Archive for December, 2009

I would like to invite you and one guest to one of my Fireside Chats. The first of these meetings will be held on Tuesday, January 5th.  I’ll be leading a discussion on how Republicans can take our nation back and why I’m running for the Senate to help make that happen.

The first Fireside Chat will be held at the Provo Marriott, 101 West 100 North, Provo at 7:30 p.m.

I’d be honored if you would join me.  To attend this or any of the other Fireside Chats, please RSVP with the names of those who will be attending by sending an email to RSVP@bennettforsenate.com or call: 801-328-4889. Space is limited.

We hope to see you there.

All Fireside Chats will begin at 7:30 PM and last approximately one hour.

Additional Fireside Chats will be held at these locations:

Davis County
Wednesday, January 6
Courtyard by Marriott, Layton
1803 Woodland Park Drive, Layton

Cache County
Thursday, January 7
Riverwoods Conference Center
615 S Riverwoods Parkway, Logan

Washington County
Tuesday, January 12
Washington County Chamber
178 North 200 East
St. George, UT 84070

Salt Lake County
Thursday, January 14
Sandy City Offices
10000 Centennial Parkway
Sandy, UT 84070

Weber County
Friday, January 15
Pleasant Valley Library
5568 S Adams Ave.
Ogden, UT  84405

For most people, the Christmas season trumps politics. My children and grandchildren are gathering without me in Salt Lake, but I’m still in Washington – I have to be here to vote against the health care bill on Christmas Eve. It seems President Obama is determined to give everyone a tax hike for Christmas – unless, of course, you live in Nebraska or Louisiana.

But there will be plenty of time enough to worry about that later. Christmas is busy enough without any added stress. Yet, ironically, it’s often the most difficult Christmases that we remember with the most fondness.

I can remember one Christmas season, nearly thirty years ago now, when my wife Joyce decided to put on a production of Amahl and the Night Visitors at church. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this show, it’s a one-hour opera that was made for television, back when the networks were still open to the idea of broadcasting openly religious programming.

The opera recounts the story of Amahl, a poor shepherd boy living outside of Bethlehem who, in the course of an evening, receives three royal visitors – the Wise Men on the way to visit the newborn Christ child. It has become something of a Christmas classic and is produced regularly this time of year, although it’s usually beyond the “roadshow” scope of church congregations our size.

Joyce served as musical director of the show, and she drafted me into service as director of the whole production. I also played one of the Three Kings. It was quite a challenge to pull this show together, given the fact that we had no budget, an all-volunteer cast, and I had a full-time job and six young children who demanded quite a lot of attention.  At times, it seemed impossible, and I wasn’t sure if we’d have anything ready to present to an audience by opening night.

Yet, somehow, we pulled it off.

And now, anytime I hear a song from that show, I’m instantly transported back to a simpler time, and I remember the friends and associations of Christmases past. I know that life wasn’t necessarily any easier then than it is now, but Christmas memories tend to grow sweeter as time passes.

We all face struggles and challenges; we all deal with pain and loss. That’s why I’m very grateful for the spirit of this season. It’s a welcome reminder that, in the end, the joy is what we remember best.

Merry Christmas.

SALT LAKE CITY…. Today, Senator Bennett announced a coalition of “County Leaders for Bennett” which consists of 68 elected county commissioners and county council members from across the state. This new coalition is part of an extensive campaign organization that also includes over 60 “Mayors for Bennett” and a Bennett Campaign Chair in each of Utah’s 29 counties.

“We need Senator Bennett fighting for us back in Washington,” said Commissioner Jay Hardy of Box Elder County. “Urban and rural communities have different needs, and Senator Bennett gets that. Every county in the state has a voice in Washington with Senator Bennett. He has represented us well.”

Weber County Commissioner Jan Zogmaister agreed.  “Senator Bennett has proven to be a very valuable friend to Weber County,” she said. “We can’t afford to lose him.” 

“Senator Bennett pays attention to us out here in rural Utah,” said Wayne County Commissioner Derae Fillmore. “He listens. He comes to our community and finds out what’s happening firsthand. That’s important. That matters.”

