Sean C. Morgan
Invoking Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” Art Robinson knocked on doors in Sweet Home Saturday and then met supporters at the Jim Riggs Community Center.
Robinson, a Republican, is challenging incumbent Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, for the Fourth Congressional District, which includes Sweet Home.
“It is not common sense that a country that has been free for 250 years would give up its freedom to a gaggle of career politicians,” Robinson said to a crowd of about 30 in the meeting. Those career politicians have used regulation to to suppress prosperity.
Two decades ago, they brought it home to the Fourth District and closed the forests, taking away 30 percent of the district’s industry, Robinson said. They created a bureaucracy to stand between the citizens and the resources.
“Our congressman could’ve fixed it,” Robinson said. “He didn’t.”
Robinson painted a picture of career politicians, with the Constitution on one side of their desks and their careers on the other. He said such individuals make decisions to ensure contributions from various interests that will keep them elected, and he counted DeFazio among them.
The founders wrote the Constitution and kept it small to protect liberty, Robinson said. It authorized a small number of powers for the federal government and left everything else to the people and the states.
Now the federal government is involved in schools, the environment, energy, the economy and much more, Robinson said. It’s not constitutional.
Congress is the most powerful branch of the government, he said. It can change things, but not the way it is now.
“One of the things we have to do is replace Congress,” Robinson said. Congress needs to return to the way it operated when the nation was founded, when congressmen served two or three years then returned to businesses that needed their attention. That’s the way it was for a hundred years, but now, the average congressman serves 12 years. The Fourth District’s has been there for 25, he noted.
They make thousands of unconstitutional decisions, and that has eroded American freedom, he said, estimating the loss in freedom at up to 50 percent.
Speaking of the inter-relationship between big business and the government, he said a corporate president’s job is to provide a better product at a lower price. But heads of companies may find it easier to go to Washington, D.C., and ask congressmen for help, regulations that they can handle but competitors and startups cannot – along with a big contract from the federal government.
The congressman should say, “I’ve got this constitution, and I don’t see you in it,” Robinson said. Instead, the congressmen see the $50,000 campaign contribution coming from the corporation, the special interest. “If you say, ‘I don’t see you in the Constitution,’ they stop coming.”
Asked about unions and their impact on politics, Robinson said he supports unions, which are just like other special interests.
“It’s completely within our rights to join together and bargain with our employer,” Robinson said. What goes wrong is when unions or employers are given special powers by Congress. Unions are special interests just like any other, corporations and banks. They have money and power just like corporations.
The answer they should hear from congressmen is, “I don’t see you in the Constitution,” Robinson said. Whether it’s corporations or unions, the problem is “misuse of government power.”
One of these decisions doesn’t really hurt Americans, Robinson said, but thousands of such decisions do.
The tax code is more than 70,000 pages, he said. It doesn’t take 70,000 pages to explain how to calculate taxes. It takes 70,000 pages to explain the special deals these guys have with their congressmen.
It doesn’t change because simplifying the tax code would make all of the congressional perks and campaign cash go away, he said. Beyond overt taxes, the federal government also uses an inflationary tax, and regulatory costs inhibit prosperity.
Since 1970, regulations in the United States have increased 20-fold, Robinson said. “It’s just added up to the point we’re watching our prosperity disappear along with our careers.”
Communist China can out-compete the United States, he said. There, as long as someone stays out of politics, it costs about 20 percent of his or her income to get by. By contrast, Americans give up 50 percent of what they earn to the government.
As a consequence, the United States cannot even compete with a communist country, he said. The United States used to make most of the world’s steel. Now it makes 6 percent of it.
All of this is what he is running to correct, he said.
“Obviously, I can’t fix the country by myself, but I can make a lot of trouble,” Robinson said. He can do his job, abiding by the Constitution and representing his district. The Fourth District still has a suppressed industry that, he said, he can help free.
Congress is overspending by $1 trillion per year, Robinson said. Cutting that deficit and the federal government’s ability to regulate would relieve the regulatory burden that is causing unemployment today. It would allow the United States to keep promises it has already made, such as Social Security, Medicare and the Veterans Administration.
By contrast, it does not have an obligation or a promise to keep when it comes to the energy industry, for example.
Congress needs to clean up its finances and keep its promises, he said.
Congress doesn’t do it today because the only prosperity most congressmen care about is their own and their donors and collaborators, he said.
One of the problems in Congress is ignorance, Robinson said. He can help fight that by staffing his office with “real people,” experts in various areas, such as timber. The position would rotate among experts who actually work in the woods. They would be able to educate other congressmen.
He also can propose bills, finding out what it may be possible to pass, and fight to get committees to vote on them, he said.
Asked about President Obama’s healthcare reform, Robinson said that repeal would probably be difficult, but the House of Representatives could simply choose not to fund it. Congress can also use its budgetary power to fight presidential abuse of executive orders.
Congress can control the president because it controls the money used by the president, he said.