Bill Nelson wants to know what you think, again. Let's tell him!

[FCTP]

If you are having trouble viewing this e-Newsletter, click here.

If you want to send a message to Senator Nelson, please Click here If you don’t want to receive future messages, Click here Dear Friends, In an opinion piece I penned for today’s POLITCO, below, there’s a specific solution to the nation’s economic woes. We have to stop the partisan finger pointing. And we have to realize we can’t just cut our way out of this mess. Take a look and let me know what you think via an e-mail under the “economy” topic. Thanks. Close the tax loopholes "There’s no mystery about what we have to do. It’s just common sense. In addition to the spending cuts Congress just made, we need tax reform. And by tax reform, I mean closing loopholes, special interest tax breaks and corporate subsidies. It’s just plain wrong to be protecting tax breaks for oil companies and to be rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas." - Sen. Bill Nelson By: Sen. Bill Nelson August 10, 2011 After watching Standard & Poor’s performance in the Enron and housing debacles, it’s hard to stomach their decision to downgrade America’s credit. But even coming from S&P, there is a message we should hear: The finger pointing and hyper-partisanship has to stop. If it doesn’t, we really will be on the road to ruin. Democrats need to see tea partiers as something other than debt-limit hostage-taking Republicans. And Republicans need to see President Barack Obama and Democrats as something other than big-spending socialists. We’ve got to stop this attack madness. We have to bring civility back to the public square. We have to put the country back on the path to fiscal sanity. To do that, we need to cut some $4 trillion to $5 trillion. We made a down payment on this with the $2 trillion dollars we cut just last week. Now we need to go further. To understand what we have to do, though, we first need to look at how we got here. We went from a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 to a $1.3 trillion deficit last year — and a record $14 trillion debt. A huge chunk of the debt comes from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re bringing the troops home. Another significant piece stems from the Bush-era tax cuts. Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, says the tax cuts for the wealthy should be left to expire. They’re set to do so at the end of next year. We should let that happen. Agree or not, don’t you think most Americans were better off before the tax cuts than they are now? Much of the rest of the debt comes from the economic downturn since 2008. That brings us to today. And there’s no mystery about what we have to do. It’s just common sense. In addition to the spending cuts Congress just made, we need tax reform. And by tax reform, I mean closing loopholes, special interest tax breaks and corporate subsidies. It’s just plain wrong to be protecting tax breaks for oil companies and to be rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth Subcommittee, I’ve scheduled a hearing for early September to investigate closing many of these loopholes. Doing so will likely generate $2 trillion over the next decade. Add that to the $2 trillion in spending cuts we’ve made — and we’re in the $4 trillion range that we need to hit. It’s time to stop the shouting and bickering and political attacks. It’s time to show the world that America can take care of business. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is a member of the Senate Finance and Budget committees. © 2011 POLITICO LLC     Unsubscribe | Click here to open in browser Please do not reply to this e-mail. If you want to send a message to Senator Nelson, please Click here to comment regarding this or any other issue.

[Barry Lee Phillips]

There was one problem.  I never asked him about a proposed rule change by the Department of Labor!

Whichever dolt answered the email decided to send a canned response.  Typical and a total waste of time.

 

[Barry Lee Phillips]

Well, I finally got a reply from Bill Nelson (or one of his minions) via email:

 

Dear Mr. Phillips:

 

     Thank you for contacting me regarding a proposed rule by the Department of Labor that would change the 35-year-old definition of what entities are considered fiduciaries for retirement plans.  

 

     I understand many have expressed concerns about the impact of these regulations; DOL has received hundreds of comments and held two days of public hearings.

 

     On May 31, the Department of Labor announced that it would delay implementation of this rule from July 16, 2011 until January 1, 2012.  I appreciate hearing your views on this issue and will continue to monitor this situation closely.

 

     Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future.

 

                                   Sincerely,

                                   Senator Bill Nelson

 

[Patricia M. McBride]

Theresa, nope, it was never you standing out there alone.  Many of us have been writing and writing and writing some more to Bill Nelson and going to his office.  The girls that work there are nice and as I found out the last time several of us went to his office, his lead lady will be going over to the Brown administration (she really is very nice, but that should give you an idea where Brown may be headed if he is plucking Nelson staff members?).

[Theresa Pletcher]

I'm sad it happened to your Doyle and Patricia but I'm also glad to know that it's not just me.  I was talking to Abby Johnson author or UnPLANNED and now pro life activist.  Abby said as much as they don't want to that they have to tell him what we said...so I don't know if we are being out called or out emailed but he definitely knows whether he acknowledges it or not our opinions.  I sincerely hope and pray that he finally gets defeated in 2012!

[Doyle]

Nelson's response didn't surprise me at all, Patricia. Writing to him is just as useless an exercise as calling his office. Whether calling his local office for the one in DC, the tone of whoever answers is always the same. They're doing you a favor just picking up the danged phone. And if you're calling in opposition to something the great senator is supporting, their boredom increases and they terminate the call as quickly as possible with an irritated, "I'll give your message to the Senator."

