James Whittier Parker: “That independence that the gentleman is talking about basically is getting the government out of somebody's pocketbook…”

“That independence that the gentleman is talking about basically is getting the government out of somebody's pocketbook and out of their lives. I must tell the gentleman, some of this stuff is pretty simple to me. One of the reasons I support the death penalty is because I know for a fact that whenever that murderer is put to death, he will commit no more crimes. No more crimes will be committed by that individual. I support that. I also support certain things that other people look at a little odd, I think. I listened around here to Democrats, and Republicans, talk about shutting down the Federal Government. Democrats were tickled to death that the Republicans were blamed with the shutdown. The Republicans were all worried that they were getting blamed with the shutdown. My personal view is a little bit differently. I do not think the American people were that upset with the government shutting down. I think they were more upset that we opened it back up. My personal view is they would have liked to have seen the government shut down, and I wanted to see it shut down for longer than it was, simply because the American people after a few months would realize they do not need a lot of the things that the Federal Government says that we have to have in order to survive. I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense. Why do we have all these programs? Why do we have programs that are not working? Why do we add new programs without getting rid of the old programs?”