Liberty Amendments: Congressional Term Limits

Liberty Amendments: Congressional Term Limits

D.C. McAllister · August 18, 2013 at 7:39am

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post lamenting the need for a strong leader, a visionary, a man of conviction to help us break the chains of tyranny that are enslaving us, a rebel who will stand up to the establishment and restore the principles of freedom on which our nation was founded. I think we have found one such man in Mark Levin—though I’m sure we need many such men to push back the despotic tide that is threatening to drown us all.
Like the prophet Ezra turning his people back to the law of God after their exile in Babylon, Levin is calling Americans back to their law, to their founding principles—to the Constitution. He’s doing it through his book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic.
My purpose in this post is not to debate the feasibility of state conventions in amending the Constitution -- Mainly because one would need to read Levin’s book to grasp how this can be done. If you would like to discuss the constitutional process itself, I point you to Ricochet member Ole Summer’s post on The Liberty Amendments.
After reading the book, I do think Levin’s plan is possible (of course it is—the Founders wouldn’t have included it in the Constitution if they thought it weren’t possible!), but, as he says, it won’t happen overnight. This is not a plan for those addicted to instant gratification or quick fixes. This is a battle that will take years, but it is a beginning. It is a vision.
What I would like to do through a series of posts is discuss each amendment Levin has proposed -- amendments designed to turn America back to the Constitution. This might seem strange—amending the Constitution to save it—but this is exactly the gift given to the American people by our founders when politicians have become too tyrannical to fix the government themselves.
The first amendment Levin has proposed is establishing term limits for members of Congress:


SECTION 1: No person may serve more than twelve years as a member of Congress, whether such service is exclusively in the House or the Senate or combined in both Houses.
SECTION 2: Upon ratification of this Article, any incumbent member of Congress whose term exceeds the twelve-year limit shall complete the current term, but thereafter shall be ineligible for further service as a member of Congress.
According to Levin, “There is nothing wrong with keeping a good public servant in office for as long as the official and we, the voters, want him there. New does not necessarily mean better, and often it can mean worse.” The problem is that in reality too often unexpected consequences prevail.

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism. Moreover, our supposedly broad parameters of “choice” at the ballot box have actually caused a dramatic narrowing of electoral options for voters. Putting aside the media histrionics over “divided” government and the “dysfunctional” relationships between the two houses of Congress, these institutions are populated by a class of elected officials who jealously covet the power of public office.

 In 2010, 85 percent of incumbents from both parties were reelected—397 members of the House ran for reelection and 339 won. The Senate’s reelection rate was 84 percent.


Ronald Rotunda, Chapman University law professor and constitutional expert, made the point a few years ago that “turnover in the House of Lords has been greater than the turnover in the House of Representatives. There was even more turnover in the membership of the Soviet Politburo.”

As Levin says, “It is apparent that in Washington and most political capitals TIME in office = POWER.”


An important antidote is congressional term limits, which slowly displaces a self-perpetuating ruling class populated by professional politicians—which is increasingly authoritarian in its approach to governance—with a legislative body whose members are, in fact, more representative of the people, for they are rotated in and out of Congress over a generally shorter and defined period of time.

What do you think of this particular amendment in helping to reduce the power of the federal government and putting it back in the hands of the people?

Column: Mark Levin: A Modern-Day Constitutional Prophet

August 22, 2013

Column: Mark Levin: A Modern-Day Constitutional Prophet

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When Mark Levin decided to write his book "The Liberty Amendments" to advocate a convention to propose a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, he may not have realized how quickly and deeply his profound idea would resonate. But throughout the nation, people are inclining their ears.

The first obstacle Levin faced was the widespread misconception that he is calling for a constitutional convention that could be hijacked by enemies of our founding principles and converted into a forum to hammer the final nails into our constitutional republic by fundamentally and radically changing our founding document.

