Clark Patterson's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Key
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Clark Patterson has provided voters with clear stances on key issues by responding to the 2022 Political Courage Test.
Texas Congressional Election 2022 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| As an Ayn Rand Objectivist, I don't believe that life begins at conception. Even if life begins at conception, no one has the right to live at the expense of another life. A woman cannot be forced to use her body as a mandatory life support system for her fetus by forcing her to carry her fetus to term. Consequently, I'm pro-choice on abortion. Finally, libertarians oppose the public funding of abortion by any level of government. | |||
| No | Do you support expanding federal funding to support social safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare? | ||
| Because Libertarians recognize that today's mandatory Social Security system is a modern-day Ponzi scheme, Libertarians favor phasing out Social Security and Medicare and the compulsory payroll taxes that finance them. Social Security should immediately be made voluntary. Finally, as Social Security is being phased out, recipients' lifetime benefit payments should not exceed their total payroll tax contributions during their working years. Libertarians believe there should be no governmental involvement in health care. Libertarians believe that health care is not a right. Removing all levels of government from health care would, in the long run, greatly reduce overall health care spending. | |||
| No | Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations,unions, and individuals? | ||
| All campaign finance laws, at the federal, state, and local level, should be repealed. Corporations are individuals and money is speech. Campaign finance laws are gross violations of the First Amendment. If American voters elect reprehensible politicians, then the fault lies with the voters, not with the campaign money spent by disreputable candidates. | |||
| No | Do you support the protection of government officials, including law enforcement officers, from personal liability in civil lawsuits concerning alleged misconduct? | ||
| Government officials, including police officers, should possess no power not enjoyed by any other US citizen. Consequently, libertarians oppose qualified immunity. | |||
| No | Do you support increasing defense spending? | ||
| The US is the most existentially secure nation in world history. We share a border with two close allies. There is no reason for the US to spend more on defense than the next seven countries combined, as it currently does. Also, today American culture is globally ascendant and there are more free governments today than at any other time in world history. The US should immediately implement a foreign policy of strict non-interventionism and close all overseas bases. This will allow the US to cut defense spending by at least 75 percent, moving Washington closer to a balanced budget. | |||
| No | Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| No | Do you support providing financial relief to businesses AND/OR corporations negatively impacted by the state of national emergency for COVID-19? | ||
| No | Do you support the federal government taking action, beyond those of the Federal Reserve, to alleviate inflation? | ||
| We've known for years how to both prevent and resolve economic bubbles. We know from Austrian economic theory that completely deregulating interest rates (specifically, permitting them to rise to reflect deficit spending), avoiding pump-priming fiscal stimulus policies, and allowing recessions to run their course for 18-24 months is the only long term strategy to both avert and rectify economic downturns. But because American voters today want something for nothing and are far more concerned with the short-run than the long-run, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have rejected valid economic policies in favor of giving Americans what they want. | |||
| No | Do you support the forgiveness of federal student loan debt? | ||
| All federal and state government funding and regulation of higher education should be phased out. Higher education is not a right, nor is it a public good. The massive expansion in US higher education spending since World War II has created an enormously wasteful college-industrial complex and produced the most over-credentialized, undereducated society in history. Fifty years from now, bricks-and-mortar colleges will no longer exist. They will have been consigned to the dustbin of history, along with hard-covered books, newsprint publications and stamped letters. Consequently, we should significantly decrease higher education funding today. | |||
| Yes | Do you support requiring a government-issued identification in order to vote at the polls? | ||
| In my opinion, requiring a government-issued identification in order to vote at the polls doesn't infringe on voting rights. | |||
| No | Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| No | Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| While Libertarians recognize the reality of anthropomorphic climate change, we oppose the US rejoining the 2015 Paris Agreement. Humans as a species must change the planet in order to survive, prosper and flourish. Humans build houses, roads, skyscrapers and clear land to raise crops and livestock. All of these human activities change the planet. When the planet changes, climate changes. One recent planetary change has been the 8-fold increase in world population. Since the advent of political and economic freedom in the 18th century, world population has risen from 1 billion in 1804 to 7.98 billion in October, 2022. | |||
