BJ Lawson on the Issues

If you don't know much about BJ Lawson, then I recommend checking out this questionnaire conducted by a local newspaper before the primary. I'll post the first question and answer, which should give you an idea of what he's about:

1. What do you believe are the most important issues facing your U.S. House district, the state of North Carolina and the nation? If elected, what are your top three priorities in addressing those issues?

With our grocery bills and gas prices skyrocketing, jobs going overseas, basic services like healthcare and good education becoming less accessible, and people working two or more lower-paying jobs just to keep up, the greatest problem we face is an economy and financial system that have been hijacked by an out-of-control federal government whose interests are no longer separate from corporate and special interests.

Our reckless legislators make endless promises to get re-elected, and our bankrupt federal government prints paper dollars to pay for promises we can’t afford. Even the supposed benefits themselves don’t help – instead of helping the average American, most federal “benefits” end up helping well-connected special and corporate interests.

Washington has proven more corrupt and less effective as it has consolidated power and grown tremendously over the past several decades. It is time to transition to a federal government that focuses on the specific duties enumerated in our Constitution.

Instead of always giving more power to Washington, and always looking to Washington for “help”, it is time to keep more resources in our state and localities to address our challenges. We cannot keep sending more money and power to Washington for the pleasure of lobbyists and bureaucrats and expect better results.

My first priority is to fix our broken economy. Instead of printing more money for “stimulus” packages, we must balance our budget, stop pretending we can afford to police the world at our expense, and eliminate corporate welfare and unconstitutional spending that benefits special interests. We must eliminate the IRS and its 67,000 pages of job-killing regulations that punish productivity, entrepreneurship, saving, and investment. Instead, we should consider a uniform, progressive national sales tax such as the FairTax. We must also eliminate overreaching and counterproductive regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley that drive jobs and investment overseas. We must also provide choices in our monetary system so that American workers and savers are not trapped in a paper currency that is losing its purchasing power at an alarming rate. (It’s not that groceries are more valuable, your dollars just buy fewer groceries.)

My next priority is to reform health care by taking it back from corporate and government bureaucracies, and retuning it to patients and providers. Government subsidies and regulations have promoted the interests of big drug and insurance companies and managed care providers while increasing costs, limiting choices, and leaving far too many without coverage. Our current system is better termed “corporatecare” than healthcare, and neither patients nor doctors are happy with the results. Health care reform is also essential to revitalizing the economy, as soaring health care costs are squeezing businesses and consumers alike and reducing the competitiveness of the U.S. economy in a global market.

My final priority is to approach every issue, and every vote, with the goal of restoring a Constitutional federal government. That means restoring our recently sacrificed civil liberties, ending federal tyranny over public education, pursuing a just and sustainable legal immigration policy, and ensuring our safety and security through a rational foreign policy and strong national defense.

We need to change the definition of a “good Representative”. Our Congressman should not win praise for bringing federal dollars back to the Fourth District. Instead, our Congressman should win praise for pursuing a federal government that follows the Constitution, serves only the people’s interests, and does so with the least amount of the people’s money leaving the Fourth District in the first place.

Read the rest - I highly recommend it!