From their press release:
Bill Stephens, former State Senate Majority Leader and GOP candidate for the 9th District U.S. Congressional seat now held by Congressman Nathan Deal, signed the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) No Tax Pledge today.
Stephens is the first and thus far only Congressional candidate in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District to sign the ATR No Tax Pledge.
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He’s also the “only Congressional candidate in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District” who lives in the 6th District.
Full address listed here –
http://ethics.georgia.gov/Reports/Lobbyist/Lobbyist_Name.aspx?&FilerID=L20070352
Canton, GA
Wow, Stephens and Evans are both lobbyist!!!! I always knew that Evans was one, but Stephens too. It is pretty obvious that the only real choice here is Tom Graves.
However, I do admire Stephen’s pledge, but I think that Washington already has enough lobbyist.
Gotta disagree with you, tocallaghan. The real choice is Jeremy Jones. He is the only candidate in this race who is not a career politician. The Founding Fathers never intended for our government to be run by politicians who do nothing but run for office, and stay in office! George Washington set a very good example. He could have stayed in office, he would almost certainly have been reelected until his death, but he didn’t. There is very little difference between having a king who has authority by inheritance, and having an elected official who has never worked outside of politics. It’s time to vote out the incumbents, and not just move them to another office. Jones is a small business owner, and has never held an office. It is time we return to government “by the people, of the people, for the people” and eliminate this elite group of politicians who, because of their money and name recognition, almost completely obliterate a normal citizen’s chances of being elected.
I like Mr. Jones. He delivered a good speech in Pickens County, but Apacheangel, you are wrong on a couple points.
Graves is by no means a career politician. He is also a small business owner like Jones. He spends must of his time as father, husband, business owner, and Christian.
Stephens could be considered a career politician because he is a lobbyist and has had a previous aspiration for higher office with his SOS race. Evans is the same way. However, I do not know either of these men personally, so I will not judge their intentions. Both men could be and probably are perfectly nice men, running for Congress, trying to make our country a better place.
But you can’t use Jone’s lack of political experience as a reason to vote for him. I can look at Rep. Graves’ record and see that he has stood on firm ground, fought the establishment in the house, always stood up for smaller government, fought for lower taxes, and worked to lower spending. Jones has NO record to base anything off. I am sure that he, like Rep. Graves, is a solid conservative in favor of common sense policies, but I can not be too sure. It is hard to trust a man for such a high office with out any previous knowledge of how he votes. I can go around saying that I don’t like a large government, but would I risk a leadership position, like Rep. Graves did, to stand firm on principle?
I would not only vote for Jeremy Jones for a lower office, but I would campaign for him. If Mr. Jones, like Rep. Graves, proved to me that he could stand firm on his principles, I would support him in a bid for Congress.
Read my lips…
Yeah, but is there any teeth to this thing? I doubt it, but I hope there is. Otherwise, it basically becomes yet another broken campaign promise, probably within the first couple of weeks of taking office.
I’m trying to figure out why he signed a piece of paper he ripped out of his son’s notebook instead of the actual ATR pledge in his video. How bizarre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9hyPd6B3zg&feature=channel_page
Okay, not just because I am running against him, I do find that video funny. When I sign the pledge, I will let you know why they accept a signature on notebook page rather than the pledge page. I will also contact Stephens about getting a better video editor!
Notebook paper? Well in that case I’ll sign it myself…
There, it’s done. I signed the pledge. Anything else need signing today? lol
Hey Steelfist,
I wanted to verify that ATR does have a signed Pledge from Bill Stephens. Here is a link to the ATR blog post on the GA-09 race: http://www.atr.org/georgia-theres-lack-pledge-signers-looking-a3510.
- Adam
Adam he may have very well signed the pledge. I am sure at the end of the day all candidates in the 9th will sign the pledge, but I guess what I found bizarre was that he videoed himself signing something other than the pledge. Smoke and mirrors, that’s the distrust I have and votes have with the system, especially politician turned lobbyist turned politician.
Since you are with ATR, can you verify if Bill signed the Pledge when he was in the State Senate only to break it when he voted to raise taxes in 2003?
Well, any Member of Congress who votes to raise taxes in that district will lose the primary in less than two years after taking office, so it is kinda moot…
This is kinda like someone running for Nancy Pelosi’s SF district after she retires signing onto some pledge to support gay rights…
There ought to be a pledge not to spend more money so as to cause either a tax increase or a debt increase.
I’ll sign that too, Bill. Let me write something up real quick on my daughter’s etch-a-sketch.
LOL! That’s about the value of any pledge out there, Kell.
So Stephens signed a piece of paper supporting ATR’s agenda, while Graves has actively fought with their support for the last seven years.
