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| 10/30/2008 10:51:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | |
| | Kagen: Opponent is a career politician who’ll say anything for votes | Incumbent 8th District Congressman Steve Kagen, a Democrat, says this year's election gives voters a powerful contrast between an outsider like himself and his challenger, Republican John Gard, whom Kagen says is the ultimate political insider.
"Two-and-a-half years ago, for the first time in my life, I ran for public office because I felt, like most people, we needed a positive change and a new direction," Kagen told The Lakeland Times. "I worked real hard to bring about all the changes we need, like lowering our energy costs, making sure we get access for everyone to affordable health care, and restoring our economy to the world class jobs-producing economy it should be."
Gard, he says, is just the opposite.
"I'm running against a career politician who will say anything and do anything just to get elected," Kagen said. "He does not support the middle class. He voted against a minimum wage increase three times (in the Assembly). There are differences on Social Security: he wants to privatize it; I want to protect it. In Iraq, he wants to continue our wasteful government spending there for an unlimited period of time, and I think it's time for them to build their own country."
In addition, Kagen says he can relate to small business owners in a way a career politician cannot.
"I'm a businessman and I understand all the challenges involved in running a business and employing people, while John Gard has never been in business other than feeding at the public trough," Kagen said.
Specific issues
Kagen placed the current financial crisis and $700 billion bailout in the context of what he called an economy in transition.
"We are at the end of the road of a failed economic policy that's called borrow-and-spend and it is the policy of the current administration," he said. "We also have failed trade deals, so in order to restore our economy - in particular the middle class - we have to provide tax cuts to the middle class, and we have to have an easing of the credit crisis."
The representative said the bailout was nothing less than a reward for the failed economic policies of Wall Street.
"So it was what I called DOA, Dead on Arrival," he said. "The big picture today is this: You are witnessing the rewriting of the rules of capitalism. If I ask anybody in the 8th congressional district if they would have ever expected to see George Bush nationalizing the housing industry, nationalizing Wall Street and now nationalizing our banks by taking equity positions in them, you would have thought I was from another world. But that's exactly what's going on, and the sad part of it is, when this policy got put into action, there are no regulations to prevent the banks from paying off their own CEOs with golden parachutes or by acquiring other banks."
And, he says, that's exactly what they are planning to do with our federal tax dollars. There's a better way, Kagen says.
"One thing we can do is change the accounting rules," he said. "This is complex but terribly important. If you're a company like Ford or GM, you have to mark your assets to the market. Well that's fine if there is a marketplace, but in times like this where there is no market, it's impossible to fairly judge your assets. It locks up liquidity. You can't live without money."
Kagen said he was glad that FDIC insurance limits were increased to cover deposits up to $250,000 from $100,000 so the confidence of people in their banks would be restored.
"I would remind readers that no one has lost a dime in FDIC-insured accounts," he said.
Kagen said the banking crisis of the 1980s was just as bad as the current crisis; 13,000 banks failed, he said. But, he asserted, taxpayers didn't bailout the banks then. Instead, the government used $1.8 billion of the FDIC insured fund so there was zero tax dollars involved.
"That kind of strategy is exactly the kind of strategy that should have been taken now," Kagen says. "Over the past decade we have been living high off the hog on foreign investment money. In other words, the money that was in your pockets a few months ago came from China, the Middle East and countries like Kuwait, which is a kingdom we saved. Even so, they would not loan us any money back. When foreign investors decided not to invest in our debt, our banking system, our machinery, almost came to a stop and as a consequence the Federal Reserve and treasury department sounded the alarm and came to Congress and shook down Congress to the tune of $700 billion."
That didn't sit well with him, Kagen said, because he has always believed "pigs should go to slaughter, not to Congress for a bailout."
As for Gard's charges that Kagen voted to weaken regulation, which in turn helped mortgage lenders dump loads of bad debt on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Kagen said it simply wasn't true.
"When it comes to Fannie and Freddie and regulation, they are paying their bills," Kagen said. "When the Republicans were in charge of Congress and the White House in 2005, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, Mike Oxley, put together a bill to toughen up the regulations on securitizations and mortgages and to regulate the banks. It passed the house, and Oxley went to the White House to convince President Bush to sign it and this is what he had to say recently about that visit: 'All the hand-wringing and bedwetting is going on without remembering how the House stepped in. And what did we get from the White House? We got a one-fingered salute.
