governor when the Pentagon was attacked on 9-11, as Chairman of the congressionally-mandated Advisory Panel on Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction and as a counter-intelligence agent during the Cold War give me the skills to accomplish that, skills none of my opponents have.
Second, we must strengthen our intelligence capabilities – not only satellites but intelligence agents in hostile nations – who can provide the information essential to interdicting and deterring attacks on Americans at home and abroad. We should invest in new intelligence technologies in order to attain and maintain the upper hand against all our adversaries but especially against the natural advantage terrorists have in their ability to hide among otherwise peaceful people.
In doing that, we have to maintain our free society and not give carte blanch to domestic intelligence activities. Intelligence must be established to adequately protect us from terrorists who come across our borders and home-grown terrorists as well. But it must be limited by our laws and subjected to strict oversight.
In order to win this war we have to understand the grip radical Islam has on too many people in too many nations. It is the reason President Bush’s nation-building had to fail in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have to look for, and encourage, those moderate Muslim leaders who want to reform their religion to reject the Radical Islamists’ ideology.
I was encouraged by the January 1 speech by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In that speech, al-Sisi called radical Islam to account. His central theme was the insanity of Islam trying to set itself apart from – and to conquer – the rest of the world. His words flew in the face of all the terrorist network leaders saying, “It is inconceivable that the wrong ideas that we sacralize (sic) should make the entire umma [Muslim community] a source of concern, danger, killing, and destruction for the whole world. This is not possible.”
Al-Sisi thus condemned not Islam itself, but those who say that Islam’s sacred texts should be read to demand that it dominate the entire world, to set itself at war with all other religions.
We cannot embrace al-Sisi because of his oppressive domestic policies but we can work with him to change those policies and to encourage his ideological fight. We can, and must, seek to encourage other Muslim leaders at home and abroad to follow his example. Those Muslim leaders, including those in the United States, who want to resist the radical Islamists’ ideology must be encouraged to do so and helped as much as a non-Muslim nation can.
In a highly significant speech on July 20th of this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron described why this war is an ideological one and outlining his policies on how to fight it.
Cameron first stated the obvious: that radical Islam, the Islam of the terrorists, is an extremist doctrine and, he said, an ideology that is subversive to Western democracies. He said that the ideology is based on a sort of paranoia. It’s based on conspiracy theories that are a warped view of the world, such as Jews exercise malevolent power in the West seeking to destroy Islam, that 9-11 was inspired by Mossad to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and that the terrorist attacks on London’s buses and subways were tolerated by the British security services to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash.
Cameron’s words are worth quoting because they outline the policies I will adapt to guide America and win the ideological war:
First, any strategy to defeat extremism must confront, head on, the extreme ideology that underpins it. We must take its component parts to pieces – the cultish worldview, the conspiracy theories, and yes, the so-called glamorous parts of it as well.
In doing so, let’s not forget our strongest weapon: our own…values. We should expose their extremism for what it is – a belief system that glorifies violence and subjugates its people – not least Muslim people.
We should contrast their bigotry, aggression and theocracy with our values. We have, in our country, a very clear creed and we need to promote it much more confidently. Wherever we are from, whatever our background, whatever our religion, there are things we share together.
Cameron’s words are a guideline that all Western democracies should use to defend their laws, their cultures and to insist on the obvious fact that they are superior in every way to the ideology of Radical Islam. That is the path to victory in this long war.
There can never be any doubt that America will stand for its Constitutional system of government. I will defend the Constitution, as every president must, against all its enemies. Together, we can defeat the ideology of radical Islam and terrorist networks to whatever degree may be necessary to make them understand they have been defeated.
Foreign Policy and America’s Role in the World
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/foreign-policy-and-americas-role-in-the-world/America must always be a force for freedom. To that end, I will take specific actions directed at correcting the many mistakes President Obama has made. Because of those mistakes, we are no longer trusted by our allies or respected by our enemies. Throughout my presidency America will keep its word to ally and adversary alike. We need to reject the Iran nuclear deal, stop drawing red lines we don’t mean to enforce and deny the UN the power to control our actions. In my presidency, we will be fully engaged and leading from a position of strength. That’s a real formula for peace through strength.