| No | Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | ||
| Libertarians are Second Amendment fundamentalists. We favor repealing all laws, at the federal, state, and local level, that infringe on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." Also, some cliches are true: "Guns don't kill people, people do." Libertarians would completely repeal all laws that hold firearms dealers and gun manufacturers responsible for gun violence. Libertarians believe that the solution to gun violence is to ban violence, not guns. Finally, the US murder rate has fallen by 50 percent during the last half-century, during the same time that the number of privately-held firearms has tripled. | |||
| No | Do you support a government-run (single-payer) healthcare program, such as Medicare-for-All? | ||
| No | Do you support expanding paid family AND/OR medical leave opportunities? | ||
| No | Do you support lowering the cost of prescription drugs? | ||
| Obamacare should be phased out. We should also phase out Medicare and Medicaid within one generation [25 years]. Libertarians believe there should be no governmental involvement in health care at all. Unfortunately, too many Americans today believe that health care is a right. It is not. Removing all levels of government from health care would, in the long run, greatly reduce overall health care spending. In a complete free market in health care, Americans would pay almost all of their health care costs "out of pocket." Health insurance, if it still existed, would likely only pay for health emergencies. | |||
| No | Do you support increasing security along the southern US border? | ||
| No | Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship? | ||
| I ardently support comprehensive immigration reform based on greatly increasing legal levels of immigration. In a 2012 Gallup poll, roughly 150 million foreigners expressed a desire to immigrate to the US. With some procedural vetting, we should allow the vast majority to do so. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, immigration is a win-win proposition. Immigrants benefit from moving to the US, but so do natives. We should legalize the current 11.2 million undocumented workers and DACA Dreamers and grant them a pathway to citizenship. Finally, increasing the legal level of immigration would almost completely end human trafficking and sex slavery. | |||
| No | Do you support economic intervention as a means of resolving international conflicts? | ||
| No | Do you support the U.S. providing increased offensive military aid to Ukraine? | ||
| The US is the most existentially secure nation in world history. We share a border with two close allies. There is no reason then for the US to spend more on defense than the next seven countries combined, as it currently does. The US should pursue complete free trade and greatly increase the level of legal immigration. Finally, the US should immediately implement a foreign policy of strict non-interventionism and close all overseas bases. This will allow the US to cut defense spending by at least 75 percent, moving Washington closer to a balanced budget. | |||
| No | Do you support raising taxes, on any income or on any entity, to promote economic growth? | ||
| Libertarians favor drastic immediate reduction, and eventual elimination, of all taxation. Taxation is theft, pure and simple, and has no place whatsoever in a free society. Also, we've known for years how to both prevent and resolve economic bubbles. We know from Austrian economic theory that completely deregulating interest rates (specifically, permitting them to rise to reflect deficit spending), avoiding pump-priming fiscal stimulus policies, and allowing recessions to run their course for 18-24 months is the only long term strategy to both avert and rectify economic downturns. Only the private sector, not the government, can promote economic growth. | |||
| Yes | Do you generally support removing barriers to international trade (for example: tariffs, quotas, etc.)? | ||
| I ardently support complete free trade with all nations and oppose all sanctions, tariffs, and import and export restrictions of any kind between the US and any nation. I reject the idea that countries compete against other countries. Trading with economically strong nations like China and India significantly raises the standard of living of all Americans. These nations are not a threat to the US. I strongly support greatly increasing the legal level of immigration. Finally, I ardently reject US economic independence in favor of economic interdependence between the US and all other nations, including Canada, Mexico, China, And India. | |||
| Reining in the $31 trillion federal debt and unfunded liabilities of c. $100 trillion; phasing out all "entitlement" programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid within 25 years; closing all overseas military bases and ending the US' interventionist foreign policy; ending the War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Poverty. None of these libertarian solutions require any government funding. |
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