Newt Gingrich: Rick Perry's book "almost came too late" [Foreward to "Fed Up!"]

America is recklessly accelerating toward economic disaster. Fed Up! may be the last warning sign to the danger that lies ahead.

Rick Perry, Texas governor for the past decade, is uniquely qualified to offer a firsthand perspective on why the United States—the most successful civilization in human history—is being threatened with economic collapse.

Faith, freedom, and free enterprise are the pillars of a strong, safe, prosperous society. Rick knows that when these principles are protected, America succeeds, and when they are undermined, America fails. But the Left has a different belief. The Left believes that most people are not capable of pursuing happiness and that a strong centralized government is best able to provide for them. While claiming compassion for humanity, the Left's policies are destructive to the human beings subject to them—as we have had to learn painfully again and again.

The Left's self-serving solution to every crisis, economic or otherwise, and many of their own doing, is always the same: inflict higher taxes on Americans to create more government programs with more rules and regulations that result in less freedom, less innovation, less safety, and less prosperity.

The problem with the Left’s one solution, as Rick forcefully explains in the pages that follow, is that it doesn't work. It's never worked, and it never will work. The record shows it.

But what the record also shows is that when power and freedom are returned to the people, when people are rewarded for work, and when government holds the line on spending, individuals and opportunity thrive. We have seen that result most spectacularly recently in Texas, and in the mid-1990s with the Contract with America Congress, when I served as Speaker of the House.

Upon taking office, President Barack Obama repeatedly said that he was open to ideas on health care policy and on reversing the economic crisis. But he had to look no further than Texas to see ideas and policies that work.

Texas has no state income tax, no capital gains tax, and no tax on corporate dividends. In contrast, California taxes all three. It has the highest state income tax rates in the nation, with a top rate of 10.3 percent and with most income earners paying 9.3 percent. The California sales tax stands at 8.25 percent. In Texas, the state sales tax rate is 6.25 percent. With both the highest personal income tax and the highest state sales tax in the nation, California also has the largest budget deficit of any state.

Texas has economically outperformed California by any measure. Since 1998, economic growth in Texas has been nearly 20 percent higher than it is in California. Since the end of the tech boom, the rate of real economic growth in Texas has been 48.5 percent higher than in California. From 1998 to 2007, personal income in Texas grew 21 percent faster than in California. Since 2002, real personal income has grown 46 percent faster in Texas. From 2000 to 2007, California lost a net of 1.2 million residents. Texas, over the same period, gained more than half a million in interstate migration, the third highest in the country.

Prior to 2003, Texas was losing doctors at an alarming rate due to predatory practices of trial lawyers who were driving up the cost of malpractice insurance. In 2003, the Texas legislature passed a measure to limit medical liability. In that same year, a state constitutional amendment was approved by voters to cap noneconomic damages awarded by juries. These two provisions reversed the trend and improved care, accessibility, and the overall economy by making Texas a more attractive place to live, work, and own a business. Malpractice claims dropped, and physician recruitment and retention went up. Doctors saved more than $50 million on insurance premiums, and hospitals' insurance rates went down.

People in Texas, like anyone living in any state, have a choice. They can vote with their feet. Many living in California simply became fed up with their state's high taxes and regulations. Many who moved out moved to Texas, where on average they are safer, freer, and more prosperous. Competition among the states is a powerful incentive for states to keep taxes and the cost of doing business low. And as this California versus Texas example shows, conservative economic policies work and socialist policies don't.

Yet both the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress continue to ignore success stories like Texas. They are going in the opposite direction, passing a massive government takeover of health care while planning similarly massive tax increases to pay for it and for the rest of their job-killing agenda.

Now, it may not be surprising that a politician from Chicago would not naturally look to the Lone Star State for solutions. And you wouldn't expect a Texas governor to look in Illinois for answers (thankfully).

And that is precisely the point of this book. States have been called laboratories in democracy precisely because every problem potentially has fifty different approaches to solving it. Some solutions work in some states and not in others. Some states prefer some solutions over others. Some solutions may work in every state, and some just don't work at all. But the best way to find the best solutions is to allow the states to discover what works best for them, without the federal government interfering.

In today' s global economy, each state is competing not only with other states for businesses, workers, and investors but also on a global level. The fact is, with the right principles and policies, you can make any place rich, as happened in Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, the opposite applies as well. With the wrong principles and the wrong policies, you can make any place poor, as happened in Detroit. In 1950, 1.8 million people called Detroit home. It ranked first in median income of all major cities in America. But after Detroit's political leaders, ignoring the principles of freedom and free markets, governed with runaway government spending and taxes, Detroit shrank by more than half. Today, the Motor City is number 66 in median household income in a list of 68 major American cities. One-third of its residents are living below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate is the highest of any major metropolitan area in the country.