In fact, Levin's proposal couldn't be more at odds with that misperception. He is, first and foremost, a constitutionalist. His goal is neither to eradicate nor to substantially change the Framers' blueprint for government. It's to restore it with specific, defined amendments intended to re-establish the proper balance between the power of the government and the liberty of its citizens, with due emphasis on the latter.

Levin is not arrogantly presuming to improve on the ineffable work of the Framers in crafting "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man" but humbly calling on his fellow patriots to recognize that we have strayed from the principles they enshrined in the Constitution and join him in his effort to advance the necessary correctives.

The Framers didn't meet in Philadelphia in the 18th century with the burning desire to pass super-legislation to codify an ideological political agenda to establish fundamental rights in health care or education, and they certainly didn't want to guarantee, by law, certain economic outcomes.

They met ostensibly to amend the Articles of Confederation and ended up scrapping it entirely and replacing it with our Constitution.

They were determined to design a system of government that would maximize individual liberties. That would require establishing a government strong enough to protect citizens from domestic and foreign threats but no stronger than that, for they knew that historically, unchecked, tyrannical governments had been the enemies of freedom.

Their challenge was to find that optimal balance between the power of government and individual liberties, so they created a system that divides and diffuses power between the national and state governments (through a system of federalism) and between coequal, competing branches of the federal government (the separation of powers), which hold one another in check.

It was not the affirmative granting of rights that would establish liberties -- many meaningless constitutions have paid lip service to that endeavor -- but the imposition of defined, specific and enforceable limitations on the federal government.

We must not lose sight of the fact that their overarching concern was liberty, an idea that gets little attention today -- apart from conservatives, constitutionalists and tea party patriots.

What constitutionalists understand is that upholding the integrity of the Constitution and its designed system of limited government is essential to preserving our liberties, and usurpations of power by all three branches of government and by an out-of-control, unaccountable administrative bureaucracy have imperiled them. Constitutionalists abhor abuses of power by any and all branches, irrespective of the substantive political agenda being served by such usurpations.

When King Josiah found a copy of the Jewish law in the Temple, which was being restored in 621 B.C., he was mortified by the extent to which the nation had departed from its teachings. He called for rededication to the law and a revival of its presence in the lives of the people.

Mark Levin is a modern-day constitutional prophet whose purpose is not to revamp the Constitution. It is to revive it and refurbish it -- to restore the cracks in its foundation caused by lawless officials through the years who were more interested in guaranteeing outcomes than they were liberty.

The goal of every one of Mark's proposed amendments is to restore the delicate balances the Framers originally designed; it is to restate and revivify the system of limited government they established by replacing bricks in specific places in our constitutional foundation -- bricks that statists have forcibly dislodged over time.

The sagacious and prescient Framers knew that no matter how well they crafted the Constitution, no matter what kind of protections it included, it would always be vulnerable to the abuses of lawless men who simply refuse to honor its provisions. They also understood that experience would enlighten their successors as to possible pitfalls and weaknesses in the framework that could be breached by such scofflaws over time, so they provided specific methods for amending the Constitution to shore up those trouble spots -- always keeping in mind that preserving liberty was the greatest imperative.

Today's statists have no regard for the Constitution or rule of law and have severely weakened it in many places, and as a result, our liberty, our prosperity and our very nation are in decline and in grave jeopardy.

Mark Levin is calling on us to take corrective steps -- through a process anticipated and expressly sanctioned by the Framers, no less -- to restore our system and reinvigorate our liberties. Let's pray his effort becomes an inexorable movement that sweeps the nation like the Great Awakening.

Posted by David Limbaugh at August 22, 2013 03:10 PM

Nevada AFL-CIO: Obamacare Will Destroy 40-Hour Work Week

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by Wynton Hall 22 Aug 2013, 5:55 PM PDT 1 post a comment

The Nevada AFL-CIO unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday condemning the Affordable Care Act, known to its critics as Obamacare.

