From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is Campaign 2016: Is Ted Cruz a liar?
Its as if we were on a playground. That’s where you hear things like “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” or “How do you know when that kid’s lying? His lips are moving!” And in the Republican debates and in this year’s Democrat debates, these are statements that were very close to being used by each of the candidates. In a real sense they have said them with different words.
Because of his outspoken lack of political correctness, of all the candidates it’s Donald Trump, whether he becomes our president or not, who will be most remembered for his verbal attacks on Ted Cruz. When an adult calls someone else a liar in front of millions of people, (like the many millions watching the Republican debates over television), it is shocking and reminds me of that playground.
But what if it’s true? What if the one being accused IS lying? Shouldn’t America’s voters know that? We the people will soon be voting in primaries, if we haven’t already, and then in the general election. If a candidate has a regular pattern of lying, wouldn’t it be important for you to know that? Does honesty matter to you, most especially in a president?
At this point I can hear someone say, “Politicians are crooks who are in politics for the money they can make. They all lie.” And I would respond “Some lie far more than others.”
Whoever is our next president will be in many ways in control of your life and mine, making decisions that can strengthen us or destroy us as Americans, strengthen or destroy the next generation, including your children. Should you, in all wisdom, vote for a habitual liar who can never be trusted? – A person promising what they never plan to deliver? What if he or she were president and whenever they spoke to the American people they put their own slant on whatever they said and wouldn’t even blink if what theywere telling us wasn’t even a smidgen true?
So, in keeping with keeping with my promise on Campaign 2016 that I will try to tell the truth about each of the candidates – Republican or Democrat – as far as I can find the truth – this time we are going to settle the question “Are Donald Trump and Marco Rubio telling the truth when they say that Ted Cruz is a liar, totally dishonest – one who covers up his tracks to make himself look good?”
Let it be understood from the outset that I admire the positive things that Ted Cruz has done. At Harvard, Cruz amazed his college and America by winning the national college debate championship individually and then won ithe championship again again with his debate partner. Ted Cruz went beyond that and was in the finals for the world college debate championship. He thinks quickly on his feet and is extremely intelligent. As Attorney General in my state of Texas, he was loved by most and it set him in motion to win his Congressional Senate seat. He makes it very clear that he is a conservative and a Christian. All these things make me heavily lean towards Ted Cruz for president. But just before we vote him into the highest office in the land, and arguably the most important office in the world, let’s look at the nagging question “Is Ted Cruz a liar?”
William Saletan at the website Slate says about Ted Cruz “He’s a lawyer, not a leader.” As a conservative, Cruz has argued brilliantly against amnesty, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood, in fact, he has argued in front of the United States Supreme Court on several occasions on subjects dear to the hearts of conservatives.
Ted Cruz said during the Republican debate in Las Vegas, “The battle over amnesty was a time for choosing”. He said that he and Senator Jeff sessions of Alabama stood strongly to secure the border and keep illegal aliens out. Cruz then attacked Marco Rubio who joined Chuck Schumer and other Democrats to push “a total amnesty plan”. Cruz said “I have never supported the legalization of aliens. In fact, I led the fight against Rubio’s legislation and amnesty intentions.” Is THAT true?
What Saleten has done is to study almost every word Ted Cruz spoke during the immigration showdown in the Senate. It’s a timeline that goes between Cruz being sworn in as a freshman Senator in January 2013 and the end of June 2013 when the Senate bill he favored, passed.
You have undoubtedly heard the term “The Gang of Eight”. That was the name given to four Democrats and four Republicans, including Republican Marco Rubio who pushed hard to pass an immigration reform proposal that included a definite path to citizenship. While that was happening, Ted Cruz said that he had “deep concerns” about it and said a path to citizenship would alienate many Republicans. Yet when he was directly asked by news reporters “Would you vote against anything that has a path to citizenship included?” Cruz wouldn’t answer.
Even with that being true, Ted Cruz has been consistent throughout his first term as a senator in saying that he favored tighter borders, stronger enforcement at the borders, and an easier process for legal entry into the United States through H-1B visas (more about that later). Cruz was holding these views during a time when polls showed 60% of Americans endorsed a pathway to citizenship for the illegal aliens whenever a question about that had been asked in a certain way. So, he wasn’t saying any of this to win friends and influence people. He hung tough.
