CONCORD, N.H.—In an effort to convey transparency about its intentions to restore the liberty-oriented Republican form of government created by the state and nation’s founders, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire is unveiling a list of the 338 bills passed by the 107 legislators it endorsed in 2010 and the 66 bills it actively supported as an organization that are now the law of the land.
“As an organization, we serve two important roles that both contribute to the advancement of conservative principles in New Hampshire’s government,” said Carolyn McKinney, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. “Our first duty is to help elect principled Republicans who understand what it means to have limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility and free enterprise, and help replace Republicans who don’t understand these essential tenets. Our second responsibility is to provide further education to elected officials and the public about the application of our core values in order to pass or repeal laws and advance our cause, which is to restore liberty and prosperity in New Hampshire.”
The 107 Republican lawmakers endorsed by the RLCNH in 2010 passed 338 bills this session that accounted for 60 percent of the total 560 bills passed by the Legislature in 2011 and 2012. These bills, most of which advance the RLCNH agenda, are listed in an attached PDF document. Many of these bills, 66 to be exact, which are also listed in an attached PDF, were core policy goals for the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire during the biennium, including but not limited to:
“The RLCNH applauds its endorsed lawmakers for making restorative progress toward the limited form of representative, constitutional government our founders set up,” McKinney said. “While we do not support all of the bills passed by our endorsed lawmakers and even actively oppose a handful of them, the great majority of the bills listed in this report are bills we are proud to say advance liberty and prosperity in New Hampshire. We’ve also highlighted 66 bills that our organization actively supported as crucial to this noble cause and express our deepest gratitude to the Legislature for making them New Hampshire laws.”
When studying the attached files, please note that all 66 RLCNH-supported bills were fully vetted and supported by the organization from their initial public hearings until they became Chaptered Law. These are the only bills that can truly be attributed to the organization’s post-election activities. Many new laws sponsored by RLCNH-endorsed lawmakers were also supported by the organization or its members, but many of these laws were either not followed by the organization through the entire process or they were not included in the RLCNH agenda this term. Thus, an endorsed candidate’s bill that was not supported by the RLCNH may or may not have been a good bill, but chances are that it advanced the RLCNH agenda.
Also documented in an attached PDF report, the RLCNH is happy to report that 21 of the 26 bills the organization actively opposed during the session have been killed. These are bills that moved New Hampshire in the wrong direction, not the least of which was CACR 12, an educational funding amendment that would have explicitly centralized control over education at the state level causing near permanent damage to local control over education and to educational freedom in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, a few of the RLCNH endorsed lawmakers were sponsors or cosponsors of some of these bills.
“We ask supporters and the public in general to evaluate the full list of bills sponsored or cosponsored by our endorsed candidates and invite e-mails that suggest continuing or discontinuing endorsements of some of these incumbents based on the bills they supported,” McKinney said. “In fact, the RLCNH will be releasing a list of endorsed incumbents next week based on the bills we supported and opposed and we welcome all suggested improvements to our process this week and beyond, which is the very purpose of our transparency. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to fill the Legislature with endorsed candidates who all work to advance the proven founding principles of our state and nation.”
By releasing the attached reports about the progress the RLCNH made during the current Legislative session, the organization is also hoping to involve more people in the process of self governance. True progress, after all, means that more people will work for themselves, run their own lives and households, raise and educate their own children and pursue the maximum amount of happiness they can possibly achieve through their own efforts. In order to achieve this progress, more people will need to rise to the occasion and do their civic duty—whether that means running for office themselves or paying attention and holding their elected officials accountable, we leave that up to them.
“The trend of human history has been to favor central governments with extensive power to control individuals and economies, and we know from experience that such governments perpetuate human misery by limiting the genius of individuals to reach their fullest potential,” McKinney said. “We also know that human freedom encourages the best results for the most people, and that our system of government once allowed for such liberties and created the most prosperous and advanced civilization that we know of. While we have once again trended toward central government control in both our state and our nation thanks largely to Democrats and Republicans who subscribe to the philosophy of big government, and our state and nation have suffered for it, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire exists to help reverse that trend and restore an effective limited government philosophy that will restore liberty and prosperity for all hard-working people.”
