Eric Loeb's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Key
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Eric Loeb has provided voters with clear stances on key issues by responding to the 2022 Political Courage Test.
Maryland Congressional Election 2022 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| This issue cannot be decided based on facts. It is purely a matter of belief. We have no mechanism for issues of this sort other than to let the States decide. As horrible as the loss of this protection will be for so many women and families, nationalizing this undecidable issue has also caused enormous harm to our country. For the time being, we will have to see where state-be-state decisions take us. | |||
| Yes | In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket? | ||
| No | Do you support expanding federal funding to support entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare? | ||
| I would invest in modernization before turning to expansion. The profusion of programs is confusing. I would rather see a cost-neutral consolidation of the 80+ entitlement programs for better clarity for citizens in need of aid and better control and targeting for legislators who wish to help. Between the citizens' interface and the legislators' interface to our entitlements system, there sits 80+ human bureaucracies that in no case work at all how they would if we designed a single system from scratch to use modern conveniences like computers and cell phones. | |||
| Yes | Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions? | ||
| These regulations are an unfortunate fact of life. It is unfortunate that we cannot bring transparency without also inhibiting involvement. Our elections could be great laboratories of democracy if candidates could make free use of donated technology, but due to regulations, those donations come at a high cost for corporations. Similarly, regulations on labor contributions can cause unions to be penalized if a candidate succeeds in inspiring the union's membership. However, we require reporting and we need to require reporting so as to bring transparency to the sources of influence on our elected officials. | |||
| Yes | Do you support the protection of government officials, including law enforcement officers, from personal liability in civil lawsuits concerning alleged misconduct? | ||
| Government officials need some protection against the costs of civil lawsuits, as they are otherwise highly vulnerable to bribery. It may help to charge the costs of these legal protections to the union representing the official in question. This may create more incentive for internal enforcements of standards of conduct, but it may also make the unions more vulnerable to well-financed attack. There are no good answers here, but we cannot just leave our employees, our government officials, to fend for themselves. | |||
| Yes | Do you support increasing defense spending? | ||
| I think there is room for cuts. In budget balancing simulators I typically cut hardware expenditures (maybe 1600 instead of 1700 F-35s?) but I still want to increase R&D and Personnel and Readiness expenditures. As a matter of grand policy, I might end up increasing defense spending, because I also favor National Service. That would be a huge added expense. These decisions just get harder as the interest on the debt steadily erodes our available dollars. | |||
| Yes | Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Yes | Do you support lowering corporate taxes as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Yes | Do you support providing financial relief to businesses AND/OR corporations negatively impacted by the state of national emergency for COVID-19? | ||
| It would be a false economy to stop propping up our economy before our economy is back on its feet. | |||
| No | Do you support requiring states to adopt federal education standards? | ||
| The meaning and possibilities for education are massively changed by the internet and AI. Heavy regulation and standardization of education might be holding back innovation. We spend a lot on the Department of Education ($68B/year). It is not clear if existing efforts to nationalize education are contributing to increased national attainment. | |||
| Yes | Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| Yes | Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| I am running for the Republican nomination in the Maryland 4th Congressional district. The district is 80/20 in favor of the Democrats. Even so, there are about 100,000 Republicans in the district. It is certainly possible to find a group of 100-200 voters including enough Republicans in the district to get a balance of views. In a deliberative poll, the participants hear many sides of the issue and then discuss it in small groups. The method leads to consensus. We can reach across the aisle here at home and provide the nation with a climate policy that Republicans will support. | |||
| Yes | Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | ||
| As of May 24, 27 school shootings have occurred so far in 2022. It appears there were 15 dead in today's elementary school shooting in Texas. As Winston Churchill said, we will eventually do the right thing after exhausting all the alternatives. I do not understand the idea that it will somehow make matters worse to reduce the ease by which guns are purchased. I think we will get there eventually. Perhaps I am wrong, and it will be surprisingly successful to first make sure that every man, woman, and child older than three has a gun. | |||
| No | Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")? | ||
| No | Do you support requiring businesses to provide paid medical leave during public health crises, such as COVID-19? | ||
| This would not be a good requirement, as stated. This provision would add an enormous economic impact to the question, "Is the United States currently in a public health crisis?" As a result, that question will rapidly become encrusted with political maneuvering, lobbying, and false communications. Further politicizing our public health apparatus will not be helpful. It would be better to legislate the conditions of a universal law, and then pay companies as needed (per legislation) to shoulder the extra burden that will fall on them as a result of public health problems. | |||
| Yes | Do you support the construction of a wall along the Mexican border? | ||
| No | Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship? | ||
| This would be a silly inefficiency. It looks to me like this idea exists because it takes us too long to process immigration requests. People have to get on with their lives, and so we have immigrants here waiting for our government to take action. I suspect we would be best off redesigning our system from the ground up to have the throughput it needs to handle the load that it does. | |||
| Yes | Should the United States use military force to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a weapon of mass destruction (for example: nuclear, biological, chemical)? | ||
| Yes | Do you support reducing military intervention in Middle East conflicts? | ||
| An example where intervention would probably be necessary would be very near-term acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran. We will know when Iran is close and so will Israel. As the time grows short, Israel will have no choice but to intervene. We will know about that too. We will be forced to intervene. If we do not intervene before Israel is forced to, then we will have a much worse conflict on our hands. | |||
| No | Do you generally support removing barriers to international trade (for example: tariffs, quotas, etc.)? | ||
| Removing barriers is just setting them to zero. It benefits the country to have dials it can turn from zero to whatever. It gives us control. We are limited in our control because it takes a long time (weeks or months) to change the barriers. That's what we need to work on. When we have the control of our decisions and our processes so we can set the tariffs (et al) to zero this week and 10% next week, and 11% the day after that... then we will be much more in control of ourselves and our environment. | |||
| My only priority is to establish an independent organization that will be responsible for convening deliberative polls and town halls in my district. The independent organization will be responsible for defining our legislative agenda and lobbying for it. I believe we will be much more effective than other districts once we separate the agenda-setting authority from the office of our Representative. |
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