Liberty Maven

Vern Mckinley is running in my own district, Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. I’m excited to not only endorse him as a candidate, but also to interview him for Liberty Maven. Mckinley is very comprehensive in his well thought out answers. This is part one of the interview, and truly gives some excellent insight into his campaign and positions. I look forward to continuing this interview in the coming days and weeks.

Remember, complete Liberty Maven interviews can always be found on the interview page. For more information about Vern Mckinley’s campaign check out his campaign web site: MckinleyForCongress.com.

Read on for part one of the Mckinley interview.

LM: Tell us a little bit about who you are and why you chose to run against Congressman Wolf, who has been in Congress representing the 10th district in Virginia since 1981?

Mckinley: Who– To put a bit more detail on what is on our campaign website, I was born in East Chicago, Indiana which is next to Gary just outside of Chicago and I grew up in Chicago. From a political view, that was the year of the Kennedy tax cuts and also the year of Kennedy’s untimely death. My sister was the first one in our family to attend college and ultimately all of my siblings and I finished college, which was important to my parents.

My father worked in a union job at Standard Oil/Amoco for 40 years and my mom worked at home raising my siblings and me. It was a hard-core Democratic upbringing given the mix of Chicago politics influenced by the union environment. My parents were part of the Kennedy generation and I can even remember my mom backing Senator Kennedy during the 1980 election against Carter. Meanwhile about that time my brother closest to my age was starting to get me interested in Republican politics and Ronald Reagan.

As for my career, I worked in government financial agencies most of the time from 1985 to 1999. I spent time at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Dallas, and then the Federal Reserve Board, Resolution Trust Corporation and Treasury Department (Office of Thrift Supervision) in Washington. Although these agencies do similar things I reinvented myself going from working on accounting and audit to working with economists to managing a staff of financial and accounting analysts to working as an attorney after I finished a law degree at night.

Also during the 1990s I did quite a bit of policy work with the Cato Institute, putting together policy papers and following through by testifying up on the Hill or making media appearances. At that time some of my work was cited by members of Congress, including Dr. Paul.

The last eight years I have spent advising foreign governments in financial sector issues I learned about while in the government. Most of these assignments have been in post-conflict countries (Afghanistan, Sudan, Tajikistan, and the former Yugoslavia) or in countries that were going through political and economic reform (Armenia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Kenya). Most of my work has been at central banks, banking supervisors and deposit insurers. This work has required me to spend nearly half my time out of the United States these past eight years.

As for personal background, my wife and I have been married six years after having met while I was working in Armenia and we live with our children Ruben, 5, and Catherine, 2, in Ashburn, Virginia which is about 30 miles west of Washington in the 10th District. We have been lucky enough to travel together around the world on a few of my assignments, including to Armenia, Kenya, Indonesia and Tajikistan.

I love being a father, but unfortunately my travels without my family prevent me from spending as much time at home as I should and this puts a big burden on my wife, Nona, to keep watch over our children. So even if people don’t agree with me on every issue I would hope they would vote for me to allow me spend more time with my family.

Why– The Republican Party has really drifted since the twin revolutions—Reagan in the 1980s and the Republican Revolution in the 1990s. Although the follow through for both of those revolutions fell flat in many respects, at least at the core of each was the idea that we should have limited government. Now the majority of the Republican Party has abandoned all pretenses that they stand for limited government on both domestic issues and foreign policy. Congressman Wolf embodies that abandonment and it is ironic that he came in on the 1980 Reagan wave and signed the Contract with America in 1994. In the run-up to the 2006 election I took one of these VoteSmart surveys (www.vote-smart.org) where you compare your views with your Congressman. It showed I agreed with him about 30% of the time which surprised me.

Admittedly with travel and family I lost touch with politics, but I began to research his positions. Every one of his initiatives, whether it be pork barrel spending and earmarks, his position on Appropriations, his positions on Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan and foreign policy generally, Journey Through Hallowed Ground, taking over the Greenway, Real ID, transportation spending, and his votes on the State Children’s Health Program (SCHIP), mortgage reform, increasing the minimum wage, No Child Left Behind, Campaign Finance Reform, the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, and on and on has at its core that the federal government is always a force for good and that the federal government which governs most, governs best. There should be an alternative for limited government Republicans, so that is why I decided to run.

LM: As a Ron Paul supporter, I see some similarities between your views and his. Ron Paul has aligned himself with a Barry Goldwater type of conservatism. In fact, Goldwater’s son has endorsed him for President. I notice on your website (mckinleyforcongress.com) you have pictures and quotes from both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Could you talk a little bit about the similarities and differences between your own views and those of Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater?

