Some of the College Republicans assisted John Coffey in his recent candidacy
for the US congressional Candidacy, however Mr. Coffey lost the Nomination
to State Senator Stewart Greenleaf. It was a very close race, and John
Coffey was winning until they reached the voting stations in Stewart
Greenleaf's home senatorial district, where he pulled ahead and won the
race. Republican State Senator Stewart Greenleaf will now challenge Joe
Hoffel in the November election. The Ursinus College Republicans have been
asked to assist in the election of Stewart Greenleaf. I will be helping in
the campaign, and I hope other College Republicans will do the same.

-Submission by Mark Wolfrey, FCRUC President

George Gunning receives endorsement of former Congressman John Fox (Email from Jon Fox):

It has come to my attention that George Gunning is running for State Chairman of the College Republicans. I feel George is the perfect candidate for this position. I have known him for several years now, so I'm writing to let you know why you should support him and make sure he wins at the convention in April. When George first started working on my re-election campaign to Congress, almost immediately I recognized his excellent leadership and organization skills. For this reason, I appointed him to my campaign staff. In this position he excelled. George was also a dedicated and selfless individual. Not only did he give up another job so he could work full time on the campaign, he was also always there through thick and thin - working at fundraisers, on literature handouts, on the phones at the office, anywhere his talents were needed. He proved himself to be a very reliable asset to my campaign. After the most recent election, I suggested to George that he become involved in the College Republicans. At the time, he was studying at
Montgomery County Community College, was a member of the Young Republicans, was active in local government, and had worked on several campaigns. I felt that with his background and leadership abilities he would surely excel and leave the College Republicans organization in better shape than he found it. Within months, of course, he had become the Southeast regional director for the Pennsylvania College Republicans. In this position, he began working with local organizations in his region, paying particular attention to those clubs that needed the most help, and putting them back on their feet. Now this dedicated, hard-working conservative stands to be your next State Chairman. He promises better organization and more effective communication, among many other laudable goals. Speaking from experience, I know that George Gunning can deliver. Won't you join me in supporting him? Please visit www.pacr.org to learn more about George Gunning - your next State Chairman.

Regards,
Jon D. Fox
Member of Congress 1994-1998

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to Senate Rules, this will be the last Rick
Report until after April 4.

PROSPERITY FOR A PURPOSE - At a press conference on Wednesday, Senators Santorum and Lieberman re-introduced legislation that will reach out to the working poor by enabling them to obtain financial security. The Savings for Working Families Act of 2000 will help hardworking
Americans gain financial security through savings and investment, utilizing Individual Development Accounts. These savings accounts may be used to purchase a first home, pursue a post-secondary education or training, or start a small business. "As Americans, it has always been
instilled in us that financial independence is won through hard work and savings," said Senator Santorum. "I am proud to re-introduce this legislation with Senator Lieberman so that we can continue our work of reaching out to those who are less fortunate." For more information,
visit our website at www.senate.gov/~santorum/press/000202.htm

UP! UP! OUTTA CONTROL! - Also on Wednesday, RJS wrote to Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson about the widespread impact of the recent fuel price increases. Over the past year, oil prices have risen to nearly $25 a barrel, creating a financial pinch for many Pennsylvanians who
rely heavily on gasoline and home heating oil. RJS requested that Secretary Richardson use "all available means to mitigate a sustained rise in fuel prices."

KEEPING THE FAITH - RJS visited four Philadelphia churches on Sunday, delivering the morning message at New Covenant Church, and greeting the congregations of Oak Lane Church of God, Deliverance Evangelistic Church, and Greater Exodus Church. The first service RJS attended was
at Oak Lane Church of God, which has been very active in community outreach for many years. After sharing some thoughts and words of encouragement with the congregation, RJS traveled to New Covenant Church, where he gave the morning message. RJS focused on the importance of truth, and the struggle between moral relativism and God's law. Following the message, RJS visited Deliverance Evangelistic Church, a big supporter of the effort to ban Partial Birth Abortions,
and Greater Exodus Church, which RJS has visited on numerous occasions and has hailed for their successful People For People conversion outreach ministry.

A VOICE FOR VETERANS - Senator Santorum was the keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania VFW Annual Conference in Harrisburg on Saturday. RJS, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, addressed important issues ranging from military readiness to veterans health care,
and answered questions from attendees on various areas of concern to veterans.

