Chuck Wilkerson's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
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Inferred Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, but Vote Smart inferred this issue based on the candidate's public record, including statements, voting record, and special interest group endorsements.
Unknown Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, or we could not infer an answer for this candidate despite exhaustive research of their public record.
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Chuck Wilkerson refused to tell citizens where he stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders.
Issue Positions
For Presidential and Congressional candidates who refuse to provide voters with their positions, Vote Smart has researched their public records to determine their likely responses. These issue positions are from 2010.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Chuck Wilkerson. Issue Position: Education. "What if most or at least a healthy fraction of, public school teachers were contracted to by local school boards and local government instead of being employees of the state? While some may argue that politics is still in play, the difference in results would be tremendously advantageous to those who count in the end: our students! Just for starters, the education of our youth would be non-uniform to the extent that such local curriculum development and authorization entities are non-uniform in thought across the country. This would create a competitive environment for truth-telling and educational emphasis - with those producing the more productive students having lived up to their charge to local parents and taxpayers, and those who produced less productive students coming under scrutiny and remedial action from parents and taxpayers in their own bailiwicks." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
- Chuck Wilkerson. Home. "Legislation driven by the "man-made climate change" movement poses a dire threat not only to job creation and the U.S. economy but to global prosperity as well. I am convinced by the known science that this is a despicable and the most far-reaching attempt ever to establish a government-industry oligarchy over the American people. We must hold honest hearings in the Congress which do not exclude scientific findings which conclude that human activity has a negligible effect on the Earth's climate." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
- Chuck Wilkerson. Issue Position: Energy & Environment. "Human activity is a minor contributor to the total CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere and will likely be so for many centuries. CO2 is a minor contributor to what is known as the "greenhouse effect": water vapor accounts for 98% of the total greenhouse effect while CO2 contributes about 2%. Human activity contributes essentially nothing to the productions of water vapor as it is produced by the combination of Earth temperature and solar radiation. This green house phenomenon is, in turn, driven primarily by solar activity and the varying distance of the Earth from the Sun. It is the interaction of the solar magnetic field with the (Milky Way) galactic cosmic background - and supernovae-driven radiation which is, by far, the primary driver of the Earth's climate. In summary, the contribution of human activity to the Earth's temperature is negligible. In lay terms, it has "zip", "zilch", "zero", "nada" effect on it. Thus, energy produced by human activity, is of no consequence to the Earth's climate - regardless by what means that energy generation may take place: the burning of fossil fuel, nuclear fuel, wind power, solar power, etc." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Chuck Wilkerson. Home. "They have charted a course to subvert the U.S. Constitution and turn this country into a nanny state - not unlike the socialist countries of the European Union. With passage of the Health Care Legislation they have assaulted both our economy and our spirit as a free people." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
- Chuck Wilkerson. Issue Position: Health Care. "The government has no business in the health care business any more than it has any business in any other industry. It is an established fact over all such programs around the planet that this simply is not the way to provide a cost-effective health care system. History has told us: Whatever service the government provides will ultimately result in rationing and a black market; whatever activity the government subsidizes will increase beyond affordability and whatever activity it restricts will discourage the investment of human and financial capital and impoverish citizens. The entire bill should be scrapped and replaced with a bill which actually improves health care. This can be done by instituting a number of changes to existing law both at the federal and state levels..." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
- Chuck Wilkerson. Issue Position: Immigration. "The issues associated with illegal immigration in this country have been debated for decades and a number of "remedies" in the way of guest worker programs have been tried. Under President Reagan an amnesty program granted citizenship to 2.7 million illegal immigrants. These programs did little, if anything, however, to enforce border security. The problem has only intensified as narco terrorism in Mexico has become part of life in Arizona, including the capitol city of Phoenix in which the narco-associated crime rate mirrors the intensity of that crime at the edges of the entire border with Mexico." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
- Chuck Wilkerson. Issue Position: Foreign Policy/National Defense. "America cannot afford to have its national defenses weakened. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration appears to be deliberately pursuing such a policy. If I am elected to the U.S. Congress, I will apply every skill and asset at my command to achieve a return to the sound policies of "Peace Through Strength" and one in which we encourage and aid those nations which eschew tyrannical government policies and seek friendship with us." (www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com)
This candidate has responded to a Political Courage Test in a previous election. As a continued effort to provide the American public with factual information on candidates running for public office, these archived responses are made available here.