Jim Bennett, Senator Bennett’s campaign spokesman, noted that the county commissioner’s coalition was one of several large-scale coalitions that the campaign has organized this past year. “We’re excited that so many county commissioners have been willing to publicly announce their support of Bob Bennett, and we look forward to unveiling additional coalitions on behalf of the senator in the weeks ahead.”

County Leaders for Bennett consists of the following elected officials:

Beaver County
Chad Johnson 
Donald Willden 
Billy Dalton 

Box Elder County
Brian Shaffer 
Rich VanDyke 
Jay Hardy 

Cache County
H. Craig Peterson 

Daggett County
Floyd Briggs 
Henry Gutz 
Stewart Leith 

Davis County
Louenda Downs

Duchesne County
Ron Winterton

Emery County
Gary D. Kofford 
Jeff Horrocks 

Garfield County
Clare M. Ramsay  
D. Maloy Dodds 
H. Dell LeFevre 

Grand County
Ken Ballantyne
Patricia Holyoak
Gene Ciarus 

Iron County
Alma Adams 
Lois Bulloch 
Wayne A. Smith 

Juab County
Luwayne Walker 
Chad Winn 
Val Jones 

Kane County
Daniel W. Hulet

Morgan County
Rodney Haslam
Sid Creager
Karen Sunday 

Piute County
Rick Blackwell 
Travas Blood 
W. Kay Blackwell

Rich County
Bill Cox
Norman A. Weston

Salt Lake County
David Wilde
Michael H. Jensen

San Juan County
Bruce B. Adams 
Lynn H. Stevens 
Kenneth Maryboy 

Sanpete County
Steve Frischknecht 
Claudia P. Jarrett
Spencer Cox 

Sevier County
Ivan Cowley 
Gary Mason 
Gordon Topham 

Tooele County
Colleen S. Johnson 
Bruce Clegg 
Jerry Hurst 

Uintah County
Mark Raymond 
Darlene Burns
Michael  J. McKee 

Utah County
Larry Ellertson
Gary Anderson 

Washington County
Alan D. Gardner 
Jim Eardley 
Denny Drake 

Wasatch County
Jay Price
Kipp Bangerter
Mike Kohler
Steve Farrell
Val Draper

Wayne County
Derae Fillmore 
Stanley Wood 
Thomas Jeffery

Weber County 
Jan Zogmaister 
Craig L. Dearden 
Kenneth A. Bischoff

In the end, Harry Reid’s political payoffs were more powerful than the conscience of a single Democrat.

In a series of backroom deals, the Democrats decided to defy the will of the American people and clear the way for a terrible bill that will increase spending, gut Medicare, and raise costs, both in the form of taxes and health care premiums. They had to hold the vote in the dead of night, but they were able to strong arm every single member of their caucus and push through this monstrosity of a bill.

What does this mean for you?

Immediately, it means four years of increased taxes, half a trillion dollars slashed out of Medicare, and four years of higher premiums before any changes in benefits.

There are two articles worth reading this morning that provide much of the details. One is Robert Samuelson’s piece in the Washington Post, and the other is the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

Samuelson persuasively demonstrates that this bill does nothing but meet an arbitrary deadline. It won’t cover everyone; it won’t control costs. It’s solidly opposed by majority of Americans.

The Wall Street Journal cites examples of the real-world applications of this bill. They quote an insurer who expects premiums to rise by a rate of 105% to 178%. Both Samuelson and the Journal make the case that the quality of care will decrease even as costs rise.

This bill is also historic in another sense. For the first time in over thirty years, taxpayer dollars will now be used to pay for abortions.

The final vote in the Senate will take place on Christmas Eve. We need to keep the pressure on, in the hopes that the Democrats will listen to the people they’re supposed to represent.

The battle continues. The fight is now.

I can’t remember an issue that has generated more passionate opposition than the current health care proposal. The overwhelming majority of messages I’ve received have asked me to do everything I can to defeat the bill.