STANDING UP FOR FREE SPEECH - On Friday, January 28, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rescinded a controversial ruling which complicated efforts to complete a license swap agreement including the purchase of Pittsburgh television station WQED by Cornerstone
Television, a Christian station. The original decision hindered the purchase by adding programming content requirements which the FCC mandated for religious broadcast television stations with
educational licenses. The decision to rescind the ruling was made the day after Senators Santorum and Brownback introduced the Non-Commercial Broadcast Freedom Act of 2000, to reverse the FCC ruling. "I believe the decision to rescind the FCC's guidance was the right one," said RJS. "If the FCC had followed through on its decision, I would have been deeply concerned about the `free speech' ramifications for religious broadcasters and their viewers."

FLIGHT UPGRADE - RJS announced on Tuesday, January 25 that
Chautauqua Airlines has agreed to upgrade their aircraft serving the Cambria County Airport in Johnstown. The current aircraft is a 19-seat Jetstream, an outdated aircraft which has drawn much criticism from travelers. The planned development of a nearby industrial park has increased concern in the community regarding the quality of air travel to and from the airport. RJS recently wrote to the CEO of Chautauqua Airlines regarding the matter, and learned on Friday that the
Airline has agreed to provide enhanced service, replacing the Jetstreams with five new 30-seat Saab cabin aircraft. "I am pleased to be able to help move this process forward," said RJS. "Quality air service is a crucial part of the economic development of this region, and updated
aircraft was long overdue."

HUMAN EVENTS:
The National Conservative Weekly
Front Page - April 17, 1998

Exclusive to Human Events
The Case for Repealing the 16th Amendment

Abolish the Income Tax!
By Alan Keyes

The signs are growing that strong sentiment exists in America to abolish
the income tax. Despite the attempts of some to distract and diffuse
this sentiment - including the proposal merely to flatten the income tax
without eliminating it - there appears to be a broad willingness in the
country to consider the entire question of the income tax in principle.

In this moment of opportunity, the serious work of political leadership
that needs to be done is the work of setting before the American people
the only agenda that is going to restore our freedom. We must abolish
the income tax and replace it with the tax system that was intended by
our Founders when this nation began - a tax system that leaves our
people in control of 100% of their dollars, and that gives to the earner
the first use of every dollar that he or she earns.

Abolishing the income tax should be the premier goal of all tax
discussion and policy for the next several years. And, as important as
this goal is at a policy level, it is perhaps just as important that
conservative leaders use the debate about tax reform as an occasion to
make clear to ourselves and to the American people the reasons that this
change is necessary.

"A Moral Imperative"

We need to start talking about what is really going to make a difference
in restoring the liberties of our people and of this nation. We should
make clear at every opportunity that the income tax is a slave tax -
inherently incompatible with freedom. Abolishing it is therefore not
just economically feasible, it is a moral imperative if we are to meet
our obligation to bequeath liberty to future generations.

This moral case against the income tax will carry the day. And by
presenting the tax issue in its proper moral context, we will finally
put to rest the foolish uneasiness with the moral agenda that reduces it
to divisive disputes about theology or sex. The moral agenda is about
self-government and how we preserve the character to sustain it.

The tax issue is a moral issue because it raises fundamental questions
about the way American citizens will insist that they be treated by
their government, and thus inevitably by each other. Are we a nation of
grown-ups whose government is our tool, or are we a nation of children
whose will and resources are subject to the control of "Big Daddy"
government? This is what is at stake in the "economic" debate now
beginning over tax policy.

What, concretely, should be done? We should repeal the 16th Amendment to
the Constitution and thus return to the original Constitution of this
country. And then we should simply abolish the tax code that inflicts
the income tax on our people. We should fund the federal government
through tariffs, duties and excise taxes (i.e., sales taxes) as the
Founders intended.

The income tax should be replaced with the kind of taxes most people are
already paying - the taxes on things we buy and that we pay only when we
decide to buy them. By restoring tariffs and duties to their proper role
we will also make foreign populations who benefit from access to the
U.S. market share the burden of supporting the governmental system that
guarantees its existence.

What will be the result of this change? Instead of being taxed before we
decide how to spend our money, we will be taxed only after we decide
what to do with it. And if we decide that we want to save it, we won't
be taxed. If we decide that we want to invest it, we won't be taxed.

Instead of waiting upon the whim of politicians and bureaucrats, we will
control our own tax burden by controlling the amount and pattern of our
consumption.

In larger economic terms, an excise tax system would also impose natural
limits on the rate of taxation. Politicians would have to think like
business people, being careful not to raise the price of goods so high
that a drastic fall in demand destroys the source of revenue. Also, if
the excise tax rate on any good or service were set too high, everyone
in the sector dependent on it would unite to seek relief. Instead of the
"let's you and him fight" divisiveness of the income tax system, the
excise tax would be a unity tax, encouraging coalitions of interests
across all income levels.