But now let’s flip this coin over. We all know that Ted Cruz’s campaign staff, during the pre-vote week in Iowa that preceded that state’s caucus, sent out robocalls to Iowa’s voters spreading the totally false and destructive information that Doctor Ben Carson was suspending his candidacy. Then the call urged each voter to vote for Cruz instead of wasting their vote on the now non-candidate Carson. When confronted afterward, Senator Cruz excused himself by saying that he had no part in this and that he knew nothing about it while it was being done. The problem is, presidential candidate Ted Cruz should have laid out clear and inflexible rules right from the beginning with his whole staff that in part stated only total honesty would be accepted by him and any dishonesty would result in an immediate firing. No staff member, no matter how high up the ladder, should have been allowed to move ahead on anything that serious without the direct permission of each candidate. Wouldn’t you want your president to be the one to make final decisions that would seriously affect both you and your family?. Doctor Carson was maligned and has said so ever since. There is the probability that that lie cost Ben Carson a large amont of votes, votes that, in such an evangelical state like Iowa, instead most probably went in large number to Cruz. No one will ever know how many votes Dr. Carson lost through that lie or what it may have cost him.
According to Donald Trump, Cruz kept up his lies about him with robocalls throughout South Carolina and did it again in Nevada. Ted Cruz denies it.
During this past week in Nevada, Ted Cruz’s campaign staff was at it again. This time they ran an ad on that states televison showing a photo–shopped picture , supposedly showing Marco Rubio with a large and admiring smile on his face while Barack Obama is smiling back with an “You’re an idiot” grin on his face. In reacting to that supposed photo, Marco Rubio said to reporters “The picture’s a fake, and that alone should prove to you everything I’ve been saying for the last few days – Ted Cruz keeps making things up. I think it’s a disturbing pattern, guys, every day the Cruz team team is spreading lies. In this case they literally lied with a picture.”
Rubio’s top strategist added “There is a culture of dishonesty from top to bottom in Cruz’s presidential campaign. It’s reflected in what Ted Cruz himself says. It’s reflected by the phony, fake, Facebook pages that his supporters put up. It’s reflected by calls to Iowa voters saying Ben Carson had dropped out.
After four state’s were full victims of the Ted Cruz campaign, Cruz finally fired his publicity manager this week. Now it will be easy to watch Cruz’s campaign tactics from here on out. If all of the phoniness ends, it will mean that either it was the publicity manager doing all the false claims, or that Ted Cruz has stopped his own dirty tactics. Like never knowing how many votes Doctor Carson lost because of Ted’s team did, we’ll never know whether Ted Cruz or his campaign staff was guilty of lying. That Ted Cruz didn’t fire his publicity director while they were still in Iowa instead of allowing him to continue spreading lies about Cruz’s rival candidates through three more campaign states, at very least shows a great weakness in his leadership.
With all of that said, there is one other fact that does stick out like a sore thumb. It’s in regards to how Ted Cruz financed his campaign for the United States Senate four years ago. Heidi Cruz, Ted’s beautiful wife, is his biggest supporter in many ways. Ted says he went to Heidi before he was sure he could afford to run for the Senate and said to her “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, our liquid worth, and put it into the campaign.” That amounted to $960,000. Heidi said “Of course.”
Two months later, shortly before the scheduled runoff election, the couple had to add still more money, bringing the total to 1.2 million dollars, which Cruz says “is all we had saved”. However the one thing that Ted neglected to mention was that Heidi works at Goldman Sachs and that’s where they made a $1 million low interest loan that eventually helped complete his road to his Senate seat. That fact was not disclosed by Ted Cruz on his campaign finance report, which is an absolute legal no no. When the New York Times broke the story on this, Ted Cruz said “Woops!” He called it simply an oversight.
Here is what the critics of Ted Cruz are saying about that loan. Goldman Sachs is a company that employs hundreds of workers who are on H–1B visas. As I’ve already mentioned, one of the things that Ted Cruz continues to advocate is a huge increase in H–1B visas. Donald Trump is reminding everyone that it was Ted Cruz who accused him of having “New York values.” When a Washington Post writer reflected on that, they wrote “If hiding a big loan from a Wall Street firm tied to the housing crisis isn’t the essence of ‘New York values’ I am not sure what is.”
Throughout his campaign, Ted Cruz continues to say that Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington must be stopped. And yet it is to one of those banks – Goldman Sachs – to which he owes so much.
Again, Ted Cruz has been the Attorney General of the state of Texas. No one but a tremendously gifted lawyer could ever have such a role. When it was discovered that Cruz hadn’t disclosed his loan, he told the New York Times it was only “an oversight”. The New York Times said of that excuse “Saying it was an oversight after he won his seat is hardly an excuse. It’s evidence that Cruz was hiding the ball all the time it mattered during the election.”
During the November Fox Business Republican debate, Neil Cavuto asked Cruz if he was in favor of bailing out banks. Cruz’s answer was “The truth is, the rich do great with the government. They get in bed with big government. The big banks grow bigger and bigger and bigger under Dodd–Frank, and community banks are going out of business. And by the way, the consequence of that is small businesses can’t get business loans, and it is that fundamental corruption that is why six of the ten wealthiest counties in America are in and around Washington DC.”
