AN EVENING WITH MO BROOKS

Last night,  your congressman, Mo Brooks held a town hall at the Elkmont Depot.  It was the most heavily attended town hall meeting of the summer recess with about seventy people there.  Most of these were from Elkmont, very few were under 30 years old.   It is a sad commentary, that these town halls aren't of more interest.  Only Channel 48 was in Elkmont yesterday and their reason wasn't to cover the event but to conduct a one minute sound bite interview on Obamacare.  There was no newspaper coverage or other tv channels there.  

The Hill Spirit was there and was impressed with the questions and conduct of the Elkmont citizens.  We had one or two ringers from out of town that were negative but the meeting was excellent.  After his presentation on the state of the nation's finances, Rep. Brooks held a very honest  question & answer session.   I was shocked at how honest he was about his opinions and what is going in Washington.  Folks, it is not good and the more one knew about a subject, the worst this information was.  The outlook for our local economy in the next few years is less than desirable.  Please consider looking at your household and where you are with your money, your debt and how prepared you are to deal with what life throws your way. If you aren't where you want to be, you will be wise to make a plan to improve on these things and get committed to making improvements as soon as possible.

Summary of meeting:
Elkmont mayor, Tracy Compton, kicked the meeting off by introducing Representative Mo Brooks. 

Presentation: After opening remarks, Brooks had a fifteen minute presentation of what he considers the most important issue facing our country, our national debt.  He stated that the nation's finances were at the root of many of our problems. The overspending and borrowing are a creation of both parties and those who really want to fix it are few and far between. The national net interest for all this borrowed money is 250 billion in 2012.  That would fund 13 NASA programs.  Money paid for interest is not available for other things.  The debt share per person is about $55,000 but since only taxpayer households actually pay the bill, this comes to $110,00 per person in those families. 

Question and Answer:
Odds of Government Shutdown: 
Doesn't know until he gets back to Washington in September.  The House leadership is against this but the Democrats and White House would love it for political reasons, (pin it on the Republicans for the 2014 elections). 

Term Limits:
would support but if the people keep electing politicians with the same ideas, it won't matter.

Over-cutting Department of Defense and ability to defend: (draw your own conclusions)
*3.7 trillion is spent on stuff that is on autopilot (by law and not voted on) - (example: social security, welfare, Medicaid, etc.)
*970 million (that is voted on each year) that is spent on funding the agencies and departments ( FBI, CIA, Defense, EPA, etc.) 
This is a 3 to 1 ratio between non-discretionary spending and discretionary spending.  The Department of Defense gets 18% of that voted spending but of that amount, 60% of the sequester cuts is coming out of defense. Some of the consequences for our national defense will be:
      The smallest air force since WWI
      Troop strength at levels before WWII
      Naval ships down to 1917 numbers
Not a good place to be as the world becomes more dangerous. 

How to repay the debt:
There are three ways to repay debt; the worst way is to increase taxes, next is spending cuts in social programs (example: various welfare programs in Hawaii give $60,000 per person on assistance and New York redistributes wealth to the tune of $38,000).  Hillspirit came across something to think about; " In the Empire State (New York), a family receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, public housing, utility assistance and free commodities (like milk and cheese) would have a package of benefits worth $38,004, the seventh-highest in the nation. While that might not sound overly generous, remember that welfare benefits aren’t taxed, while wages are. So someone in New York would have to earn more than $21 per hour to be better off than they would be on welfare."

The best way is to use economic policies that work:

• Reduce cost of doing business; cost of regulation is $10,000 per employee that other countries don't require of their businesses.
• Reduce taxes on corporations - U.S. has highest corporate rate
• Environmental costs - put a tariff on countries that don't have as high a protection cost to level the playing field.
• Fair Tax (Hill Spirit likes the flat tax but Brooks likes Fair Tax).  You will have to look that one up; it would take too much room to discuss here.

• Find a way to deal with China - big problem

     China's government supports state businesses' losses so they can undercut other countries and drive competition out of business and then raise price.  They steal technology rather than spend the funds to develop their own; play with their money to keep it 25% to 30% below the dollar. We owe them lots of money and they send us a more stuff than they buy of ours (trade balance).  In other words, they are using our money to build up their military at an alarming rate.

Immigration - current laws allow 600,000 to 1 million legal immigrants each year; opposed to Gang of Eight Bill (Senate) - will vote no. Believes in voting for what is good for American and on principles.  Not going to make decisions to get votes.
*Consequences if passed:
Not enough jobs for Americans; would bring in 44 million low skilled workers; decrease wages and standard of living; increase in unemployment rate, increase in interest rate; a net loss for the country.

Saturday delivery of mail - doesn't have an opinion except that the issue is probably dead for the rest of the year.

Parental Rights & Government In Your Life:
Favors the 10th amendment (States decide most things, not federal government).  The responsibility to govern people of a state should be in the state, county and city governments. Used education as an example; get rid of all federal mandates, even the ones he likes.

Can Anything Be Done About President Using Executive Orders To Do Whatever He Wants To:
No, unless the Senate and House of Representatives stand together.  Not going to happen unless the Senate agrees with House - not enough members from either party really want to limit power of government.

Repeal Obamacare: 
At this point, those who want to get rid of it will have to control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.  Again, not enough members in either party really want to scale government back.  Will need more new blood who are principled and committed to making hard decisions and giving power back to states and people.


Hillspirit Thought:  Elections have consequences and if you don't care enough to find out about what is going on or want the government to take on the responsibility of making your life easy, you get the government we have now.