During a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition convention today, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) explained that as a recruitment officer for the NRCC, the Republican campaign committee in charge of electing House Republicans, he picked candidates that would stand with the caucus in unified campaigns to slash government, starting with health care.

If Republicans take back the House, Westmoreland said, they would use their new majority to force a budget battle akin to the fight staged by former Speaker Newt Gingrich with President Clinton and shut down the federal government. Westmoreland cautioned that he was fully aware that such a move would close down hospitals for veterans and shut down National Parks. But, Westmoreland argued that taking down the government is worth “the pain” because health reform and government programs are like a “gangrene” that “need to be cleaned out”:

WESTMORELAND: If we hold the line, if we get those courageous men and women to be part of our majority. If we say look, the American people we’re listening to the American people, this is what we’re going to do. If government shuts down, we want you with us. We want you with us. We gotta have you because later on you all will call us and say look I didn’t get my check. Daddy can’t go to the VA. You know, the National Parks are closed. We need to be sure that you are with us because let me tell you this, all Americans need to understand. We need to understand this and I hope you can help share this analogy with people. Just as when you talk about what is going to possibly happen, you know I was unfortunate to cut myself with a chainsaw. I don’t know how many of you have cut yourself with a chainsaw. Chainsaw is not the cleanest instrument if you’re going to cut yourself. [...] He said this is going to sting a little bit and it hurt like crazy. But you know what, if he didn’t clean out that wound, it would have never healed. I would have got gangrene. I would have died from it. And what has happened with this country, we have put bandaids on things that need to be cleaned out. It’s going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship.

Listen here:

Gingrich, who spoke after Westmoreland, has repeatedly advised that the GOP should follow through with a plan to shut down the American government.

In a recent interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) revealed that he refused to answer all the questions on the Census form and sent it back incomplete:

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Athens), who carries a copy of the Constitution in his pocket, declared how many human beings lived in his household — and then sealed the envelope.

The congressman refused to answer questions about the sex and age of occupants, ancestry, or whether he lives in a rental or owns. “That’s none of their business,” Broun said in a recent phone interview.

“The Constitution requires the federal government to count the number of people in this country every 10 years,” the congressman said. “It doesn’t require them to ask a lot of personal information. People are very concerned about an invasion of privacy, and I have those same concerns.”

What Congressman Broun did is illegal. U.S. law says that people can be fined for refusing to honestly fill out the entire Census:

§ 221. Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers

(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100.

(b) Whoever, when answering questions described in subsection (a) of this section, and under the conditions or circumstances described in such subsection, willfully gives any answer that is false, shall be fined not more than $500.

It doesn’t seem that the Census Bureau aggressively enforces these fines. Reps. Michele Bachmann (MN) and Ron Paul (TX) have also said that they would be answering only how many people live in their household. Luckily, it doesn’t seem that many people are taking the conservatives’ advice so far. Census director Robert Groves said that so far, he hasn’t seen any evidence of a large-scale boycott of the Census; just “1 or 2 percent of the 10-question forms returned so far have been incomplete.” (HT: Ben Smith)