Why McClintock?

During my six years of service on the Auburn City Council, I’ve never endorsed a candidate for the U.S. Congress. Quite a few of my neighbors in town have asked me why I’ve endorsed Senator Tom McClintock to represent us in the 4th Congressional District. Here’s my answer.

Our federal government is fundamentally broken and we urgently need to fix it. Too many of our elected representatives have, by gerrymandering their own districts and diving into the pork barrel, put their self-interest and re-election above the national interest. They think that we should pay for “Bridges to No Where,” artificial rainforests in Iowa and a hippie museum in Woodstock, New York. Instead of attending the vital needs of the nation, they waste our tax dollars by conducting congressional hearings and preening before the television cameras to determine whether Roger Clemens, a pitcher with the New York Yankees, took human growth hormone (HGH). They have gone AWOL as public servants.

The Iron Triangle – consisting of congressmen seeking earmarks and re-election, federal bureaucrats seeking to increase their budgets and regulatory power, and the Big Business/Big Labor coalition seeking federal contracts – have created a huge $3 trillion federal budget, a $400 billion annual budget deficit and tens of trillions in future liabilities. Federal policies crafted by the Iron Triangle now guarantee that our taxes, energy and health insurance costs will go up in the future while the value of the dollar and homes will decline. Trillions of dollars in liabilities are pilled upon the next generation of Americans to serve the greed and present-day needs of our sheep-like representatives. The Iron Triangle works every day to turn voters and taxpayers into servants and serfs of the federal government. They gain power by taking away our freedom and more of our tax dollars. Meanwhile, the courts, populated by judges from elite universities and insulated by lifetime tenures, believe that they have the power to re-write the U.S. Constitution. This is not what our Founding Fathers intended when they mutually pledged their lives, fortune and sacred honor in declaring independence from the aristocratic tyranny of Great Britain and creating the American Republic.

Over the last seventeen years, as a policy consultant in the California Legislature, I’ve closely observed hundreds of state legislators make thousands of votes on proposed legislation. During this time, there have been only a handful of legislators who have had the courage to ignore the pleadings of powerful special interest groups and instead vote their conscience. This kind of courage is rare. It goes against the tide. It’s easier to a sheep than a lion. And yet, I’ve watched Assemblyman and then Senator McClintock thoughtfully look at each bill and ask fundamental questions about whether government involvement is required or not. He takes each vote very seriously. And he has had the courage, when examining the details of the state budget, to say to Democratic and Republican governors that the “Emperor has no clothes.” If these governors and legislators had adopted some of Senator McClintock’s reform ideas, the state would not now be in such a precarious position.

On November 3, 1774, Edmund Burke, the Irish-born English Member of Parliament and political philosopher, told the voters of Bristol that “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests…but a deliberative assembly one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.” Burke told his constituents “your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment.” I strongly believe that Senator McClintock, because of his devotion to the U.S. Constitution, to federalism, to accountability, and to fiscal prudence would, if elected to the U.S. Congress, use thoughtful judgment in reforming our federal government. We need a strong and courageous voice for reform to represent us in Washington D.C. The time for fundamental reform is now.

Kevin Hanley serves on the Auburn City Council and as Chief Consultant on health and insurance legislation with the California Legislature. Send your comments to Kevin at (deleted).

Published in the Sentinel, March 14, 2008.