CANDIDATE Q&A: U.S. House 6, William 'Billy' Kogut (R)

Palm Coast Observer
News

William ‘Billy’ Kogut
AGE: 57
FAMILY: Married 35 years, no children
QUIRKY FACT: Raises peacocks
BIO: William Kogut lives in Ormond Beach. Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Kogut was active in the local government of Wallington, N.J. Kogut served as Burrough Councilman from 1985 to 1993. In 1993, Kogut was recognized by the New Jersey State Senate for his dedication and service to his local community. Kogut began at Adams, Cameron & Co. in 1995, and has been a successful Realtor there for 17 years. He also ran for U.S. Senate in 2010 and earned 9% of the vote, after spending just $1,000 in campaign literature.

The federal government has an annual deficit of about $1 trillion per year. What would you do to balance the budget?
First thing I would do is cut all the departments by 50% because I’m going to file a federal lawsuit. I’m not going to get too specific as of now, but I’m basically suing the president and the Congress because they are spending money without having passed a budget in three years. And this situation, I don’t believe is constitutional. So I believe we’re spending money without authority. Will anyone agree with me on that? Not the current legislators — they would not agree. But without a budget, you can’t operate much things.

So how would I cut it? The spending is going on anyway, regardless of a budget passed or not. Not single handedly, I can’t do this by myself with one vote; my goal is to talk to people, show examples, and sort of try to get them — common sense is what we’re lacking, I believe.

Would you be willing to pledge not to raise taxes?
Absolutely, there’s no question in my mind that we are taxed enough. My first person that I favored for the presidential primary was Herman Cain, the 9-9-9 plan. When I heard it that night, I immediately went outside, got white chalk and wrote “9-9-9” on my truck.

What does 9-9-9 mean? Nine percent corporate tax; that’s how we start to get our companies to start coming back to this country from Mexico and China. We are at 35%. Nine percent is fine because it would encourage expansion. And 9% federal is fine because the average federal tax rate is anywhere from 20% to 25%; plus 9% sales tax which was really, I believe, to cover the federal portion of our tax.

The only difference I would have if I was Mr. Cain is that I would have included, in order to increase the 9% sales tax you need, a 75% vote in order to increase it because the next comments after his suggestion was, “Well, what happens with the next Congress raising it to 10, 12, 15, whatever?” That was the so-called oppositional argument.

But I would have thrown that in: It would have had to have been passed by a 75%.

If you were asked to raise the national debt ceiling, how would you vote? What would you propose to reduce the national debt?
I would vote no on any national debt — absolutely not; $16 trillion is more than sufficient. I’m scared for this country, period. How would I reduce it? With $868 billion in foreign aid, if you go and Google “U.S. foreign aid” you will see countries that we’ve never ever heard about or heard of, or heard the names.

The only one that I would exclude out of the reduction is Israel. Israel is the only friend that we have, and I believe we give them approximately $3 billion in foreign aid from us. Most of these countries that we give foreign aid to, I don’t know, the majority of them are not friendly to us. The money goes to the governments of these countries. The money is there to help people, but I don’t believe it gets to the people; it’s handled by the governments we give it to.

How would I handle that differently if it had to stay? Well, we have a Peace Corps, do we not? Why not, if we have Peace Corps people in those countries, why not give the money to the Peace Corps representatives to hand out and help with the families and people of those countries, rather than giving it to the government?

What should be done with the federal tax code? Where do you stand on the subject of a flat tax?
I support the fair tax. Any tax that we may pass obviously we have to repeal the 16th Amendment because that’s what the IRS is part of. I was just with an individual who’s a big fair tax person, and I said, “We need 35 states in order to have a constitutional amendment,” and he says, “They’re getting close to that number.”

Obviously the legislatures have to vote for it in order to come to it. The only thing that I would be concerned about is if we have a constitutional convention, then does it run amuck? If you know what I mean.

It would have to be for specific things, whether it be fair tax.

What are you willing to do to reform Medicaid and Medicare?
I don’t understand how we have Medicaid and Medicare fraud. How in the world have we allowed this to continue? I remember back in the ’70s, that was the biggest thing that was going on, and has yet to be corrected.

I would probably encourage a law of some kind, such as, if you’re caught defrauding Medicaid or Medicare you have a trial, get arrested obviously, then appeal, and if you do not succeed on any one of those, everything is to be taken away from you other than $5 for a taxicab. That’s the kind of punishment we need in order to show people that fraud within the government should be given examples of.