FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, December 2, 2009
Contact: Phil Kerpen or James Valvo (703) 224-3200

Americans for Prosperity Applauds U.S. Congressional Candidate Todd Long
-Signs No Climate Tax Pledge-

WASHINGTON—The free market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today applauded U.S. House candidate Todd Long —running in Florida’s 8th Congressional District—for signing the group’s “No Climate Tax Pledge.” By doing so, Long joins over 290 lawmakers and candidates on the federal, state and local levels pledging to “oppose legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.”

“The one thing elected officials should agree on is that global warming shouldn’t be used as an excuse to hike taxes on citizens and businesses,” said AFP Policy Director Phil Kerpen. “We encourage all of Florida’s elected officials and candidates for elected office to sign the pledge.”

Other Florida signers include: U.S. Representatives C.W. Bill Young, Bill Posey and Jeff Miller.

Cap-and-trade took its first step toward enactment when the U.S. House narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill, which escaped the lower chamber by a scant seven votes despite significant bipartisan opposition. Senators Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kerry (D-Mass.) have advanced companion legislation in the Senate. However, key Democratic senators have expressed opposition to attempting to pass cap-and-trade this year.

President Obama has made no secret of his support for the bill, which would be the largest tax increase in American history. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has scored the House plan as an $846 billion increase in federal revenue, a burden that will be borne by taxpayers and consumers for decades to come and a clear violation of AFP’s pledge.

“Using the guise of climate change to transfer dollars from hard-working citizens to bureaucratic big government is unacceptable,” said Kerpen. “Regardless of their stance on global warming, this should be common ground for all of our elected officials at all levels of government.”

The pledge is available online at www.NoClimateTax.com. AFP does not endorse candidates. All elected officials and candidates are encouraged to sign the pledge and go on the record in opposition to using the climate change issue to increase taxes and grow the size of government.
Americans for Prosperity® (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP has more than 800,000 members, including members in all 50 states, and 25 state chapters. More than 55,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial investment in AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org
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I am an ardent supporter of The Fair Tax (H.R.25) and have been fighting for a complete overhaul of our disastrous tax code for years. The Fair Tax proposes the elimination of all federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, capital-gains taxes, corporate taxes, self-employment taxes, gift taxes and estate taxes and replaces them with a 23 cents national sales tax.
The advantages are obvious:
Illegal immigrants and the underground economy will now be contributing to paying the nation’s bills.

America would once again be far and away the greatest nation in the world to start a business. Many entrepreneurs around the world would move their businesses back to the U.S. creating millions of new jobs for americans particularly in our declining manufacturing sector.

With The Fair Tax, we would no longer punish wealth creation or the investment or savings critical for Americans to have plenty of good paying jobs, a high standard of living and sufficient income for retirement.

The Fair Tax would take the power out of Washington’s career politicians and lobbyists who use the 60,000 pages of IRS Rules and Regulations for their own power and wealth at the expense of our nation’s citizens.

I’m Todd Long a conservative Republican running against Alan Grayson in Florida’s Eighth Congressional District. I’m running for Congress because I strongly believe that America must return to our Founding Fathers’ values and principles to effectively solve our national challenges. I also believe we must be led by conservative, problem solvers with the same warrior spirit that enabled our Founders and President Ronald Reagan to persevere and succeed. We must remember that GREAT PRINCIPLES NEVER CHANGE!

Since 2005, I have championed the fight for conservative solutions in this district hosting a radio show The Conservative Comeback, through my book The Conservative Comeback and speaking at numerous Tea Parties and Republican,conservative and service clubs. In 2006, I took on the four term Republican incumbent and fell just 2000 votes shy. Recently, I won a straw vote in the Republican primary getting twice as many votes as the nearest challenger. With your support, I will handily defeat Grayson.