An excise tax system would mean that each citizen would decide what his
tax burden was going to be. Not in every respect, of course. One
couldn't simply decide to pay no taxes and otherwise live as he pleased.
But rather than have our tax rate and tax payment determined before and
apart from any decision that we make, economic or otherwise, we would
instead determine and pay our taxes as the cumulative result of many,
many decisions to purchase or not to purchase taxed items in the open
market.

This is what the Founders intended to be our economic situation:
ordinary citizens in the driver's seat of the economic patterns of their
own lives.

Liberty from the income tax would mean, of course, liberty from the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We would no longer have the IRS, because
we would no longer have a tax code that requires the government to
demand that we report our income to its agents and gives these agents
the right to take away our homes and our goods, and to destroy the
livelihood of our families, in order to improve their records at the
IRS.

We would no longer have our privacy invaded by a government that was
interested - officially and legally - in burrowing about in our business
to find out how much we make, where we make it, and when we got it.

The Habits of a Free People

These are all questions that were once considered to be private
business. Now they are everybody's business. The government of this
supposedly free people can ask these questions, at its pleasure, compel
answers, and throw into jail anyone unwilling or unable to answer them
to the government's satisfaction. This is fundamentally contrary to any
substantive notion of political liberty.

By contrast, under a sales-tax system we would not have to report the
facts of our individual economic situation or choices to a living soul.

Over time, the difference in these two patterns of economic life will
have - has already had - its effect on the quality and extent of the
responsibility we take for our own lives. And as the Clinton
Administration explores new ways of manipulating the income tax to
coerce our choices through targeted tax cuts, we begin to see the next
stage of the manipulation. Now we are permitted the carrot of tax
relief, but only when we make the choices the government directs and
dutifully report them to our master.

This manipulation has already had a chilling effect on the willingness
of our moral leaders in the churches to speak out against the moral
abuses being encouraged by political and judicial decisions. Fear of
losing their tax-exempt status has discouraged religious leaders from
their traditional role as the nation's conscience, the sparks of its
passions for moral decency.

Tolerance for moral turpitude in the highest offices in the land passes
without remark. Meanwhile, the virtue of charity is corrupted by the
expectation of gain as people give money to get money, rather than to
please the living God.

The distance the income tax has already taken us down the road to
servitude can also be demonstrated by considering how rare it is for
anyone even to raise the question of what right the government has to
know how much money we make.

Do we ask ourselves this question anymore? We blithely file our income
tax every year, putting down all kinds of details about where our money
comes from and telling people in the government what our income is. Has
it occurred to us to ask in the course of doing that, what right at all
do they have to know this? What legitimacy there is to this law?

Let me give you an illustrative comparison. Suppose that tomorrow the
government were to levy a tax on sexual activity, and were to require
that, at the end of a certain time, maybe on a monthly basis, every
citizen had to report all sexual activity so that the tax could be
accurately assessed. Would we accept that as a legitimate requirement?
Or would it occur to us to stand up and tell the government that such
matters are none of its business?

We do have a lingering sense that there are certain things about our
lives that ought to be private, and certain relations we have with
others that ought to be private. Why is it that after many centuries in
which it was understood that one's income was his private business, we
accept a regime that requires that we report this private fact about our
lives to a government agency?

Whatever the reasons for accepting this regime in the first place, we
accept it now largely because we have lived with it for decades and
become used to it. But that is to say that the income tax has managed,
in 80 years, to deaden the zeal for liberty - and vigilance in its
preservation - that were once synonymous with the word "American."

We must ensure that the debate on tax reform includes a serious attempt
to raise these questions. In this way, we can open the eyes of our
fellow citizens to the fact that the income tax is not only bad for
economic reasons, and because the Founders didn't care for it and didn't
write it into the Constitution. It is also bad because it is based upon
a premise that destroys one of the material foundations of privacy. How
can there be a private sphere without a protected source of material
support for it?

A free and vigilant people should never have tolerated this for a
minute. The income tax is an inherently communistic tax, because one of
the prerequisites of freedom is a sphere of privacy. And if you destroy
the material foundations of that sphere of privacy, you have destroyed
the possibility of freedom.

Yet the income tax is based upon a premise that hands to the government
what it needs to destroy the material foundation of private life

When we treat any aspect of our lives as intrinsically the concern of
the government, we implicitly begin to accept the role of government in
judging and controlling that aspect. Government is a practical entity -
the only reason it needs to know things is so that it can do something
about them. Whenever we grant, in principle, that the government has a
right to know, we are granting it a right to control.

For this reason, the income tax is a kind of universal solvent,
dissolving the private and personal resolve each of us should have to
control responsibly the actions we take in the acquisition and
expenditure of wealth.

We have survived the income tax as long as we have because the habits of
American liberty run deep, and the American people have not quickly or
easily taken into their souls the habits of servitude suggested by the
actions the income tax requires.

