The Issues
Nunes has voted with a majority of his Republican colleagues 95.1% of the time during the 111th Congress and 96% with his party during the entire span of his Congressional career.
He has never forgotten his farming roots. As a member of the House Agriculture Committee, he has been a steady advocate for his dairy and farmer constituents. Among the bills that he has sponsored are a $300 billion grant to support the growth of the milk protein concentrates (nutritional powders produced from skim milk) industry, and a tariff on imported milk protein concentrates until the U.S. industry is better established.
His knowledge of, and passion for, farming issues is no secret on Capitol Hill. Two weeks after he joined the House Ways and Means Committee, his committee colleagues designated him their “dairy expert.”
“It’s kind of scary. Few people in Washington understand agriculture,” he said. “And fewer still understand dairy.”
The Economy
Nunes opposed the 2008 bailout package from the beginning. He did not budge on this stance, despite many entreaties from Bush administration officials, who invited him to meet with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson or Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. Nunes declined both meetings, saying he was prepared to cast a “no” vote based on what he had read.
"We should not be propping up the stock market and interfering in the marketplace," Nunes said.
Nunes reserved some particularly harsh words for his home state’s economic policies in a January 2009 Wall Street Journal editorial, in which he warned that California’s high tax rates and long-term fiscal deficits would only restrict future growth.
“The attempts by state leaders to spend their way back to prosperity are killing California,” he wrote.
In his editorial, he praised the enactment by several other states of a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, and he called upon California to enact its own. He also announced that he and other lawmakers would soon launch campaigns within California to enact:
1. Turning state budgeting into a two-year process—one year for holding hearings, negotiating and determining spending priorities; and another year for finalizing and passing the budget.
2. A requirement that the governor’s proposed budget automatically becomes law—provided it has no tax increases—if the legislature fails to pass a budget by its constitutional deadline.
3. A stipulation that state spending not grow faster than inflation, and that the state have a 3% budget reserve at all times.
The Environment
California is now in its fourth year of a statewide drought, and some of the worst-affected communities are in Tulare County in Nunes’ district. Nunes has been working to resolve the water shortages by supporting investments in California’s water infrastructure system and launching a 2003 feasibility study for a new water reservoir near Temperance Flat in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The feasibility study, completed in October 2008 and released in August 2009, identified two promising locations on the flat for reservoir development.
In May 2009, Nunes accused Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) of not doing enough to solve the water crisis and called on him to resign.
“When a government can’t provide the people access to a reliable supply of water, it has failed,” Nunes said. “This government has utterly failed and Governor Schwarzenegger should resign from office.”
While Nunes is avowedly skeptical of scientific findings that human activity is contributing to global warming, he has introduced several measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote alternative energy sources. These include increasing the solar tax credits, which reward Americans who purchase solar-energy systems for their homes; and increasing funding for development of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Nunes once warned that if the U.S. does not take more action to find new sources of energy, “someday, we may be back to milking cows by hand.”
Whereas some lawmakers tend to be partial either toward fossil fuels or toward renewable energy, Nunes takes a rather ecumenical approach. In 2006, he proposed a bill to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, but it would place all revenues into a trust fund that would sponsor development of ethanol, solar energy, “clean” coal and other alternative energy sources.
“The next generation of homegrown energy would be incubated,” he said of his proposal. The House Ways and Means Committee, House Resources Committee, House Energy Committee, and House Science Committee all separately considered his proposal, though none of them approved it for a House vote.
Health Care
In May 2009, Nunes and House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) introduced a sweeping health-care reform bill, the Patients’ Choice Act, which aims to expand health-insurance coverage, make employee-based health insurance more flexible, and trim health-care costs, all by expanding health-insurance options and encouraging individuals to proactively take better care of their own health. Instead of providing universal health care to all Americans, the plan would incentivize Americans of all income levels to buy their own health insurance by providing them with tax credits.
“The Patient’s Choice Act would give every American the opportunity to choose the health care plan that best meets their individual needs,” he wrote.
The bill’s provisions would:
1. establish an inter-agency committee to develop and coordinate preventive-health programs among all federal agencies
2. establish science-based initiatives regarding nutrition, exercise, smoking cessation, and ways to combat the nation’s top five killers
3. launch a coordinated media plan to further public education of preventive health
4. provide a Web-based prevention tool run by the CDC that would provide personalized health prevention plans for individuals based on personal health and family history
5. lower Medicare premiums for seniors who adopt healthy behaviors
6. create Wellness Bonus Grants—funding that can be used for promoting public health—to states that demonstrate the greatest success in reducing disease rates and risk factors
7. increase vaccine availability and rewards for states that achieve higher vaccination rates
8. ensure that junk food is not provided to food stamp recipients
9. extend tax credits of $5,700 to families, $2,300 to individuals, and an additional $5,000 debit card to low-income Americans. These tax credits would essentially pay employees’ shares of employer-based health insurance.
10. guarantee that employees who change or lose their jobs can keep their health care.
11. establish state exchanges to facilitate consumers’ selection of health insurance plans. Any health insurance plan licensed to operate in a state would be able to participate in the state’s exchange. The exchange would review the plan and, provided that it meets basic criteria, present it to consumers who seek insurance plans on the exchange.
12. allow states to enter into multi-state compacts, thereby enlarging participation in the exchanges
A May 20, 2009, American Spectator commentary called Nunes’ proposal “the leading Republican health-care reform alternative.”