I fully support Ron Paul’s Audit the Federal Reserve Bill H.R. 1207. We must remove the blanket restrictions on GAO audits of the Fed. We have strayed so far from our Constitution and Founders’ principles which were intended to keep power out of the a concentrated few and keep it disbursed among all the people in the various states. The Federal Reserve now has the power to destroy our nation’s economy and all of our lives and we cannot even audit their books to find out what they are doing. We must start reigning in this unbridled power and the first step is moving ahead with H.R.1207.

Before analyzing serious solutions to make health care affordable, it is critical to look at the facts: Without any reform, health-care costs are expected to double to $4.3 trillion by 2017, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. Moreover, tens of millions of Americans are without health insurance. We can all agree that significant reform is necessary to bring down costs.

Why are health-care costs so high? Excessive regulations have destroyed virtually all competition in the insurance industry; and, under the present system, consumers do not care about the cost of their health-care services, since the government or insurance companies absorb the costs. These two facts guarantee out-of-control prices for health insurance.

We must have competitive insurance markets and consumers with incentives to care about the costs of the health product or service they are purchasing. Competition and private markets keep prices low and the quality of health care high. We must allow insurance companies to sell across state lines and also eliminate many of the regulations placed on insurance companies to allow new competitors into this industry. Consider the cost of elective procedures such as plastic surgery, where prices have barely risen the last ten years while the quality of such procedures has improved tremendously because we do have private markets and competition.

Secondly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 25% of health-care costs are related to obesity and physical inactivity which trigger heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. Tragically, the government has taken physical fitness out of our schools, while feeding our children unhealthy food, causing much of this crisis. With a senior population about to double to 77 million by 2040, we’d better start producing healthy citizens and return to physical fitness and nutritious foods in our schools or there will be no money to care for our seniors.

Thirdly, the federal government is already heavily involved in health care through Medicare and Medicaid. Both of these programs are going bankrupt. Each year taxpayers are victimized by $100 billion of Medicare and Medicaid fraud. I strongly suggest that Mr. Grayson and the liberals in Congress fix Medicare and Medicaid before implementing more federal control over health care.

As someone who strongly believe that we need to return to our Constitution which greatly limits federal government interference in its citizens affairs, I believe each state should have its own healthcare strategy. Some states have already begun this process, and I believe tort reform should be a component of each state’s strategy. Florida instituted significant tort reform and while it did not lower healthcare costs, it did lower doctors malpractice premiums and allowed many good doctors to continue to practice medicine. The only reason people want federal involvement is so that we can continue to have our children and future generations picking up the tab, not because Reid, Pelosi and our Congress run efficient or creative programs.

The Democrats’ health-care bill will destroy what is great about our current system. America has the best doctors, hospitals and nurses in the world. Adding 30 million citizens and no new doctors into a broken system will clearly harm the quality of our care, result in rationing of services and further increase the tax and debt burden on the nation’s citizens.

Mr. Grayson wants more federal involvement which allows politicians to pay for unaffordable programs by bankrupting our children. Our Constitution dictates that each state decide for itself how to run its health-care program. This unconstitutional bill will give a corrupt Congress more control over our lives. The result is that Americans will be forced to transition from a free, prosperous, God-dependent nation to a corrupt, poor, government-dependent nation. I promise to fight for conservative, free market solutions to our health care cost crisis, and for solutions to create a healthy nation of citizens while retaining the very best doctors and hospitals in the world.

I support protecting the traditional family as the fabric of our great nation. We cannot have a strong nation without strong families. We now have 40% of our children being born to unwed mothers, many of whom are teenagers. The decline of the traditional family is primarily responsible for the problems we have with abortion, crime, lack of education, and excessive spending as we create a welfare, government society instead of the free, self reliant, God dependent, prosperous nation given to us by our Founders.

Limited Government

I support:

I strongly support school choice, including charter schools, private schools and home- schooling. I believe in tax credits for parents choosing to opt for such schools. The fact is our government schools are producing far too few motivated, well rounded young adults of good character, who understand the principles that made America so prosperous, basic economics and are ready to compete globally for high paying jobs despite tremendous increases in federal spending on education. We should not force or encourage children to enter into a failing system.