Bill Redpath

Strongly Agree

Agree

At any time in a case of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. Otherwise, I favor legal abortion through approximately the 13th to 15th week of pregnancy.

Strongly Disagree

Strongly Agree

I support scrapping the entire Internal Revenue Code and replacing it with the Hall-Rabushka Flat Tax.

Neutral

Religious liberty deserves a high level of protection, but it is not my perception that religious liberty is "at risk" in the United States.

Strongly Disagree

I support the complete separation of church and state.

This is a very difficult question entailing detailed cost/benefit analysis in many situations. My views are reflected in the following blog post by Robert A. Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute, on August 22, 2021: At The Hill, I’ve written an op-ed that explores, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, what a libertarian position on vaccine mandates ought to be. Of course, there are many questions one needs to answer to draw a philosophically consistent conclusion. As I explain: Here’s the controversy: If the vaccine causes no appreciable injury, can you still refuse to be injected, notwithstanding that you might be visiting significant risks on others? It’s a close call. Even those who resist government intervention in private matters will endorse rules that bar some persons from violating the rights of others. Ordinarily, those rules ban or limit harm-inducing activities. Occasionally, however, advocates of limited government will condone directives to engage in benign activities (even when not cost-free) if failure to do so might cause injury to innocent bystanders. And some pertinent questions: How much increased risk do I have to endure before your potentially malign failure to act can be redressed? When rights theory doesn’t provide adequate guidance, defenders of liberty often look to utilitarian, cost-benefit tradeoffs. In the context of the vaccine, here are a few relevant factors … … First, how safe is the mandated act? … Second, what’s the magnitude and frequency of an injury that could occur without a mandate? … Third, can we be sure that a vaccine mandate will remedy the problem? … Fourth, are there remedies available that are less intrusive than a vaccine mandate? … Finally, what peripheral concerns need to be addressed before implementing compulsory injections? I address these questions in detail, ultimately concluding that: “Those are crucial questions, which should be examined before embarking on a program that encroaches on personal autonomy. And yet, we are in the midst of a health emergency, which means that suitably modified, narrowly-tailored, time-limited rules may be justified.”

Someplace between C and D. Federal government involvement in Medicaid should be changed to block grants to the states and phased out over a ten year period, so it gradually becomes a responsibility of the states. As recommended by Michael F. Cannon in the Cato Institute's Handbook for Policymakers, 8th Edition (2017), #1: Medicare should allow seniors to opt out of Medicare without losing their Social Security benefits; #2: Limit the growth of Medicare spending to the level of GDP growth; #3: Medicare funds now used to pay medical providers directly should be given to enrollees as cash, as with Social Security, adjusting individual enrollees' "Medicare checks" so that lower income and sicker enrollees receive larger checks; #4: Allow workers to save their Medicare payroll taxes in personal, inheritable retirement Health Savings Accounts that gradually replace Medicare transfers; and #5: Fund any transition costs by reducing other government spending, not by raising taxes.

I am between C and D.

Disagree

While I think US foreign policy has favored Israel too much on the Palestinian issue, I do not support the BDS movement.

Agree

Americans are safer from the threat of Islamic terrorism than we think. According to the Cato Institute, "even with 9/11 included in the count, an American's chance of being killed by a terrorist is about 1 in 4,000,000 per year." But, to make that chance even lower, we should adopt a far less interventionist foreign policy. 9/11 was a heinous, reprehensible and unforgivable act, but we need to recognize that it happened because of US intervention in the Middle East. Less military adventurism around the globe will make us safer at home.

Disagree

It is our overly restrictive immigration system that is causing the chaos at our southern border. If we had a more rational and less punitive immigration system in this nation, immigration would be more organized and better controlled.

Disagree

I think total denial of funds is too extreme on this matter. If the US adopted the immigration policy that I recommend, there would not be any sanctuary cities.

Unless someone has a serious communicable disease, a criminal background or can reasonably be deemed a security threat to the US, a person should be able to legally immigrate to the United States, with a reasonably short path to citizenship.

Neutral

I think that this is true with respect to government, but not so in strictly private matters.