ATR supporting Rep. Tom Graves’ Jobs Act: http://www.atr.org/thats-call-stimulus-a2925
Video with Graves, Speaker Richardson, and ATR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDB0U0ePuw
Any pandering fool can promise not to raise taxes while in DC. What is he gonna do about the fracking deficit?
Spend more money and leave the bag of debts in the hands of whoever follows him, of course.
Anyone can be for “no taxes” — you’d have to be a mental midget to fall for that bad joke — but it takes guts to tell us what they would cut in order to balance the budget.
Cut the Department of Education, by at least 95%
Cut almost all of the three letter departments of government.
Immediately vote against any new spending increases on current items no permitted by the Constitution, while starting the process of eliminating them.
Not support any new federal program not specifically permissible within our Constitution.
Cut all support to most all foreign governments.
I can make this post as long as anyone wants it to be. No other candidate will even take the time to consider answering such a question on this type of forum. I am here to represent the people, not the well-to-do. I am here to discuss the topics of the day, not send out my surrogates to tell everyone what I “might” do, or what I will do. I will tell you myself.
Sorry for the rant, I am just as frustrated as most everyone else, and my way of doing something about it is to run for office.
http://www.JonesForUs.com
Nice try. Really. But you really should read the budget sometime.
If you cut everything that’s “discretionary” excluding the DoD (wouldn’t want to be soft on defense, right?), you still can’t close the deficit without raising taxes. And you’ll put a lot of people out of work, which then lowers the tax receipts, so the budget gap gets wider again.
And that doesn’t even include the problem of Social Security and Medicare funding, which is going to be cash flow negative in a few years.
No new taxes? Pfft. That’s kids’ play. Tell us you’re going to cut Social Security and Medicare and we’ll applaud as we watch you go down in flames as a political martyr. Tell us you’ll cut defense expenditures and we’ll tell you you’re soft on national security. Tell us you’ll cut the FDA and we’ll tell you about salmonella poisoning coming from peanuts for lack of food processing plant inspectors. And so on.
It’s easy until you get specific. Then it gets hard. And you still can’t close the gap without more revenues… i.e., taxes.
you still can’t close the deficit without raising taxes
Fool. Damn fool. Dumbest thing I’ve ever read. This fool thinks you generate more tax revenue by raising taxes than you do by cutting marginal rates.
Can’t wait to see how much total revenue the Obama Administration generates under their new tax structure. Wanna bet it will be less than the years under Bush, Byte?
Sorry, but the theory of cutting taxes to increase revenue has been shown time and again not to work. You can look at the numbers ever which way you want, but really smart people who study this stuff have already figured out that cutting marginal rates slightly improves the economy only slightly and only for a short period of time. If the Bush Tax Cuts were so great, why aren’t they still working even though they’re still in place?
Cutting taxes from 70% to 39% was a large cut and did help trigger a long-term expansion. But it also stopped working after a while. And it never ever closed the budget hole that it created.
Again: if you wipe out the entire discretionary part of the budget except for DoD, you STILL do not close the current budget gap (and that’s before TARP/stimulus spending). That includes every single department of the government except for social security, medicare, DoD and interest on the debt. We are not raising enough revenue to fund the government that the people demand and cutting rates hasn’t and won’t work.
Sorry that you don’t like what reality looks like, but people actually want services from their government (actually, what a lot of them don’t want is services going to other people, but they want to keep the things that they’ve come to expect and get). Denying reality only makes you look foolish.
If the Bush Tax Cuts were so great, why aren’t they still working even though they’re still in place?
Because Bush and his Bushettes in Congress in 2005-2006 voted to increase spending and increase the debt load. Marginal rate taxcuts will work GREAT if you maintain the same spending level or (be still my beating heart) seek to reduce spending.
Also, the former Idiot-in-Chief’s decision to invade Iraq also put a big spending load on the nation’s cashflow.
All true. The fact remains that even if we get rid of everything but SS, MC, DoD, and debt interest, we still don’t balance the budget based on current and medium-term revenues… and we don’t have a prayer of paying down the debt.
Cutting taxes further will only make that reality worse.
I remember looking at the budget for FY2009 that Bush’s team produced. It showed a SURPLUS in 2012… but only if his tax cuts expired in 2010. If the tax cuts were retained, the budget projections NEVER balanced. He never talked about that publicly for some reason.
Signing a no tax pledge is fine but I’d be more impressed if one of the candidates would pledge not to use a 1937 SCOTUS decision as an excuse to vote for something not authorized in Article I Section 8. Now THAT would be a promise!
http://constitutionalawareness.org/genwelf.html
This is the standard I intend to use. Any candidate up for taking the pledge NOT to use the 1937 Steward decision as an excuse to give the federal government authority the founders never intended them to have?
Since not everyone is on Facebook (I think), here is the response I posted regarding Ramblinwreck’s post.
