Shelby: U.S. should not be ‘world police’
Published 9:46 am Wednesday, March 23, 2011
A few businessmen and women in the community put U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) on the spot Monday morning during his stop in Atmore as part of his congressional tour of the state.
Keeping with current events, Regions Bank branch manager Alex Jones questioned the government’s participation in worldwide wars most recently against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
“We’ve been fighting these brush fires globally and sinking a lot of national treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Jones said. “I’m worried that we are allocating our defense budget into the wrong areas, not preparing for the bigger, strategic issues that we’ll face; China and their step to be a hegemonic empire.”
Shelby again reiterated his stance that the U.S. does not need to act as the “world’s police.”
“What happened after World War II, we emerged as the most powerful nation, Russia second, in the world,” Shelby explained. “We had the monopoly on nuclear weapons for about five years and our economic engine was so strong. But today, we are challenged in the world and we are getting into things that we probably should think about getting in.”
Shelby added that he voted in favor of troops entering Iraq, and his thoughts on Afghanistan and Libya.
“I’m going to support the troops wherever they are,” he said. “We did so well in (Iraq), but God, we don’t know how to get out. We go in and don’t know how to get out; there’s no exit plan. Afghanistan, now we know that is an unstable country. We will never establish real tranquility in that country. And now, we’ve got Libya, where do we go. Are we going to be better off? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Iraq and Afghanistan is going to cost us a $1 trillion or so and a lot of blood of our sons and daughters. Every war is blood and treasury.”
Businessman Hooper Matthews spoke out on the government’s entitlement programs such as unemployment and food stamp, stating that it is hard to compete with the government when attempting to hire quality employees.
“As an employer, our biggest competition when trying to hire employees is the federal government,” Matthews said.
Matthews said with the government extending unemployment, it has cost many businesses he works with the opportunity for hiring employees.
“We service a lot of industrial accounts in our area and some of them actually have opening, but when they go to interviewing people and offer them reasonable pay of $10 per hour, a lot of the applicants will look at it and start writing down all of the entitlements like unemployment, food stamps and all of that they receive.”
Matthews added that a majority of applicants are willing to “live off” the amount of unemployment, food stamps and other entitlements offered by the government rather than working a full time job, which also subjects them to paying taxes.
“We can’t hire anybody at minimum wage,” Matthews said. “Not somebody who would show up and actually work. We’re competing against all of the entitlements.
Shelby agreed with Matthews stating that he “said it better than he could,” adding that people need to go to work.
“The government is the enemy, not your friend when the government is competing with you directly and indirectly,” Shelby said. “And if we prop up everybody to where they lose the incentive to work, and that’s what we are doing in this country to a great extent. If people are laid off temporarily from work at no fault of their own, I want to help them, but do we do this for year and years and years.”
Shelby then suggested a solution to the problem.
“Why don’t we give them a lump sum and say, ‘that’s it?” Shelby said. “That’s all you are going to get.”
He added that the entitlements are offered to keep citizens “politically happy.”
“It’s not good for the job creation machine in this country, it’s not good for productivity and so forth,” Shelby said. “I believe that a lot smaller, efficient government is in our best interest. We have too many people working in government. I want to be the enemy of waste and inefficiency and there’s a lot of waste and inefficiency in government.”
Other issues Shelby addressed included banking regulations, Flood Insurance Reform, political spending and the Clean Air Act.
“Life is short and we must put the country first, and we haven’t,” Shelby said.