Of course, I’ve also gotten plenty of advice as to how to do that. Some say we should yell a lot louder about how terrible this bill really is. Others say we should stop offering or voting on amendments to “fix” the bill because we ought to be focused on killing it altogether.

With those suggestions in mind, I thought I’d spend a moment to provide an inside look as to what the real strategy is on how we hope to defeat the health care bill.

Believe me, we’re more than happy to turn up the volume in telling the world what’s wrong with this bill, and public opinion has definitely soured on Obamacare as a result. Every poll demonstrates clearly that the American people don’t want this, and the American people are absolutely right.

But public opposition isn’t enough. We may have the voters on our side on this issue, but we still don’t have the votes in Congress to prevail, even with unanimous Republican opposition.

The goal, then, is to convince a single senate Democrat – just one – to vote to kill this bill.

That can’t be accomplished by screaming at them.  They’re not going to suddenly stop being liberals. Instead, what we’re doing is trying to receive votes on amendments that will be difficult for some moderate Democrats to oppose. We are trying to include a poison pill in the health care bill  that will make it impossible for at least one Democrat to vote for it. We’ll take any Democrat. We’re not picky. We just need at least one.

We also recognize that they’re feeling a tremendous amount of heat from their side. This president has been in office for almost a year with no successes to show for it.  For him, it’s no longer about solving the health care problem; it’s about scoring a political victory. He wants new momentum to expand government into every aspect of our lives. A defeat would be a devastating blow to the Democrats, and they know it.

That’s why I don’t want to “fix” Obamacare. It’s a disaster from start to finish. I want to kill it, bury it, and drive a stake through its heart so it never rises again.

Terrorists do not belong on American soil.

You would think that would be a non-controversial statement. We are at war, and the terrorists want nothing more than to see this country destroyed. As a nation, we have gone to great lengths to keep terrorists from attacking us again.

But now President Obama wants bring the terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

Current reports suggest that the Thomson Correctional Center in President Obama’s home state of Illinois will be purchased by the Obama administration to house prisoners currently detained at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama administration officials even go so far as to boast about the job creation opportunities in such a move, as if preserving national security were little more than a work program.

This is wrongheaded. It demonstrates that President Obama fails to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

In the first place, these people were not arrested; they were captured on the field of battle. They did not commit crimes; they committed acts of war. For decades, we have relied on the military and the military courts to deal with this kind of threat, but now President Obama seems intent on bringing them into the American criminal justice system, much like he’s doing with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of 9/11 who is scheduled to go to trial in New York City.

Left-wing pundits scoff at the claim that this is somehow a threat to our national security, since the Thomson Correctional Center could be transformed into a facility just as secure as Guantanamo Bay if we sink hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into it. They miss the point entirely. The problem isn’t that the prison system will let the terrorists escape; it’s that a judge, applying the precedents of liberal jurisprudence, might very well be persuaded to let one of them go.

Why would the President subject the nation to this?

Fortunately, Congress has the power of the purse, and we can vote to deny him the resources to take this action, just as we denied him the funding necessary to close Guantanamo Bay. We are at war. This terrible decision is a profoundly unserious way to deal with a very serious threat.

Did you know that Global Warming has taken the past eleven years off?

It’s true. Even Al Gore has been forced to admit it. Of course, the alarmists, in public, say that this is just a natural plateau, and that the warming will pick up again soon, and so we still need to gather in Copenhagen to consider taking some kind of drastic action that will require trillions of taxpayer dollars and a lower standard of living.

But what they’re saying in private tells a different story. In fact, an email from a scientist working with the U.N.’s International Planet on Climate Change calls it a “travesty” that “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment.”

That’s an email you were never intended to see.

It was part of a group of emails hacked from the servers of Britain’s Climate Research Unit, many of which were in the process of being deleted before they would have to be released as part of an open records request. They reveal that scientists were eager to hide or massage data that didn’t support the theory of man-made warming, and they were working to discredit any respectable scientific outlet that expressed skepticism.

That, in a nutshell, is “Climategate.”

