Miller: Turn Out Feds, Give
Alaska Greater Control of Its Resources
Published August 29, 2010
| FoxNews.com
The federal government is driving the nation into bankruptcy, and
Alaska's resources should be turned out of federal hands to save the
state and the nation, Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller said
Sunday.
"In this state, two thirds of it is owned by the federal government,"
Miller said, speaking from Fairbanks, Alaska. "The government is going
bankrupt. ... That means that everybody in this nation is going to have
to do some belt tightening. ... It's our position that as the money is
restricted, the lands are transferred."
Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," Miller said his goal is not to pull
the financial plug on his state, but to return to the constitutional
principle of "transferring discretion" of states' resources from the
Feds. He noted that his state has enough natural resources to be the
economic engine of the country, but those resources first must be
properly managed.
"I think the answer to this is to basically transfer the
responsibilities and power of government back to the states and the
people," Miller said. "And certainly the state with its resources could
be incredibly independent and, incredibly economically powerful. But
that really is the answer to the crisis that we're in right now."
Miller is on the right track if he's interested in spending less
taxpayer money on his state, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said minutes
later on the same show.
"The fact is the country is going to have to spend less money,"
Barbour said. "And if Joe Miller was trying to say that in a different
way, he is right."
Miller is not the GOP Senate nominee yet. He is locked in a tight race
with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who fell 1,688 seats behind Miller in last
week's statewide Republican primary. The victor will be determined by
absentee ballots, which state officials will begin counting on Tuesday.
If Miller, a West Point and Yale Law School graduate, emerges the victor
in the primary, he still must win a general election that currently
favors the generic Republican candidate over Democratic nominee and
Sitka, Alaska, Mayor Scott McAdams.
But a primary victory would still ensure for the first time in 30 years
that a Murkowski hasn't held a U.S. Senate seat.
Murkowski's father Frank Murkowski named his daughter to replace him
when he was elected Alaska's governor in 2002. Four years later, he was
ousted from the governor's seat by Sarah Palin. Lisa Murkowski was
elected to a full term in the Senate in 2004.
Palin has endorsed Miller in the Senate race, a factor that Miller
attributes in part to his strong race.
"Obviously Governor Palin's endorsement" was a factor, Miller said,
adding that he also won backing from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee,
and had a large volunteer base.
Miller also received $500,000 in advertising dollars from the Tea Party
Express.
Tea Party backing has played a critical role in several Republican
primaries, a factor that Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla.,
predicted will hurt the GOP in the Nov. 2 midterm election.
"It seems to me that you do have kind of an exotic crew out there this
time," Wasserman-Schultz said of the new crew of Republican nominees,
including Miller. "I mean, Americans really are going to have a very
clear choice set up in November between moderate Democrats who are
centrists, where the country is, and Republicans who are really off on
the right-wing fringe. And there's countless examples of that across the
country."
Barbour said the Republican candidates may look extreme to some because
the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress "have taken the
biggest lurch to the left in policy in American history."
"There (has) been no Congress, no administration that has run this far
to the left in such a small period of time. And there is a reaction to
that," Barbour said.
Barbour also disagreed with the notion that the GOP "establishment" is
flummoxed by the number of candidates who are not insider picks.
"When I was chairman of the (Republican National Committee) ... we never
took sides in primaries. We did not endorse incumbents over
challengers," said Barbour, who now heads teh Republican Governors
Association.
"And here's why. The Republicans of Alaska have the right and should
pick their nominee. They don't need somebody in Yazoo City, Mississippi,
to tell them who ought to be the senator of Alaska," Barbour said.
Miller said if he is elected, he would butcher Washington's sacred cows
-- like avoiding discussion about how to make Social Security solvent
without leaving seniors in the cold.
"It would be incredibly irresponsible for us to sit back and say that
this is something that shouldn't be addressed. ... It is basically part
of the crisis of leadership in D.C. to not look at Social Security and
understand that there has got to be a solution posed."
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