Senator Nelson visits the Military Officers of Northwest Florida and
speaks on a number of issues, such as sequestration, Eglin AFB, and RETORE
ACT. For real estate developers in
Northwest Florida, the latter is very important. Senator Nelson noted a bi-partisan delegation
past a law overwhelming which will require BP Oil to pay the 5 affected states in
fines, billions of dollars to address the environmental and economic damages
caused by the BP Oil Spill. It was
noted, with the profits made by BP, these fines will not adversely affect them
and they expect them to be paid in the near future.
Sen. Nelson calls for more cooperation in Washington
2012-09-05 17:24:26
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is asking for more
bipartisanship in Washington and a less “my way or the highway” attitude to
move the country forward. Nelson was the
guest speaker Wednesday at the Northwest
Florida Military Officers Association meeting at Northwest Florida Regional
Airport. He discussed the threat of sequestration, health care reform and the
challenges of being in Washington when elected officials are more divided by
party lines than they have been in decades.
“This is a different time in politics. I’ve never seen it like this
before,” said Nelson, a Democrat who faces Republican Connie Mack IV in the
Nov. 6 election. “There’s a lot of intolerance out there, a lot of intolerance
that they don’t want to hear the other fella’s point of view. And you can’t run
a country with that mindset. The beauty of this country and our constitutional
system is that you respect the other fella’s point of view and then you work
out your differences. “Remember in the
old days where partisan politics stopped at the water’s edge?” Nelson said. “On
anything that had to do with foreign affairs or national defense, it was always
bipartisan. When I went in as a young congressman, that’s the way it was. A lot
of that’s gone now and we’ve got to get it back.” Nelson said there have been recent examples
of the two parties working together. He
used as examples the RESTORE Act, which guarantees 80 percent of all penalties
BP pays for violating the Oil Pollution Control Act go to the five Gulf Coast
states most affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, and the
Veterans Skill Act, which makes it easier for veterans to receive civilian
credentials in the same field as their military training. Nelson said he is confident that $1 trillion
in defense cuts from sequestration scheduled to be implemented next year can be
avoided, but it will take both parties working together. Although he does not expect that to happen before
the general election, Nelson said he believes new budget reforms can be decided
during the lame-duck session of Congress that starts a week later. “We’re not going to let sequestration go into
effect,” Nelson said. “We’re going to have to come up with a budget solution
(on tax and spending reforms) as I have outlined here because you can’t take a
half trillion out of defense and not hurt our defense preparedness, and you
can’t take another half trillion willy-nilly right across the board away from everything
else. You’ve got to do it intelligently and surgically.” Nelson also defended the Affordable Care Act,
or Obamacare, as not perfect but a good first step. Among the good things it
does is allow parents to keep their children on their family insurance policy
through age 26, prevent insurance companies from canceling policies in the
middle of medical treatment or deny someone coverage because of an existing
condition. “Yours truly has read it. Yours truly helped write it,” Nelson
responded after being asked how Congress could approve the act without reading
it. “I didn’t get what I wanted because we had to get 60 votes to get this
thing passed, and there are a lot of things in there I would have had
different. I would have gotten a lot more out of the pharmaceutical industry
than is in there. “Now that the Supreme Court has said it’s constitutional, we
will be able to fix it where it needs fixing,” he added.
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