Florida’s Senate race is up for grabs. The incumbent Democrat, Bill Nelson, who paints himself as a centrist, is starting to fall behind Republican Connie Mack in the polls, and for good reason: voters are finally becoming aware of how far to the left Nelson truly is.
Nelson has veered farther and farther left over the past 30 years; in the last two years of the Carter presidency, he only supported Carter 49% and 68% of the time, but in 2009-2011, he supported Barack Obama 97%, 98% and 97% of the time. The public is taking note. In 2006 at this juncture he was polling in the mid-50s; this year he’s in the mid-40s. His vulnerability is high this year because, unlike 2006, when the Democrats swept both Houses of Congress and Nelson could hide his big-spending proclivities, 2012 is the year of fiscal hawks, and his voting record in that regard is horrific:
1. He has voted to raise the debt ceiling 11 times.
2. He has voted for almost 89,000 earmarks.
3. He has sponsored or co-sponsored legislation that could cost $1.45 trillion.
4. He has voted for increasing taxes 143 times.
Most egregiously, Nelson’s was the 60th vote for ObamaCare, allowing it to pass. This decision is killing Florida; in North Florida, small business owners (SBOs) are saying that ObamaCare is driving up their premiums; in Jacksonville, SBOs are worried that ObamaCare could force them to sell their businesses; in Melbourne, the medical device tax embedded in ObamaCare is stifling innovation in medical device companies. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has already warned that ObamaCare will kill 800,000 jobs nationwide.
During Nelson’s tenure in the Senate, unemployment in Florida has tripled. There were 310,000 unemployed; now there are close to one million. Nelson’s support for the failed policies of Barack Obama has contributed heavily to that. When he voted for Obama’s stimulus bill, Nelson claimed that it would create or save 206,000 jobs (interesting number to pick out of thin air) but conveniently forgot to tell Floridians that their state would rank last in the country in stimulus benefits per person. Since 2001, when Nelson was inaugurated, Florida construction jobs have dropped 33%, and Florida manufacturing jobs have been reduced by 35%.
While Nelson has championed all the left-wing causes of Barack Obama – such as the failed stimulus, bailouts, cap and trade, card check, the DREAM Act – and helped Obama kill the pro-domestic energy, pro-jobs Keystone XL Pipeline legislation, Connie Mack is running the train in the opposite direction.Mack supports less federal spending and lower taxes and reducing the federal debt. A signer of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, he is an original co-sponsor of a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget and has vehemently opposed federal bailouts. He also has plans of his own to tackle the financial debacle we are in; his “Mack Penny Plan” calls for balancing the federal budget by:
1) cutting federal spending by one percent each year for six consecutive years
2) setting an overall spending cap of 18 percent of GDP in 2018
3) reducing overall spending by $7.5 trillion over 10 years
Unlike the passive Nelson, Mack wants to get things done – now. He has promulgated an idea called “Repeal Congress.” Each Congress would spend one complete two-year term focusing nearly all legislating on repealing and reworking bad, broken and out-of-date laws. No passing new laws, no creating new entitlements to break the backs of American taxpayers, just cutting through the muck of red tape to streamline the government.
And Mack’s record speaks for itself: his votes in the House have been consistently pro-growth and pro-jobs legislation throughout his career in the House.
Florida has always been known as the Sunshine State. Now the sunshine can expose Bill Nelson’s shadowy liberal voting and bring Floridians a senator who will help lead them back to the light of prosperity.
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