Free Norwich

Free Norwich:  As the candidate with the most military experience, and serving on the Homeland Security Committee, do you agree with the President setting a time-line for pulling out of Afghanistan in 2012?

Rob Simmons:  No, I don’t.  I think that whenever you are engaged in a war, and of course our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are in a war–it’s a different kind of war from World War II, Korea or Vietnam, where I fought–but when you’re in a war, the Commander-in-Chief should not set a specific deadline for accomplishment of the mission and publicize it.  That’s just not a good idea.  It creates opportunities for our enemies, because now they can plan on that date being a critical date and they can plan around it for some particularly violent activity and it also tells them that our commitment is limited.  It’s not good to send your enemy those signals.  And then think about the soldiers in the field and their families, because if I was over there, or my son was over there, I’d be concerned that the President, the Commander-in-Chief  has simply said, your son’s sacrifice, or your sacrifice is only good to buy us a year and a half.  That’s about it.  We’re not making a long-term commitment to victory in any way, and I think that’s demoralizing and bad public policy.

FN:  Do you think it’s politically motivated?  The date?

RS:  Absolutely, it’s politically motivated!  You didn’t see Franklin Roosevelt telling Dwight Eisenhower 30 days after the D-Day landing, if you’re not successful, leave France.  You didn’t see Truman tell MacArthur in Korea if you’re not successful in 60 or 90 days or a year, we’re going to pull the plug on the Korean peninsula.  So it has to be political pressure from the left that’s forcing the president to put a deadline out there, and I just think that’s a mistake.  When you are Commander in chief, you’ve got to be strong, you’ve got to stand above the political crowd and make decisions that are best for this country and for the troops and for their families.

FN:  There’s talk of a second stimulus package to the tune of about $200 billion.  If you were in the Senate today, could you vote for that?

RS:  Probably not.  I wouldn’t have voted for the first stimulus package, I wouldn’t have voted for the TARP bill and I wouldn’t vote for a second stimulus, if it’s anything at all like the first one.  I gather it’s got earmarks in it and the whole deal.  This is disgraceful.  You don’t stimulate the economy by allocating large massive amounts of government funds and passing them from the federal government to the state government or from the State government to the local government.  That may help a particular state balance it’s budget, but it doesn’t stimulate the economy.  Connecticut is a perfect example of that. We got abut 3 billion, 3.2 billion in stimulus out of the January bill and 1.2 billion was for Medicaid.  Well Medicaid is a government program so that money supports a government program, which relieves Connecticut’s budget problems, but it doesn’t stimulate the economy.   And then secondly, 800 million or so, I believe, was for education, that is federal government, state government, and local government.  How does that stimulate the economy?  It doesn’t.  When you want to stimulate the economy you need to have structured tax cuts on small business for example which is what we did in 2003.  It allowed small business to expense up to $100,000 in new equipment purchases and that stimulates the economy and increases productivity and it works.  Today you talk to small business about what did you get under the stimulus, and the answer is 100% zero, zilch, nothing.  They haven’t got anything.  And so, I would say no more stimulus.  Let’s really focus on our economic problems, let’s cut the spending, let’s reduce the deficit, and let’s get off the backs of small business.

FN:  How do you propose we create jobs in this country?

RS:  Just by what I just said.  You create jobs by getting the government off the back of the job creators.  Who are the job creators?  Well, you know the job creators are not necessarily big banks, big financial institutions, big corporate entities.  Here in the State of Connecticut, 53 percent of all business are 4 or less employees, 73 percent of all businesses are nine or less employees.  Nationally,  96% of all business are 20 or less employees.  So, it’s really small business where the jobs are created and that’s where the focus has to be.  It has not.  It has to be there.

FN:  You’ve taken some heat for your position on cap and trade – the change in your position on cap and trade.  Why are you now against that legislation?

RS:  I co-sponsored a cap and trade bill a long time ago when I was a member of the House of Representatives.  Since that time, I’ve had a unique experience.  I was appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the legislature to be the Business Advocate for the State of Connecticut.  For 22 months, I traveled the state and went to over 400 businesses, one a day, every day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks of the year.  And I got an education.  I got an education on taxes.  I got an education on red tape and regulation.  But I also got an education on energy costs, which goes to the issue of cap and trade, and I got an education on the costs of labor which goes to the issue of card check.  And you know, I’m a guy that learns from my experiences.  The experience of being a business advocate was a really important learning experience, and I learned from it.  Based on that experience I would not support that legislation.