"It was Bush and Alan Greenspan that dumped on Fannie and Freddie, not the Congress," Kagen said.
Budget
The Democratic representative said he was shocked to learn that 80 to 85 percent of American households have net assets of zero or less.
"That should be a wake up call, " Kagen said. "More than anything, that should tell people we are spending more than we are saving, not just at the federal government level but at the state and local level and in our homes. We have to create federal policies that will reward saving rather than spending. We have to balance our federal books like we do around the kitchen table in our homes here in Wisconsin."
Kagen also said Gard's opposition to earmarks was bad public policy.
"What he is promising is that he will not do anything to bring back your federal tax dollars once they are sent to Washington," he said. "When I was elected to office, I looked around and one of the most amazing numbers I found was that we weren't getting our fair share of tax dollars. I worked very hard and I am proud that I have brought back millions of dollars, not in earmarks, but in investments."
Besides, he said, Congress has changed the way the earmark system works.
"We changed the rules in Congress so that no Congressperson can get an earmark unless you make that request - and it comes from your mayors and county organizations - and stand by it and justify it and get a vote on it in the House and get a vote on it in committee, and that's what I did," Kagen said.
Kagen said he had helped the mayor of Peshtigo obtain $492,000 in federal dollars to meet a federal mandate to clean up its drinking water.
"So what did I do?" Kagen said. "I lowered their taxes and provided them with clean drinking water. That's what a congressman is supposed to do and John Gard has promised he won't even try to bring back your federal dollars."
Kagen also said Gard's position on taxes was just so much rhetoric, offered up by a career politician.
"Well guess what?" Kagen said. "(In the Assembly) he voted to raise taxes on gasoline. He raised our fees for hunting and fishing. He raised taxes 14 times in the State House. So everything he says he is, he's not."
Kagen said Gard's charge that he had voted for massive tax increases was equally untrue.
"I am the taxpayers' best friend," Kagen said. "When I went to Congress, we enacted pay-as-you-go rules. It worked when Clinton was in office, and it means any bill that comes before the House must be paid for. You're going to have to cut another program or find a way to pay for it."
Kagen said he voted to prevent 63,000 households from paying increased income taxes, voted to permanently repeal the estate tax, voted for the deduction of health insurance for the self-employed, voted for an adoption tax credit, voted to ensure that small businesses could expense their capital investments over seven rather than 10 years, and voted to maintain the marriage credit, the earned income credit, and the child tax credit.
He said he could support a Balanced Budget Amendment but cautioned against opening up the constitution to multiple amendments and said the same objectives could be accomplished with pay-as-you-go laws.
Energy
Kagen cast aside as inaccurate Gard's charges that he was against drilling for domestic oil.
"Let me set the facts straight," he said. "I'm in favor of drilling for oil, and I'm especially a proponent of drilling for natural gas. We've got some natural gas supplies in the country that will last for a hundred years and we need to tap into those supplies as rapidly as possible and we should also invest in the infrastructure in this country to make it possible to power our diesel trucks with natural gas. It's 90 percent cheaper than diesel, cleaner, more plentiful and it's homegrown."
Kagen said he passed a bill to increase drilling by the greatest amount at any one time in the nation's history.
"But I do believe, and I wrote the bill, that oil that we obtain from our shores or territorial waters must be sold to Americans first," he said. "After all, it's a natural resource."
Kagen said he does not support drilling in ANWAR, the natural preserve in Alaska, but he said that does not mean he's opposed to Alaskan oil drilling.
"We have two reserves of oil in Alaska - ANWAR, where the experts in President Bush's own energy department said if we drill in it will decrease gas prices 10 to 15 years from now by one penny - but there's an oil reserve right next door to it, just a few miles way from the pipeline, and I think we ought to be drilling where the oil is and where we already have land leased."
As for oil companies already holding leases to drill, Kagen said the federal government needs to tell them to start drilling or surrender the lease so the government can sell it elsewhere.
The congressman also said all forms of renewable energy should be on the table for development, including nuclear energy.
"Whether it's biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear - we have to allow our creativeness and drive, our privatization, so to speak, of our commercial products of all forms of renewable energy to take root and to give them tax incentives," he said.
Kagen said the biggest pushback against nuclear power is that it's not economically feasible without government support.