| Pro-life | a) Do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life? | ||
| Yes | b) Should abortion be legal only within the first trimester of pregnancy? | ||
| Yes | c) Should abortion be legal when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| Yes | d) Should abortion be legal when the life of the woman is endangered? | ||
| Yes | e) Should federal subsidies be prohibited from being used for abortion procedures? | ||
| Embryonic stem cells should not be allowed to be used for research except in the case of a non-aborted fetus born dead at birth. | |||
1) SpendingIndicate what federal funding levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one number per category- you can use a number more than once.2) TaxesIndicate what federal tax levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one number per category- you can use a number more than once.
| Eliminate | a) Agriculture | ||
| Eliminate | b) Arts | ||
| Greatly Increase | c) Defense | ||
| Greatly Increase | 1) Intelligence operations | ||
| Greatly Increase | 2) Military hardware | ||
| Greatly Increase | 3) National missile defense | ||
| Greatly Increase | 4) Salary and benefits for active duty personnel | ||
| Greatly Increase | 5) Programs to improve troop retention rates | ||
| Greatly Increase | 6) Research and development of new weapons | ||
| Greatly Decrease | d) Education | ||
| Greatly Decrease | e) Environment | ||
| Slightly Increase | f) Homeland security | ||
| Greatly Decrease | g) International aid | ||
| Greatly Decrease | h) Medical research | ||
| Greatly Increase | i) Scientific research | ||
| Slightly Increase | j) Space exploration | ||
| Greatly Decrease | k) United Nations | ||
| Greatly Decrease | l) Welfare | ||
| Greatly Decrease | a) Alcohol taxes | ||
| Eliminate | b) Capital gains taxes | ||
| Greatly Decrease | c) Cigarette taxes | ||
| Greatly Decrease | d) Corporate taxes | ||
| Greatly Decrease | e) Gasoline taxes | ||
| Slightly Increase | f) Income taxes (low-income families) | ||
| Greatly Decrease | g) Income taxes (middle-income families) | ||
| Greatly Decrease | h) Income taxes (high-income families) | ||
| Yes | 3) Do you support the elimination of the federal estate tax? | ||
| Yes | 4) Do you support requiring the federal budget to be balanced each year? | ||
| No | 5) Do you support using government funds in an effort to stimulate and improve the economy? | ||
| Education funding should be supported primarily by state and local taxation. Education funding is bloated, yet results are unacceptable. Increase competition in education by moving responsibility for text book and teacher selection to the local level. Let agriculture price levels be determined by the free market. Environmental concerns should be restricted strictly to air pollution as the "man-made" climate change theory is based on badly flawed science. Exploit the nations fossil fuel reserves. Welfare recipients should be required to work for their welfare payments unless medical reasons restrict such. The UN is dominated by America haters. Seek alliances outside UN. | |||
| Taxes should be greatly reduced across the board. Eliminate the departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy. Greatly reduce the budget/charter of HHS to strictly sensible consumer safety concerns. Greatly increase the Dept of Defense expenditures and supporting intel agencies. Review and fix problems associated with FBI-DOJ-Defense Intel agency collaboration. Review charter of Dept. of the Interior and cut out wasteful services which only feed on themselves and create increased costs for industries of all kinds. Eliminate the federal reserve and return monetary policy establishment to the congress. | |||
| Eliminate federal involvement in the mortgage, student loan, banking and automotive industries. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support privatizing elements of Social Security? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support reducing government regulations on the private sector? | ||
| No | c) Do you support increasing the federal minimum wage? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support the ability of workers to unionize? | ||
| No | e) Do you support federal funding for job-training programs that retrain displaced workers? | ||
| Government workers should not be allowed to go on strike. Their wages/benefits should be established by congress. SocSec should immediately be put on a fast track to solvency by a staged increase in privatizing it, i.e. Roosevelt should have set up a system wherein investment of contributions were under control of the wage earner, thus eliminating his/her dependency on the federals for maintenance of the program. Wage earners would then be required to learn about investing and not be dependent on a "safety net" which evaporated when beneficiaries exceeded payees. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support increasing the amount individuals are permitted to contribute to federal campaigns? | ||
| No | b) Should Congress regulate indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support removing all contribution limits on federal campaigns? | ||