Neil Cavuto then asked Cruz “I just want to be clear, if you don’t mind, that millions of depositors would be on the line with that decision. And I just want to be clear. If it were to happen again, for whatever reason, you would let it go, you would let a Bank of America go?”
Ted Cruz answered “So let me be clear, I would not bail them out, but instead of adjusting monetary policy according to whims and getting it wrong over and over again and causing booms and busts, what the Fed should be doing is, number one, keeping our money tied to a stable level of gold. And number two, serving as a lender of last resort.”
The Washington Post said of that remark “That’s the essence of cronyism – Cruz gets his money when he is in a pinch, but ordinary employees, customers and shareholders will get no help from him.”
The Times report continued by saying “In the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low–interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before partly being paid down later that year. Citibank was another Wall Street firm tied up in the housing disaster.
The Washington Post said about all these things “This all feeds into Trump’s argument that he himself is not beholden to anyone, unlike greedy politicians. He is financing his own campaign.” Jennifer Rubin who writes The Right Turn blog for the Washington Post said “The GOP is lucky to find this out now. Imagine what would happen if the party nominated someone with this to go up against the Clinton attack machine. It’s one more reason not to nominate someone with such a thin public record who has never been thoroughly vetted.”
This is Ray Mossholder. With all that I’ve shared in this article and on the one about Marco Rubio that is on Reach More Now YouTube and reachmorenow.com, I in no way mean for any of this to be a personal attack on anyone. I like each candidate still running. But if you are going to vote in the primary, or the 2016 election, please learn all you can about the one you plan to vote for and about the other candidates as well. The next post in this series of Campaign 2016 will turn the spotlight on Donald Trump with the question “What Hasn’t Donald Trump Told Us?”
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush for President 2016? (Wikipedia)
By George, I’ll bet you know who this Republican candidate is. But how much do you know about him? Ray goes into his Wikipedia file to give you a full account of the background of this possible president in 2016, Jeb Bush.
In 1994, Bush made his first run for office, losing the election for governor by less than two percentage points to the incumbent Lawton Chiles. Bush ran again in 1998 and defeated Lieutenant GovernorBuddy MacKay with 55 percent of the vote. He ran for reelection in 2002 and won with 56 percent to become Florida’s first two-term Republican governor.[2] During his eight years as governor, Bush was credited with initiating environmental improvements, such as conservation in the Everglades, supporting caps for medical malpractice litigation, moving Medicaid recipients to private systems, and instituting reforms to the state education system, including the issuance of vouchers and promoting school choice.[3][4]
Since announcing his presidential candidacy on June 15, 2015, Bush has appeared in nationally-televised debates, and stressed civility, competence and his belief that slow and steady wins the race.[5]
Early life and education
Jeb Bush, front right, with family, early 1960s
Jeb Bush was born on February 11, 1953 in Midland, Texas. When he was six years old, the family relocated to theTanglewood neighborhood[6] of Houston, Texas.[7] The nickname “Jeb” is composed of his initials J.E.B. (John Ellis Bush).[8]
He grew up with two younger brothers, Neil and Marvin, one younger sister, Dorothy, and one brother, George, who is seven years older. Jeb Bush initially attended Grady Elementary School in Houston.[9] Following in the footsteps of his father and older brother George, at the age of 14 years in the fall of 1967,[6] Bush began attending high school at theAndover, Massachusetts boarding school Phillips Academy, Andover.[10] Even though he received poor grades at first, he made the honor roll by the end of his senior year and served as captain of the tennis team.[11] A student who was later expelled from Phillips Academy says that he and Bush once sewed a shorter classmate’s pajamas together so he could not put them on; Bush has expressed doubt that such an incident occurred, but says he smoked marijuana at that school, which he now calls “stupid” and “wrong”.[11]
At the age of 17, Bush taught English as a second language and assisted in the building of a school in Ibarrilla, a small village outside of León, Guanajuato, Mexico,[12] as part of Andover’s student exchange summer program.[13] While in Mexico, he met his future wife, Columba Garnica Gallo.[13][14]
Bush, who had largely avoided criticizing or supporting the Vietnam War, registered for the draft after his graduation from high school in 1971.[11] In the fourth and final draft lottery drawing, on February 2, 1972, for men born in 1953 and to be inducted during 1973, Bush received a draft number of 26 on a calendar-based scale that went to 365. But no new draft orders were issued after 1972,[15] because the U.S. changed to an all-volunteer military beginning in 1973.[16]
In 1974, Bush went to work in an entry-level position in the international division of Texas Commerce Bank, which was founded by the family ofJames Baker.[19] In November 1977, he was sent to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to open a new operation for the bank, where he served as branch manager and vice president.[20]
Following the 1980 presidential election, Bush and his family moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, a 32-year-old Cuban immigrant and self-made millionaire. Codina had made a fortune in a computer business, and then formed a new company, The Codina Group, to pursue opportunities in real estate.[21] During his time with the company, Bush focused on finding tenants for commercial developments.[22] Codina eventually made Bush his partner in a new development business, which quickly became one of South Florida’s leading real estate development firms. As a partner, Bush received 40% of the firm’s profits.[23] In 1983, Bush said of his move from Houston to Miami: “On the personal side, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were already living here”, and on the professional side, “I want to be very wealthy, and I’ll be glad to tell you when I’ve accomplished that goal.”[24]