The Left's willful ignorance of the historical record concerning principles and policies that work is not limited to Texas. The Left also ignores the success of the Contract with America Congress from just fifteen years ago.

Beginning in 1995, after the Republicans gained the majority in both Houses of Congress, the policies generated by the Contract with America set out to put America back on the road to prosperity and keep it there.

Among the historic accomplishments of this Congress were congressional accountability, welfare reform, fewer regulations, the lowest increase in federal spending since the 1920s, the first tax cuts in sixteen years, and the first four consecutive balanced budgets (reducing the public debt by over $400 billion) since the 1920s.

The federal deficit went from $107.4 billion in 1996 to a $125.6 billion surplus in 1999. During that time, unemployment dropped 1.4 percent, from 5.6 to 4.2 percent, with the creation of 8.4 million new jobs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rose 140 percent, from 3,834 to 9,213, between January 1995 and January 1999.

By comparison, since 2008, the Democrat-controlled Congress has added an astonishing $4.6 trillion to the public debt, including $1.6 trillion in 2010 alone. Nearly 7 million jobs have been destroyed under the Pelosi-Reid Congresses between January 2007 and June 2010. Unemployment has risen 4.9 percent, from 4.6 to 9.5 percent. And would be 10.4 percent if it included discouraged workers, those individuals who are unemployed but are not actively seeking employment, usually because they have had no success finding a job after searching for a long time. The total number of unemployed and underemployed workers in July 2010 stood at an astonishing 26 million. Between January 2007 and August 2010, the DJIA dropped 1,823 points.

During the 1990s, at the same time that the Republicans were cutting taxes, we were also cutting spending. As a share of the gross domestic product (GDP), federal spending fell from 20.2 percent in fiscal year 1996 to 18.5 percent in FY 1999. But even as the economy grew dramatically from 1994 to 1999, federal revenue as a percentage of GDP actually increased. That is, even with lower taxes and a higher GDP, more money came into the federal treasury.

The Pelosi-Reid Congresses have increased spending as a share of the GDP from 20.7 percent in FY 2008 to 25.4 percent in FY 2010, the highest since it spiked in FY 1945, at the end of World War II. Between FY 2007 (the last Republican budget) and FY 2011 Congress has increased spending by a total of $1.105 trillion.

Since World War II, the average duration of a recession had been ten months, with the longest lasting sixteen months. July 2010 marked thirty-one months since the current recession began, and we're still losing jobs. Yet despite this fact, the Pelosi-Reid Congress has set in motion comprehensive, across-the-board tax-rate increases for next year on both businesses and investors that will extend the downturn indefinitely.

The evidence of what works and what doesn't is empirically irrefutable, yet the ideologically stubborn Keynesians in the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress refuse to acknowledge it. They ignore both the Texas success under Governor Perry's leadership and the Contract with America success in the 1990s.

Instead of pursuing the policies that have time and again demonstrated success, the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress insist on following job-killing economic policies rather than the job-creating policies that we know work. Chief among these job-killing policies are a failed trillion-dollar stimulus package and the bound-to-fail “Obamacare.”

Unfortunately for America, the Obama administration is creating a job-killing economic system based on an ideology of centralizing power, which most people considered a failure after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These failed policies have brought us to the edge of the cliff. This gets us back to the importance of moving power away from Washington and back to the states and the local level.

For most of our history, Washington was a far-off place that had little inf1uence on the daily lives of most Americans. More recently, the federal government has usurped or seduced enormous power away from local and state governments. There are in the United States today 513,000 elected local, state, and federal officials, but only 537 are elected on the federal level, or about one-tenth of 1 percent. Yet so much power has been consolidated in the hands of federally elected officials, as well as in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and federal judges. We need to reverse this trend or we will suffer lasting consequences.

Rick has done a great service by explaining how we got here and what we can do about it. His position as governor of Texas gives him a tremendous platform for helping us change course and return to sound conservative fiscal policies. But he can't do it alone. Every American has a duty to rein in the out-of-control federal government. Fed Up! is your handbook. It will arm you with the facts so that you can inform your family, friends, and neighbors. An informed citizenry is the best tool we have in the arsenal to defend our Republic.

I am not a huge fan of Perry, but
compared to Romney, Newt, and the rest of JOKES running for President he’s a rock star.
We need somebody who can WIN this thing. That means somebody with cross-over appeal, which our Palen, Bachmann and Cain (no matter how much we love them) simply do not have.

Until 1989, Rick Perry was a conservative Democrat. He switched parties as, like many Democrats including Ronald Reagan and Phil Gramm, he saw that party moving farther and farther to the left. Under Perry’s decade as governor, hundreds of Texas Democrats have followed his lead and become Republicans. As a former Democrat, Perry can speak to that swath of his former party that has become disenchanted with their party as President Obama has taken it even farther to the left, in a way that few Republicans can. He can also speak well and credibly to all wings of the national GOP, from the fiscal cons to the social cons to the libertarian set.
He would appeal to all segments of the Republican electorate and would come armed with a record of economic success and a commitment to liberty that no other contender can match.