Strongly Disagree

I am an objectivist. I believe individual freedom brings with it responsibilities. Individual freedom is not only moral but also leads to a just and prosperous society.

Disagree

Governments need to make it easy for voters to obtain a photo ID, including going to the homes of the disabled, if necessary. I don't think this is a high barrier to voting. For the sake of election integrity, I support photo ID laws.

First, ballot access laws are far too restrictive in the US, particularly in Illinois. If one were to start a new political party in Illinois, and tried to run candidates for all statewide offices, all 17 US House elections, all 118 Illinois House elections and all Illinois Senate elections, it would usually take over 600,000 valid signatures of Illinois registered voters (in highly gerrymandered districts, which makes it all the more difficult) to place all of those candidates on the ballot for a single election. People from other democracies around the world are shocked at how difficult it is for independent and third party candidates to get on the ballot in the US. I support Ranked Choice Voting in single winner elections. I also support changing elections for legislatures to multimember districts, with elections conducted using Ranked Choice Voting, which would be a form of proportional representation. This last reform, I think, would be necessary to allow more than Republicans and Democrats to be elected to our legislatures in the US.

Strongly Disagree

No. I was born in 1957. This nation is in a much better place on the matter of race relations than it was when I was a child. While racism exists with some individuals, and probably always will, I do not see racism as a threat to domestic security.

Agree

Answer "A"

Choose not to answer

This question reflects the typical left-right political spectrum, but it is not adequate to categorize all people. I am a Libertarian, meaning that I take generally conservative positions on economic issues and generally liberal positions on social issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Redpath https://www.audacy.com/wbbm780/news/candidates-clash-during-6thcongressional-district-debate

No.

I will work for a much smaller federal government. We must address the coming entitlement crisis in this nation. I addressed Medicare and Medicaid elsewhere in this questionnaire. I support the Cato Institute's "6.2% Plan" for Social Security, which allows people under 55 to opt out of the Social Security system and make their employee FICA contributions to personal, inheritable investment accounts in exchange for them waiving their future Social Security benefits. I want to end the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I want to repeal the entire Internal Revenue Code and replace it with the Hall-Rabushka Flat Tax. I think the tax rate for that should be set to an amount that will balance the federal budget. I support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the US Constitution. We need to stop pushing the burden of our government spending onto future generations. If we Americans want big government today, we have a moral obligation to pay for it today, as well.

Disagree

Disagree

Public safety would be best enhanced by ending The War on Drugs. According to Trevor Burris at the Cato Institute, "Among homicide victims, more than half are young men, and more than two-thirds are Black." The murder rate in this nation decreased substantially after the end of alcohol prohibition. The same would occur by ending drug prohibition. With respect to restrictions on gun ownership, the goal should be to maximize "negative rights," that is, the right to life, liberty and one's property. If there were easy answers to this question, they would have already been found. An article on gun control posted on Reason.com on March 31, 2022 stated, "There are hundreds of laws and regulations at the federal and state level that restrict Americans' access to guns, yet according to some advocates, social science research shows that a few more "simple, commonsense" laws could significantly reduce the number of injuries and deaths attributed to firearms. There has been a massive research effort going back decades to determine whether gun control measures work. A 2020 analysis by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, parsed the results of 27,900 research publications on the effectiveness of gun control laws. From this vast body of work, the RAND authors found only 123 studies, or 0.4 percent, that tested the effects rigorously. Some of the other 27,777 studies may have been useful for non-empirical discussions, but many others were deeply flawed. We took a look at the significance of the 123 rigorous empirical studies and what they actually say about the efficacy of gun control laws. The answer: nothing. The 123 studies that met RAND's criteria may have been the best of the 27,900 that were analyzed, but they still had serious statistical defects, such as a lack of controls, too many parameters or hypotheses for the data, undisclosed data, erroneous data, misspecified models, and other problems." That said, I do think convicted violent felons should not be able to legally possess firearms, and I support background checks before the transfer of firearms. Legislatures should continue to search for ways to reduce gun violence but should pass legislation only when there is reasonable proof that a policy will actually enhance public safety.

Disagree

Only in circumstances of egregious behavior by dealers and manufacturers should they be subject to litigation.