The Issues
Coastal Communities
Our coastal communities are vital to our state’s economy and a treasure for all North Carolinians.
In Congress, I will be a tireless advocate for those issues critical to our coastal communities. I will work to find long term funding solutions for the dredging of our waterways and inlets as well as beach nourishment and re-nourishment.
I will also work with my colleagues in the House to protect the federal floodwater insurance program, which is vital to our coastal communities. It would be irresponsible for the federal government to ignore any rapid increase in flood insurance rates, which would bring real estate sales to a complete halt and cripple our coastal economy – not to mention causing many home-owners to lose their life savings.
Foreign Policy & Military
President Ronald Reagan had it right — Peace through Strength.
We must maintain a cutting edge military and bolster our intelligence agencies if America is going to remain the dominant force for freedom in this world. We should continue to invest in research and development, so that our soldiers have the technology they need to protect themselves and defend our country.
I believe in military intervention only when we have a threat to the national interest of the United States. I believe we should do everything in our power to defend and protect U.S. sovereignty and uphold the U.S. Constitution. Under no circumstances should we cede or grant any power to any international body that usurps our national sovereignty — no matter how noble the cause may seem.
I support a strong alliance with Israel. Just as any sovereign country, Israel has every right to defend its citizens from attack and the United States should unequivocally support them.
Economy & Jobs
My entire career has been focused on championing the needs of small businesses, entrepreneurs and our farm families. In the State Senate, I chaired the committees responsible for cutting wasteful spending and removing burdensome regulations from our business owners and farm families while leading the fight against implementation of Obamacare and its mandates during Senate floor debate.
Our small businesses, entrepreneurs, and farmers are the economic engine of this state and nation. Right now they are dying a death by a thousand cuts because the government continues to pile regulation upon regulation and tax after tax on their backs to the point that there is little incentive left to be in business. As a result, our economy remains stagnate and the American Dream is slipping away from many.
We must create a business climate that is friendly to capital investment and job creation. We achieve that by getting rid of onerous rules and regulations that are making it difficult for our job creators to get access to credit and cost them unnecessary time and money. This includes the repeal of Obamacare.
We also need to reform our tax code so that it enables those who work hard and do well to keep more of their money, enabling them to reinvest in and grow their business. Profitable, growing businesses is the only way to produce a growing job market.
Finally, it is past time for America to become serious about energy independence. I support an all-of-the-above energy policy that will enable us to safely tap our energy potential and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. In fact, it should be our goal to be the number one exporter of oil and natural gas. We have the natural resources available to us to reach that goal if we will get serious about it.
National Debt & Budget
It is not what you make that gets you in trouble, it is what you spend.
I am a firm believer that less government is best. When you boil it all down, the government is a major part of the reason why we have an energy crisis, a struggling education system, and so many regulations in health care that competition and transparency are significantly impeded. Costs continue to spiral out of control and insurance is unaffordable for many.
Families across North Carolina and America are required to live within their means, and the Federal government should be forced to do the same. I will support a balanced budget amendment that requires Washington adhere to these same principles.
While in the state legislature, I helped cut spending, eliminated unnecessary and costly rules and regulations, and stood up to the tax and spend agenda of big-government bureaucracies – including cutting the jobs of unnecessary bureaucrats. I will do the same in Washington.
In Washington, we must do the same – cut spending and get the government out of the way so that our farmers, entrepreneurs and small businessmen can grow, prosper, and create jobs. A smaller government that spends less, and a vibrant, growing economy are critical to our ability to start paying down our National debt.
Taxes
We cannot tax our way back to prosperity. I fought for lower taxes in Raleigh and I will fight for lower taxes in Washington.
In the State Senate I helped craft two balanced budgets without raising taxes on hard-working North Carolinians. I also proposed legislation to completely eliminate the state’s burdensome gas tax that strains family budgets and small businesses. And I led the fight against Obamacare – the $500 billion tax increase on American families.
We need to lower all taxes so people can keep more of their money in order to help re-invigorate the economy and generate more revenues for the state. Lower taxes encourage innovation and reward the hard work necessary to create economic growth and new innovations that benefit all of society.
Life & Marriage
Life – I am pro-life and will do everything in my power in Congress to fight for the rights of the unborn in our country.