"The unintended consequences of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] will lead to the destruction of the 40 hour work week, higher taxes and force union members onto more costly plans," said the resolution.
The union resolution passed unanimously hours after an address from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). The Las Vegas Sun says Reid did not discuss Obamacare in his remarks but has previously blasted some union leaders for "exaggerating" the damage Obamacare will do to union workers and told one union leader, D. Taylor of UNITE Here, to "just calm down and stop frightening people."
So far, though, union leaders are not backing down.
“We were told that if you liked the health insurance you had, then it would be left alone,” Nevada AFL-CIO chief Danny Thompson told the Sun. “Well, it hasn’t been left alone.”
Earlier this month, progressive Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein conceded that Obamacare is "going to make a lot of people who get good employer-based benefits really unhappy—including some of the law’s supporters, like labor unions."
The Nevada AFL-CIO resolution says that its original support for Obamacare has boomeranged back on the organization.
"The Administration has postured on proposals to address the problem, but no proposal to date will actually solve the problem," says the resolution. "Our health plans only get worse."

Federal government plans to sue Texas over voter ID law, intervene in redistricting case

By Matt Peterson
mpeterson@dallasnews.com
11:55 am on August 22, 2013 | Permalink

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Attorney General Eric Holder, shown at an American Bar Association in San Francisco, has filed suit against Texas twice this summer. (Jason Henry/The New York Times)

UPDATE at 3:28 p.m.: The Justice Department has released its complaint, filed in a Corpus Christi court.

Justice Department complaint against Texas voter ID law

UPDATE at 2:55 p.m.: The governor and the state attorney general have weighed in. Attorney General Greg Abbott, who’s office will be tasked with defending the state’s position in the lawsuits, said his Washington counterpart was ignoring voter fraud for political purposes.
“Eric Holder’s outrageous claim that voter ID is a racist plot to disenfranchise minority voters is gutter politics and is offensive to the overwhelming majority of Texans of all races who support this ballot integrity measure,” Abbott, a Republican running for governor said in a written statement.
He also said that by getting involved in the redistricting case, Holder is “trying to resurrect a law that was never implemented and no longer exists — and then sue it.”
Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, denounced “this administration’s blatant disregard for the 10^thAmendment.” He pledged that the state would vigorously defend its laws.
UPDATE at 12:34 p.m.: Sen. John Cornyn has denounced the Justice Department’s lawsuit, calling it an attack on “the sovereign affairs of Texas and a lame-duck administration trying to turn our state blue.”
“As Texans we reject the notion that the federal government knows what’s best for us,” Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a written statement. “We deserve the freedom to make our own laws and we deserve not to be insulted by a Justice Department committed to scoring cheap political points.”
ORIGINAL ITEM: The Department of Justice announced today that it plans to sue Texas over its voter ID law and will intervene in the ongoing case over the state’s redistricting laws.
“Today’s action marks another step forward in the Justice Department’s continuing effort to protect the voting rights of all eligible Americans,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a written release. “The Department will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs.”
It’s the second time this summer that the federal government has singled out Texas in a lawsuit seeking to protect voter rights.
The suits follow a June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that found that requiring some states, including Texas, to get federal clearance before making changes to existing voting rules was unconstitutional because it relies on outdated data.
The court left it up to Congress to decide which states should be subject to pre-emptive scrutiny.
After that ruling, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the voter ID law would immediately go into effect. The feds countered the following month with a suit that sought to force the state to continue clearing any changes to voting laws (on the grounds that Texas continues to discriminate against voters).
This month, Dallas County commissioners narrowly agreed to join a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Perry over his intentions to implement the law requiring voters to show ID at the polls.
Read today’s full release from the Department of Justice after the jump.