During Bush’s years in Miami, he was involved in many different entrepreneurial pursuits, including working for a mobile phone company, serving on the board of a Norwegian-owned company that sold fire equipment to the Alaska oil pipeline, becoming a minority owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, buying a shoe company that sold footwear in Panama, and getting involved in a project selling water pumps in Nigeria.[23] Miguel Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a US$75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place. Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC.[25]
Bush volunteered for his father’s campaigns in 1980 and 1988. During the 1980 campaign, Bush worked as an unpaid volunteer, and expressed great admiration for his father.[26] In the mid-1980s, Bush got his start in Florida politics as the Chairman of the Dade County Republican Party.[6][26][27] Dade County played an important role in the 1986 election of Bob Martinez to the Governor’s office. In return, Martinez appointed Bush as Florida’s Secretary of Commerce.[27] He served in that role in 1987 and 1988, before resigning to work on his father’s presidential campaign.
Bush frequently communicated with his father’s staff from 1981 through 1992.[28] The younger Bush recommended Dexter Lehtinen for the post ofU.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and set up a meeting between the Bush Administration and Motorola.[28] He also advocated forCuban exiles living in South Florida, and supported the Cuban embargo.[28] In 1990, Bush urged his father to pardon Orlando Bosch, a Cuban exile who had been convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. Bosch was released from prison and granted residency in the U.S.[25]
In 1989, Bush was the campaign manager of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American to serve in Congress.[29] In 1994, Bush launched anunsuccessful bid for the Governor’s office against incumbent Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles.[29] Bush ran that year as a conservative. At one point, he was asked what he would do for African Americans, and Bush responded: “It’s time to strive for a society where there’s equality of opportunity, not equality of results. So I’m going to answer your question by saying: probably nothing.”[30][31] Bush lost the election by only 63,940 votes out of 4,206,076 that were cast for the major party candidates (2,135,008; 51% to 2,071,068; 49%). In the same election year, his older brother, George, was elected Governor of Texas. Following his election loss, Bush joined the board of the Heritage Foundation and continued to work with Codina Partners.[22] Alongside T. William Fair, the president of the Urban League’s Miami affiliate, Bush helped to establish Florida’s firstcharter school.[22]
Bush ran again for governor in 1998, defeating Democrat Buddy MacKay, who was Lieutenant Governor. Bush ran for reelection in 2002 to become Florida’s first two-term Republican governor.[2] During his eight years as governor, Bush was credited with initiating environmental improvements, such as conservation in the Everglades, supporting caps for medical malpractice litigation, moving medicaid recipients to private systems, and instituting reforms to the state education system, including the issuance of vouchers and promoting school choice.[3][4] Bush was governor when his brother George won an intensely fought election recount in Florida to become President. Bush recused himself from any official role in the recount.[32]
In 1998, Bush defeated his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay, by over 418,000 votes (2,191,105; 55% to 1,773,054; 45%) to become Governor of Florida. He campaigned as a “consensus-building pragmatist”.[31] Simultaneously, his brother, George W. Bush won a re-election victory for a second term as Governor of Texas, and these siblings thus became the first to govern two states at the same time since two Rockefellers did so from 1967 to 1971.[33]
In the 1998 election, Bush garnered 61 percent of the Hispanic vote and 14 percent of the African American vote, a surprising[to whom?] showing for a Republican seeking statewide office.[34]
While governor, Bush presided over a state government that reduced taxes by US$19 billion and he vetoed US$2 billion in new spending, according to The Wall Street Journal.[35] An analysis conducted by economist Martin Sullivan, which eliminated the effects of the federal estate tax repeal (which did not require legislative action to go into effect) and inflation, estimated the cumulative reduction in taxes by the state at closer to US$13 billion during Bush’s tenure, resulting in tax savings by 2006 of US$140 per person, per year.[36] A substantial amount of the tax savings in the higher estimate came from the phasing out of the federal estate tax law implemented in 2001 underPresident George W. Bush, for a total tax savings of US$848 million per year; Jeb Bush did not push for a replacement with a state tax.[36] The biggest reduction in taxes was due to the elimination of the state’s Intangible Personal Property Tax, which applied to holdings of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and money market funds.[37]
During Bush’s tenure, the state also increased its reserves from US$1.3 billion to US$9.8 billion, which coincided with Florida receiving the highest possible bond rating for the first time.[35] According to Kurt Wenner, VP of research at Florida Tax Watch, Bush was governor during one of the strongest revenue periods for the state of Florida, due in part to the boom in property values, so that revenue grew despite the tax cuts he implemented.[38]
Bush reduced the state’s government workforce by 11 percent.[39][40][41] In May 2006, as part of a US$448.7-million line-item veto of state funding, he cut a total of US$5.8 million in grants to public libraries, pilot projects for library homework help and web-based high-school texts, and funding for a joint-use library in Tampa.[42]
As Governor of Florida, Bush received grades of B in 2000,[43][44] A in 2002,[45][46] B in 2004,[47][48] and C in 2006[49][50] from the Cato Institute, alibertarian think tank, in their biennial Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors.
