LibertyVoter.Org

The House is in session Tuesday through Thursday this week. There are two rule bills on the schedule. H.R. 1815 requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to interview and survey retail investors prior to making any new regulations regarding transparency of retail investing. H.R. 3624 requires corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange to disclose how many of their employees are American citizens and how many are foreigners. The House will also consider a number of suspension bills this week, including: H.R. 3289—Requires the State Department to assess whether China is exercising such control over Hong Kong to justify changes in the US’ treatment of Hong Kong. The assessments must include whether China is eroding Hong Kong’s basic law and civil liberties. The Department of Commerce must also determine whether China is using Hong Kong to evade US export controls and sanctions. It also requires the president to report on China’s human rights abuses in Hong Kong, allows visas to be issued to Hong Kong residents arrested for protesting China, and sanctions Chinese officials found to have violated human rights in Hong Kong. H.R. 4270—Prohibits the export of tear gas and other forms of crowd control technology to Hong Kong. H.Res. 543—Reaffirms [...]

When President Trump Tweeted last week that “it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars,” adding that the US would be withdrawing from Syria, Washington went into a panic. Suddenly Republicans, Democrats, the media, the think tanks, and the war industry all discovered and quickly became experts on “the Kurds,” who we were told were an “ally” being sent to their slaughter by an ignorant President Trump. But it was all just another bipartisan ploy to keep the “forever war” gravy train rolling through the Beltway. Interventionists will do anything to prevent US troops from ever coming home, and their favorite tactic is promoting “mission creep.” As President Trump Tweeted, we were told in 2014 by President Obama that the US military would go into Syria for just 30 days to save the Yazidi minority that they claimed were threatened. Then that mission crept into “we must fight ISIS” and so the US military continued to illegally occupy and bomb Syria for five more years. Even though it was the Syrian army with its Russian and Iranian allies that did the bulk of the fighting against al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, President Trump took credit and called for [...]

From Deep State Surveillance and endless wars to Big Government censorship, gutting the Second Amendment and the Federal Reserve banksters manipulating our financial system, our country needs more patriots who will stand up and say “NO” when they come after our freedoms. After all, if you and I aren’t prepared when threats to liberty surface, it could be too late. So I hope you’ll take the quick Patriot Survey I’ve prepared to gauge your opinion on the schemes the statists are attempting to ram down our throats. For Liberty, Ron Paul Chairman [...]

In addition to allowing seniors to form private contracts with medical providers and not forcing seniors into the Medicare program as a condition of receiving Social Security, President Trump’s executive order on Medicare also orders the Department of Health and Human Services  to reduce regulations and barriers preventing seniors from taking full advantage of Medicare Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs). President Trump’s executive order is not the only effort to expand Medicare MSAs. Democrat Congressman Ani Berra (CA-07) and Republican Jason Smith (MO-08) have introduced the Health Savings for Seniors Act (H.R. 3796). This legislation allows seniors to continue making contributions to their Health Savings Accounts, which is what Medical Savings Accounts are commonly called today. Passage of this bill combined with President Trump’s executive order would go a long way toward giving seniors control of their health care. Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul has long been an advocate of Medicare MSAs. Here is his official statement on his legislation expanding access to Medicare MSAs: Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce legislation which enhances senior citizens' ability to control their health care and use Medicare money to pay for prescription drugs. This legislation accomplishes these important goals by [...]

Last Friday, President Trump signed an Executive Order instructing federal agencies to take a number of steps to give seniors more choices in the Medicare program. The executive order repeals a Clinton-era rule forbidding any senior who refuses to accept Medicare from enrolling in Social Security. This provision forces seniors who would rather provide their own health care to accept government health care or forego Social Security benefits. Many seniors need Social Security because taxes and inflation make it difficult or impossible to save for their own retirement. The order also instructs the Health and Human Services Department to remove all barriers to private connections in Medicare.  This refers to the extent the existing laws and regulations limit seniors’ ability to use their own money to pay for health care. Current law says that a physician who forms a private contract with a senior cannot file any Medicare claims for two years and that seniors are only eligible to write private contracts with certain types of healthcare providers. Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul championed repealing these restrictions on seniors’ health freedom when he was in Congress. Below is Dr. Paul’s official statement on his Seniors Health Care Freedom Act, [...]

