Please review your general ideas about the economy and contrast these
with those of your opponent(s).
Response:
Although the economy appears to be in relatively good shape today, there
are several clouds building on the horizon that need to be addressed.
They are as follows:
1. Education: We must improve our education system to be able to
compete successfully in the world economy. High quality education will
assure us of the continued productivity gains we need to compete with the
world's industrialized nations. We must do a better job in educating
our future generations, or our economic prosperity in the world will
deteriorate.
2. Trade: When our government officials blindly (or intentionally)
open our borders to all comers without regard to the wage conditions,
environmental policies, and tax policies that give other nations grossly
unfair trade advantages, there is only one way to go. Down. We must
negotiate trade deals that allow our industries to compete in a free and
fair trade game. We are not doing that now, which is why we are losing
many of the good paying manufacturing jobs that were once the mainstay of
middle class America.
3. Deficit Spending: It is immoral and, in the long run, financially
untenable to fund our prosperity on the backs of our children. Much of
today's "healthy" economy is due to the fact that we are paying our
public bills with our children's (future tax money) credit card. How
"healthy" would our economy be without the 5.2 trillion dollars we spent
today and are requiring our children to pay tomorrow? How healthy is our
collective conscience to permit such a crime against our children to go on?
If we continue to pass debt upon debt to future American taxpayers, we
will be the first generation since the Civil War to leave our children
financially worse off than their parents. It doesn't have to be this
way, but if we don't stop using our children's credit card to fund our
prosperity, we will have few good answers when, as taxpaying adults our
children ask, "Why did you do this to us?"
4. Entitlements: Currently 49% of the federal budget is for
entitlements and 19% for interest on the national debt. Unless we
immediately reform Medicare and Social Security, 100% of the federal
budget will only pay for entitlements through the year 2020. We have 5
years to reform Medicare before it becomes insolvent and 16 years to fix
Social Security.
The sooner we address these problems, the less draconian the solutions
will need to be. Problems ignored never get solved, they only grow
worse. As Jack Kennedy once stated, "The time to fix a leaky roof is
when the sun is still shining." Let's act now to fix the roof.
Paul Wellstone uses scare tactics in response to those who mention these
problems. Such tactics make it very difficult to seriously address these
issues. It is irresponsible for a US Senator to overshadow the real
problems with scare tactics designed to secure his own re-election.
Senator Wellstone should be taken to task by the voters for his
self-serving and fiscally untenable positions regarding entitlement
reform and the budget deficit,
When he served as our US Senator, Rudy Boschwitz sat on the budget
committee. Working with Ronald Reagan, Mr. Boschwitz helped burden our
children with over 2 trillion dollars of public debt. His supply side
economic plan did not work in 1980 and it won't work now. Given the
massive and long term debt he helped lay on our children, Rudy Boschwitz
does not deserve another six years in office.
Unlike Mr. Wellstone and Mr. Boschwitz, I am willing to address the
tough issues. I am willing to tell the truth about the crisis we will
face if we don't fix the roof while we still can.
I care more about solving these pressing problems than I care about my
political career. That is why I am Minnesota's best choice for US Senate.