Texas has been voted #1 business climate for the last seven years.
Texas has been getting all of California’s jobs.
Perry must be doing something right.
We need a good business guy right now.
Perry has proved it.

. Sarah Palin threw her endorsement to Rick Perry for governor- and so did Nugent.
Sarah just restated the other day she likes Perry

.Rush said that Perry is his dream candidate.
http://gretawire.blogs.foxnews.com/rush-limbaugh-on-the-record-3/

. Pro-life, Pro-guns, pro-spending cuts, pro-business

. He’s an outside-the-Beltway candidate

. He is not a Ivy League grad

. He was an Air Force captain who flew a C-130

. Speaks Spainish.
(Odumbo says everybody should speak a foreign language, but he CAN’T)

. Fighting with Obama on many fronts
Google Perry/Obama and you will see he’s been fighting him and his government for the past two years.

. Since Perry has been Governor of Texas, Texas has added more than 850,000 jobs, more than all other states combined. Texas has added over 180,000 jobs since August of 2009.

. There is no such thing as ‘Perrycare’

. Signed into law sonogram and explanation by physician before abortion

. Signed into law, photo ID ident to vote

. Perry did not apply for federal “Race to the Top” education funds because he said it would force national standards upon Texas.

. He has vetoed a record 248 bills, including dozens after the 2001 session, angering many lawmakers.

. He said last year that President Barack Obama was “hell-bent” on turning America into a socialist country.

. Won governorship of state with lots of latinos

. According to this web site Texas is #1 this year and last year for business friendly.
http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-states-for-business
Obama would not want not run against a governor that has the BEST business climate in the U.S. when everything else is in a depression.

. He used to be a Democrat. So? So did Reagan.

. The Bush’s don’t like him

. Perry has a reputation for not sweating

• He refused to raise taxes when Texas faced a record $10 billion budget shortfall in 2003. Instead, he was the first Texas governor since World War II to sign a budget that lowered state spending (and has now done it twice). As governor, Perry has used his line item veto to cut over $3 billion in proposed spending.

• In 2005, Perry signed a historic $15.7 billion property tax cut for homeowners and businesses that also included new taxpayer protections against appraisal increases. In 2009, Gov. Perry secured a tax cut for approximately 40,000 small businesses in Texas and protected the Rainy Day Fund for future challenges.

• He led the battle to pass the country’s most sweeping lawsuit reforms, closing the door on junk lawsuits that had been making trial lawyers rich while driving countless doctors either out of the state or the profession all together. Since Texas voters approved these reforms, malpractice claims and premiums have fallen and access to healthcare is increasing across the state as doctors have applied in droves to practice in Texas.

. He has never lost an election, including an elementary school contest for “king” of the Paint Creek School Carnival. He secured that win by handing out pennies for votes.

. Perry is also known for his socially conservative views on homosexuality, and he opposes same sex marriage. He condemned the United States Supreme Court decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, which struck down a Texas sodomy law. He called the law “appropriate”

ABORTION:

. Perry is pro-life and opposes government funding for elective abortions. In 2005, Perry, a social conservative, signed a bill that limited late-term abortions and required girls under the age of 18 who procure abortions to notify their parents. Perry signed the bill in the gymnasium of Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Worth, an evangelical Christian school.

Perry signed into law a bill requiring a sonogram and doctor’s explanation before granting an abortion

In 2005, Perry signed a new law that requires minor girls to receive parental consent before getting an abortion. This law strengthens a parental notification law Perry supported as Lt. Gov. in 1999, which
helped reduce teen abortions by 26 percent.
Perry has also signed a ban on third trimester abortions, a ban on tax dollars being used to support abortion facilities, a prenatal protection act that protects
unborn children from assault, and an informed consent law that helps expectant mothers better understand the risks and consequences of abortion. Perry supports a ban on human cloning and will veto any
legislation that provides state dollars for embryonic stem cell research, a process that ends a human life.
Perry urges to keep up pressure to roll back the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion until “Roe v. Wade is nothing but a shameful footnote in our nation’s history books.

Perry, a frequent critic of the federal government, also bashed President Barack Obama for his administration’s policy allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, saying he was deeply disturbed by studies that turn “the remains of unborn children into nothing more than raw material.”

Perry has faulted Obama for reversing the so-called “Mexico City policy” that banned giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information about abortions. Obama struck down the policy during his first week in office, saying it was too broad and undermined family planning in developing countries.
Under Obama “our federal tax dollars can now be used to fund abortion all over the world. With the stroke of a pen, abortion essentially became a U.S. foreign export,” Perry said.

