ThinkProgress Logo

Stories tagged with “John Boozman”

Economy

GOP Senator Embraces Sequestration: It Has ‘Actually Worked’

By Igor Volsky on Apr 26, 2013 at 9:47 am

As communities across the nation struggle with the consequences of sequestration cuts to pre-school programs, school aide, unemployment benefits, and jobs, some Republicans in Congress are trumpeting the automatic reductions as sound fiscal policy.

Appearing on KHTE’s “The Alice Stewart Show” Friday, Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) argued that sequestration is “actually working” and compared the agencies who are complaining about the spending reductions to spoiled children:

BOOZMAN: I really think the FAA and many of the other agencies are trying to figure out how they can make things as painful as possible to the public. And it reminds me of a spoiled brat kid. You take away some of his stuff and, you know, he starts screaming. They don’t want want any cuts period. [...]

I think that you have to have some kind of a spending cap in place. You know, you can knock sequestration or not knock it, but it’s worked in the sense that hit has forced reduction in spending. And I’ve been here 11 years and this is the first time I’ve seen it in this manner, in the sense that it is something that’s actually working.

In reality, overall government spending has dramatically plateaued under President Obama, a trend economists believe is holding back economic recovery.

On Friday, new data from the Commerce Department reiterated that sequestration is only making things worse. U.S. economic growth rebounded to 2.5 percent in the first-quarter of 2013, 0.5 percentage points lower than analysts had projected. “We saw some good resilience from the consumer, particularly given all the headwinds,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, told Bloomberg. “The weakness in government spending is an issue. It’s going to be tough to repeat the first-quarter performance this quarter.”

In the first three months of the year, “outlays declined for the 10th time in the past 11 quarters, restraining growth,” Bloomberg notes. The economy may get worse before it gets better, as the the nation has “barely only begun to feel the impacts of sequestration’s automatic spending cuts.”

Update

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) told The Wichita Eagle: “In my judgment, the pain [from the sequester] has not been too great.”

Update

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) at the Heritage Foundation: “I think it’s the first time we’ve saved money in Washington D.C., I think we need to move on from this subject and talk about how we can get to a balanced budget in the next ten years and stop trying to find ways to bring the sequester up in every conversation.”

Update

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) on the House floor: “Even though sequestration is painful, it is working.”

Politics

Senator Defends Assault Weapons, Claims Criminals Don’t Use Them To Kill People

By Igor Volsky on Apr 10, 2013 at 10:50 am

A day before the senate begins debate on a comprehensive package of gun safety measures, Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) told a local radio station on Wednesday that the provisions being proposed would have done nothing to prevent the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut since criminals don’t use assault-style weapons “to commit crimes.”

Appearing on “The Alice Stewart Show,” which airs on KHTE 96.5 The Voice, Boozman condemned the Congressional push to regulate firearms and predicted that it would fail:

BOOZMAN: Nothing that’s being proposed would have any effect on that at all. When you look at the studies, 90 percent of violent crime is hand guns, 5 percent is rifles, less than 1 percent is assault-style weapons and again these are not the automatic weapons that soldiers carry. But they’re big, bulky, people don’t use them to commit crimes and so as a result it still doesn’t do anything.

Assault weapons may not be the weapon of choice for most gun criminals in the United States, but they are far more deadly, as the mass killing in Newtown, Connecticut demonstrated. A recent study of mass shootings since January 2009 from Mayors Against Illegal Violence found that while “just 12 of the mass-shooting incidents, or 28 percent, involved assault weapons or high-capacity magazines,” those incidents resulted in “an average of 8.3 deaths, compared with 5.4 deaths on average for the rest.”

Limits on assaults weapons and high capacity magazines are not part of the comprehensive gun package the Senate will consider this week, but will be offered as amendments on the floor.

Health

Republicans Who Tout Mental Health As Response To Gun Violence Opposed Landmark Mental Health Law

By Josh Israel on Jan 17, 2013 at 9:00 am

As Republicans rushed to oppose President Obama’s gun violence prevention proposals on Wednesday, several lawmakers released statements echoing the National Rifle Association’s suggestion that “fixing our broken mental health system” is actually the best way to prevent future gun crimes. But when Congress considered a landmark mental health access bill in 2008, many of the same Republicans voted against it.

Accessing mental health services in the United States is harder than accessing a gun. In 2008, Congress took a step toward addressing that issue by passing the long-delayed Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which required most health insurance plans to start treating mental health services in the same way they treat all other medical care. The bill included exemptions for small businesses and those who opted not to cover mental health coverage at all, but House Republicans still overwhelmingly opposed the effort, 145 to 47.