From World War II until President Obama took office, America was the respected and trusted leader of the free world. We stood up to the threat of Soviet communism and defeated it. When the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, there began a new birth of freedom in Europe and many other regions. But even before that, the rise of radical Islam began to enslave many peoples, an enormous threat to freedom that continues to rise because Obama refuses to deal with it.
President Obama believes that a weaker America makes the world safer and that we are have no greater place in the world than any of the UN’s other members. That’s flat wrong. America offers the freedoms, preserved by our Constitution, that ensure life, liberty and the ability to prosper. Our moral, religious and Constitutional systems make us superior to the many nations that don’t offer those freedoms.
Call it what you will, American exceptionalism is a fact, and that makes our place in the world what it has always been. America is a force for freedom, an untiring voice against oppression and slavery, and a stabilizing force. We have the right and the duty to defend ourselves and our allies. To do so we must act – diplomatically, economically and when necessary militarily — from a position of global strength.
I will recreate America’s foreign policy on that basis. I will guide our foreign policy with the understanding that both the neocons and the isolationists are wrong. The neocons are too willing to go to war to reshape the world. On the other hand, the isolationists refuse to recognize threats to our vital national security interests that have to be deterred or defeated. Their weakness only encourages aggression.
We should never engage in nation-building or fight indecisive wars. War is always a last resort. But there are some acts of aggression that have to be defeated. As we learned in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, if you do not fight a war in a manner calculated to win it decisively, you will lose inevitably.
We must engage constructively with our allies and with our adversaries to our mutual benefit. We should never draw “red lines” against an adversary’s action unless we mean to enforce them. I will not sacrifice America’s credibility to phony “red lines,” nor will I allow the United Nations to control any aspect of our foreign policy as Obama has done in his dangerous Iran deal.
We cannot rely on the United Nations to produce a diplomatic resolution to any significant problem. I will conduct American foreign policy in America’s interests with the objective, always, of keeping the peace. But our diplomacy will be conducted in a manner that uses all of our national assets – diplomatic, economic and military – to best advantage.
As the Obama foreign policy has proved time and again, weakness is provocative. We must always retain the option of acting unilaterally, but we should prefer to function internationally through real alliances with dedicated allies both new and old. Our diplomatic adversaries will quickly learn the difference between our vetoing a UN resolution and our sending an aircraft carrier battle group. We will neither demonstrate weakness nor provoke aggression. And, at all times, I will ensure that we have the ability to deter or defeat any significant threat.
I will recreate America’s foreign policy in accordance with those specific principles.
When Obama and Hillary Clinton began implementing his “transformational” foreign policy they began a process that has, intentionally in accordance with his plan, forfeited America’s influence and power. Obama has done this by shunning our allies and embracing our enemies. He has broken other presidents’ commitments to allies, such as President Bush’s promise of a ground-based missile defense system in Poland to protect Europe. And he has engaged in extremely unwise agreements, such as the new Iran nuclear weapons deal, which place our allies in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, under the intolerable threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
One measure of the great harm Mr. Obama has done is the number of nations that used to depend on us to guide their foreign policies and now reject our leadership. NATO is adrift. Saudi Arabia, among others in the Middle East, has made it clear that it will no longer follow America’s policy lead. Many other nations are going their own ways because we are not trusted. We must correct that and again make our nation the trusted and respected leader it was for so long.
Our next president will bear the heavy burden of repairing the damage Obama has done. America needs to again be a force for freedom and stability in the world. To do that, we first need to re-earn the trust of our allies and re-earn the respect of our enemies. If we are going to re-earn that trust we must do it in a way that respects our allies.
Some of the other candidates apparently believe we can just say America will resume its leadership to have it happen. That’s wrong. Our allies have to grant their trust based upon concrete actions.
To re-earn our allies trust – and our adversaries’ respect — we need to take foreign policy actions aimed specifically to correct Obama’s mistakes. The biggest example is the Iran nuclear arms deal which I will revoke if elected.
I will create a new Middle Eastern alliance along the lines of NATO. The Arab states, usually our allies, can be convinced that our foreign policy can be trusted as a guide to theirs. The Arab nations already understand that their common enemy is Iran, not Israel. A cornerstone of the new treaty will be that Israel will be a member of the alliance and share in the obligation to defend against Iranian aggression.
That is a plan from which we can derive the specifics of national defense and foreign policy. It is a plan to achieve peace through strength and responsible, constructive engagement with the world.
