Mark Zaccaria Announces for Senate

Republican Mark Zaccaria formally announced his campaign for United States Senate yesterday afternoon. Below is an excerpt from his announcement speech (which includes several direct mentions of his opponent, incumbent Democratic Senator Jack Reed)…

Mark Zaccaria: I am Mark Zaccaria. I am here primarily today because I am an angry, young Rhode Islander. I am furious. I see the disconnect between government, especially at the Federal and state levels, and the people that government is supposed to serve, and it frosts me a little bit.

I see the nonchalance with which Mr. Reed, our incumbent Senator, as well as a number of others in the Federal and the state government ignore constituents. They ignore the laws, and they ignore the whole process of achieving a consensus in our democratic Republic. That, to me is wrong, and needs to change. So I come to this race ready to channel all that anger into what I hope will be a productive campaign of ideas….

Now, to my right is the symbol of our republic, Old Glory. We start all of our meetings by paying respect to it. We need to pay respect to it during those meetings as well. Back in the days when I wore Air Force blue, I was pretty well drilled, as everyone was, and we all knew that these colors do not run. And we saw to it that it was the case then, forty years ago, and it is still the case today. But I suggest that these colors may be fading, as a result of that disconnect between the power of the people and the government.

Look what has happened. I’ve been casting around for adjectives to use, and I can only find the one: catastrophic. We currently have catastrophic economic policies. We have catastrophic regulatory policies, which are burying businesses and making the economic situation that much worse. We have catastrophic foreign policies, which are making America a laughing-stock around the world and allowing our enemies to take advantage, which if you’ve noticed, they are. And we have catastrophic legal policies, wherein we pick and choose which of the laws of the Republic we think would be appropriate for us to follow that day.

That’s not the way to do things. The result is that these colors still do not run, but they are fading. We have to make a difference. We have to turn that around.

Right now, we’ve had two quarters of economic decline. Three makes a recession, so when the numbers come out in September for Q3, watch really carefully, watch how tortured the analysis is that comes out of the Federal Trade Commission that says oh-no-no-no, we actually did advance by point zero-zero-one, it’s not an official recession. They are having to spin those numbers big time.

Look at business activity being crushed…I would point specifically to banking regulations which prevent commercial banks from loaning money. Take a look at the tens of thousands of unaccompanied children that are flooding across our border today, because they’ve been invited by the actions of our Federal government. Take a look at law and order under fire. Take a look at the coin toss in the Justice Department that goes on as to which laws to follow and which laws not to follow. Look at our enemies around the world, jumping on their opportunities.

Jack Reed voted yes for all this stuff. He specifically costs Rhode Islanders, I assert, thousands of dollars per year in post-tax dollars, coming out of your pockets and mine, because of the policies he’s instituted. The easiest one to point to is the dramatic increase we’ve all seen in annual deductible for our healthcare. Jack Reed cast the critical vote for the Affordable Care Act, which took the average annual deductible from a little over $1,000 to a little over $6,000. Don’t get sick, because it’s going to cost you.

He is also, in my opinion, at least partially responsible for the slow motion inflation that we’ve been seeing in the cost of all of the commodities we have to buy. Gasoline today is two dollars more than it was six years ago, and it’s partially because of the Federal Reserve policies that Jack has blessed over and over again, from his perch on the Banking Committee. The fact is, if you use only ten gallons of fuel per week — and I wish I was that guy — it costs you at least a thousand dollars more that it did six years ago, and the gasoline still does the same thing. That is strictly a result of government polices that he voted yes for.

Going back to the Community Reinvestment Act where he took part– it wasn’t just him, but he was part of a team that said let’s give people houses who can’t afford them, that will be good, and when they couldn’t afford them, what did he do? He got behind the Dodd-Frank bill. He was one of the prime movers in his committee to do that, didn’t exactly ingratiate himself to the banking community, but struck enough fear into them so that he was able to get substantial campaign contributions. What it has done is put the stasis I referred to a few minutes ago into our commercial banking system.

So your taxes, your food and your housing costs are all up as a result of what the Federal Government has done, and Jack Reed has voted yes for every single one of those increases, certainly during the last couple of terms. I contend that Rhode Islanders are ready to vote no, and it’s about high time.

But they have to have a choice to be able to do that, to be able to vote for better monetary policy, or smaller government that costs less, so that it takes less money out of your pockets. You have to have that alternative on the ballot. I hope to be the face of that message to the hard-working, tax-paying men and women of Rhode Island during this campaign.

There is another way, folks. We can do that. And I will be making that point, to anyone who will listen to me, every day between now and the fourth of November…you don’t have to vote for the guy you voted for last time. In fact, it might be better if you voted for somebody new.

Government has to operate, under a new order, if we are to continue to prosper. It has to work for the people, not the special interests. Now we say that all the time. Every politician has said that in a speech — I just did too — but we have to actually internalize it, invest in it, and take it to heart, because we have to save on government expenditures. Government must spend less. We have to do that. Will there be pain and suffering? Absolutely. Can you depend on Jack Reed to do that? Absolutely not.

We have to leave more tax dollars in the pockets of the taxpayer; you know what to do with your money, far better than any government can. In the process, we have to cut government intrusion. The regulatory and social fabric that’s being created around government doing everything for you is something that’s stifling the individuality and creativity around which our Republic was built.

Pundits say the people can’t handle the responsibility, they couldn’t do it. They need that big mother and father figure in Washington to do it for them. I say baloney. I say two hundred and twenty plus years of the second amendment is proof of the fact that people can handle all sorts of critical and dangerous things and get along quite nicely, thank you very much.

And I say that the calls we hear for fiscal restraint and the rule of law today are clear indications that the people want that to happen.

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