Published Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Westmoreland: Government needs dose of common sense

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Times-Herald

The word "change" really hits home with some Americans, said Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, R-Grantville.

"I think people do want change," he said Monday at a question-and-answer session sponsored by the Coweta County Republican Women.

"But it's not the wholesale, rock-your-world kind of change that the Democrats are promising," Westmoreland said.

"The change people want is somebody who is going to tell the truth and have common sense," Westmoreland said.

Americans want candidates who, when asked a question on a news show, will actually answer the question they were asked -- not launch into a prepared answer that has little or nothing to do with the question.

Americans want someone who is "going to try common sense rather than government sense."

When people get into the political realm, "your common sense tends to go away. You end up with this government sense, which means you can't do anything," Westmoreland said. "Common sense means you can figure out a solution to any problem."

The government can certainly benefit from a good dose of common sense.

Westmoreland, who was elected to Congress in 2004, said he feels that his role in government is "to create the best environment possible for businesses to grow and expand, to employee people, to put infrastructure into our communities.

"My job is to make sure that every one of you has the ability to enjoy all of the personal freedoms that you were guaranteed by the founding fathers," he said.

But for some reason, according to Westmoreland, government thinks it needs to put up roadblocks instead.

Westmoreland said he was working with some propane associations and companies that were trying to convert gasoline vehicles to run on propane.

The Environmental Protection Division stepped in and drove the company out of business, Westmoreland said. The company was converting a 350 engine to run on propane. A 350 can operate in many different vehicles, but the EPA said the company would have to run emissions tests and get emissions numbers for the same engine in many different models of vehicles. Because of the extreme expense of running these tests for every make and model, "they had to go out of business," Westmoreland said.

He had a staffer call the company and ask what he could do to make things easier. "What kind of legislation can [Westmoreland] write where the government gets out of the way?" the staffer asked.

"The scary thing about it is, they didn't know how to answer the question ... because they're so tied up in government regulations," Westmoreland said.

Westmoreland said he plans to spend some time trying to work on the propane issue, as well as hydrogen and other alternative sources of energy.

He wants to see if he can "promote and get the government involved in helping rather than hurting. That's a common sense thing."

Westmoreland said he is trying to increase exposure of how things actually work in Congress.

Someone who wants to get a bill passed will "take a bill that has no way to get 218 votes in the House, and they will keep adding some sweetener to it until it gets to about 218," Westmoreland said. They'll stop adding "sweetener" then because "they know the more sugar they add, they may lose some out of the bottom."

The farm bill is a perfect example. "It would not have passed unless they put some sweetener in it," Westmoreland said.

All that sweetener makes a bill so convoluted that "you can't tell if your congressman is against something or for something, because it's got so much good and so much bad."

After a short presentation, Westmoreland took questions from the audience.

He was asked if Iraq is going to have to start paying for its own reconstruction.

That possibility has been talked about and is something Westmoreland supports, especially because oil prices are so high. However, Iraq is just starting to approach the same oil production level that it had before the U.S. invasion, he said. A major problem has been insurgents blowing up the oil lines. Once they get the pipeline through Turkey up and running, "it will double or triple the production they have," Westmoreland said.

But last week he heard some bad news about Iraq. "They don't recognize Israel's right to exist," he said. And that's what the U.S. is hammering on Iran about.

"So we're fixing to start cracking down, I think, or at least make the Iraqi government participate," Westmoreland said.

Iraq is very, very different from Afghanistan. Iraq has oil, but in Afghanistan "their's is mainly a 'dope' economy," Westmoreland said. The gross national product is "very, very minute, if anything. Iraq's is going to be tremendous."

Westmoreland was also asked about the SAVE Act, which deals with illegal immigration. The bill was introduced by a freshman Democrat elected from a very conservative district. "He introduced that bill to protect himself politically," Westmoreland said.

After Westmoreland signed on to it, other Republicans told him it was just a political ploy and that it would never get to the floor. Westmoreland said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi once said if she could get an immigration bill with 50 Republican signatures on it, she would bring it to the floor. There are now about 180 Republican signatures on the bill, Westmoreland said. And it hasn't come to the floor yet.

A real estate agent asked Westmoreland about legislation regarding the mortgage crisis.

Westmoreland said he is concerned about a plan to let homeowners facing foreclosure get government-backed loans for up to 80 percent of their home's value.

"The government is on the hook," Westmoreland said. So he voted against the plan.

The plan would also bring the dollar even lower, Westmoreland said.

"You can't bail people out of every bad situation they get into in their lives. You can't do it," Westmoreland said.

Throughout history there have always been times of cleansing.

"We have always had a cleansing of the market," Westmoreland said. The market will adjust and "real estate prices will come down to where they should be," said Westmoreland, who has been in the building and construction industry since 1971.

"Prices are artificially inflated right now because of the speculation market that went on in real estate. It is the same thing that is going on in oil prices," Westmoreland said.

"You can't pass laws to make people honest."

He was also asked what he thinks of talk about expanding Coweta's airport and making it a reliever airport.

"That's the first I've heard of it. It must not be very active," Westmoreland said.

He said he doesn't expect anything to happen because he has been trying to get large airlines to come to Columbus for years. With all the military people there, it seems like a great location for a reliever airport.

The airport does need some upgrades, Westmoreland said. He'd like to see it at the same level as Peachtree City's Falcon Field. The airport in Thomaston is another good example, he said. He does expect the airport to be a big selling point for the former Camp property that is being marketed as an industrial "mega-site."