Calling for the elimination of the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development didn't help Ted Cruz slowdown the relentless Donald Trump.
Now faced with a Republican primary challenger in the form of Assembly of God missionary and ebook author Amanda Hinson in Minnesota's Seventh Congressional District, drone commander and educator David Hughes has thrown the U.S. Department of Labor on to the chopping block.
In Thursday's Bemidji Pioneer, Matthew Liedke reports in ELECTION: GOP candidate for 7th District talks small government at town hall:
While meeting with potential voters at Beltrami Electric Cooperative, Hughes described his background as a U.S. Air Force veteran, his political stance as a constitutional conservative and outlined his plan to reduce the size of the federal government
"My No. 1 theme is to make the U.S. government smaller and send much of what's done at the federal level back to the states," said Hughes, a Karlstad resident.
To do so, Hughes said if elected to Congress, he would want to eliminate five of the 15 federal government departments including education, energy, commerce, labor and housing and urban development. Despite his ideas, though, Hughes said he isn't telling voters that he will get everything accomplished on Capitol Hill.
With roots in the 1880s, the DOL was created when President William Howard Taft signed the Organic Act of the Department of Labor on March 4, 1913, having been bullied into it. A DOL timeline notes:
After much opposition, President William Howard Taft signs the Organic Act creating the U.S. Department of Labor. Signed during Taft's last hours in office, it is followed shortly thereafter by President Woodrow Wilson's appointment of William B. Wilson (no relation) as the first secretary of labor.
Taft was bullied into signing the bill when he realized that Wilson and Congress would just do what they wanted on behalf of labor after he left the room. It was the final humiliation after President Teddy Roosevelt made Taft Secretary of War and he became Roosevelt's hand-picked successor, only to see his frenemy shaft him by running on the third-party Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party ticket.
Hughes will undo this Progressive Era betrayal and put the Bureau of Labor Statistics et. al back into state governments' hands, whether or not they want it.
The Bemidji Pioneer also reports that Hughes believes that he's better qualified for office than Hinson because of ideology:
"I feel I'm much more conservative than Hinson," Hughes said. "I want to eliminate entire departments, make government much smaller and taxes much lower, whereas she will talk about streamlining and making efficiencies."
We're not sure the influential John Birch wing of Minnesota's Tea Party Republicans will agree. Hughes favors holding an Article 5 Convention of the States to amend the United States Constitution, while the JBS is adamant in its opposition. Republican voters have quite the choice to make in August.
It's not a mystery why we see Peterson staffer Allison Stock Myhre tweet Larry Sabato's new ranking for the district via her personal account
Peterson has enough local credibility that we now see his race as Safe Democratic. https://t.co/qPvAi3hGWo
— Allison Stock Myhre (@allimyhre) June 9, 2016
Photo: Woodrow Wilson (left) and William Howard Taft (right) on the day the Organic Bill of the Department of Labor was signed and government balloon to proportions that mirrored Taft's awesome Progressive Era stache.
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