Immigration and Border Enforcement
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/immigration-and-border-enforcement/The first thing I am going to do is get every illegal immigrant who is a criminal, like the man who allegedly shot down Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco, off our streets. I will – quickly – secure our borders and end the ability of cities to declare themselves sanctuaries for illegal aliens. And I will insist that the only path to citizenship for illegals currently in our nation is a path back across the border. No one who comes to this country illegally should become a citizen. Those who come legally should be able to follow the path that has been taken by millions of other legal immigrants who have come to our country and become citizens.
A nation that doesn’t enforce its own borders cannot claim to be a nation. America is a nation of laws but President Obama has refused to enforce our laws against illegal immigration. In disregard of the Constitution he has refused to enforce many laws and has declared revisions to our immigration laws without congressional legislation to accomplish those changes. He has thus created an anarchy of open borders.
We are a nation of immigrants and should always welcome those who come here legally, who intend to become Americans, to join our culture and to help serve and protect our constitutional system of government.
But Obama’s open border policy has not only let too many illegal aliens into this nation, it has also refused to protect us against the violence that some bring with them. The murder of young Kathryn Steinle allegedly by an illegal immigrant who had seven prior felony convictions and was released to walk our streets, is a terrible lesson that Mr. Obama refuses to learn.
That lesson is perfectly clear. Our borders must be secured. That means people such as the alleged killer of Ms. Steinle – a man who had been deported several times — should never have been allowed to re-enter this country. When a person is deported, they should not – by negligence or lack of action – be permitted to re-enter our nation unless they apply successfully for legal entry.
Those are the first steps: secure our borders and not let anyone – far less known criminals — into our society. But our immigration system is broken. We need to reform it.
Reform doesn’t mean deporting all of the many millions who are here illegally. And it doesn’t mean that someone who came here illegally should ever be eligible for American citizenship. Reform also doesn’t mean that anyone who can get here should be entitled to remain. Amnesty – which has been defined to include a path to citizenship — is and will remain the wrong remedy.
Reform means that those who legally immigrate regardless of their racial or ethnic identity or their national origin should be welcomed. They should benefit from a system that works faster and more effectively. Those who entered illegally years ago – those who pay their taxes, who work hard to assimilate into our culture, who obey our laws and system of government and learn to speak our language – should be given the ability to work legally.
None of this can be done unless and until we secure our borders. Once that is done and our system of securing the borders has been proven to work we can proceed with these other necessary reforms.
Repairing America’s Defenses
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/americas-defenses/America is in greater danger every day we continue down the path of weakness and retreat President Obama has followed. The threats our country faces are extreme and increasing. Thanks to Obama’s slashing of the defense budget, America’s military capabilities are in the worst shape they’ve been in 60 years. This isn’t just a matter of budgeting. I will restore a national strategy of peace through strength with specific plans and objectives to ensure America is worthy of our allies’ trust and our enemies’ respect. It will take time to solve the many problems Obama has created, but I will soon again to deter or defeat any nation or terrorist network that threatens our country.
President Obama’s wrong-headed policy has forfeited America’s influence in the world because of his core belief that America’s global standing needed to be reduced. He has created a situation in which America is no longer, as it had been since World War 2, the world’s foremost defender of freedom.
To put in simply, America is in great danger because of the policies Obama has pursued.
Natan Sharansky, one of the bravest survivors of the Soviet Union’s gulags, wrote last April in the Wall Street Journal that America has suffered a tragic loss of moral self-confidence. America, he said, has forgotten that it’s America. It is not just a lapse of collective memory. It is the necessary result of Obama’s intentional rejection of the principles that made America the most prominent force for freedom in the world, one which our most powerful enemies understood to be an immovable barrier to aggression.
We expect our military to defend America, help defend our allies and even provide disaster relief in remote corners of the world. Our Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are responsible for deterring and, if necessary, defeating any major threat to America. But we have no national defense and intelligence strategies to answer the key question: what do we expect our military to do, and what do they need to do it? Devising those strategies will be Job One when I am president.
What do we want America’s role in the world to be? To heed Sharansky’s admonition, we need to remember who we are and restore America to its role as a global power. We can – and must – be able to help bring stability to crucial regions of the world. We should not be the world’s policeman. But whenever a vital American national security interest is threatened or actually violated, we need to be able to deter or defeat that threat.