Marriage – I believe in the Biblical definition of marriage between one man and one woman. This is the cornerstone to a productive and moral society. I was a co-sponsor of the Marriage Amendment to the NC Constitution and campaigned for its adoption by the people. I will vigorously fight any attempt by the courts to void the vote of the people of North Carolina or any legislative effort to repeal it.
Second Amendment
I am a proud member of the NRA, and a strong supporter of our Second Amendment rights. The Second Amendment is about much more than the right to hunt, as some seem to suggest. It is about protecting ourselves from enemies foreign and domestic.
Veterans
Our veterans have laid it all on the line for our country — for our freedoms.
Too often our veterans find only difficulty in dealing with the bureaucratic maze of the Veterans Administration and receive very little support for ongoing physical and mental recovery from the physical and emotional battles they have faced. Without question, we must step up to the plate and make sure that all of our veterans and their families have access to the very best health care available — both to address the immediate physical needs and their long-term physical and mental health.
We must reform the Veterans Administration so that it is customer friendly and appropriate the funding necessary to ensure quality long-term care. No veteran who has served this country honorably should ever lack quality care for their physical and mental health needs.
We must also help them be successful when they come home. By investing in career training programs and incentivizing businesses to hire veterans, we can help our heroes transition from active duty to other careers.
Budgets reflect priorities. The first budget passed by Congress appropriated more than 25% of the budget for pensions for disabled veterans. We should follow our Founders’ example.
Immigration & Border Security
I do not support amnesty. No one who has come to this country illegally should be allowed to obtain taxpayer benefits. We have an illegal immigration problem because our legal immigration system is seriously flawed, overly bureaucratic and many of our immigration laws have not been enforced.
First, we must secure our borders using every technological tool available and all the manpower necessary, including use of our military forces. This is critical from a national security perspective – particularly in light of the new threats we face from terrorists organizations.
Second, we should replace the current federal laws that allow citizenship via family ties with a work or military service requirement.
Third, we must establish easy-to-use guest worker and high skilled visa programs so that our farmers can get the labor that they need at a reasonable cost (and without the threat of being sued by US Legal Services) and our businesses can get the advanced skilled labor they need for product development. The current programs are so bureaucratic and costly they contribute significantly to our illegal immigration problem.
We cannot grow the economy and create a stronger, more vibrant middle class without the high skilled labor necessary for product development, which is so important to creating wealth, and the low skilled labor needed to keep our food supply from rotting in the field.
Fourth, we should reform our welfare programs so that only the invalid can obtain benefits. Everyone who is able-bodied must work. Our welfare programs and entitlement culture are the primary reasons why employers have such a hard time finding people who are qualified and want to work.
Education
I believe that control of education needs to be in the hands of parents, teachers and principals at the local level. The federal government should get out of the way and let the states do what is best for their local school officials so that every child receives a quality education.
I believe we should return to the fundamentals of learning with a focus on critical thinking rather than the reciting of facts and figures that are forgotten soon after the test. If a student has learned how to think through issues and problems thoroughly, couple that with personal initiative and they will be able to achieve anything.
We also need to make sure that our teachers are taken care of and have the tools to be successful. My mother taught in public schools for 40 years and I learned through her, and friends in the teaching profession, the many significant challenges our teachers face today. Teachers should be allowed to focus on educating our students, not bogged down with paperwork and testing. We need to encourage our best and brightest to enter the teaching profession and reward them for their success.
Healthcare
There is no question that our health care system needs to be reformed.
Even before Obamacare, we had too much government intervention and control — the very reason why health care costs continue to increase at exponential rates. This is one of the primary threats to long-term economic growth in this country.
Obamacare must be repealed, and our healthcare system significantly reformed in order to bring down the cost of individual health care. We must enact free market reforms in order to increase competition among health insurance companies, attract more of the very best and brightest to the health care profession, and increase transparency if we expect to reduce the cost of health care. We must also have medical malpractice reform so that doctors aren’t practicing defense medicine by adding unnecessary tests that drive up costs as they guard themselves against potential lawsuit.
Increased health care costs not only hurt working families, but also are putting a major pinch on all taxpayers in the form of increasing costs of Medicare and Medicaid. The less costly health care is, the less costly Medicare and Medicaid will become. Medicare and Medicaid are important programs that we must preserve and to do that, we must address the systematic problems facing both programs. Otherwise, the cost of these two government-run programs will be unsustainable and will require a significant increase in taxes to pay for even fewer benefits than recipients of these programs currently receive today.