“ We have to do both at the same time, and this is possible. On the debt side, as indicated above, we have to make further spending cuts, and at the same time we also need to raise revenue. And the best way to raise revenues is to get our middle class working again. The main economic driver is middle income consumer spending. Without a strong and vibrant middle class, America’s economy will continue to stagnate. We must make investments for our future - locally and nationally. I believe strongly that national government/industry programs have accounted for much of our industrial growth over the last 50 years, but we have backed off on these. The space program, the DARPA program that created the internet, and the program to map the human genome were all government/industry programs and they created entire industries and millions of private sector good jobs. We need a national strategy that invests in these kind of programs to create the economy of the 21st century. Locally, we must invest in bringing 21st century technology to our rural district. Many of our small towns and communities have to rely on dial-up internet service. Our businesses can’t compete in a 21st century marketplace, without high speed internet service. And our children can’t have a first class education without it. Also, our district is covered with National Forest. We need to revitalize our forests and make them healthy again. We can do that by clearing the underbrush and responsibly harvesting timber. It’s a win-win for our district. We revitalize our forests and make them less prone to forest fires, we create hundreds of jobs, and we create revenue by selling the brush and timber. ”

“ If massive stimulus spending were the road to prosperity, America should be enjoying a new Golden Age by now. Out-of-control government spending – and the debt it creates – is needlessly prolonging and deepening the recession by crowding out private capital, freezing permanent job creation, robbing us of our future productivity, and transferring trillions of dollars of investment decisions from private citizens who seek the highest economic return on each dollar to politicians who seek the highest political return. That is the difference between Microsoft and Solyndra, and it is killing our economy. ”