[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 5008-5009]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         BRINGING AMERICA HOME

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, April 1, 2011

  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, Tom Pauken, Chairman of the 
Texas Workforce Commission and author of the book ``Bringing America 
Home,'' has written a column in the Washington Times that I wish every 
American would read.
  The column, entitled ``An Agenda for the Next President'' and 
reprinted below, is a very important one that I would like to call to 
the attention of my colleagues and other readers of the Record.

               [From the Washington Times, Mar. 31, 2011]

                Gates Grilled on Price of `Illegal War'

                            (By Tom Pauken)


                            ANALYSIS/OPINION

       What bothers most Americans as they check out next year's 
     crop of presidential candidates is their country's 
     involvement in a series of endless wars to promote the 
     Wilsonian ideal of ``making the world safe for democracy.''
       First, there was the Bosnian War during the Clinton 
     administration, in which the U.S. intervened militarily on 
     behalf of a radical Islamic Kurdish group against the 
     Christian Serbs who had been our allies in World War II. 
     Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright was the leading 
     proponent of that Clinton policy, and she famously said to 
     Gen. Colin L. Powell at the time, ``What's the point of 
     having this superb military that you're always talking about 
     if we can't use it?'' And so we used it to bomb Belgrade and 
     other areas of Serbia--which ensured the Islamic takeover of 
     Kosovo.
       Now, Mrs. Clinton reportedly is the prime mover in the 
     Obama administration of U.S. military intervention in Libya 
     to oust the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi and replace it 
     with ``the forces of democracy,'' whoever that may turn out 
     to be.
       Meanwhile, the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations 
     have supported our continued military involvement in 
     Afghanistan. After the tragedy of 9/11, it made strategic 
     sense to deny Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies their 
     sanctuaries in Afghanistan, where they were training their 
     radical followers in the techniques of sabotage and 
     terrorism. What is our mission in Afghanistan 10 years later? 
     To keep the regime of President Hamid Karzai in power?
       The human and financial costs of these ``endless wars'' to 
     our nation have been enormous. A policy of using U.S. 
     military force to impose democracy in the Middle East has not 
     worked and will not work. Moreover, how do we ever hope to 
     get federal spending under control if we keep on the current 
     course?
       American foreign policy should be guided by what is in our 
     nation's best interest. We need a new strategy to address the 
     threat of radical Islam. Remember: President Reagan put a 
     policy in place to win the Cold War with very little loss of 
     American military lives.
       Changing America's foreign policy is just the beginning. We 
     need to pick a new president we can count on for an economic 
     policy that puts Americans back to work, starts helping the 
     private sector grow again and rebuilds our manufacturing 
     base. The best way to do that is to replace our onerous 
     business tax system--which exports prosperity and American 
     jobs overseas--with a revenue-neutral, business consumption 
     tax that will level the playing field with our trading 
     competitors ande bring jobs home to America.
       Next, we should pick as our new president someone we can 
     count on to replace Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. 
     Bernanke with someone like Thomas M. Hoenig, president of the 
     Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, who has warned of the 
     risks of loose monetary policy and who understands the 
     importance of a sound-dollar policy.
       A new president should be one we can count on to end 
     taxpayer bailouts of the ``too big to fail'' financial 
     institutions-- a policy begun by Treasury Secretary Robert E. 
     Rubin in the Clinton administration and continued by Treasury 
     Secretary Henry M. Paulson in the Bush administration. If 
     these institutions are too big to fail, they are too big.
       We'll want a new president to determine what levels of 
     spending cuts are necessary and feasible. Then, devolve power 
     wherever possible over domestic programs by removing federal 
     mandates and sending control over spending back to the states 
     and local communities. Give Medicaid back to the states in 
     the form of block grants, just like we did with welfare 
     reform in the Reagan administration.
       A president committed to getting federal spending under 
     control also has to be willing to make cuts in defense 
     spending (which has nearly doubled over the past decade), 
     foreign aid and entitlements. Mr. Bush's Medicare drug plan 
     alone, pushed through Congress in 2003, constitutes an 
     unfunded liability of $55 billion annually, or $7.2 trillion 
     over the next 75 years. It only speeds up the date when 
     Medicare will be bankrupt. That issue needs to be addressed 
     as part of overall health care reform.
       Finally, we cannot ignore the coarsening of our culture and 
     the unraveling of our once strong social fabric, so necessary 
     for the nurturing and preservation of a good society. Bluntly 
     speaking, a free-market system without an ethical compass 
     guiding it will not work. A constitutional republic without 
     the Judeo-Christian ethic as its foundation will not last.
       Only if we make the right choice next year will we get a 
     new president who can help America find its way back.

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