With the government takeover of healthcare becoming law and our ever-increasing national debt weighing down on our children’s future, Washington’s agenda looks nothing like the American peoples agenda. It’s no wonder people all across America are continually asking the same question: why isn’t Washington listening to us?

I’ve had enough. Have you? Well, here’s a new outlet - www.AmericaSpeakingOut.com – to voice your ideas to change America. This is an outlet where these ideas will not fall on deaf ears. Together, we can create something new, something bold, and something to act as a check and balance to Washington’s out-of-touch agenda. And we can work to craft this agenda now, instead of waiting to let more bad policy go unchecked. The stakes are just too high to wait any longer. American families continue to struggle from job losses month after month, all while Congress continues to increase Washington spending, pile onto the debt, mettle with American free enterprise, and ignore national unemployment that hovers near ten percent.

Thankfully, millions of Americans are engaged and continue to offer ideas, even though the majority in Congress shuns the idea of listening to the people. As a Member of the minority in the House of Representatives, I’ve seen this firsthand. I held two healthcare town halls last summer, and about five thousand people showed up to overwhelmingly support saying no to the government takeover of healthcare. But, Washington did not listen to our voices, and the voices of countless other Americans. Instead, the backroom deals prevailed over the majority of America. Well, we can change that. That is why were trying something different.

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Yesterday afternoon conservatives gathered on land once owned by George Washington to commit their organizations and members to a renewed set of principals.

Known as the Mount Vernon Statement, the document includes the following:

• It applies the principle of limited government based on the
  rule of law to every proposal.
• It honors the central place of individual liberty in American
  politics and life.
• It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and
  economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
• It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom
  and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that
  end.
• It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood,
  community, and faith.

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After reading Warner Todd Huston’s article, Tea Parties: The Biggest Mistake We Could Make in 2010, I was incredulous.  It seems misguided to suggest top down management in a time when big companies, big organizations, and big government have received bailouts after spending like drunken thieves or failing in the marketplace. Under what premise can anyone make the case that the solution to our nation’s dilemma is a big organization, especially a Big Tea Party? In all cases big leadership has resulted in big corruption, which is at the root of almost every issue before us.

Since the onset of ‘change we can all believe in’, politicians at all levels seem to constantly point to small businesses as our hope for economic recovery. In an era of “too big to fail,” it would seem obvious that people, regardless of party affiliation, could agree that bigger is not better. I haven’t heard anyone speak of the positive impact that CEO-led mega-banks, automakers, or the Fannies and Freddies will have on economic recovery.

The idea that the grassroots tea party movement should become a third political party is counter productive and borders on the ludicrous. Tea Parties are about government accountability, not joining partisan politics in the corruption and incompetence that threatens American liberty. Our City Councils, State Legislatures, and Congress work for us, and it is high time that we reminded them of this and brought them into the fold.

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Within our own party, we need to make it clear that from now on there will be a price to pay for abandoning conservative principles.  The grassroots – activists from tea parties to town halls – have sent a message: no more ‘fake-it-until-you-make-it’ conservatives.  The days of merely espousing conservative principles and then, once elected, governing or legislating without principle, are over.

At least one senator has already got this message – Arlen Specter.  In early 2009, after years of distressing votes for big government, Specter’s vote for the stimulus bill provoked an outcry among Pennsylvania’s Republican grassroots.  Having barely survived a 2004 primary challenge from principled conservative Pat Toomey, Specter asked me what he could do to mend fences with conservatives.  I said he needed to stand with us against card check (which abolishes the secret ballot on forming unions) and against the cap-and-trade carbon cutting scheme.

He agreed, publicly declaring himself against those proposals – and soon after, he abandoned the party and became a Democrat.

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