IMMIGRATION:

Perry adds immigration issues to lawmaker session
Perry wants passage of a measure requiring every person arrested to be run through the federal immigration databases as part of the Secure Communities program. He also wants to provide the state Department of Public Safety with the authority to make sure someone is in the U.S. legally before issuing a driver’s license.
These measures, along with a ban on sanctuary cities, would “provide a clear message that Texas will not turn a blind eye to those breaking our laws,” Perry said in a statement.
“Texas owes it to the brave law enforcement officials, who put their lives on the line every day to protect our families and communities, to give them the discretion they need to adequately do their jobs,” Perry said.
http://www.rickperry.org/media-articles/perry-adds-immigration-issues-lawmakers-agenda-0?amp
.Gov. Perry has made numerous requests of the federal govt. to enforce the border in Texas including handing Pre. Obama a letter in person when he landed in Dallas last year.
.Perry signed into law photo ID required before voting.

CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS:

In what was described as a “God and country” sermon at the Cornerstone church in San Antonio, attended by Perry and other mostly Republican candidates, the Rev. John Hagee stated, “If you live your life and don’t confess your sins to God Almighty through the authority of Christ and His blood, I’m going to say this very plainly, you’re going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket.” Perry was asked if he agreed with those comments and said, “It is my faith, and I’m a believer of that.”[39] Perry went on to say that there was nothing in the sermon that he took exception with.
Humorist and entertainer Kinky Friedman, the Jewish independent candidate for governor in the 2006 election, said, “He doesn’t think very differently from the Taliban, does he?” Carole Keeton Strayhorn disagreed with Perry’s comments, and Democrat Chris Bell said that one who is in public office should “respect people of all faiths and denominations”.
Conservatives then responded, arguing that Perry had a right to his religious beliefs, and that he was not disrespecting Americans of other religious convictions.[40] While visiting Israel in August 2009, Perry gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post in which he affirmed his support for Israel from his religious background, “I’m a big believer that this country was given to the people of Israel a long time ago, by God, and that’s ordained.”

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:

Perry does not believe there is valid scientific proof of anthropogenic global warming. He has said several times that there is no scientific consensus on the issue.[69] In a September 7, 2007, speech to California Republicans, Perry said, “Virtually every day another scientist leaves the global warming bandwagon. ... But you won’t read about that in the press because they have already invested in one side of the story.”

MISC:

PERRY ISSUES OBAMA A COUPLE OF BIG FUBOs:

1. “Texas to Allow Regular Incandescent Bulbs”
Reports are the governor will sign Bill HB2510 by June 19th.
Bill HB2510 allows for the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs otherwise banned in federal legislation of 2007, applicable from 1 January 2012 onwards.
The legality, at least in the way the proposed law is framed, has apparently been cleared with the US Attorney General’s office.
The Bill has already passed in both House and Senate with overwhelming support.
While Texas has no current manufacture, relevant parties are being invited to restart it.
Texas has been a leading US state in providing new local jobs, and this is seen as a further contributive measure.
http://freedomlightbulb.blogspot.com/2011/06/texas-to-allow-incandescent-light-bulbs.html

2.Perry Adds TSA Anti-Groping Bill to Call
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/tea-party/updated-perry-adds-tsa-anti-groping-bill-to-call/ ^

Gov. Rick Perry this evening announced the addition of TSA anti-groping legislation to the agenda for the special legislative session. In a statement, he said lawmakers could consider legislation “relating to the prosecution and punishment for the offense of official oppression on those seeking access to public buildings and transportation.”

. He played quarterback on the six-man football team for the Paint Creek Pirates. He also played basketball and ran track.

. He is an Eagle Scout and wrote a book about the Boy Scouts, ‘On My Honor’.
Rick Perry uses the Boy Scouts to draw a battle line in what he considers a “culture war,” defending them against the American Civil Liberties Union and what he sees as a moral struggle for the country’s future.
The book also traces a 30-year history of litigation involving the Scouts — most of which they won — which Perry considers an attack on traditional values and faith in God.

Perry targets the ACLU as the primary force behind a leftist push to accept homosexuality and challenge Scouting’s duty to God.
http://www.rickperry.org/media/perrys-new-book-supports-boy-scouts-attacks-aclu

. He’s a runner and triathlete.

. He is an outdoorsman who enjoys hunting and fishing.

. He plays the drums. At a January 2005 inaugural party in Washington, he played with ZZ Top in front of 2,000 people

. Perry has Romney’s looks without the other baggage.
Raised on a ranch. Has hair. 6’ tall- presidential (especially after Obama)

. Perry knows he was wrong for pushing the vaccine (although there was always an opt out) and the TTC.
But if that is the worst he has done, I can live with it.
I JUST WANT TO WIN THIS THING!

Americans WILL get it:
Better looking
Better record
Rick Perry for President.

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