| No | d) Should candidates for federal office be encouraged to meet voluntary spending limits? | ||
| No | e) Do you support giving the President the power of the line item veto for items concerning appropriations? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support limiting the President's ability to define how legislation is applied through the use of signing statements? | ||
| The legislature needs to reassert it's proper position of power within the "three-headed eagle". Executive orders are not constitutional if they are not supportable by federal law. ExecOrders which change previous legitimate executive orders are not necessarily constitutional if the order being changed was in compliance with federal law. Money is the de facto coin of free speech, especially in the modern communications age. Full discosure should be a requirement for all political campaign donations, however, there should be no limit on the amount or source of contributions. (Consider the current old-boy club incumbency bias due to CF restrictions). | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support capital punishment for certain crimes? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support programs that provide prison inmates with vocational and job-related training and job-placement assistance when released? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support programs that provide prison inmates with substance abuse treatment? | ||
| No | d) Do you support reduced prison sentences for non-violent offenders? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support mandatory prison sentences for selling illegal drugs? | ||
| First time offenders should be isolated from repeat offenders to reduce recitivism. Prisoners should be in work programs. Offenders should be tasked, as much as possible, to provide restitution to their victims. The death penalty should be mandatory for murder of a child or for multiple counts of murder. Prison is for punishment, restitution and rehabilitation - in that order. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support federal education standards and testing requirements for K-12 students? | ||
| No | b) Do you support federal funding for universal pre-K programs? | ||
| No | c) Do you support federal funding for charter schools? | ||
| No | d) Do you support federal funding for K-12 school vouchers? | ||
| No | e) Do you support the federal government providing college students with financial aid? | ||
| The department of education should be eliminated and funding for schools be moved to the state level - with minimum federal standards. Competition and local involvement will improve education. Charter schools should be funded at the state level. Federal law should deal only with advisory standards to the states leaving it up to the states to insure that all schools within the state meet certain minimum standards, regardless of ethnic or racial mix. Population, jobs and prosperity will flow to the states which produce the best students. Voters will force politicians, answerable to them locally, to provide good education. | |||
| No | a) Do you support enacting environmental regulations aimed at reducing the effects of climate change? | ||
| No | b) Do you support international emissions targets aimed at reducing the effects of climate change? | ||
| No | c) Do you support allowing energy producers to trade carbon credits under a "cap and trade" system? | ||
| No | d) Do you support strengthening fuel efficiency standards on all gasoline and diesel-powered engines, including cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support domestic oil exploration in federally-protected areas? | ||
| No | f) Do you support federal funding for the development of alternative energy? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support the development of nuclear reactors? | ||
| Credible science concludes that human activity has no significant effect on climate (average Earth temperature). CO2 is a plant food and is not correlated with temperature over hundreds of millions of years, including the past 1-1/2 centuries of the industrial age. Air pollution should be controlled by federally enforced minimum standards. Except for pollution and safety considerations, all energy production methods should be developed using cost-effectiveness via a free market as the only criterium. Hearings need to be held in the congress in which the credible science cited above is included, not excluded. | |||
| No | a) Do you support restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you believe that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individual citizens to own guns? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support allowing individuals to carry concealed guns? | ||
| No | d) Do you support a ban on assault rifles? | ||
| Firearm possesion should not be allowed for convicted criminals or non-citizens. | |||
| No | a) Do you support a publicly-administered health insurance option? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support expanding access to health care through commercial health insurance reform? | ||