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Justice Department to File New Lawsuit Against State of Texas Over Voter I.D. Law
The Department of Justice announced today that it will file a new lawsuit against the State of Texas, the Texas Secretary of State, and the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety over the State’s strict voter photo identification law (SB 14). The United States’ complaint seeks a declaration that SB 14 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Separately, the Department is filing a motion to intervene as a party and a complaint in intervention against the State of Texas and the Texas Secretary of State in the ongoing case of Perez v. Perry (W.D. Tex.), which concerns the state’s redistricting laws. The United States had already filed a statement of interest in this case last month. Today’s action represents a new step by the Department in this case that will allow the United States to formally present evidence about the purpose and effect of the Texas redistricting plans.
“Today’s action marks another step forward in the Justice Department’s continuing effort to protect the voting rights of all eligible Americans,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “We will not allow the Supreme Court’s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights. The Department will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs. We will keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement. We are determined to use all available authorities, including remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, to guard against discrimination and, where appropriate, to ask federal courts to require preclearance of new voting changes. This represents the Department’s latest action to protect voting rights, but it will not be our last.”
In the voter ID lawsuit, the United States’ complaint contends that SB 14 was adopted with the purpose, and will have the result, of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. The complaint asks the court to prohibit Texas from enforcing the requirements of its law, and also requests that the court order bail-in relief under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act. If granted, this would subject Texas to a new preclearance requirement.
In the Department’s other filing announced today, the United States seeks a declaration that Texas’s 2011 redistricting plans for the U.S. Congress and the Texas State House of Representatives were adopted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group in violation of Section 2, as well as the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The complaint also requests that the court order bail-in pursuant to Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act, to remedy persistent, intentional discrimination in voting within the State of Texas.
“The Department of Justice will use all the tools it has available to ensure that each citizen can cast a ballot free from impermissible discrimination,” said Jocelyn Samuels, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The right to the franchise is one of the most fundamental promises of American democracy.”
If the federal courts in either the redistricting or voter identification cases find that the State of Texas should be covered by Section 3(c), then the State would be required to submit voting changes to the U.S. Attorney General or to the federal court for review prior to implementation to ensure that the changes do not have a discriminatory effect or a discriminatory purpose. The Department has previously participated as amicus in the Perez case, and last month advised the federal court in Texas that the Department believed the imposition of a new preclearance requirement on Texas under Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act was appropriate. Today’s filing asks the Court to allow the Department to participate as a party in further proceedings on the question of whether Texas should be made subject to Section 3(c).
A federal court in the District of Columbia has previously held that Texas had failed to meet its burden of proving that its 2011 redistricting plans and its 2011 voter identification law were not discriminatory under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. These decisions were vacated after the Supreme Court’s June decision in Shelby County v. Holder. The Supreme Court’s decision left unaffected the non-discrimination requirements of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the bail-in provisions of Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, and today’s filings seek to enforce those important protections.
The filings in the Texas redistricting and Texas voter identification matters will be available on the Civil Rights Division’s website later today. More information about the Voting Rights Act and other federal voting laws is available on the Department of Justice website at www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/. Complaints about discriminatory voting practices may be reported to the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division at 1-800-253-3931.

DHS Official Behind Gun and Ammo Purchasing Calls for White Genocide, Race War

by Anthony Gucciardi
August 22nd, 2013
Updated 08/22/2013 at 6:40 pm

A DHS official whose very role at the agency is to ‘procure guns and ammunition’, of which the organization has purchased a large number of weapons and billions of rounds, has been openly calling on his black supremacist website for the ‘great race war’ and the death of white Americans.
Even the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLW) has acknowledge DHS employee Ayo Kimathi and his website as ‘anti-white’, which sports the name ‘War is on the Horizon’ and has been taken down following press coverage. And this is the man who, on record according to the reports, as the man who works primarily on the purchase of guns and ammunition for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ammunition and weapons that he believes will be used for the coming race war.
The story has received very little coverage considering the depth to which it displays the true state of our federal government and its employees. The initial report was obtained by Storyleak via a news tip directed towards the website.
But the best part here is that the DHS was apparently fully aware of the website, and Kimathi somehow got away with telling them that his black supremacist site called ‘War is on the Horizon’ was an ‘entertainment site that sells concert videos’. We’re talking about the agency that runs the TSA’s genital searches and censors the Constitution being entirely incapable of noticing that an openly aggressive black supremacist website that calls for the death of virtually all whites may not be a site that sells concert videos.

