At an afternoon session of the RightOnline Conference in Las Vegas, Indiana Congressman Mike Pence said that the November elections will be a great comeback for conservative values. He’s optimistic, and he likes our chances. Pence is Chairman of the House Republican Conference.
What a difference a year makes, he told the audience of some 1,100 conservative activists. Democrats dominated both houses of Congress. Elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts changed that. “Even Republicans in Congress have returned to the fight for fiscal prudence and limited government.”
The American people walked away from the Republican Party, he said. But now Republicans are back in the fight.
Democrats in Washington are out of ideas, he said. Disputing claims that the stimulus worked, he said that 2.4 million Americans have lost their jobs. But Americans don’t want to rely on jobless benefits, they want jobs. It’s not only a fiscal crisis in Washington, he said it is morally wrong to take the resources of future generations to deal with today’s problems.
Democrats have increased taxes by $670 billion dollars, and they’re embracing the largest tax increases in history — the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. House Republicans will oppose this tax increase with everything they’ve got, he said.
He said that if we get government under control and out of the way, America will come roaring back.
Bailouts must end, and he said that the recently-passed financial reform bill must be repealed.
On spending, he said we should limit federal spending to 20 percent of the nation’s economy by adopting a constitutional amendment. It was just a few years ago it was at 18 percent, he said, and the historic average since World War II is 20 percent.