But our fitful and sporadic tax "revolts" are being patiently waited out
by our leaders like the increasingly exhausted attempts of a hooked fish
to break free. Line is played out, the illusion of liberty is permitted,
and all the while the deep conformity of the captive to the will of the
captor is secured.

We need to pause and reflect, and remember to ask the fundamental
questions before it is too late. We need to resist the pressure to be
concerned only about the amount or fairness of the tax burden, and start
to ask instead whether the current form of taxation itself is
legitimate.

And when we ask that question, we must insist that what ultimately
measures the legitimacy of government policy in America is not simply
the procedure by which it becomes law, and much less the revenue it
produces, but the degree to which it is prudently ordered to the
production and preservation of the habits and character that befit a
free people.

Conservatives must show that it is not only the socialists who are able
to see the moral implications of taxes. Otherwise we will not be able to
lead the nation to a fundamental agreement on a wise and lasting reform
of taxation.

It is time that we insist on a tax policy for grown-ups, and that means
abolishing the income tax and replacing it with a tax structure whose
first premise is the capacity of American citizens to make their own
economic decisions responsibly.

The tax debate is an opportunity for conservatives to demonstrate the
unity of the moral and economic agenda, and to demonstrate concretely
the confidence we do and must have in the people of this country. It is
a profoundly democratic opportunity, and thus a great duty for anyone
aspiring to be an American statesman and lead this people.

We must lead this people to the abolition of the slave tax, and for the
right reasons. The question of fundamental tax reform is a test of the
statesmanship of our politicians and of the quality of citizenship of
our people.

This is an informational brochure for the use of anyone who may read it for the primary use of informing them of the issues and the publicized positions of the candidates on the issues discussed. The views and ideas were taken directly from the official web sites of the individual candidates, and were done in a way as to keep the integrity of the candidate’s point of view as close as possible to the stated and spirit of the candidate’s position on the topics presented. The views expressed with in this pamphlet may not completely or in part express the views of the Federation of College Republicans or it’s membership as a whole or in part unless stated as our view in the statement directly.

http://www.georgewbush.com/georgelaura/bio/biography.html

http://www.mccain2000.com/

Governor and Presidential Candidate

George W. Bush is the 46th Governor of the State of Texas. Now in his second term, Governor Bush has earned a reputation as a compassionate conservative who shapes policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families and local control.

Taxes

Doubles the child credit to $1,000. Replaces the current five rate structure of 15, 28, 31, 36, and 39.6 percent with four, lower rates: 10, 15, 25, and 33 percent
Expands the charitable deduction to non-itemizes.
Increases the annual contribution limit on Educational Savings Accounts from $500 to $5,000, and expanding them beyond college, down to Kindergarten
Restores the Reagan 10 percent deduction for two-income married couples.
Supports an extension of the moratorium on Internet sales taxation at least through 2004. Opposes taxes on access to the Internet.
Would veto any increase in personal or corporate income tax rates

Senator and Presidential Candidate

John McCain. At a time when America searches for heroes to lead us, it has the genuine article in John McCain. He's been serving his country since he was 17 when he entered the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. And his life is a testament to true courage, integrity and leadership.

His whole life John McCain has thrived on challenges, from narrowly escaping death on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal, to persevering for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, to his outstanding service in the U.S. Senate.

Restore integrity to the office
Reform government
And renew the American dream

Taxes

The McCain Plan

As President, John McCain will use the projected budget surplus wisely to meet pressing national priorities including ensuring that Social Security and Medicare are protected and preserved. Paying down our $5.6 trillion debt; lessening the enormous burden of taxation on our citizens; and increasing the personal savings rate that is so important to a growing economy.

John McCain has proposed a plan to move America toward a flat tax from the bottom up by expanding the lowest 15 percent tax bracket to include 25 million more Americans. His plan addresses the unfair "marriage penalty" by increasing the standard deduction for married couples to twice the amount of the deduction afforded to single filers.

His plan also acknowledges the importance of the American family in our society by, among other things, granting the full standard deduction to stay-at-home parents and immediately beginning to double the Child Tax Credit. The plan also makes lower- and middle-income Americans shareholders in the American dream by providing unprecedented opportunities for saving and investment.

Finally, John McCain's plan will make the federal tax code more fair by abolishing, once and for all, the Social Security earnings limit that unfairly taxes our nation's seniors who want or need to work. It will provide tax relief to military personnel stationed or deployed overseas -- similar to civilians working overseas. And John McCain's plan will eliminate numerous inequitable and unnecessary corporate and special interest loopholes, subsidies, and set-asides that make the tax code a 44,000-page catalogue of favors for special interests and a chamber of horrors for the rest of America.