Bush’s administration emphasized public education reform. His “A+ Plan” established heightened standards, required testing of all students, and graded all Florida schools. From 1998 to 2005, reading scores of 4th grade students in Florida on the National Assessment of Educational Progressincreased 11 points, compared to 2.5 points nationally, according to the pro-free-market Washington Policy Center.[51]
Bush has been a proponent of school vouchers and charter schools, especially in areas of the state with failing public schools, although to date very few schools have received failing grades from the state. He established the McKay Scholarship Program which provides vouchers for students with learning disabilities to attend a school of their choice. He also established the A+ Opportunity Scholarship Program which provided vouchers to students. This program was struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006.[52]
Bush helped create the Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship which provides corporations with tax credits for donations to Scholarship Funding Organizations. Those organizations must spend 100% of the donations on scholarships for low income students.[51]
Bush declined to raise taxes for education, which led him to oppose a ballot initiative to amend the Florida Constitution so as to cap growing school class sizes. Bush said he had “a couple of devious plans if this thing passes”.[53][54] Despite his opposition, the amendment passed.[55]
In higher education, Bush approved three new medical schools during his tenure and also put forth the “One Florida” proposal, an initiative that had the effect of ending affirmative action admissions programs at state universities.[56] These moves were among the concerns that led to the faculty of the University of Florida to deny Bush an honorary degree, while the University of Florida Alumni Association made him an honorary alumnus.[57]
As Governor, Bush proposed and passed into law major reform to the medical liability system. The Florida Senate, a majority of which were Republican, sided with the trial lawyers against caps on non-economic damages. Bush insisted, and called the legislature into five special sessions. The contentious debate even included a senior Bush staffer calling for primary opposition to Republicans who disagreed with the Governor on the reforms. Eventually, the legislature agreed to the caps and Bush’s reforms passed.
Bush passed a reform to Florida’s Medicaid system that moved recipients into private managed care systems.[35] Florida was also the first state in the nation to publish hospital outcomes on the Internet, including cost and information on quality, infections and complications.[58]
Bush was involved in the Terri Schiavo case, involving a woman with massive brain damage, who was on a feeding tube for over 15 years, and whose husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, wished to remove the tube. This move was opposed by Terri Schiavo’s parents in the courts. Bush signed “Terri’s Law“, legislation passed by the Florida legislature that authorized him, as Governor, to keep Schiavo on life support.[59][60] The law was ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court on September 23, 2004. That decision was appealed to the federal courts. On January 24, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, thus allowing the Florida court’s ruling to stand.[61]
While Governor of Florida, Bush was opposed to abortion.[62] He supported a law requiring parental notification for teen abortions and requested that the courts appoint a guardian for the fetus of a mentally disabled woman who had been raped.[63]Choose Life, a pro-lifeadvocacy group based inOcala, Florida, submitted a specialty license plate application—previously vetoed by Governor Lawton Chiles—which passed both houses and was signed into law by Bush on June 8, 1999.[64][65]
Bush at Rookery Bay participating in Earth Day activities in 2004
Bush signed legislation to restore the Everglades in 2000 as part of an US$8 billion project in conjunction with the federal government. He also set aside over one million acres of land for conservation as part of a land purchase program.[66]
In 2001, Bush eliminated civil service protection for over 16,000 state jobs, which had the effect of making it easier to fire employees in those positions. In addition, he issued an executive order which removed racial preferences in state contracting.[35]
In 2004, Bush supported an unsuccessful bill to allow illegal immigrants to be issued drivers licenses by the state.[35]
Bush supported more than a dozen new protections for gun owners.[35] In 2005, Bush signed into law Florida’s stand-your-ground law,[67][68] which was the first such state law in the United States.[69]
Bush is an advocate of capital punishment and 21 prisoners were executed during his term.[70] After the execution of Ángel Nieves Díaz was seemingly botched – the execution took 37 minutes to complete, and required a second injection of the lethal chemicals – he suspended all executions in Florida on December 15, 2006.[71]
