Platform Issues

Do I believe we should have started the war in Iraq? The answer
is I don't know. Do I think we should finish what we started?
Absolutely, however we need to do it in the right way. We need
to provide our troops with everything they need to be safe and
successful, including armored vehicles, ammunition and body
armor (which they do not have to provide for themselves). In
our latest defense appropriations bill (HR 2863 singed into law
December 2005), there appears to be more pork than real
spending on defense, unless you consider killing weeds in New
York that are killing flowers defense. If this latest defense bill is
how things are done in D.C. , it is no wonder so many of our
Representatives and Senators want to get out of Iraq; It is
cutting into their weed killing money and other special interests.
It is a shame that it has become as important to kill weeds as it
has to protect our young people fighting in a war zone.

There are entirely too many lobbyists and special interest
groups. They are influencing our elected officials by providing
paid for perks and other monetary inducements influencing
their votes on bills. In the Cincinnati Enquirer dated 3/4/06 there
is an article about the latest congressman to be sentenced for
taking bribes from special interest groups to steer government
contracts their way. He is one of more than a dozen that have
been convicted of such crimes since the 1970’s. This is
embarrassing and needs to be curtailed.
The Lobby reform that the Senate passed recently is just
window dressing to get them through the primaries. There
needs to be much more done. The effects of lobbyists are far
more reaching than the average person realizes. They affect
our tax code, our appropriation bills, the deficit, just to name a
few. We need stronger more effective reform.

I believe it is time for tax reform. Do you realize the last time the
tax code had an update, within 6 months there had been
15,000 changes made by Congress and the Senate in order to
help out their pet projects and charities. We need reform now.
Our president put together an advisory panel in 2005 to look at
reforming the tax code. They came up with two different plans
to reform and simplify our tax code.
The first is called the Simplified Income Tax Plan. With this
plan there would be four tax bracket instead of the eight in the
current system. There would be tax credits for things like
mortgage interest and child exemptions. Tax credits are
always better than deductions or exemptions. The second
plan is called Growth and Investment Tax Plan. It has three tax
brackets and spreads taxes more fairly across all payers. The
panel found that our current tax code is so confusing that last
year we spent 140 billion dollars on tax preparation and
compliance. Do you realize that is enough money to fund all of
the following government departments:
Homeland Security
NASA
Department of Housing and Urban Development
EPA
Department of Transportation
Congress
Federal Court System
All Foreign Aid

If you would like more information on the panels findings and
recommendation you can go to taxreformpanel.gov

In 2002, President Bush signed into law the The Elementary
and Secondary Education Act (also known as the No Child
Left Behind Act). This was one of the most far-reaching and
controversial bills passed with regards to education in many
years. There is no doubt of it's merit and benefits in the
improvement in our children's education. However, the law
needs work. It needs to be reviewed and in some cases
revamped. The issue of unfunded federal mandates on the
states needs to be addressed, especially here in Ohio, where
our own educational funding system is not sufficient to
provide an equitable education for ALL the children in Ohio's
public schools. The unfunded mandates placed on the
educational system in Ohio forces many of our school
districts to make financial decisions that can and do have an
impact on their ability to fund the necessary education of the
district's children.

In addition, many of the testing mandates, while good, still
need to be addressed and aligned with the state mandated
testing.