| Yes | c) Should the federal government expand eligibility for tax-free medical savings accounts? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support monetary limits on damages that can be collected in malpractice lawsuits? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support relaxing regulations on the importation of prescription drugs? | ||
| Control of insurance "commerce" is unconstitutional. Insurance should be marketable across state lines just as most other industrial products and services. Indigent recipients of medical care should be required to have some small stake in the cost in order to discourage the expected outcome: "what the govenrment subsidizes completely, it will utlimately need to ration". Neither state nor federal law should regulate the medical industry (services, devices and drugs) except by way of assuring sensible public safety. The most effective tort reform is to institute "loser pays". | |||
| No | a) Do you support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support decreasing the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support establishing English as the official national language? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| First institute a leak-proof border security system. Then apply the Chuck Wilkerson "BID Law" www.chuckwilkerson4congress.com : Illegals have a year to sign up for a high tech green card (the Bracero ID card). Criminals and those who miss the deadline will be deported. There is a strong state law component to foster competition. BID holders are free to work wherever they can find work except that states may impose a maximum equal to the federal law minimum allocation for any given state. Amnesty is not part of the law and there is no favored pathway to citizenship for BID holders. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support United States military action in Afghanistan? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support increasing military assistance for Afghanistan? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support increasing economic development assistance for Afghanistan? | ||
| Yes | d) Should the United States continue to strike suspected terrorist targets in Pakistan? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support granting aid to countries when it is in the security interests of the United States? | ||
| No | f) Should the United States support the creation of a Palestinian state? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support increasing sanctions on Iran if it continues to defy United Nations mandates? | ||
| No | h) Do you support the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq? | ||
| No | i) Do you support the United States' involvement in free trade agreements? | ||
| Trade agreements should be negotiated on a country-by-country basis with duties being the primary concern. The U.S. sacrificed lives and fortune so Iraq could become the only democratic state in the Middle East in addition to Israel. The U.S. should pursue victory in Afghanistan and support other Muslim countries in attempts to defeat the jihadist forces. The U.S. should publicly support Israel in the recognition by its neighbors of its right to exist and its right to secure boundaries: the Golan Heights and the Jordan River. US Iran policy should be publicly clarified as not allowing a nuclear warhead capability. | |||
| Yes | a) Should marriage only be between one man and one woman? | ||
| No | b) Do you support allowing openly-gay men and women to serve in the United States military? | ||
| No | c) Do you support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research? | ||
| Yes | d) Should the federal government end affirmative action programs? | ||
| Discipline in the armed services is essential. Commanding officers should have sole discretion via proper language in the UCMJ in enforcing discipline. Should anyone be the source of morale or unit cohesiveness problems by way of their behavior, commanders should be able to apply disciplinary action. Agreement on behavior norms between gays and non-gays should be negotiated with both sides airing their fears and expectations and without government involvement - which serves only to worsen relations among citizens. | |||
| 1) Greatly reduced taxation to be achieved by greatly reducing federal government services and regulations which serve mainly to maintain and grow beauracracies rather than provide service to citizens. (2) Get government out of industry: health care, mortgage lending, etc. in order to encourage free market competition, create jobs, and eliminate the uncertainties which discourage investment (risk taking). (3) Overhaul our foreign and defense policy according to the maxim "Peace through strength". Reward and encourage our friends and allies. Oppose tyrannical governments. Hold our military secrets dear and greatly improve the effectiveness of our intel services and their morale. |
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