Issues

I believe Missouri has taken a courageous step in putting the Missouri Health Care Freedom Act on the August 3rd Primary. Missouri will be the first state in the country to ask voters to support or refute the recently passed national health care program.

I personally do not support the health care bill that was passed in Washington. The health care problem is very complicated. Three issues dominate the problem: cost, access, and availability. Washington would like you to believe they solved the problem. I believe what really happened is they dealt with access and hope, as a result, that cost would come down with more paying customers. Cost and availability are supply and demand inputs. We will have increased the amount of people seeking health care by 15 to 30 million people. We currently do not have more doctors, nurses, and hospitals to meet the demand. If demand is increased and availability is constrained cost will go up.

The Government will not want to see costs go up because that will not be politically palatable or financially feasible with our continued deficit spending. The forced result of the increased demand on limited supply will be efforts to control what the system pays health care professionals. That decision will affect the amount of people who want to provide health care services. In essence, we will have the illusion of access because everyone will be able to see the doctor. However, when the doctor prescribes a treatment, we will then be limited by availability of staff or facilities in seeking access to the treatment.

I would like to see our Federal Government address the problem with a focus on all three dominant concerns instead of focusing on just access.

We in Missouri have the opportunity to tell Washington what we really think by voting August 3rd.

Arizona could not afford to wait on Washington to fulfill its responsibility along the border. The most important duty of our federal government is to protect us from foreign and domestic threats.

We are a nation of immigrants; in fact, my grandfather immigrated from Greece. He came here legally and worked very hard to become an American. He did not identify himself as a Grecian-American: He was an American. He taught his children that they needed to speak English to the point that my mother only knows a few words of Greek.

Those who come here illegally must never be granted amnesty. In most cases they should be sent back to their home country. Choosing to learn English and volunteering to serve in our armed forces might provide a path for some to earn the right to be a United States citizen. I envision this option for those children who were brought here by their parents at a young age and have attended our schools but are still considered illegal aliens.

Because human life is sacred, I am committed to protecting the most vulnerable in our society. No group is more vulnerable or more worthy of protection than unborn children. From the point of conception until our last breath on earth life is sacred and should be protected. Abortion is currently a federal issue. I support measures on a state level that can protect more unborn children.

The sanctity of life is not only an abortion issue; it also can deal with end-of-life issues. I am against assisted suicide. An individual can choose how to treat or not treat a problem on his or her own, but a doctor should not, in any way, be asked to step into the role of executioner. I am sure that most all doctors who would help in these cases would do it out of compassion. However, I fear the few that would warp the process or distort this illusion of power into something we don’t want to imagine.

The death penalty should be eliminated. I would hate to be the juror who recommended someone be put to death and later found out DNA had exonerated the person. We can incarcerate without the chance of parole. I know that for me that would be a great punishment, an even greater punishment than death.

Too often we judge success in education based on what we put into the system instead of what we get out of it. That means we focus too much on how much to spend in stead of how to spend it. We need more education dollars to go directly into our classrooms, with a focus on more for teachers and less for administration. Currently Kearney , Missouri, is ranked one of the top schools in the state, yet Kearney R-1 achieves this success with less money than its peers in the surrounding area. Dollars are not all of the answer; they are part of it. Parental involvement, student engagement, and teacher competence make up the majority of the success formula. Insuring all three ingredients for success are there will create a good opportunity for our students to excel.

I will work to reduce paperwork for educators and provide liability protection so educators spend less time worrying about being sued. I will also support greater investment in technology.

I support a spending cap on state spending that limits the growth of state spending to population growth and inflation. I would implement this in conjunction with Missouri’s balanced budget provisions. This would force discipline into the spending process. I also hope that it would move us thinking longer term rather than one year at a time.

Government does not do well preparing for the rainy day. They regularly project continued growth to produce their budget figures. We can no longer afford to think short term, one year to the next. The lack of fiscal discipline on the federal level is going to influence decisions here in Missouri. We must prepare to do more things with fewer dollars.

The 10th Amendment affords stated the sovereignty to give precedence to state priorities over federal priorities. If the federal government continues to force states to add billions of dollars in state funds to mandates bureaucratically controlled by Washington, like Medicaid, we should assert our state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment and give financial primacy to state concerns.