People are outraged about this, but for different reasons. Senator Boxer of California has no interest in what the Climategate emails actually say; she’s only interested in prosecuting the people who released them. Al Gore is upset that people continue to talk about this, falsely claiming on several occasions that the emails are a decade old, when, in fact, many of them are as recent as last month.

Well, I’m outraged, too.

I recognize that I’m in no position to evaluate the underlying science here, and I’m not trying to argue that man-made global warming isn’t happening. Even if these emails had never come to light, even if all the alarmists were 100% correct, even if all the polar ice caps really were melting, I’d still be disgusted with the Cap and Tax proposal now being considered to fix it.

That’s because the cure is worse than the disease.

Even the most rabid global warming alarmist concedes that, if fully enacted, the Cap and Tax proposal will have no significant effect on lowering global temperatures. They’re willing to commit trillions of dollars to a symbolic effort that they call a “good start,” but which does nothing to solve the problem. And now, we discover that they’re trying to conceal evidence that suggests that there may not be a problem in the first place.

The President is eager to make a symbolic gesture that cost trillions of dollars and accomplishes nothing. That, in my estimation, is the real scandal here.

President Obama held a “Jobs Summit” last week, where business leaders from all over the country gathered to discuss ways to increase employment and get the economy moving again.  During a holiday season where one out of every ten Americans is out of work, that’s an important discussion to have.

Well, with all due respect to the president, I have a suggestion that will do more to further employment in America than anything that was discussed at the jobs summit:

Congress should abandon this job-killing health care bill.

Prior to coming to the Senate, I spent over thirty years in the business world.  I have run several small and large businesses that have created thousands of jobs. Indeed, it is the private sector, not Washington DC, that creates jobs. All Washington can do is get in the way.

And when it comes to job creation, this health care bill gets in the way – in a big way.

Last night, I listened as one of my constituents – a Democrat, mind you –complained about the rising costs of providing health care for the employees in his small business. He is optimistic that the Democrats’ bill will help lower costs. He didn’t realize that the bill we’re now considering is loaded with mandates and requirements that will raise both health care premiums and personal and corporate taxes.

The logic here is very simple. Every dollar that a small businessman spends on health care premiums, taxes, or other government fees is a dollar that can’t be passed on in wages to an employee. That forces the business owner to face the cruel reality of either lowering wages for everyone or cutting some employees off the payroll altogether.

Put simply, this health care bill means more lost jobs.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Small business is the engine of the economy. It’s irresponsible to jam through a health care bill that would devastate the very businesses that can get our country back on track. That’s the wrong approach, and it’s not what Americans want.

We need to focus on free market principles to fix our broken health care system. This bill fails to do that.

If we’re going to make real progress on health care and in job creation, we need to scrap this bill altogether.

For over three decades, it has been illegal to use any federal funds to pay for abortions in the United States.

The Hyde Amendment, a law enacted in 1976 that prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion, has long been a target of the Democrats, but even when they’ve held significant majorities in Congress, they’ve been unable to repeal it.

Until now.

In the current health care bill, the so-called “Public Option” would provide federally funded insurance coverage for abortion. This would give the radical abortion proponents a chance to get rid of that pesky Hyde Amendment.  That would pose a serious problem for most Republicans  – and even a few Democrats.

Which leads us to yesterday’s vote.

Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, teamed up with Senator Hatch to propose an amendment that would have prevented federal insurance from funding abortion. I co-sponsored the amendment, but it failed on a largely party-line vote.

On the one hand, it’s disappointing to lose this particular battle. But on the other hand, it may very well help us to win the war against this bill altogether.

Remember what the goal is here. We don’t want to make Obamacare just a little less awful; we want to kill it outright. So, ironically, by defeating this amendment, the Democrats have made it harder for Senator Nelson to vote for the final bill.

All forty Republicans are on board to prevent this bill from passing. All we need is one Democrat to join us. By bowing to the demands of the radical abortion lobby, the Democrats today may have helped push Senator Nelson to our side of the aisle on this issue.

This is just one battle in the fight to kill Obamacare, and there will be many more. I will continue to press forward and oppose this bill at every turn.

I’m on the front lines on this issue, and the fight is now.