"That may be true," he said, "but government should help support our energy industry. Energy is the biggest component of making paper besides people and raw materials, and look at China - they give the energy away to their paper mills and they can compete with us unfairly - so I think our government should be very actively interested in research and development of new technologies, including nuclear. We should not take anything off the table."
That's important, he said, because energy independence is critical.
"The most important thing we can do for our own national security is to become energy independent. and especially independent of Middle Eastern Arab nations who are not our friends," he said.
In the interview, Kagen touched on high gas prices, saying speculation in oil markets played a role, but he said the real culprit was OPEC.
"I'm against market manipulation anywhere in the world, but the United States is the only nation that believes there's a free market in oil," Kagen said. "Every other nation has nationalized their oil, OPEC controls the supply and determines the price. That's not a market-based economy, but we've been tolerating that. I brought up a bill that would break up OPEC and make them compete with each other."
Health care:
In health care, Kagen said constitutional rights need to be extended to a citizen's body.
"The way to change the health care economy is to implement a constitutional ban against discrimination, and apply it to your body and previous health conditions," he said. "To guarantee universal access to affordable health care, you have to have a law that says no insurance company can discriminate against any citizen due to a pre-existing condition. If they can't discriminate against you based on the color of your skin, then what about the chemistry of your skin? If an insurance company cannot discriminate against you because of what you are thinking, then what about the chemistry of your mind? Once we apply our constitutional rights to the health care industry, we can guarantee universal access to affordable health care."
By compelling insurance companies to accept everyone, and to openly disclose their prices, the cost of health care can be leveraged down for everyone, he says.
One thing Kagen says won't work is a program Gard likes - Health Savings Accounts.
"No amount of money you have in the bank in an HSA will lower the price of a pill," he said. "Saving is great, but saving money in a piggy bank or a real bank is by itself not going the change the health care economy. Look where we are at today. The cost of health care is through the roof. The latest number is that 72 million citizens are having difficulty paying their medical bills or their prescription drugs. When you've got 72 million out of 300 million unable to afford it, that's when the government has to get involved to reshape the marketplace."
Trade
Kagen says he is for balanced trade.
"The language people have been using is about free trade," he said. "But we see what free trade did to us. NAFTA and CAFTA-styled trade agreements, what did they do - they sent our jobs overseas to Mexico, then it was a hop, skip and a jump to China, and now they are leaving China and going to Vietnam. They are chasing the lowest cost of production."
Kagen says balanced trade means than when China sails a ship loaded with $50 million of its goods for America, they should have to take on $50 million worth of our produce.
Some of that trade needs to be intangible, he said.
"The most important thing is, we have to ship our values overseas, not our jobs," he said. "Our model of capitalism has failed. We have lost in the battle, without firing a single shot, to corporate governance in Asia because in Asia the corporate governments are communist nations. The government is the corporation. What company - General Motors, Ford - what company, as we knew capitalism to be, what company can compete against a corporate government? There's an old saying, if you can't beat them, join them, and I expect what's happening unwittingly is the current administration is, instead of trying to beat them, trying to join them. They are nationalizing many sectors of our economy, so we're going through a metamorphosis without really having a debate about it, and that's what happened when all the fear mongers came in and shook down the Congress for almost a trillion dollars."
Thus, Kagen said, it is important to have a representative who won't cow tow to those influences.
"We need a congressman who is hardworking and tough and who can't be bought and that's exactly who I am," he said. "I'm an outsider to this game. John Gard is a career politician. It's the only job he's ever known. He can't change Washington and won't even try."
Immigration
On immigration, Gard's charges notwithstanding, Kagen says he voted to fund border fences to secure our national borders.
"He can say what's he wants, but the truth is the truth and I did vote for funding our border fences," Kagen said. "I'm very much in favor of obeying and enforcing all of our laws. John Gard is the one who takes campaign cash from employers who hire illegal immigrants, not me, so he's on the side of big oil, illegal employers and big insurance companies."
The reality is, Kagen said, the border fence can only do so much.
"Let's face it," he said. "You've got a 40-foot fence, soon you'll have a 41-foot ladder coming up against it. I suggested moving our National Guard from Iraq to guard our borders, and he's against that, and he's not for enforcing our laws by prosecuting illegal employers."
Social issues:
This year, Kagen received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, and he says it's an honor.
"The NRA recognizes my hard work to protect our Second Amendment rights," Kagen said. "I did take an oath to uphold the constitution, and I think I am doing that and I'm honored to have their recognition and their strong support. They support me not just with their endorsement but with campaign contributions."