Unlike all of the other candidates, I voiced my opinion on this matter BEFORE Deal choose not to run. I have been voicing my frustration, and my desire to run when the path was not easy. I choose to stand to up to Washington when the odds were virtually insurmountable. I choose to run specifically because I knew Congress was not supporting the Constitution, not because it was an open seat.
While no candidate with a desire to win is going to post on this note they are in favor of abusing their power, no candidate, other than myself, is running specifically to stop this abuse. No other candidate was willing to run the tough the race; I jumped in head first.
It is not enough to just elect me. We must spread our message to congressional districts across the state, and across the nation.
I do take your pledge. This pledge is the fabric of my being, and of my campaign, not a reaction to your post, not another empty promise by another politician.
Jeremy Jones
http://www.JonesForUs.com
As for the ATR pledge? I agree with the above poster (I can’t post name, for someone will take that quote out of context!), no candidate is going to vote for higher taxes. I do hold one reservation on that note however. I am for spreading out the tax base. I think it is dangerous that almost 50% of Americans do not pay federal income tax. Even if that tax is 5%, everyone should pay something. That is the only way to guarantee the level of apathy diminishes. Thus, I am in favor of eliminating the progressive tax system.
FYI, I just went to their website, printed, and signed their pledge. I signed the actual pledge, not a blank sheet of paper. Where do I mail this thing? Is a YouTube video an acceptable form of dissemination?
Hey Jeremy,
You can email it to me at aradman@atr.org. Thanks for your support of Taxpayers.
Thanks,
Adam
I agree with my friend Trey, Tom Graves is the only candidate with a proven conservative record along with the necessary experience needed to legislate America back to the basics.
Maybe what he rally signed was the prop “message” from Fanny Mae he used to ensure repeal of Georgia’s predatory lending law in the waining hours of the legislative session several years ago. In case you don’t recall, Stephens claimed from the well of the Senate that the Governor’s office (yes, Sonny is implicated) had just received a message from Fanny Mae saying it and Freddy Mac would cease accepting mortages from Georgia if the legislature did not repeal the predatory lending laws on the books. Turns out to have been a compelete fabrication (read: lie), but it worked. The law was repealed, the robbers were back in business, and we’re paying a heavy price today.
I am not going to make a defense of a lie, but the “predatory lending laws” that were passed were too draconian. If Georgia did not revise them, (and they were revised and not repealed), many lenders would have stopped doing business in Georgia.
This is like saying “I won’t take earmarks”. That’s fine, it’s easy to say I won’t do anything, now tell me what you are going do to stop all the others from over spending.
Yep, you get the feeling this is all just a giant pander to the stupid and distracted?
No guts, no vote!
That is the big question. Stopping others. I can be no more responsible for the actions of others than I can control the sun. That is why it is not good enough to just support people like me within the district, you must find people in other districts, other states, and get more like minded people elected. “Our problem did not come to us overnight, nor will the solution be realized overnight.” (Jeremy Jones April 5, 2009 TEA Party)
I call it “giant baby steps.” The first order of business is to stop all new earmarks and projects. That will be difficult, but in our current environment, not impossible. Then we begin the process of de-funding prior spending commitments, or let them die of attrition.
You’re quoting yourself? That’s kind-a creepy weird, y’know?
Nobody else was going to!
LOL!
Given the recent performance of the well-educated and experienced in Washington DC, Jones’ lack of experience may be his best credential, and at least we know an ivy league education will never get in Handel’s way. And experience as a paid lobbyist may be exactly the kind of experience that is not needed.
The acerbic Mr. Simon’s point cuts to the heart of it — not voting for tax increases is the easy part. When will candidates start promising to vote against larger and larger budgets?
I think Bill signed the same pledge when he was in the State Senate only to break it when he voted to raise taxes in 2003. I won’t be falling for that bait and switch again.
You get what you vote for, and Americans have lately been educated to believe in and vote for socialism.
North Georgia has a spirit of independence from statism that is deep rooted in the hearts of the constituency. The people of the Blue Ridge Mountains have a Knoxian social theory that is diametrically opposed to tyrrany, and that is why they will vote for a Congressman who signs the ATR pledge.
The answer for the rest of America is to return to the same philosophy of government that is found in the writings of folks like John Knox.
Until the heart of America changes back to what it once was, I guaran-dam-tee you that spending and taxing and deficit will continue in a downward spiral to the death of this great Republic.
Just took a look at the ATR website and found this….
http://www.atr.org/georgia-theres-lack-pledge-signers-looking-a3510
Seems Mr. Stephens wasn’t exactly telling the whole truth when he said he was the first to sign….seems Mr. Evans signed at the same time.
Stephens has no credibility on this issue.
LOL! First to look like a fool is important to you?
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