Liberty Maven

One of the unique things about Vern Mckinley is that he saw what was broken and decided to try to fix it before Ron Paul declared his run for President. Mckinley decided to run for Congress in December of 2006. He was a Ron Paul Republican before the term even existed. It is this kind of foresight that deserves recognition and is demonstrated in this, the second part, of his interview with Liberty Maven.

The first part of the interview is available here, if you missed it.

All Liberty Maven interviews are available on the interview page.

LM: Let’s continue with one of the questions I’ve been asking the other candidates. Who is your favorite founding father and why?

Mckinley: Like most liberty-loving Virginians, Thomas Jefferson is at the top of my list. I am amazed at how many of his quotes are so timely and on-the-mark today and how prescient he was on many issues that are important to my own campaign. For example, in my discussions on our campaign website on term limits I note this gem of his: “”Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them [offices], a rottenness begins in his conduct.” This is a timeless indictment of career politicians before the concept was even known.

Obviously the fact that Jefferson was a slave owner undermines much of what he had to say in his writings and other work, but as I believe Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute once put it, this demonstrates how long-standing the practice of politicians saying one thing in their political life while practicing something completely different in their personal life, which we see examples of to this day.

LM: On your web site issues page you mention that you are committed to a voluntary term limit of 4 terms for yourself should you unseat Congressman Wolf and win in the general election. Could you elaborate a bit more on your position on term limits? Would you support or sponsor legislation to mandate term limits? Why or why not?

Mckinley: At this point I have committed to a voluntary term limit. Interestingly enough Congressman Wolf who I am challenging in his first campaign noted that members should voluntarily retire after two or three terms and here he is in year 28 of his Congressional career. I have had some people tell me a voluntary term limit is not a good idea and I have heard some politicians I respect (for example, Congressman Flake of Arizona) who took such a pledge and have reversed course on it argue against it. But from a personal standpoint, I really do not see that I want to stay in office that long and that the best thing I can do if I am elected is mentor or recruit a limited government candidate(s) to take my place after this period.

As for a specific term limit position I think it is appropriate to Constitutionally set parameters on terms of office in Article I, Section 2. I would put a term limit here in the sense that Members would be forced out of office at a certain point, after three or four terms, but I would want them to be able to return after a “cooling off” period (one or two terms). So someone like Dr. Ron Paul who has entered Congress due to his popularity on three separate occasions after going back to the real world for a period would still be able to serve. I think this would limit the advantages of incumbency while at the same time allow those who were truly popular independent of their incumbency to continue to serve. I continue to talk to people about this issue on the campaign trail and am amazed at how excited and thoughtful people are on this topic.

LM: Your background shows you have experience with advising central banks around the world. If you had the job of advising Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke what are some of the things you would suggest?

Mckinley: I have advised central banks around the world for much of the past eight years, although my specialty is more in the areas of central bank efficiency, legal reform and banking supervision and not in monetary policy. Like a lot of people I had some concern about Chairman Bernanke that he did not have enough hands-on experience in the economy and that he was too much of an academic. Chairman Greenspan before him had experience on Wall Street prior to his time as Fed Chairman. I think the jury is still out on how Bernanke will be judged, but as his term has unfolded, I think first of all we have to recognize that much of what has happened on his watch was “baked in the cake” and he is trying to deal with it as best he can.

As we all remember from Economics 101, monetary policy works with a lag, so the first years of his term are obviously beyond his control. I think the mortgage crisis has really been building for about 15 years as we detail in a recent campaign press release. The crazed push to increase homeownership that was started in the early Clinton years and continued in the Bush years combined with accommodative monetary policy was bound to lead to a bubble. I have been arguing for many years that public policy has put too much in the way of incentives on the side of housing investment.

That having been said, my specific advice to him would be to make clear that government policy has been too activist in encouraging housing investment and the answer is to wring out the over-investment by reducing government involvement in this sphere. Some of Chairman Bernanke’s rhetoric seems to blame private markets and argue for more government involvement which is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw.

