Goodlatte stresses austerity in Lynchburg town hall

A Lynchburg crowd questioned Rep. Bob Goodlatte on nearly a dozen issues, many of them involving the economy, Monday night during a town hall meeting.

“We have to look to austerity to solve our problems,” Goodlatte, R-6th District, told about 50 people at the Lynchburg Public Library.

Unlike Greece, which was unable to pay its debts earlier this year and was bailed out by other countries, the United States is “too big to fail” and can’t get help from other countries if the social promises it has made to its citizens become too expensive to pay off, Goodlatte said.

“Events are pushing us toward a cliff,” he said.

Telling the crowd that America needs the balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution that he sponsored and almost passed in the mid-1990s, Goodlatte said tough decisions are needed to cut spending.

“I think this is a time for the federal government to do what everyone else in our society has had to do, and that is tighten our belt and cut spending and achieve efficiencies, and then you will see the economy grow,” he said.

Goodlatte fielded questions on illegal immigration, the nation’s energy situation, tax reform, Social Security, the stimulus and defense spending.

When Edward Olivares of Lynchburg asked whether Goodlatte thought amnesty might be authorized for illegal immigrants, Goodlatte said no. He also said he supports three measures to control immigration: better controls over the borders; allowing local police to check on the immigration status of people they stop; and giving employers access to a database showing whether job applicants are in the country legally.

Goodlatte also said he supports repeal of a lottery program that gives out 50,000 green cards annually, granting permanent resident status to people.

George King of Lynchburg asked why energy products that are made in China, such as photoreceptors, couldn’t be made in the United States. Goodlatte said the answer lies in reducing the cost for companies to operate in the United States, through lower health-insurance costs and lower corporate taxes.

Health care can be improved by following the model of low-cost care provided by such programs as the government-funded Johnson Health Center in Lynchburg, Goodlatte said, rather than a government-mandated health insurance program like the one envisioned in the health care legislation passed this year.

Social Security must be changed soon, Goodlatte said, because baby boomers will put new demands on the system starting in 2012.

Possible solutions include raising the amount of income that is taxed for Social Security, increasing the payroll tax (“probably not popular,” he said) or reducing the cost-of-living adjustment. Another suggested solutions involves a “means test,” in which people with other income would get less from Social Security.

“I don’t know what the outcome will be, but I do think all this needs to be looked at very seriously and in a bipartisan way,” he said.

Another person in the audience asked Goodlatte, “How do you reconcile Republican opposition to the stimulus with the report from the Congressional Budget Office that shows the stimulus has had a positive effect on the economy?”

“I have no doubt that it has had some positive effect,” Goodlatte said. But the stimulus has cost more than expected, at $850 million, and created 400,000 government jobs while 3 million have been lost in the private sector.

“Those jobs are unsustainable because they rely on somebody generating income from manufacturing or growing a crop or providing a service that allows them to have some revenue to pay taxes on,” Goodlatte said.

Also, he said, those jobs were created at a cost of about $330,000 each.

“So in my opinion that is not a good deal at all,” he said.