Like it or not, the federal government is a significant player in our $14 trillion economy. However, for the last 30 years, the government has been used to take taxpayers’ hard earned wages and divert them to special interest groups or to borrow inordinate amounts of money that no elected official ever intends to pay off. With our federal debt exceeding $9 trillion dollars or nearly $30,000 for every single person in this country, I will represent your interests in working to control federal spending, set appropriate priorities, and the development of a long-term plan to get spending under control and to reduce our outstanding debt.

There are not many fiscal conservatives left in Congress. Most of them have been sacrificed in favor of monied interests.  How can I even hope to have an impact on deficit spending?  If you allow me, I will take on the entrenched special interests that keep programs alive long after their usefulness and relevance has past. I believe that some of these will be addressed by the omnibus tax reform bill I would like to introduce. If it becomes necessary, I will seek to sponsor an omnibus subsidy reform bill to eliminate or reduce subsidies that no longer serve a purpose other than to transfer wealth from hard working taxpayers to special interests that are no longer productive. These subsidies are kept alive by the system of legal bribery used by our elected officials. There are many areas of wasteful spending in the federal government and each one has a very active and vocal special interest to protect them. If no one else will try to fix the problem, I will.

Omnibus Tax Code Reform Our current tax code is a mixture of dysfunction, corruption, greed and good intention. However, it is horribly flawed, just like those who work to keep it as it is. There are exemptions written for specific firms and industries, providing them with benefits that other industries do not have. This is anti-competitive in nature and distorts the allocation of capital in the market. Tax credits or subsidies should be strategic in nature.

Federal Infrastructure Spending I am a supporter of increased infrastructure spending, especially in transportation and the environment. New funding sources need to be found. The idea that the federal government should increase spending without increasing revenue is laughable and fiscally irresponsible. Reforms that I would like to bring to the federal government include capital efficiency – getting the most for what you spend.

There has been a high level of misrepresentation in federally funded projects. To solve the problem, I propose to limit the federal government’s contribution to the proscribed percentage of the projected project cost at the time of authorization. If we make local, county and state governments responsible for cost overruns, projects would receive much greater scrutiny and significantly better oversight. 

The misrepresentation is based on: underestimating cost, overestimating revenue/benefit, undervaluing the environmental impact (makes the ultimate cost higher), and overestimated economic development impact.  Capital project authorizations, budgets and major component costs need to be increased every year for construction cost inflation and reevaluated.  I would also sponsor legislation that bans naming any facility that uses federal financing after any elected official currently serving in office or who had anything to do with getting it federal funding. These are projects to meet constituent needs, not monuments to the pork barrel prowess of elected officials.

Earmarks and Further Ethics Reform If elected, I will work to close all of the remaining ethics reforms loopholes our elected officials left for themselves. Above, I already mentioned forbidding the naming of facilities built with any portion of federal funds after current serving members of Congress or those who played a prominent role in a getting federal funding for projects. Those projects are for the people, not for the egos of congressmen who obtain the funding.

Debt Dependency Previously, we used to be a nation of savers and investors, following timeless principles of living below your means, spending only what we could afford, saving to pay for children’s education, saving for retirement. This is no longer the case. Somewhere along the way, we lost this common-sense and stopped teaching them to our children and the next generations.

“Americans’ personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in 2005, something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression. Consumers depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other big-ticket items. The Commerce Department reported…that the savings rate fell into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent, meaning that Americans not only spent all of their after-tax income last year but had to dip into previous savings or increase borrowing. The savings rate has been negative for an entire year only twice before — in 1932 and 1933 — two years when the country was struggling to cope with the Great Depression, a time of massive business failures and job layoffs.” [Jan. 30, 2006, U.S. savings rate hits lowest level since 1933Consumers depleting savings to buy cars, other big-ticket items, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11098797/ ]

Our debt dependency is weakening our position as a superpower and is jeopardizing America’s future. We learned in history that debt can cripple a country. This was seen in 1919 when a massive debt was imposed upon Germany by the Allied Powers as reparations for World War I.  Economist, John Maynard Keynes, wrote:

“The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable - abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe. Some preach it in the name of justice. In the great events of man's history, in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations Justice is not so simple. And if it were, nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents or of rulers. Twenty years later, the debt, partially responsible for the rise of the Nazis, had been repudiated and Keynes's views had been confirmed. Seventy-four years later, the world confronts another massive debt, although not one imposed by a treaty of peace. Indeed, this debt, totaling $1.362 trillion in 1991… has had the effect of plunging millions of people into conditions of economic despair and desperation. Most tragically, this debt will jeopardize the chances for the happiness of millions of children who will have committed no crime other than that of being born into a poor society.” [1994, Global Debt and Third World Development, Vincent Ferraro and Melissa Rosser, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/globdebt.htm]

If America continues to borrow without saving, we will lose our power to other countries.

“America has too much international credit. Not from private investors, but from central banks. Central banks are the marginal key influence. And therefore, when you consider the American fundamentals, America is certainly the most backward country in the world, among industrialized nations. From a fundamental point of view, the American economy is in incomparably worst condition today than in 2000. Income growth for the individual is stagnating. It is negative. And there is no savings. America has no reserves to protect itself against the next recession. The fact is, Americans are trapped…America's super-liquidity all comes from borrowing. Credit has played a major role in all U.S. financial markets…There are many who say that deficit spending by the government is bad. But they don't say that deficit spending by the consumer is equally bad, or worse.  The American idea that everything good comes from consumer spending is preposterous. And that is the key fallacy in America today.”   [June 5, 2005, A Daily Reckoning White Paper Report, US Consumer Spending: Consuming America, Dr. Kurt Richebacher, http://www.dailyreckoning.com/rpt/USConsumerSpending.html]