‘Kill A Lot of Whites’

Among calls for the race war that is ‘on the horizon’ and to begin preparations against the entire white race, Kimathi warns against an ”unavoidable, inevitable clash with the white race.” But that’s just the beginning of Kimathi’s writings on how the white race needs to be obliterated in the near future. In an article on racial cleansing, Kimathi writes:

“Warfare is eminent, and in order for black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites.”

This article and all of the others are signed with the phrase ‘we’ll see you on the battlefield’. Kimathi is apparently an advocate of killing anyone who even mates with white people, even gays who choose to be with white men or women.
The best part? Kimathi may be able to keep his job as a purchaser of ammunition and weapons for the DHS — weapons that he believes, as I mentioned, will be used in the race war to kill white men, women, and children. According to the report from Fox:

“While many of the postings on Kimathi’s site are inflammatory, it was not immediately clear whether they cross the legal threshold into unprotected hate speech, and the posts may not violate DHS policies if he does not curate the website at work or espouse the ideologies in the office.”

The DHS has already purchased billions of rounds of ammunition, but that may just be the beginning. The associated press has revealed plans for the agency to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition spanned across the next 4 or 5 years, with 1.5 billion rounds purchased in 2012 alond with 360,000 hollow point bullets.

Read more: http://www.storyleak.com/dhs-official-gun-and-ammo-purchasing-white-deaths-race-war/#ixzz2ckU92OMs

Planned drill will simulate a catastrophic blackout

By  Matthew L. Wald

The New York Times Sunday August 18, 2013 10:07 AM

 

WASHINGTON — The electricity grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of U.S. industry.
If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by superstorm Sandy and the Sept. 11 attack.
That is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, FBI anti-terrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid.
They will practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever seen. More than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to participate.
“This is different from a hurricane that hits X, Y and Z counties in the Southeast, and they have a loss of power for three or four days,” said the official in charge of the drill, Brian M. Harrell of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., known as NERC. “We really want to go beyond that.”
One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities.
“If we fail at electricity, we’re going to fail miserably,” Curt Hbert, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a recent conference held by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Harrell said that previous exercises were based on the expectation that electricity “would be up and running relatively quick” after an attack. Now, he said, the goal is to “educate the federal government on what their expectations should or shouldn’t be.”
The drill is part of a give and take in the past few years between the government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing the electricity system.
The grid is essential for almost everything, but it is mostly controlled by investor-owned companies or municipal or regional agencies. Ninety-nine percent of military facilities rely on commercial power, according to the White House.
Preparation for the November drill comes as Congress is debating laws that could impose new standards to protect the grid from cyberattacks, but many in the industry, some of whom would like such rules, doubt that they can pass.

Remarks by President Obama, U.K. Prime Minister Cameron, European Commission President Barroso, and European Council President Van Rompuy on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Lough Erne Resort
Lough Erne, Northern Ireland

3:23 P.M. BST
PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Well, good afternoon and welcome, everyone.  Welcome to Lough Erne.

I always said that the whole point of this meeting in Lough Erne is to fire up our economies and drive growth and prosperity around the world -- to do things that make a real difference to people’s lives.  And there is no more powerful way to achieve that than by boosting trade.  And there’s no better way than by launching these negotiations on a landmark deal between the European Union and the United States of America -- a deal that could add as much as a £100 billion to the EU economy, £80 billion to the U.S. economy, and as much as £85 billion to the rest of the world.

And we should be clear about what these numbers could really mean:  2 million extra jobs, more choice and lower prices in our shops.  We’re talking about what could be the biggest bilateral trade deal in history; a deal that will have a greater impact than all the other trade deals on the table put together.