Mckinley: Maybe I will handle this in chronological order. I really don’t have a personal connection with Barry Goldwater given that he ran for President when I was very young, although he obviously set into motion the limited government movement in the Republican Party of the 1980s, 1990s and what is left of it today. I also think that Senator Robert Taft contributed to that development although he does not get as much attention because he never won the Republican nomination.

People whose views I agree with who are a bit older than me nearly always point to Goldwater as their big influence. I also liked the particular quote of his we posted to our campaign website about “getting gored” being a part of politics. I have felt gored a few times over the past year plus of this effort.

Without a doubt, President Reagan, along with Milton Friedman, had an enormous influence on the development of my political and economic philosophy. I was 17 when Reagan came into office and 25 when he left. A lot of people are influenced, positively or negatively by the President during this period of their life. I saw Congressman Wolf on C-Span once and he said one of his favorite Presidents was Eisenhower, who was in office when he was coming of age and Judy Feder, who challenged Congressman Wolf in 2006, talks a lot about Kennedy, who was in office when she was coming of age.

Reagan was very popular with young people because he represented a change from the drift of the country and the Republican Party in the 1970s and he questioned the role of the federal government in our lives. I agreed with the limited government approach and although, again, I don’t think everything was consistent on the follow through I think Reagan has been the most liberty-oriented President in my lifetime. The changes in tax policy, reduced regulatory burden, nominees to the Supreme Court who took the Constitution seriously (with exceptions) during that period were in the right direction and I would recognize that he had a Democratic Congress preventing him from cutting spending and regulation as much as he wanted. Plus, he had a recession to deal with just a few months after taking office.

On foreign policy, Reagan’s focus that the main function of the government is providing for the common defense and the national interest was correct. I did not agree with everything Reagan did, but to his credit he recognized his mistake in the Middle East when our Marines were killed in Lebanon and he was smart enough to get the heck out when it was clear we were not accomplishing much other than exposing our military. A lot of today’s Republicans would have accused Reagan of “cutting and running” when he left Lebanon.

I like his line towards the end of his autobiography (p. 704) where he notes that the Middle East was a “snake pit” when he unpacked his bags in 1981 and it was still a snake pit when he was about to leave. He also near the discussion of Lebanon sets out a doctrine of foreign policy which codifies the idea that we should only get involved in foreign entanglements when it is “vital to our national interest” (p. 466) which to me means when there is a direct and clear threat to the United States. In this doctrine he also talks about having “clearly defined and realistic objectives,” “having the support of the American people” and “being committed to combat abroad only as a last resort.” He learned these lessons in Lebanon and his doctrine as detailed in his autobiography is a template for minimalist foreign policy intervention.

As for Dr. Paul I have followed him since the early 1980s and had a chance to see him speak in 1984 when I was working on Capitol Hill. I remember following his run for Senate in 1984 against Phil Gramm, his run for President in 1988 and his return to Congress in 1997. Dr. Paul stands in great contrast to Congressman Wolf. They both had their start in politics in 1976, but Dr. Paul has had a consistent limited government message over the last 30+ years, whereas Congressman Wolf has gotten cozier with big government the longer he stays in office, what some refer to as “going native.”

I mentioned that I took the VoteSmart test and it showed I agreed with Congressman Wolf 30% of the time. I then ran Dr. Paul’s name through. It showed we agreed about 85 or 90% of the time. Dr. Paul will have a big influence on the thinking of a lot of young people who are coming of age now just like Reagan did in the 1980s. I have a number of volunteers on my campaign who are in their teens and 20s that are highly motivated by Dr. Paul’s principles.

As for issues we disagree on he requests earmarks and I would not do that as a Member of Congress. The Wall Street Journal and the Club for Growth critique this stand as being against his spending and Constitutional principles and I agree. The approach on earmarks of Congressmen Flake, Shadegg, Hensarling, Campbell, Boehner, Blackburn and others, as well as Senators Coburn Demint, McCaskill and Feingold is right: Just say no to earmarks (more later on the next question on earmarks).

On foreign policy, I believe when the Congress passed the Iraq resolution that the President’s Article II, Section 2 Commander in Chief Powers kicked in. Other than the power to “declare war” and related matters the role of the Congress is largely limited to the Article 1, Section 8 power to “raise and support armies” and “provide and maintain a Navy.” Some of what he advocates pushes the limits of these powers.

LM: You have been an outspoken critic of “earmarks”. For those of us that aren’t quite clear, could you explain what “earmarks” are, and the differences between your own position on earmarks and that of Congressman Wolf?

Mckinley: Earmarks are mandates for spending by Congress, usually for a narrow interest or a project, based in language that can appear in legislation or Congressional reports in a process that has lacked transparency. Most of these turn out to be pork barrel projects. We joked in an earlier version of the campaign website that Republicans like Congressman Wolf have made it so G.O.P. doesn’t stand for “Grand Old Party” any longer, but instead stands for “Giving Out Pork.”

