The federal budget process is broken. The out of control spending habits of Congress have brought us to the edge of a terrible debt cliff. We as citizens here in the eighth District have two choices. We can continue the status quo, keeping the same people in office, and allowing them to spending more than we have, and borrowing from our future to cover the imbalance. Or we can firmly and deliberately begin to change the people and thinking in Congress that has created this unsustainable situation.

I stand for election to help facilitate the change that is required to bring a fiscally responsible process of budgeting back to Congress. We have been deceiving ourselves, and been deceived by our current members of Congress, into thinking that we could continue on this path of deficit spending. I state with surety that those days are over. We must face the reality that there is no more important task ahead of us than to get our federal budget back on a sustainable track. The strategy to achieve this must include thinking that says  the federal government is not the provider of our happiness, but the protector of our own individual pursuit of it.

The Congress has created, over many decades, a pattern of spending that has far too many commitments than we can afford. They have said yes far too many times to people who are fully capable of taking care of themselves. Congressional representatives must start asking themselves, as I do every time an issue has confronted me, why should the federal government be involved in this policy problem or is this the best use of our tax dollars, and most importantly, can we afford it. We must begin to return more decision-making ability and power back to the states, counties, and cities, where tax levies and solutions to problems and services can best be decided. The federal budget must be balanced immediately with across the board spending reductions, and a reduction in tax rates that will immediately and sustainably create the growth opportunities that we need to get out of this debt spiral and economic downturn Congress has created.