Additionally, I would encourage him to go back to emphasize what he has said in his academic writings, such as those he has set forth in his book on inflation targeting. This approach would be one means to limit the Fed’s powers to implement discretionary monetary policy and there are other means, such as a monetary rule, that would also be appropriate.

He should also do more to encourage competition in currencies. On issues outside of monetary policy, the Fed should transition much of what it currently does to private markets, especially in the area of payment systems as I have detailed in some of my published work. Finally I would advise him to not support an increase in the Fed’s powers as has been proposed and as you have discussed on Liberty Maven. We need to trim back the dominance the Fed has over the economy, not expand it.

LM: There seems to be, among our elected officials, degrees of supporting or not supporting the Iraq war. Obama has stated he was against the war from the beginning, but when given the chance to vote for funding the war, he voted for it. Hillary Clinton voted for the war at the beginning, but now opposes it. McCain thinks we may need to be there for 100 years or more. Ron Paul was always against it and consistently votes against funding it. Where do you stand on the Iraq war? Do you support an immediate troop withdrawal?

Mckinley: I was never convinced that we should have gone into Iraq in the first place. I follow the “Reagan Doctrine” which summarized is:

1) The US should not commit its forces unless the cause is vital to our national interest.

2) If we commit forces, it must be done with the clear intent and support needed to win.

3) Before we commit troops, there must be assurance that the cause will have the support of the American people and Congress.

4) Troops should be committed only as a last resort.

I did not see that we got past #1 in Iraq as we were not under an imminent threat to our national interest that would have justified a preemptive strike. There is an article that all Republicans should read called “Would Ronald Reagan Have Attacked Iraq?” that was in the American Spectator. I think it makes the clear case that the answer to that question is no.

As for the immediate troop withdrawal, the hands of Congress are tied to some extent as we have seen the past year since the Democrats took control. When the Congress passed up the “Constitutional option” to declare war and instead gave the President a blank check on the Iraq resolution, the commander in chief role kicked in. So the President controls the agenda for the most part including setting timelines for withdrawal.

What the Congress can do is cut off all funding, but that is not feasible to immediately go down to zero commitment. What I would do is commit to working with the next President to draw down troops. Obviously the surge has had some positive impact on security in certain areas, but as I remember the justification for the surge was that we would surge the troops which would allow the military to draw down troop levels after the surge was complete. That has not happened yet.

LM: Just about everyone agrees that our Social Security system is broken. The same people differ wildly about what to do to for a fix. If you had the power to do so, how would you fix Social Security?

Mckinley: Speaking of Reagan on the prior question, this brings up one area where Reagan’s legacy is not very good. The reform in the early 1980s would have been a prime opportunity to have introduced private accounts and the fact that the Reagan/Greenspan combination could not pull it off is disappointing.

First of all, there is a doctrine in public policy called “market failure” that says if the market does not provide a service, the government should do so. In the case of Social Security you have a clear case of “government failure.” Private investment for retirement gives you a 6 or 8 percent return. For those entering the job market in the coming years, the return on Social Security will be roughly zero even if it could be fully funded which is not a reasonable assumption to make. So we need to let people get out of Social Security if they want to and set up private accounts going forward. If people are masochistic enough to stay in the system they can take their chances on the outcome of the years between now and their retirement.

As for any further adjustments that might be necessary to put right the system, it all has to be on the spending side as far as I am concerned. Entitlements aren’t in financial trouble because there was a shortfall of revenue, but rather an excess of spending. Consistent with that I have signed the Americans for Tax Reform Pledge to not increase taxes, while Congressman Wolf has not done that. The entitlements commission that he has proposed is just a big tax increase waiting to happen.

This concludes part 2 of our interview with Vern Mckinley. Part 3 is forthcoming. If you like what you are hearing from Mckinley then consider supporting him with a campaign donation. It doesn’t matter if you live in his district, in Alaska, or any point in between, having true limited government conservatives like Ron Paul in public office benefits us all.