When we last met at Camp David in the G8 and we first suggested we could reach this moment here in Lough Erne, many doubted it would be possible.  Everyone knows these trade deals are difficult.  Some take years to get off the ground, and some never happen at all.  So it’s a testament to the leadership and the political will of everyone here that we’ve reached this point.  We must maintain that political will in the months ahead.  This is a once-in-a-generation prize and we are determined to seize it.

President Barroso -- Jose Manuel, over to you.

PRESIDENT BARROSO:  Thank you.  Thank you, David.

Today is a special day for the relation between European Union and the United States.  Today we announce we will start negotiations of a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.  Very frankly, two years ago, very few would have bet that today we’d be in the position to launch negotiations of an ambitious European Union-United States free trade agreement.

And when the teams of the European Commission and United States will meet for the first round on the negotiations next month, it will be the start of a joint undertaking of real strategic importance.  Our joint endeavor is part of our overall agenda for growth and jobs to both sides of the Atlantic by boosting trade and investment.  It is also a powerful demonstration of our determination to shape a open rules-based role.

We intend to move forward fast.  We can say that neither of us will give up content for the sake of speed, but we intend to make rapid progress.  I’d rather see the core challenge, moving our regulatory regimes closer, and addressing the harmful effect of behind-the-border trade barriers.  Huge economic benefits are expected from reducing red tape, avoiding divergent regulations for the future.

I’d rather have our companies invest in you, in overseas products and services and job creation, than in double-testing, or multiple inspections, or even separate manufacturing lines.  Our regulators need to build bridges faster and more systematically.  The current economic climate requires us to join forces and to do more with less.  More importantly, in doing so, we will remain strong global players who set the standards for the 21st century.

Therefore, I call on our legislatures, European -- especially European Parliament, our regulators, our civil society to play a constructive and engaged part in these negotiations.

The business communities on both sides of the Atlantic, in particular, have been a strong advocate of free trade and investment between Europe and the United States.  And this is also good for the rest of the world.  Given the integrated supply chains in today’s global markets, everyone can benefit from this agreement.

Integrating two of the most developed, most sophisticated, and certainly the largest economies in the world can never be an easy task, but we will find convincing answers to legitimate concerns.  We will find solutions to thorny issues.  We will keep our eyes on the prize, and we’ll succeed.  So even if these negotiations may not always be easy, I’m sure they will be worth it for the sake of the jobs it creates and because of the strategic dimension of what we are doing -- to write the next chapter of what is our common history also forged by the sense that we share the same principles and values, the principles and values of open economies and open societies.

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Thank you very much, Jose Manuel.  President Obama -- Barack.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Thank you very much, David.  And good afternoon.  It is wonderful to be here in Lough Erne.  And thank you so much to the people of Northern Ireland for their warm hospitality.  And, Prime Minister Cameron, thank you for all the outstanding arrangements.

Among the things we’ll discuss here are promoting new growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.  And I’m pleased to join these leaders to announce the launch of negotiations on a new trade agreement that will help us do just that -- the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, also known as T-TIP.

I want to thank not only the gentlemen on this stage, but also President Hollande, Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Letta, and Taoiseach  Kenny.  We just had an excellent meeting.  And I’m proud to say that America will have the opportunity to host the first round of negotiations next month in Washington.

As has already been mentioned, the U.S.-EU relationship is the largest in the world.  It makes up nearly half of global GDP.  We trade about $1 trillion in goods and services each year.  We invest nearly $4 trillion in each other’s economies.  And all that supports around 13 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.

And this potentially groundbreaking partnership would deepen those ties.  It would increase exports, decrease barriers to trade and investment.  As part of broader growth strategies in both our economies, it would support hundreds of thousands of jobs on both sides of the ocean.