During Bush’s tenure, the racial and gender diversity of the state’s judicial bench increased. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Democrats criticized some of Bush’s judicial appointments as being “overtly partisan and political”.[35]
In 1995, the Florida state legislature created the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) and came up with a public-private partnership model. Government would build the system leveraging state dollars with federal funds and tax-free bonding. The private sector was to invest money in the project, help design and build the network, and be given the franchise to operate the trains–known as Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM). Trains would be privately owned, similar to how the airline industry operates in a publicly financed airport.[75] The rail system and its planning was estimated to cost US$7–US$8 billion.[76]
On January 14, 1999, Bush announced that the venture posed too much risk and too much cost for Florida taxpayers and that further funding would be halted.[77] In response, Florida businessman C.C. (Doc) Dockery, the former chairman of the Florida High Speed Rail Commission, authored a constitutional amendment that was added to the Florida ballot in 2000. The amendment was approved by voters. The amendment directed Bush and the Florida legislature to start building a high speed monorail, fixed guide way, or magnetic levitation system linking Florida’s five largest urban areas by 2003.[78] Bush vetoed funding for the project and led a high-profile campaign to amend the Florida constitution to repeal the 2000 constitutional amendment that mandated the construction of the high-speed system.[75][76] In 2004, voters approved that amendment to repeal the 2000 high-speed rail amendment.[79]
Bush was unopposed in the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary, and in the general election he faced Democratic challenger Bill McBride. They met for two debates, in the most expensive Florida gubernatorial election yet.[80][81][82] Voting went smoothly.[83] Bush defeated McBride 56% to 43%, a greater margin of victory than in 1998.
Bush won 44 percent of the state’s Jewish vote in the 2002 race.[84] Bush also won the white female vote in the swing-voting battleground of Central Florida’s I-4 corridor.[85] However, he was not able to replicate the same success with African American voters (like he had earlier in 1998), winning only 8 percent of the African American vote. He became the first Republican governor of Florida to win re-election.[2]
According to political scientist Susan MacManus from the University of South Florida, “In Florida, [Bush is] still perceived as conservative, especially on fiscal issues and even on social issues.”[37] Outside of Florida, fellow Republican leaders throughout the country have sought Bush’s aid both on and off the campaign trail. Bush’s out-of-state campaign visits include Kentucky, where Republican challenger Ernie Fletcher appeared with Bush and won that state’s governorship in 2003, ending a 32-year streak of Democratic governors.[86] In the first few months of 2014, Bush campaigned for New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), and David Jolly who won a special congressional election in Florida.[87]
Bush has been criticized by some in the Tea Party as not being sufficiently conservative, as he supports positions on immigration and Common Core that are unpopular with some conservatives.[88] Bush publicly criticized the national Republican party for its adherence to “an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement” on June 11, 2012. In comments shared with Bloomberg View, Bush suggested that former Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would “have had a hard time” finding support in the contemporary GOP.[89]
In October 2013, Bush called for passage of immigration reform.[90] In April 2014, Bush said of illegal immigration: “It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime. There should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”[91]
From 2004 to 2007, Bush served as a Board Member for the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB).[92] Created by Congress, the board’s purpose is to establish policy on reports examining K-12 students’ academic progress in America’s public and private schools. Since then Bush’s education foundation has advocated for the Common Core State Standards Initiative.[93] In October 2013, referring to opponents of the standards, Bush said that while “criticisms and conspiracy theories are easy attention grabbers”, he instead wanted to hear their solutions to the problems in American education.[94]
In May 2006, Bush was approached to become the next commissioner of the National Football League.[95] The outgoing commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, was searching for replacements. In response, Bush said on May 24, 2006 that “I’m Governor of the state of Florida and I intend to be Governor until I leave—which is January 2007.”[96]Roger Goodell eventually became the new NFL commissioner.