For over two years we’ve watched the national media elites cheerlead for the “Russian Collusion” charade as the Deep State targeted a politician they HATE -- just for the “crime” of beating their chosen candidate in 2016. Now they’re going for President Trump’s jugular with an impeachment scheme that looks fully-backed by the Deep State. I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for decades that our fragile Republic won’t last long if we continually hand the government spying powers over our lives. After all, if they’ll go after a sitting president, you or any other law-abiding American could be next. The good news is, with a major battle looming over reauthorization of the so-called "USA Freedom Act" and some of the Deep State’s most intrusive surveillance powers, you and I could have our best opportunity to strike a deathblow against Big Brother and restore the Fourth Amendment protections all law-abiding Americans deserve. Today, our Constitution’s Fourth Amendment -- which protects American citizens’ right to privacy against government snoops -- is hanging by a thread. The fact is, the Deep State is hell-bent on collecting your (and every other American’s) emails, phone records, text messages, Internet searches, instant messages, online purchases, and Facebook posts -- the reach of the Big Government statists’ surveillance powers over you [...]

Since September 17, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has pumped billions of dollars into the repurchasing (repo) market, the first such intervention since 2009. The Fed has announced that it will continue to inject as much as 75 billion dollars a day into the repo market until November 4. The repo market provides a means for banks that are temporarily short of cash to obtain short-term (usually one day) loans from other banks. The Fed’s interventions were a response to a sudden cash shortage that caused interest rates for these short-term loans to climb to 10 percent, far above the Fed’s target rate. One of the factors blamed for the repo market’s cash shortage is the Federal Reserve’s sale of assets it acquired via the Quantitative Easing programs. Since launching its effort to “unwind” its balance sheet, the Fed had reduced its holdings by over 700 billion dollars. This seems like a large amount, but, given the Fed’s balance sheet was over four trillion dollars, the Fed only reduced its holdings by approximately 18 percent! If such a relatively small reduction in the Fed’s assets contributed to the cash shortage in the repo market, causing a panicked Fed to pump [...]

Since this  week marked the 70th anniversary of the “People’s Republic” (communist government which is neither a Republic nor for the people) of China, it is an excellent time to re-read Lew Rockwell’s classic essay “The Horrors of Communist China.” Read the article here with excerpts below: It is a scandal that few Westerners are even aware, or, if they are aware, they are not conscious, of the bloody reality that prevailed in China between the years 1949 and 1976, the years of communist rule by Mao Zedong. How many died as a result of persecutions and the policies of Mao? Perhaps you care to guess? Many people over the years have attempted to guess. But they have always underestimated. As more data rolled in during the 1980s and 1990s, and specialists have devoted themselves to investigations and estimates, the figures have become ever more reliable. And yet they remain imprecise. What kind of error term are we talking about? It could be as low as 40 million. It could be as high as 100 million or more. In the Great Leap Forward from 1959 to 1961 alone, figures range between 20 million to 75 million. In the period before, [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently unveiled the Democrats’ prescription drug plan.  It is a big government monstrosity that may make ObamaCare look like free-market health care. The legislation was introduced as H.R. 3 signifying that this is one of the House leadership’s top priorities. Hearings on the bill have already been held and Speaker Pelosi is planning to bring the bill to the floor sometime this month. So, what’s wrong with the plan? Let’s start with price controls. The plan gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services authority to set prices for at least 25 and as many as 250 prescription drugs that lack two or more competitors. HHS must set the price for these drugs at a level that must be lower than 120% of the weighted  average of the drug prices in six countries. The price applies not just to government programs but to private commercial sales as well. This will impose price controls on the entire pharmaceutical market. Pharmaceutical companies can try to negotiate better deals, but if they refuse to negotiate or abide by the government’s prices, they will face a 65% “penalty” (tax) . The tax increases each quarter until it reaches 95%. The [...]

The House is out for a two-week break, so today we will go back and review some of the events and legislation of last week. On Thursday, the Senate passed the Continuing Resolution keeping the government open until November 24. Before voting on the bill, the Senate considered an amendment offered by Senator Rand Paul to cut spending by 2%. Only 24 Senators voted for Senator Paul’s amendment. You can see the vote on Senator Paul’s amendment here. You can see the vote on the CR here. You probably heard that both the House and Senate unanimously passed resolutions calling on the Trump administration to release a transcript of the president’s conversation with the Ukrainian President. What you probably have not heard about is that Republican leader Kevin McCarthy twice offered a resolution disapproving of Speaker Pelosi’s commencing an official impeachment inquiry without first holding a full House vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry—as has been the case with every other impeachment inquiry in history. McCarthy’s resolutions were tabled by a partisan vote. Independent Justin Amash voted with the Democrats both times. You can see those votes here and here. The House and Senate also voted to overturn President Trump’s [...]