That doesn’t mean we would respond militarily to every situation or even to most. Only vital national security interests – not every interest everywhere – must be protected.
The threats to America are growing and outpacing defense and intelligence spending and planning. Yes, our military and intelligence capabilities must be restored and that will cost a lot of money. But to fix the problems Obama has created is not merely a question of budgeting. It’s a matter of devising an in-depth national security strategy.
That strategy, if I am elected, will be based on the rising dangers we have to face. Russia’s expansion into the Crimea and Ukraine as well as China’s growing domination of the South China Sea are only two of the threats that our best military minds will have to find solutions. Historically, we have been prepared to fight a two-front conflict. Now we are not only unprepared to fight more than one, we may not be able to fight and win any large conflict.
We face networks of terrorists including al-Qaida, ISIS and literally dozens of others with regional or global reach. Nations that sponsor terrorism, especially Iran – the most powerful sponsor of terrorism – need to be deprived of the capabilities that can endanger America. That is only one of the reasons I will revoke Obama’s Iran deal.
We need to deal with the broad threat of cyber attacks on our industry and government. It’s no exaggeration to say that the armed forces, intelligence community and defense and civilian industries suffer thousands of cyber attacks every day. Last March, Adm. Mike Rogers, commander of US Cyber Command, told congress that our efforts to deter cyber attacks aren’t working. We need an offensive cyber capability – and plans and strategies to use it – to deter and defeat these attacks.
It is only an in-depth understanding of these threats and definite plans to deal with them that can lead us to the proper budgeting for our armed services and intelligence community. We have to do better, and we can if we do some hard work and engage in the kind of serious thinking that hasn’t been done since 2008.
My experience equips me to lead these efforts and create the national defense and intelligence capabilities we will need in the near and more distant future. I know the intelligence world, having served as a counterintelligence agent during the Cold War. I was the Chairman of the congressionally-mandated Advisory Panel on Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (which came to be known as “The Gilmore Commission.”) I’ve come to understand many of our global problems – and the allies who can help us solve them – on missions to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Croatia and Israel. No other candidate can claim that range of experience.
From the top down, as a matter of national policy, we need to understand at a detailed level just what the Pentagon is going to be expected to do for the next five to ten years. Without the analytical basis provided by such a review, budgeteers are working in the dark. I would also conduct a “bottom-to-top” review of our intelligence capabilities to ensure that our intelligence agencies – also suffering Obama’s from neglect – have what they need to protect America.
This is a strategy that will ensure our ability to deter or defeat any major threat to the United States. By implementing it when I am president, we will again achieve peace through strength.
Restoring America’s Economy
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/restoring-americas-economy/I am going to get America moving again and create jobs. I will cut taxes for all Americans, have three simple tax brackets, reduce business taxes to 15 percent and eliminate the death tax. The reason we are in this fix is because Obama has stifled our economy with Obamacare, excessive taxes, needless regulations and unconstitutional executive orders. I will get our economy going again so we can create full time jobs, increase wages and provide hope and opportunity to our citizens.
For most of the years since 1945, America’s economy has grown steadily resulting in a path to prosperity for a great number of us. It has, quite literally, been the most powerful engine of freedom in the world. When John Kennedy faced a period of economic doldrums, he took action that – after his death – resulted in economic growth of over 10% in 1965. Ronald Reagan, facing a similar problem, took similar action. He, too, brought our economy to average 10% growth in 1983-1984.
But the economic meltdown of 2008 saw our growth slow to a negative 1%.
Those growth percentages mean something to every American. They determine whether good full-time jobs are available. They determine whether families can afford homes, cars and college educations for their children. When the economy slows, jobs get scarce. When jobs are scarce, America’s path to prosperity – the American dream our parents always talked about – is blocked.
Since 2008, under President Obama’s economic policies, the only things that has grown in America is government spending and debt. His “stimulus plan” didn’t stimulate the economy. His Federal Reserve has kept inflation down by “quantitative easing,” a policy that artificially depresses interest rates by buying up government securities. His “jobless recovery” is an economic oxymoron, and all of his economic policies have only added obstacles to recovery.
In the first quarter of 2015, US economic growth was a paltry 0.6%. The second quarter results weren’t that much better: only 2.3%. Our economy should be growing at a rate three or four times as great.