Yeah, sure they did.

[Patricia M. McBride]

Don't you just love it Doyle.  Makes you really feel like writing to him again, doesn't it?  I know when I get responses back, that's how I feel.  I also wonder if there is a large vacant space between his ears that is fills will cotton candy or some other totally useless thing since his responses rarely have anything at all to do with what I wrote and asked him to do...............guess he thinks like Obama does and that he is dealing with idiots when in reality.........we are!

 

[Doyle]

Senator Nelson replied to me email (copied below) yesterday. In several hundred words he pounded himself on the back about all the wonderful things he accompanied during the debt negotiations and says he could have gotten much more done if it weren't for the "partisan" obstacles preventing him from doing so.

He loves hearing from concerned citizens, he says, and I should feel free to continue contacting him because my opinion is so important to him.

Translation: cricketes chirping at Nelson's office, as always.

[Barry Lee Phillips]

My comments sent to Bill Nelson on his Politico article:

The economy is still in the tank despite attempts by the Obama Administration and some media to paint a rosier picture. Do they think they are fooling anyone?

Closing tax loopholes is part of the problem! The current tax code is archaic and screams for reform. A better solution would be to scrap the current tax code entirely, repeal the 16th Amendment, and replace it with the Fair Tax. All citizens get a monthly prebate on taxes charged for essentials such as food and medicine.

Keeping the current system only invites more abuse and eveyone knows it. You could sign on as a co-sponsor of S. 13 if you are really serious about getting rid of tax loopholes.

Common sense dictates that less spending -- not more by the government is needed in these economic times. The government cannot keep spending money it does not have. THAT is the reason the government credit rating was downgraded.

Both Democrats and Republicans essentially chickened out and decided to kick the can down the road during the latest debt limit debacle. Just more smoke and mirrors and no really serious intent by either side to solve the problem.

We have a crisis of leadership at the national level and I see only a handful of people with the courage to step forward and attempt to provide solutions.

Hopefully, that crisis of leadership will be resolved in upcoming elections, but I remain cynical that it will.

[Patricia M. McBride]

Hello Mr. Nelson,
As you asked, I will respond about how I feel about what is going on right now in Washington, about the economy, the downgrade in our credit rating, and what I believe needs to be done to begin to set things right again.

First of all, I think a president that borrows almost 7 trillion dollars in 1 term of 4 years (and this will be about the number when he leaves office) should give everyone, including the democrats, a major case of heart burn. Something is clearly wrong when someone places that sort of burden on the current taxpayers and the next 2 or 3 generations. And, I do not believe raising taxes is the answer. Much of the money spent was not spent on anything that will improve our country's economic condition and all of the programs failed miserably.

I believe the massive spending is the problem. Our federal government has involved itself in so many aspects of people's lives at this point, it is stifling EVERYTHING. Increasing taxes while maintaining an unsustainable level of spending is totally insane, and raising taxes at a time when all of us are budgeting carefully in a VERY poor economy that has stagnated is not only political suicide, it is not a rational response to out of control spending of this president and his administration.

It may be time for all of you to carefully consider just exactly what the function of the federal government is, and hint, it is not to be involved in almost every aspect of our lives including trying to tell people how to raise their children, what everyone should eat, and managing our health care, so you can decide who lives or dies based on your view of what is fair or not fair............and so many other things.

We currently have a president and executive administration who have the least number of people who have ever had a real job in the history of our country. They are clueless about our free market system, dislike our free market system, and have done everything they can to destroy that same system, so they can replace it with something they think is better, and all of this is being done without the consent of the majority of the American people. It needs to stop, and if it does, then perhaps our economy will begin to recover, but you and your colleagues are stuck on tax increases, and a continuation of the same failed policies and spending. Right now, tax increases would be the worst thing you could do.

Sooner or later, Mr. Obama is going to have to face the FACT, the government does not create jobs and never has, and all the pretty speeches in the world are not going to change that. The private sector and primarily the small business owners in this country create jobs, and if you believe raising their taxes right now is a good idea, then you need to find another line of work, and we need to replace you with someone who understands how the free market system works. It is a travesty that you and your fellow democratic colleagues, to include the president, have made such poor decisions for the last almost 5 years in relation to spending and pretty much across the board that you are keeping the economy in a holding pattern due to the uncertainly and the constant upheaval related to the interference you and your colleagues seem to favor over stability and a non intrusive policies.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak about this. I know what I have to say, won't be what you want to hear, so I don't expect that you will pay any attention to my opinion, but I am saying it anyway.

Kind Regards,

[sally higgins]

Senator Nelson,

I gave you my comments last week.  It's time for honesty in government. Pres. Obama should be impeached or resign. He has shown no signs of leadership during the debt crisis. He spends money like a wild man, which turns out to be a waste of taxpayer's money. His plans seem like pipe dreams to me

sally higgins

jacksonville, fl