As for Congressman Wolf’s part in this, to his credit when the Republicans first took over Congress in the mid 1990s he actually tried to get earmarks under control from when the Democrats were in charge, but that changed really quickly (again “going native”). Congressman Wolf and his staff have been particularly secretive about certain of his earmarks. There was a request by the Washington Post two years ago that his office make public all of his earmark requests. The response was that these were “internal documents” and would not be shared. But the Congressman is very willing to talk about earmarks when he sees it is to his political benefit to do so whether it be on his website or when he is being interviewed.

I decided to take the analysis of Congressman Wolf’s involvement one step further last May before we formally launched the campaign. OMB published a database a year ago with nearly 15,000 earmarks from 2005. I extracted all of the earmarks from that database from the 10th Congressional District and then I sent a letter to Congressman Wolf which said:

• I am a constituent of yours.
• Here are 51 earmarks for $54 million that benefited interests in the 10th District in the OMB database.
• Which earmarks did your office have direct or indirect involvement with? You take credit on your website for getting at least one of them.
• Of those you were involved with, why did you get involved with them as earmarks instead of a more transparent means?
• Do you have any policies on how earmarks are handled?
• There are two $3 million earmarks that match up with campaign contributions of yours for over $10,000, two of your largest contributors. Do you have any policies on this practice?

The response was predictable from Congressman Wolf: thank you for your letter, I stand for “reform” and “transparency.” No response to the straightforward questions.

Just to show you how silly these earmarks can get, the New York Times did a piece on one of the earmarks sponsored by Congressman Wolf. It involved the federal government giving two retired law enforcement officers $150,000 a year to look for obscene material and help review 67,000 official complaints with the Justice Department. None of these complaints resulted in prosecutions. Reason Magazine’s blog entitled their article on this a little more bluntly: “Work from Home! Look at Porn All Day!” This just goes to show you that there really are no limits to what can be funded through these earmarks.

The bottom line is these are not proper spending initiatives for the federal government. Members need to just stop requesting these earmarks and work with the Administration to eliminate this spending requested by Congress and equivalently baseless spending requested by the Executive. That would be leadership on appropriations.

The topper is that now Congressman Wolf is pushing “earmark reform legislation” which involves a Joint Select Committee on Earmarks. This only happens in the bizarro world of Washington. You’ve heard of “Stop me before I kill again!” Now we have “Stop me before I earmark again!” This is from someone who the Club for Growth says voted for 96% of the pork projects that came his way. I will leave it to your readers to determine how much credibility Congressman Wolf has on this issue. Interesting that the Congressman waited until the Republicans lost power before he sponsored it.

LM: The economy is suffering. President Bush and Congress have come up with what they term an “economic stimulus” package. Do you believe the stimulus package will help the economy? What is the federal government’s role in stimulating the economy?

Mckinley: This is the classic case in Washington of the “Do something, anything” approach. You see this all the time and it consistently leads to bigger government whether it is on the economy generally or the mortgage market with the interventionist reform measure that Congressman Wolf voted for. We also saw it in the Patriot Act where the Congress rushed through a lot of changes without the full analysis that is usually given to such legislation.

I am very skeptical that the stimulus package will help the economy given that it is such a small amount (1 percent of GDP) and that it largely involves borrowing from future generations to pay for consumption now. The focus should be on more long term measures, so look for our press release this week on the stimulus package for more details.

On this issue I also think there is a problem with the Federal Reserve Act. Right now the objective in this law mandates that the Fed not only maintain growth of the monetary and credit aggregates for the goal of price stability, but also promote maximum employment. The Fed should focus on price stability only and not worry about employment per se or else you have these interventions that may actually detract from long term price stability.

LM: I work in the technology industry, as many do in the 10th district. My company has been working on complying with Sarbanes-Oxley for the better part of the last three years. Do you support Sarbanes-Oxley? Is it something that you’d look to repeal or modify?

Mckinley: Again this falls into the “Do something, anything” category. We had the scandals a few years ago and with no real showing that there was a systemic problem in the industry they pass this far-reaching, burdensome legislation that has hurt our capital markets. I agree with your point about the technology industry as I have worked in the past with a firm that has also had challenges with the mandates.

The response flowing from Sarbanes-Oxley was predictable at the time of its passage. Companies are deciding to list outside of the U.S. or they simply stay as a more closely-held entity even if it makes business sense to broaden out their ownership base. I did not support Sarbanes-Oxley and would push for dramatic changes or outright repeal.

This completes part one of our interview with Vern Mckinley.

Part two is available here.