Jobs are still scarce because America’s economy has still not recovered significantly. It’s stalled because Obama’s policies don’t allow it to recover. We have the highest business tax in the developed world. Regulations are strangling businesses and entrepreneurs face unnecessary risks. No wonder jobs are scarce. Businesses are faltering and growth is stymied.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly one-third of the entire population of the United States – about 100 million people – don’t have full-time jobs.
I have devised a plan called “The Growth Code” to repair our economy. The Growth Code’s specifics are:
- To simplify taxation on individuals and families those who continue to file their income taxes on the standard Form 1040 will be subject to a simplified progressive tax of 10, 15, or 25%. Deductions will be taxed in accordance with the “No Double Taxation” rule;
- To unify all business taxation in the United States. All business income will be declared on the same tax form for each business. Taxes will be imposed at the rate of 15% for business-created income;
- To allow for immediate first year expensing of business investments. An option should exist to allow expensing any credit against future years’ income if it can be shown that the income from the investment occurred after the end of the year in which it was made. Under current law, gradual depreciation schedules prolong recovery of the investment and prevents full recovery of the amount invested in the business for equipment or other assets;
- To end double taxation on individuals and businesses which is an existing bias against investment. In the current system, profits, interest or other earned income from investment is taxed as ordinary income in addition to the business tax rate. Spending on consumption is now treated more advantageously than saving for investment. It is our contention that we should level the playing field so that consumption spending and saving for investment are treated the same.
- To provide that profits earned abroad are repatriated to the U.S. tax free because those profits will already have been taxed once by the foreign country. Under this principle, dividends and capital gains will not be taxable to the person receiving the money, because it has already been taxed once at the corporate level.
- To provide that deductions for mortgage payments will continue to be deductible for an individual. Also, The Growth Code does not propose to disturb the payroll tax which goes directly to fund entitlement programs. Charitable contributions will continue as deductions based on the recognition of the long-standing American belief that private citizens who desire to fund charity and provide services should be able to do so to relieve what would otherwise be the government’s burden.
- To provide that every citizen will pay some form of tax, usually at the lowest 10% level under the simplified tax brackets. However, we recognize the need and desire to shield the very poor and families. With this in mind we propose to establish a Family Refundable Tax Credit (FRTC) of $4,300. Families earning less than the poverty level would receive this credit in the form of a check to supplement their income, reduced in the amount of their tax liability.
The Growth Code is not a collection of pie-in-the-sky theoretical remedies to our continued economic problems. These are the historically-proven policies that worked for Kennedy and Reagan.
When the Growth Code is enacted into law, the results will be a new turbocharged economy. Growth will recover quickly from its lows in the Obama years to exceed the historical average of 4% per year. Unemployment – real unemployment, which now ranges above 9% — will drop significantly because new good jobs will be created. Wages will go up due to job growth and the American dream will suddenly become achievable for millions of Americans now denied it.
Americans want jobs and deserve an economy that enables good, productive jobs to be found. Mr. Obama believes, as he once said, that if you have a successful business, you didn’t build that. Mrs. Clinton, as she has said, doesn’t believe people should listen to anyone who says businesses create jobs.
We know better. We have to get government out of the way so businesses can create jobs and America can prosper again.
Health Care Reform
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/health-care-reform/I will repeal and replace Obamacare with a patient-oriented healthcare system. Obamacare has become an oppressive burden on our people and our economy. As a result of Obamacare, many Americans are now being force to work 29-hour weeks and have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Millions of others have had their insurance rates increased or their policies cancelled. This law is a principal reason that our economy is not recovering. It must not stand.
The first duty of every doctor and surgeon is to do no harm. Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act – also known as “Obamacare” – has interfered with their ability to satisfy that oath and has crippled our healthcare system.
Obamacare interferes with the doctor-patient relationship, raises taxes on some things and creates new ones on others. And, most importantly, it has created such a burden on our economy that it has become one of the principal reasons the American economy remains stagnant.
More than fifty percent of Americans favor repeal of the law. They are right: it should be repealed for several big reasons.
First, Obamacare is keeping employers from hiring new employees in full-time jobs by redefining the work week. Instead of the normal workweek of 40 hours, Obamacare defines full time employees as any who work 30 hours a week or 130 hours a month.