In April 2013, Bush authored a cover story for Newsmax magazine, warning that America’s entitlement system risked collapse unless there was a course correction in U.S. public policy. Bush touted a six-point plan that addressed taxes, education, immigration, energy, regulatory policy, and the family unit.[97]
you actually went to the. The walk about the record in Italy to be 10 minute According to Fox Business, Bush earned nearly half of the US$29 million he earned between 2007 and when he decided to run for Republican presidential nomination in December 2014, from Wall Street banks and companies.[98]
In April 2007, Bush joined Tenet Healthcare‘s board of directors.[99] The following August, Bush joined investment bank, Lehman Brothers, as an adviser in its private equity group.[100] Bush has also served on the board of InnoVida, Swisher Hygiene, and Rayonier and has served as an adviser to Barclays.[101] Bush would later return US$270,000 in consultancy fees he had been paid by InnoVida after they declared bankruptcy.[102]
As of 2014, Bush had received more than US$2 million from his work for Tenet, a company that expected to receive US$100 million in new earnings in 2014 because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and that “aggressively encouraged Americans to sign up for insurance under the program….”[101] Bush has reportedly objected to the ACA at company meetings, but has kept his personal views separate from what is best for Tenet.[101]
At a press conference on April 16, 2013, at Bluefield College, Bush stated he had not begun the decision making process about a run but that he would begin to consider a run soon.[104] On October 2, 2014, Bush’s brother George said that his brother “wants to be President”.[105]
On December 16, 2014, Bush announced via Facebook that he would be “actively exploring” a 2016 run to become President of the United States and at the end of the year resigned several corporate boards.[106][107]
In February 2015, Bush released several thousand emails from his time as Governor online. Most of the emails are in the public record under Florida’s Sunshine Laws. However, Bush created controversy by releasing some emails that included some personal details such as social security numbers, names and addresses, as well as the contents of the messages.[108][109] Bush’s campaign team subsequently redacted the personal information.[110]
By extending the exploration mode of his potential candidacy to a six-month period (his scheduled announcement came one day short of six months into his exploratory phase), Bush used his time to get acquainted with the press, court donors, and prepare strategy. In doing this, he navigated several campaign finance laws which limit donations and prohibit coordination with Super PACs.[111] In May 2015, it was reported that Bush has been raising money since January 2015, estimated to be close to US$100 million, for his super PAC, Right to Rise.[112]
Bush announced his candidacy on June 15, 2015 at a multicultural campus of Miami Dade College.[113][114][115] According to Reuters, Bush characterized himself as a moderate Republican who still has conservative principles; he promised immigration reform, spoke some fluent Spanish, mentioned his wife’s Mexican origins, and criticized Hillary Clinton.[116] David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, said: “It’s pretty hard for [Republicans] to win the White House if current Hispanic voting trends continue. (Bush) has some unique abilities to appeal to those voters and he’s going to maximize them.”[116]
Jeb Bush at FITN, the First In Nation Republican Leadership Summit, Nashua, New Hampshire on April 17, 2015
Bush has addressed a myriad of political issues over the course of his career, many of them during his governorship as already described. In conjunction with his 2015 bid for the presidency, he has revisited many issues that he addressed before, as well as discussing many new ones.
Bush believes abortions should only be legal in the case of rape or incest or if the life of the mother is in danger. He does not support public funding for abortion clinics.[117]
Bush has questioned the scientific opinion on climate change,[118] while stating “I think global warming may be real”, and “It is not unanimous among scientists that it is disproportionately manmade. What I get a little tired of on the left is this idea that somehow science has decided all this so you can’t have a view.”[118]National Journal writes that Bush “does not acknowledge the scientific consensus that human activity drives climate change”.[119]
Bush supports offshore drilling outside of Florida. He says that he supports the Keystone XL oil pipeline as well asfracking. According to his spokeswoman, “As governor he worked to strike a balance between our nation’s energy needs and the economic and environmental interests of Florida. He believes states should have a role in decisions that impact their coastline. Expanding domestic energy production is key to ensuring America’s energy security.”[120]
Bush favors repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”) and replacing it with a “market-oriented” alternative.[121][122] Bush has called the current law a “monstrosity”[122] that is “flawed to its core.”[123] Bush has proposed some sort of state- or local-government funded “catastrophic coverage” system, in which “if you have a hardship that goes way beyond your means of paying for it, … the government is there or an entity is there to help you deal with that.”[122] After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ACA in King v. Burwell in June 2015, Bush stated that the decision was “not the end of the fight” against the law.[124]
In 2015, Bush took the position that people in the United States illegally should have a path to legal status, but not a path to citizenship,[121] and said that legal status and avoiding deportation should require immigrants to pay fines, get work permits, pay taxes, not receive government assistance, learn English, and not commit crimes.[125] He supports tougher enforcement of immigration laws, including prosecution of businesses that try to hire illegal aliens.[125]