So I’m pleased to hear that this negotiation enjoys the support not only of the countries that are here today, but also the broader EU membership.  I can tell you that it has been warmly received in the United States as well, both in our Congress and in our business community.

And that broad support, on both sides of the Atlantic, will help us work through some of the tough issues that have already been mentioned.  There are going to be sensitivities on both sides.  There are going to be politics on both sides.  But if we can look beyond the narrow concerns to stay focused on the big picture -- the economic and strategic importance of this partnership -- I’m hopeful we can achieve the kind of high-standard, comprehensive agreement that the global trading system is looking to us to develop.

America and Europe have done extraordinary things together before.  And I believe we can forge an economic alliance as strong as our diplomatic and security alliances -- which, of course, have been the most powerful in history.  And, by doing that, we can also strengthen the multilateral trading system.

So this Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is going to be a priority of mine and my administration.  It is important that we get it right -- and that means resisting the temptation to downsize our ambitions or avoid tough issues just for the sake of getting a deal.  And then make sure also -- it’s important that we also make sure that it’s part of an overall plan to do what it takes to promote growth and jobs.  Trade is critical but it is not alone a silver bullet; it has to be part of a comprehensive strategy that we pursue on both sides of the Atlantic.  That’s what our people deserve.

I very much look forward to working with my fellow leaders to make it happen.  We’re going to give a strong mandate to our negotiators, but occasionally I suspect we’re going to have to intervene and break through some logjams.  Nevertheless, I’m confident that we can get it done.

So thank you very much.

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Thank you, Barack.  And thank you very much for that.  Now, we’re going to hear from the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy -- Herman.

PRESIDENT VAN ROMPUY:  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  This is a special moment.  At the last EU-U.S. summit with President Obama, we jointly decided to see if launching such historic negotiations would be possible.  It was.  And now we can already start the talks.  A year and a half ago, we were not even sure the place had a door, and now we are entering the negotiating room together.

It's a sign of the strong political will on both sides.  This February, in the European Council, our European heads of state and government reiterated their support for a comprehensive trade and investment deal with the United States.  A political signal formalized last Friday by ministers and the Irish presidency formally gave the EU negotiators the green light to start the talks.

It shows the political will to work together -- to work together with our long-standing and most trusted partner on the essential objective for governments on either side of the Atlantic -- growth, jobs, and prosperity.  We both know there are no magic solutions.  Recent economic turbulence underlines this.  But we cannot expect to harvest new jobs today; we can plant the seeds for the jobs of tomorrow.  And that’s exactly what the trade agreement is about.

Together, Europe and the United States are the backbone of the world economy.  Opening up that space further for opportunities for business and consumers is simply common sense.  Not just our own economies, but also those of our trading partners will benefit.  The positive ramifications will even go beyond the economy as such.

We are making our economies all over the world more interdependent, and this will make the world safer.  What is at stake with the transatlantic free trade area is to enshrine Europe and America's role as the world's standard-setters, beyond product specifications, by setting a positive forces and shaping the way we work and the way we live our daily lives.  This is of key strategic significance.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Atlantic is not the past; it is also the future.  And that’s why we are impatient to start, although we know that negotiations won't be a smooth ride.  Obviously, there are and will be sensitive issues on each side.  With flexibility, open-mindedness and some creativity, the greatest asset for negotiators and statesmen, I'm confident we will find solutions.  There is too much at stake.

We will find these solutions not only because we know the great benefit it will bring, not only because we share the same rules-based approach at home and abroad in these matters, but also because trade is one vital part of our overall relationship.  It will link our transatlantic destinies even closer together.

The longer the negotiations, therefore, stand for our continued common commitment to engage with each other in order to engage with the world.  The EU and its member states are ready to engage and look forward to the new trade landscape we will shape together.

Thank you.

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Thank you very much, Herman.  We'll be now welcoming the other guests to the G8, and we'll be taking questions at the end of the G8 at the end of our discussions.

Thank you very much, indeed.

END
3:35 P.M. BST