As too many Americans have discovered for themselves, you can’t support yourself and your family on less than 30 hours’ wages a week. Employers who are or will be covered by the Obamacare employer mandate don’t want to hire full time employees because if you do you have to either help them pay for expansive Obamacare health insurance or pay a big penalty.
You have to get a second or even third job to make up for the loss Obamacare imposed. Too many Americans can’t find 40-hour a week jobs and Obamacare is the reason they can’t.
Almost as bad has been Obamacare’s effect on the price of healthcare insurance in America. Millions of people and their families have had their policies cancelled because of Obamacare. If they can buy replacement policies, those policies come at a much higher cost. Some states, such as Florida, have seen the price of healthcare insurance premiums rise from 30%-100%. Many states have experienced the same, and some have seen expenses rise even higher.
According to Americans for Tax Reform, Obamacare contains 20 new or raised taxes including a hike in Medicare payroll taxes, taxes on medical devices and innovative drug companies and many others. It’s a drag on our economy that penalizes research and development into medicines and revolutionary medical technologies that save lives.
There may be some things we want to save from Obamacare, such as the coverage of young people on their parents’ insurance policies until they are 26 years old and the necessity of covering people with pre-existing conditions. But those things can be added to the legislation that should replace Obamacare or through state legislation.
We need an approach to healthcare that is predicated on free-market incentives. With those incentives, we need to encourage businesses to provide better healthcare benefits to their employees. This has the double benefit of employees wanting to remain in good jobs and employers given greater ability to retain good employees.
There are good ways to reform the American healthcare system. I favor the approach taken by Cong. Tom Price (R-Ga) who has repeatedly introduced bills such as his “Empowering Patients First Act,” which he offered in June 2013.
Under Price’s bill, healthcare reforms include:
- Interstate sale of insurance;
- Promotion of Association Health Plans (AHPs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs);
- Income-adjusted, “advanceable,” and refundable health insurance premium credits;
- A tax deduction for income spent on health insurance for households ineligible for premium credits;
- Malpractice and provider antitrust reform.
Under this approach, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget would be reduced by over $1.7 trillion over ten years.
Obamacare is a burden our people and our economy shouldn’t have to bear. It should be repealed and replaced with the sensible reforms such as those in Price’s bill.
Climate Change
Source: http://www.gilmoreforamerica.com/issues-jim/climate-change/Climate change is a reality. The question is why and what is the answer? The answer is not — as Obama has done — to take actions that cause utility bills to skyrocket for every American family and drive jobs out of the country so those same hard working Americans won’t be able to pay the higher utility bills. China and India will get those American jobs and they are doing nothing to help with climate change. The climate change problem cannot be solved by America alone.
Climate change is a reality, but the debate on whether it is caused by man – the anthropogenic climate change we hear about every day – is very far from over.
We should not agree to any treaties, congress should not enact any laws, and the administration should not issue any regulations that strangle our economy in pursuit of an ephemeral goal of reducing global carbon emissions. According to The Economist, America ranks between China – the world’s biggest emitter, which exceeds US emissions by about 50% — and India which emits about 50% of what America does. It makes no sense to agree to any global climate change treaty that doesn’t place equal burdens on those economies and those of Russia and Japan, which rank fourth and fifth according to the same source.
In 2009, President Obama proposed a “cap and trade” system which he admitted would cause the U.S. price of electricity to skyrocket. Fortunately, that plan never passed into law. But, as usual, Obama is going beyond his constitutional authority and implementing new regulations to force the same result by regulations on coal-fired generation plants.
By his new regulation, Obama is trying to force states and power companies to shift their investments to solar and wind power. We’ve seen that before and we know it doesn’t do anything other than burden our economy with false remedies. When government forces investment that the free market doesn’t reward, you get the results we’ve seen such as the failure of Solyndra. That cost the federal government more than half a billion dollars. The House Oversight Committee said in 2012 that the cost to American taxpayers of Solyndra’s failure could be as high as $849 million dollars.
America should not be driving industry to more costly failures like Solyndra and our taxpayers should not have to pay for them. Obama’s regulations should be revoked immediately.
We should all be conservationists. That means we will preserve and maintain our air and water quality, protect wildlife from extinction and thus help contribute to our quality of life. Making the cost of energy skyrocket will reduce our quality of life. That’s an unnecessary sacrifice to impose on Americans.