Bush is a supporter of traditional as contrasted with same-sex marriage[126] and believes that the issue of same-sex marriage should be decided by the states rather than by the federal government[127] and that it is not a constitutional right.[128][129] He holds that businesses should have the right to refuse to provide services for same-sex couples on religious grounds.[129] In July 2015, Bush said he supported lifting the military’s ban on allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, so long as “the military’s comfortable with this” and it did not impact morale.[130]
Overall, Bush is for expanding gun owners’ rights.[121]
Bush supports a decrease in capital gains taxes and property taxes. He supports cutting taxes for all Americans and believes they do better with less government interference. Bush also is a supporter of welfare restrictions. He supports the following: a four-year limit of benefits, a requirement that able-bodied recipients participate in work-related activities in order to receive benefits, and limiting benefits given to recipients if they have additional children while on welfare.[132]
Bush favors gradually raising the retirement age (i.e., the age for collecting Social Security retirement benefits) from 65 to 68 or 70.[133]
In May 2015, Bush stated that he would have ordered the 2003 invasion of Iraq had he been President at the time: “I would have [authorized the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.” He also indicated that the lack of focus on post-invasion security was a mistake.[136] He later stated that “knowing what we know now, …I would not have engaged”. “I would not have gone into Iraq”, he said. He also argued that the invasion—though perhaps inspired by faulty intelligence—had been beneficial, saying the world was “significantly safer” without Saddam Hussein in power.[137]
In 2015, Bush said that he does not support a further major commitment of U.S. troops in Iraq to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL), saying that such a deployment is not needed to defeat ISIS.[138] He has not, however, ruled out such a deployment in the future.[138] Bush favors building a new U.S. base in Iraq’s al-Anbar province,[121] and has said that some U.S. troops ought to be embedded with Iraqi armed forces to help train them and identify targets as joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs).[125][138] Bush has not commented on adding to the approximately 3,500 U.S. troops in Iraq now.[121]
In a speech, Bush said his brother, former President George W. Bush, was his main adviser on policy with the Middle East. Bush later clarified that he was referring to policy on Israel, rather than on the Middle East as a whole.[139][140]
Bush supports the continued collection of metadata of phone calls by the National Security Agency.[141] He also supports the USA Patriot Act, and criticized efforts by Senator Rand Paul and others to stop its reauthorization. Bush stated that Paul was “wrong” about the Patriot Act and stated that: “The Patriot Act has kept us safe, plain and simple. The metadata program has kept us safe, plain and simple. There’s been no violation of civil liberties.”[142]
Bush has called for increased military spending, expressing the belief that 2.5% of GDP is an insufficient amount.[143][144]
Bush has called the April 2015 Iran nuclear deal framework a “horrific deal” and said he would likely terminate any final agreement should he become president.[125] He has argued that the deal would put Iran into a position where it could intimidate the Middle East.[121] Bush condemned theJuly 2015 final nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 world powers, calling it “appeasement.”[145] However, Bush stated that he would not seek to revoke the agreement on his first day in office.[146]
After losing a 1994 election for Governor of Florida against Lawton Chiles, Bush pursued policy and charitable interests. He “volunteered time to assist the Miami Children’s Hospital, the United Way of Dade County and the Dade County Homeless Trust”.[147]
In 1996, The Foundation For Florida’s Future published a book that Bush had co-written, Profiles in Character (ISBN 0-9650912-0-1), a clear parallel to John F. Kennedy‘s 1955 book Profiles in Courage. The foundation also published and distributed policy papers, such as “A New Lease on Learning: Florida’s First Charter School”, which Bush co-wrote.[151] Bush subsequently wrote the foreword to another book, published by theconservativeHeritage Foundation and written by Nina Shokraii Rees, School Choice 2000: What’s Happening in the States (ISBN 0-89195-089-3).
Bush co-founded the first charter school in the State of Florida: Liberty City Charter School, a grades K-6 elementary school.[152] in a Miami neighborhood that, in 1980, was the site of the first major race riot since the Civil Rights era.[153] The school’s co-founder, working alongside Bush, was T. Willard Fair, a local black activist and head of the Greater Miami Urban League. The Liberty City Charter School was closed in 2008 after falling more than US$1 million in debt.[154]
In 2000, Bush established the Points of Light program to recognize an “exemplary volunteer, organization, or person”.[155]
Bush is the honorary chairman of the Annual AT&T Jeb Bush Florida Golf Classic, a fundraiser that benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He first became involved in the benefit after meeting with committee member Lawson Dutton, whose child suffered from cystic fibrosis.[156] Supporters raised more than US$722,000 in 2014 at the 19th annual Jeb Bush Florida Classic, exceeding their goals in attendance and revenues raised.[157][158]Since the event’s inception 19 years ago, the total revenue netted has reached over US$7.478 million.[157]