FN:  Health care is on everyone’s mind these days, and although the vote may come up one way or another before you get in the Senate, you are one of the few public figures that supported the Tea Party movement.  What can be done to stop this bill before the next election?

RS:  Well I think the Tea Party movement, which is a group of citizens–I don’t like it when people criticize the Tea Party folks, I don’t like it because I’ve been to some Tea Parties myself, and I know who they are.  They’re neighbors, they’re citizens who have a right to speak out, they’re people who are concerned about the direction their country is going in, they are people that are worried about unemployment, they’re worried about the high cost of living.  They are worried about a whole range of issues that affect them directly.  And I think they have a right to speak out, whether it’s Norwich or New Haven or Hartford, that’s where I’ve been to the movements, to listen to people speak and to speak myself.  And you know, the problem with the Health Care legislation is they’re going to cut Medicare by half a billion–ah half a trillion dollars, which means less money for a program that’s already not funded adequately to meet the cost of the health care that its provided.  It doesn’t make any sense.  They’re moving towards a government option, a government takeover.   I don’t think that makes sense.  I’ll tell you why.  I’m a veteran.  You’d think I would be eligible for Veteran’s Health Care, but in fact I’m not.  The VA system (which is a good system in and of itself) only handles about 6 million of 22 million veterans.  So whenever the government is involved, it’s more expensive, it’s more red tape, it’s less access to services.  There’s a limited formulary .  It’s just not a good system.  I think what we really need to do is get some of the costs out of our health care system  – and that goes to Tort reform -reducing the cost of frivolous lawsuits, allowing competition across state lines for the access of health insurance.  For example, I buy my health insurance here in Connecticut.  I can’t buy it anywhere else.  And yet I buy my car insurance in Texas.  Why shouldn’t I be able to get my health insurance from an out-of-state company and reduce costs through competition.  And there’s just a variety of other proposals that we can do to reduce the cost of health care, which is the real problem.

FN:  It’s interesting because it keeps coming up– Tort Reform, increased competition. Why haven’t those ideas been presented in any sort of legislation that they’re talking about–it seems that everyone is talking about those things needing to be done, but it does not seem as though…..

RS:  They have.  In fact, I voted for some of those bills when I was in the House of Representatives.  I co-sponsored and supported them in the House of Representatives.  Health savings accounts.  Medical savings accounts these sorts of things were all supported.  Association health plans I supported.  Democrats opposed them because they’re reasonable proposals that get in the way of National Health Care.  Ideologically Democrats want national health care.  They want the Government to run the whole ball of wax.  And so they will fight any reasonable proposal that might work against their plan to have government health care.

FN:  The President of the Dallas Fed back in 2008 said that we had 99 trillion dollars in unfunded mandates with Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.  How do we resolve those issues?

RS:  Well you have to do it one step at a time and certainly you don’t solve the issue of mandates by adding more.  And what you see coming out of Washington DC today of course is more mandates, more taxes on those people that have good health care plans, what they call Cadillac plans.  They call them Cadillac plans so you think somehow the person is rich   If you’re a submarine builder down at Electric Boat, if you’re building jet engines for Pratt and Whitney, if you’re over at Sikorsky producing helicopters, these types of high-tech products, you probably have a good health care plan–call it a Cadillac plan, but the fact of the matter is we don’t need to put taxes on those plans, we don’t need to take away from our skilled workers a benefit that they’ve earned over the years.  We don’t need to put new taxes on small business and tell them if they don’t cover health care for their employees, that they’re going to have to pay some kind of tax or premium.  We don’t need to be punishing people over this issue–we need to be providing incentives, we need to reduce the costs of the services that are provided.  Generally speaking, the public plans: Medicare, Medicaid, veterans health care, military health care, generally seeking costs more than what is offered in the private sector.  So we need to be more efficient.  We need to get the corruption and the false claims out of these programs too.  The government has not done a good job of that.  False claims in medicare are very substantial.

FN:  Going back to your time as a business advocate, as the State’s first and only business advocate, what needs to be done in the State of Connecticut to attract more business?

