“If we have a personality contest, then everybody loses and I suspect we do too.”
WASHINGTON, DC – In remarks yesterday morning to a breakfast meeting of The Ripon Society, House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (GA-6) shared his thoughts on the economic and political climate that has taken hold in America, and the effort being led by Speaker Paul Ryan to develop a positive agenda that all Republicans can run on and embrace this fall.
“After the ‘08-09 economic crisis,” Price stated, “the Left had this narrative that the reason the crisis happened was because free market capitalism failed and that there was too little regulation. Narratives that take hold in our society are dynamic. They wax and they wane depending on the currents of the day. But that narrative has taken hold in a significant way, so much so that one of the leading candidates for President on the Democratic side is a self-proclaimed socialist and is gaining huge support among our kids and our grandkids.
“That ought to concern us all. For if we believe as a society that free market capitalism has not succeeded and there is too little regulation, then we all lose, because all of the solutions do something to tamp down free market capitalism and increase regulation. And that’s what we’ve basically had for the last seven years. There is a leadership and culture within our federal government that firmly believes that free market capitalism has failed, is failing, or doesn’t work, and that more regulation is needed. When you see the growth rate over the last quarter of 0.5%, something caused that. We’ve had an average growth rate of around 2% for the last eight years in this country. The average growth rate for the last 40 or 50 years is 3.2%. So we’re off about 30-40% in terms of growth of our economy.
“When the economy is tamped down to that degree, there aren’t jobs for folks to get in the areas they want, kids come out of college without the ability to find jobs in their field of endeavor, full-time work goes to part-time work, dreams get tamped down, horizons get narrowed… We’ve begun to see over the last couple of months or so a narrative coming out of the White House that 2% growth is alright. Let me encourage you to pushback hard on that. Two percent growth does not work for our society to thrive and survive.”
Price is serving his sixth term in the House and his first full term as Chairman of the Budget Committee. Before his election to Congress, he served four terms in the Georgia State Senate, where he helped his party win control of the chamber and became the first Republican Senate Majority Leader in the history of the state. An orthopedic surgeon by training, he has been a leading voice of House conservatives since coming to Washington.
He is also a key ally of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and a key supporter of Ryan’s effort to make sure that Republicans have a platform they can campaign on in the election this fall.
“What he has said and I agree with wholeheartedly,” Price stated, referring to the Speaker, “is as we run through the next six months, this election is going to be unlike any election we’ve ever seen. If we have a personality contest, then everybody loses and I suspect we do too. If, however, we have a race based upon policy solutions, then we’ve got a chance. Because I believe the vast majority of the American people are on our side on policy, but we tend to not be able to articulate it in a way that either hits their ear well or makes sense. So what we’ve got to do is articulate it in a way that captures their imagination and their aspirations and their dreams as well.”
To help achieve that goal, Price stated, Speaker Ryan has appointed House Members to task forces in several key areas and asked them to develop a positive agenda that all Republican candidates will be able to embrace and run on this year. The areas the task forces are focusing on include:
Tax reform – “From an international tax standpoint,” he said, “we punish American domicile companies that make a buck overseas, and we punish them for bringing it back in. That doesn’t make any sense at all. We need a complete overhaul of the tax system. The Ways & Means Committee and the task forces are working to come up with a strategy and a plan to do just that, and I’m excited about the kinds of conversations that we’re having with Members on this. Dave Camp, and the work he did as Chair of the Ways & Means Committee, was absolutely vital to laying the foundation for what needs to be done, but we are expanding the options of solutions being put forward within our group right now. I’m excited about what is to be forthcoming prior to the convention, so we’ll have a plan that I think folks will be able to embrace.”
Health Care Reform – “We’ve got a lot of folks who gained coverage,” Dr. Price noted, “but they don’t have care because they have premiums that are $1,000 a month and their deductible is $6,000 or $8,000 or $10,000 and they’re making $50,000 a year. Folks are literally walking out of doctor’s offices today making decisions about their health care based solely on their inability to pay. Our system is not allowing them to access the care that they need. That’s a system that may work for government, it may work for others, but it certainly doesn’t work for patients. So we need to move in the direction of what I call patient-centered health care, which means patients and families and doctors make medical decisions and nobody else.”
Poverty & Upward Mobility – “The poverty rate 50 years ago is essentially the same as it is today,” Price observed. “It was 14.8% in 1965, and it’s 14.7% now. We have spent trillions and trillions of dollars, and we haven’t moved the needle a bit. Any sane individual would step back and say, ‘What happened? Why have we not done better than that?’ We’ve got a lot of folks who are dependent on government, but we haven’t incentivized earned success. And that’s what we believe we ought to be doing. We ought not measure the success of our poverty programs by how much money is going in. We ought to be measuring them by how many people get off the program and are able to lift up their sights and horizon and realize their dreams. We simply have not done that. So we’ve got to push hard. And again, the task force has been really enlightening, encouraging, and uplifting for folks who came here to help their fellow citizen in their district. So we’re moving forward in a very positive way.”
Strengthening National Security – “We’ve cut about $500 billion from the Pentagon over the last five years,” he said. “We’re projected to cut another $500 billion over the next five years. That’s a trillion dollars that I believe is moving in the wrong direction. Yes, we need to get our spending under control. Yes, we need to make certain that we balance the budget. Yes, we need to make certain that we create an economic vibrancy out there that allows the economy to grow and all of those good things. But none of that can happen if we’re not secure as a country. So we’re pushing hard in trying to get folks to appreciate and realize – both within our conference and across the country – that less than 3% of the GDP spent on defense is not enough in this dangerous time. In the early and mid-1960s, we were spending 6% of GDP on defense. Now we’re at half that and going in the wrong direction. So we’re going to try to make the case that it’s incredibly important to expand what we’re able to allow the Pentagon and defense folks to do to protect us.”
Protecting Article 1 – “Through both Democratic and Republican administrations for a number of years,” Price stated, “the Executive Branch — the Article 2 branch — has been clawing away at the authority and constitutional responsibility of the Article 1 branch, the Legislative Branch. That has resulted in a President who says: ‘It doesn’t matter what Congress does. I’ve got a pen and a phone and I’ll do whatever I want to do.’ That sense — that message to the American people which basically says I don’t need to worry about the Constitution — is destructive to our system of governance. We believe that it’s incredibly important to push back on that. The way to get that back is through the power of the purse. It runs right through the Budget Committee and right through the Appropriations Committee, and we’ve got to put some teeth into it.”
To view the remarks of Chairman Price before The Ripon Society yesterday morning, please click on the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.