| In his keynote address at CPAC's Presidential Banquet, Sen. George
Allen (R-VA) announced a three-point plan to bring fiscal responsibility
to the federal budget process. He called for a line item veto amendment
to the Constitution, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and
a "paycheck penalty" on members of Congress if they fail to pass appropriations
measures in a timely fashion. Allen's paycheck penalty would withhold
salaries of members of Congress if they fail to pass appropriations bills
by October 1, the start of the fiscal year. Allen identified security,
competitiveness and values as "three key missions for America's future."
He also mentioned his four F's -- faith, family, freedom and football,
and at times he spoke in the manner of a football coach addressing his
team. ("Now team, at this conference we need to look to the future.
We need to set a game plan for this year and the years to come.")
Allen closed citing Ronald Reagan's exhortation, "If not us, who?
If not now, when?" |
| Sen. Allen spoke on his political philosophy:
"There's all sorts of folks here. There's all sorts of shapes
and sizes and stripes. There are economic conservatives and social
conservatives and neoconservatives and compassionate conservatives, libertarian
conservatives, constitutional conservatives. Over [at] that table
there there was somebody that only ate the soup and the salad, so I guess
we got some, at least one vegetarian conservative here. But we have
all of those different stripes and different parts, but we're all conservatives.
And there's all these different labels. I choose to call and characterize
myself as a commonsense Jeffersonian conservative. That means I trust
free people and free enterprise rather than burdensome, meddlesome government." |
