Press Releases

October 27, 2009

To Listen To Audio Of Full Conference Call, Please Visit: http://newmedia.gop.com/audio/102709mack.mp3  

Selected Excerpts 

CONGRESSMAN CONNIE MACK: Thank you very much, and I want to thank everyone who’s on the line today. You know once again we see the president taking a tour of the country.  Now, he’s stopping in Florida, on what appears to be a PR swing to try to boost up his own popularity to help move legislation and policy that frankly the American people don’t want, don’t need and that are hurting the American people.

We’ve seen a $4 trillion budget - $787 billion stimulus, $700 billion financial bailouts, health care, cap and trade. Everything seems to be more government, big government. The government is the answer to all of our problems, instead of listening to the people of America who are telling the president and telling this Congress: we don’t want big government; we don’t want more spending – we want less spending; we don’t want more taxes – we want less taxes. The president campaigned on the theme of ‘yes we can’ and there are many of us here in Congress who are saying, ‘no you won’t’. We won’t continue to support big spending, big government, liberal ideas that are going to destroy the foundation and the fabric of America.

The president is now I guess he’s on his way from Miami to Arcadia – again on a sales pitch. When you’ve worked in business, you recognize a sales pitch and when you have to sell something really hard, maybe, it’s something that the people don’t want to buy. So I’m concerned – instead of being here in Washington trying to work on meaningful reform for health care or trying to reduce the deficit or strengthen the dollar – instead, he’s on a PR tour around the country promoting bigger government and more spending. Those are my thoughts I’d love to answer any questions that anybody has on the call.

DAVID PLAZAS (NEWS-PRESS): Thank you very much Congressman. …This question regards Florida’s priorities when it comes to alternative energy. Two years ago, Governor Crist’s legislature had approved the legislation leading up to this Arcadia plant and it seemed back then that they were focused on the very same priorities that the president had this year in alternative energies – solar, wind, all those kinds of things. What is your sense of what’s going on - is there a disconnect right now between the Federal government and Congress’ position and State legislature’s opinion regarding this issue and what has changed exactly? 

CONGRESSMAN MACK: Well David, it’s a good question, but I think the real question is what are we going to do to encourage more energy production and alternative energy production here in the United States? You’ve got two different approaches. One approach is to tax and spend your way to alternative energies and the other approach is to create incentives and get government out of the way. So, for me, and David, you and I have talked about this in the past, for me, I want to see government get out of the way. I want to see less regulation, smart regulation but less regulation. And incentives for companies like Florida Power and Light and others, to encourage them to get into alternative energy supply.