Now, several of those opponents are criticizing President Obama, who co-sponsored the Wellstone Act, for not doing enough to address mental health in his gun violence proposals — even though several of the executive orders in the package do just that. They include:

  • SEN. JOHN BOOZMAN (R-AR): (voted no as a then-Representative): “Firearms are the tools, not the cause. If we are serious about reducing gun crimes, we need to get to the root cause which includes addressing mental health issues in our country. That is where we need to focus on finding a solution.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. JOE BARTON (R-TX): “The gun control movement hurts honest citizens and businesses, not the criminals who care nothing for the law. I believe we can better reduce the misuse of firearms by strongly enforcing laws already on the books. We also need to improve our mental health screening system so troubled, violent individuals can be identified and treated more quickly.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): “We need to have a serious conversation about mental health, psychiatric drugs, and the potential impact violent video games and movies have on our kids. I will closely review the President’s proposals, however I am concerned his approach is a pre-determined attempt to redefine our Constitution. I am not going to allow this administration to trample on the Second Amendment or put new restrictions on the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms and ammunition.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. HOWARD COBLE (R-NC): “Mental illness is an enormous factor in most of these tragedies, including the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Federal and state governments must address the issue of gun access by those who are mentally ill and find ways to curtail violence in our culture.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. ANDER CRENSHAW (R-FL): “I think we can all agree: no one wants to see another needless, senseless death committed in this country with a firearm. Along the road to that goal, a complex and multi-layered debate over firearms, education, mental health, Second Amendment rights, and more is unfolding.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. LOUIE GOHMERT (R-TX): “Mental health issues that have languished for decades may be a fertile ground for bipartisan efforts to make a true difference. Perhaps, a good first step toward curbing gun violence may well be rebuilding the sanctity and importance of the family and the home where there can be education, training and an honest conversation about guns, without treading on the Constitutional protections from criminals intent on invading the home.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. TOM LATHAM (R-IA): “In upholding our Second Amendment rights, we must also be mindful not to diminish the tragedy of recent events and the work to find sensible ways to prevent such horrors from occurring in the future. No person of sound mind could commit mass gun violence, and it is important that we consider mental health and other root causes that contribute to these terrible crimes as we move forward with this debate.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. TOM PRICE (R-GA): ‪“All Americans want our communities to be safe places to live, learn, work and play. As we review how best to prevent mass shootings and the loss of innocent lives we should make a robust analysis of America’s mental health system a priority. A proper diagnosis and comprehensive treatment are critical to ensure we are identifying indicators of violent behavior that may lead to horrific crimes. To do otherwise would mean we continue to fail not only those afflicted with mental illness, but also their families, our communities and our nation.” [1/16/2013]
  • REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX): “I believe a more responsible approach is to take significant steps to address mental illness and the root causes of such violence in our society.” [1/16/2013]

Obamacare also expanded the mental health parity rules — though these nine lawmakers joined every other Republican in Congress in opposing the health care reform law.

Economy

Boozman Says He Won’t Privatize Social Security, While Supporting Plans That Privatize Social Security

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 8, 2010 at 5:20 pm

Rep. John Boozman (R-AR), who has his party’s nomination for the Senate, has been taking some flack from Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) for being an enthusiastic supporter of privatizing Social Security. The Boozman camp is pushing back, claiming that Boozman does not support privatizing Social Security, but merely the creation of private Social Security accounts, according to Arkansas Republican Party spokeswoman Alice Stewart:

He supports a plan to allow young workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal investment accounts, these would be safe investments.

If that sounds a lot like privatization, that’s because it is. Like former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Boozeman is trying to relabel privatization with something that sounds more appealing: “personal investment.” But make no mistake: proponents of privatization didn’t change their plan, they just stopped calling it privatization when they realized that the word freaks people out. “The right discovered that ‘privatization’ polled badly. And suddenly, the term was a liberal plot,” Paul Krugman noted.

And Boozman has been an unabashed supporter of privatization. In 2001, he said that “the future of Social Security is dependent on creating a vehicle for private investment.” “I believe we must implement President Bush’s proposal to provide younger workers with the opportunity to invest part of their Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts,” he added. Boozman has also at least entertained the notion of supporting Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap for America’s Future, which would create privatized Social Security accounts.

Perhaps the most insidious part of Boozman’s plan is the assertion that only “safe investments” will be part of privatized accounts. As the Cunning Realist pointed out, proponents of privatization held up companies like Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Citigroup — the poster-children of the economic collapse — as fail-safe bets for retirement accounts:

Would the government have allowed the Bear Stearns and Lehman outcomes had the Social Security system been chock full of those stocks? Remember, both were former blue chips, the sort of companies that proponents of private accounts insisted any new system would be limited to. The same for Citi, AIG, Fannie Mae, and others. How much pressure would the Fed and Treasury have felt — and what more would have been done — to keep those afloat and/or out of penny stock land?

Remember, even if we do nothing to Social Security at all, it can pay full benefits until 2037 and 75 percent of benefits for decades after that, which is very close to current benefit levels when adjusted for inflation. There is no Social Security crisis, and those pushing for privatization are using the public’s fear of deficits to push for a policy prescription they’ve desired for years.

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up