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Peter Schiff: Get Rid of the Politicians Tuesday, August 18, 2009 1:30 PM By: Julie Crawshaw Article Font Size   Potential U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff has a very simple plan for Washington D.C. Get rid of the politicians. “We need citizens, people who are in the private sector, to come to Washington, to really get a job done, and then to leave,” Schiff told Newsmax TV’s Dan Mangru. Individuals who become career politicians, such as his potential opponent Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn), are what’s wrong with Congress in Schiff’s opinion because eventually they get assimilated into Washington D.C. culture. Schiff points out that Dodd has never actually worked in the private sector, never ran a business, and has never had to live under the regulations that he writes. On the other hand, Schiff has worked in the private sector all of his life and is currently the President of Euro-Pacific Capital.  link to video Whenever the government becomes involved, runaway costs result, notes Schiff. “If we cancelled student loan programs, universities would charge a lot less,” he says. He also applied the same principle to healthcare costs, which could reach as much as 20 percent of GDP by 2017. “Prices for insured medical procedures are rising three times as fast as those for uninsured procedures,” Schiff observes. “With insured procedures and low co-pays, no one cares what the procedures cost.” Schiff points to the “cash for clunkers” car rebate program as another example of government intervention gone wrong. “We are spending money to take an asset that works … and destroy it,” he says. “What’s probably going to happen in a couple of years is we’ll need a bailout for all the people who bought cars with their cash for clunkers money and can’t afford to make their payments.” Schiff believes that the administration is inefficiently reallocating capital through its various stimulus programs to all of the wrong places. “The government is taking money away from people who are doing it right and giving it to people who are doing it wrong. That’s a recipe for disaster,” Schiff says. According to Schiff, government stimulus is the problem, and that eventually it may lead to the creation of another financial bubble. “As painful as it is, this recession is necessary,” Schiff told Newsmax. “We’re never going to have a vibrant economy if we keep concentrating on reflating a busted bubble.” © 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.