RS:  Well first and foremost, the Connecticut General Assembly needs to balance the budget and get more business friendly.  One of the reasons the Democratic legislators introduced an amendment to get rid of the Business Advocate job and they did it secretly, so nobody would know about it (FN: right) including me–one of the reasons they did it was because I kept speaking out for free enterprise and small business and I discovered from Site Finder magazine, this is an American site-finding organization that publishes a magazine that helps business locate and it gives you the score — if you locate to Connecticut, what’s good, what’s bad.  And the interesting thing is that Site Finder lists the various legislatures–those that are pro-business and those that are anti-business.  Connecticut ranks 50th in the nation that is anti-business.  Our legislature is ranked the worst legislature in the nation when it comes to being business friendly.  We have to start right there.  Well they didn’t like it when I brought that to their attention, and they didn’t like it when I testified to that effect in front of  the Commerce Committee, but rather than address the issue that our Connecticut General Assembly is the worst in the nation, rather than address that, they decided to get rid of me because I said it.  That’s where we’re at.  Today.  Today is a good example, the legislature will come in, the Democrats will call the legislature in to try to fix the unbalanced budget that we have up there, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars out of balance–they’re going to come, they’re going to say a few things and leave.  They’re going to do nothing.  And I tell you what, the people of the State of Connecticut should be outraged.  They should throw the bums out next year, and I hope they do.

FN:  You were one of the ones caught up in all the budget cuts.  They don’t seem to be cutting in the right areas, at the right times.  It’s going to be an expensive campaign – primary and the general election – how’s the fund-raising?

RS:  We’re doing surprisingly well for some fund raising – if there is anyone listening that wants to help out, go on our web-page at: joinrobsimmons.com.  We have people that have given us $5 and we have people that have given us $5,000.  So it’s very gratifying.  In the first quarter, we raised more money than any challenger, out of office challenger,  in state history .  Second quarter we actually beat Senator Dodd.  He raised over $900,000.  We raised $970,000.  That’s unheard of.  But that shows that people are upset.  And what also shows that people are upset is that we have over 10,000 donors.  I know there’s some people in this race who can write their own checks for a ton of money, I know that, but you know the thing I really value is the citizen here in Connecticut that writes a check or goes on-line and makes a contribution, $15, $20, $25–those dollars add up.  Those dollars really make a difference.  We’ve raised literally several millions of dollars from people who have just, lots and lots of people who given a small amount, the best they can afford and we really appreciate it.  Especially now at Christmas and Hannakuh when people are spending money on their families and on gifts, just to throw 25 bucks into the web page is a beautiful thing and we love it.  So, Join Rob Simmons dot com!

FN:  One last question.  Tell me about life as a private in the army.

RS:  Life as a private in the army.  I was drafted as you know, and when I got my draft notice I had to decide am I going to get drafted or am I going to enlist.  So, having gotten my draft notice, I enlisted as a private, I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey and when I got my first paycheck, I’ll never forget it, it wasn’t a check–it was cash money counted out of a strong box, sixty eight dollars and change for a month.  $68 a month as a private in the army.  I kind of made some grumbling remarks to the sargeant that was there. He said, hey Private Simmons get over here – what are you complaining about, $68 a month?  We give you food, we give you clothing, we give you housing, we give you transportation, heck $68 that’s too much – we shouldn’t give you anything for the joy of being in the US Army!. Give me twenty pushups.  So I had to get down and do my push-ups.  But you know, seriously, we are blessed in this coutnry to have young men and women who are willing to volunteer–because we have a volunteer force now–to serve our country, to put their lives on the line for our freedom and democracy.  And what I say to those wonderful men and women who are serving us around the country and around the world:  They’re fighting for freedom.  They’re fighting for democracy. And my message to Chris Dodd and the gang down in Washington, DC is–Don’t take our freedom away by over-taxing us.  Don’t take our freedom away by passing laws that don’t let us live lives as free people.  We have inherited the freedom and the democracy of this country from generations of American who have stood up to fight for it and right now we have to fight for it in the Tea Parties, we have to fight for in the CT General Assembly and we have to fight for it in Washington DC.  Let’s not give up on freedom .  Let’s fight for it just like our wonderful men and women in uniform are fighting for it.

FN:  Thank you for your time, Representative Simmons.  It’s been very informative, and we appreciate your comments.