The Second Amendment right is a core American principle, he said.
"It's fundamental," he said, "and if you take a look we have a culture here of outdoors activities, including hunting and fishing, and I think we ought to maintain that tradition and not let the government get in the way of that."
Kagen is also pro-choice.
"When it comes to big government getting involved in your health-care decisions, I'm like everyone else across America and Wisconsin, in that I don't feel abortion should be used as a means of birth control, but at the same time I understand, not just as a father but as a physician, that it must be available for safe and hopefully limited circumstances."
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Kagen, Gard on the issues
Gard points to fundamental policy differences with Kagen
The Republican candidate for the 8th District congressional seat in Wisconsin, John Gard, is making his second attempt to win the seat in a rematch with incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen - an election Gard says is a replay of two critically different approaches to government.
"I just believe I will do a better job," Gard says. "I will fight against tax hikes. I will get immigration under control. I will ensure that we have much more accountability and oversight in government so you won't see the economic disaster that a lot of families are experiencing right now."
It boils down, he says, to fundamentally different policy outlooks.
"On drilling, there's a fundamental difference - I support drilling and Steve Kagen doesn't," Gard said. "On taxes I support lower taxes and he supports higher taxes, and he has voted that way. He said he would end the federal deficit; he's voted to more than double it. By almost any measure, people are worse off now than they were two years ago. Steve Kagen promised to be different and he's just been more of the same."
Gard said he wants to be held accountable for his votes and will provide a more effective voice for northern Wisconsin.
"He voted 95 percent of the time with Nancy Pelosi," Gard says. "It's like giving San Francisco a second seat in the House of Representatives. I believe there is a great moment coming. We're going to have a new president and a lot of new members in both houses. The public has been reawakened. I think there is a moment here that we haven't seen in some time to take the nation in a new direction and my belief is that would be limited government, lower taxes, a vibrant private sector and job base, and, on social issues, a respect for life. On all of these issues, Steve Kagen and I couldn't be more different."
Finally, Gard says, he believes he has a better sense of the people's needs in northern Wisconsin.
"When I become a member of Congress, I'm going to create an office in this area so it's not something that people show up once a month to get a picture," he said. "We're going to have a working office in the northern part of the district so people will have access to me and my staff on a daily basis."
Specific issues
Gard said he would have opposed the recent $700 billion bailout of financial institutions.
"I would have voted against the bailout, but what people should really be angry about is that there was a need for a bailout in the first place," Gard said. "At the root of all the problems in the country were the fraudulent and irresponsible actions in the mortgage and home markets."
Gard says Kagen voted on three different occasions to enable those actions to take place.
"Steve Kagen in May 2007 joined other members of Congress and voted to weaken the regulations on Fannie Mae, in effect increasing the amount of bad debt that taxpayers are saddled with," he said. "Then in January 2008 a number of shady characters around the country realized they were holding bad debt and so they went and lobbied Steve Kagen and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, and they got them to pass a law to increase the loan limits that Fannie Mae could accept."
What that meant, Gard said, was that Fannie Mae could now could guarantee or secure a mortgage up to $780,000 rather than the previous limit of $420,000.
"They passed a law to lift that limit up and made it retroactive for six months," Gard said. "What that means is Congress took a step to increase the amount of bad debt that got dumped on Fannie Mae and guaranteed by the taxpayers."
That, Gard said, led to Kagen's July 23 vote to bailout Fannie Mae.
"Steve Kagen took three actions to harm taxpayers," Gard said. "He voted to weaken regulations, he voted to increase bad debt and ultimately to bail out Fannie Mae. Steve Kagen promised to be different. He promised to make things better, but instead he made things worse."
Gard said greed and excess took over, and then Congress bailed them out on the backs of average Americans.
"People were greedy, people were trying to get higher returns on investments, in the banks and on all Wall Street, and the average person - the middle class - is getting left with the down side. The public took all the risk and the private guys got all the gain, and it's irresponsible. That's part of the reason people should be enraged and vote to throw the bums out this fall."
As for the future, Gard said it is clear that regulations have not kept pace with the changing nature of financial products in the world market.
"The government will need to establish much tougher regulations on investment banks and these financial products to protect the retirees and protect the people who expected that their investments were safe," he said. "We need to restore confidence. The people who are paying the highest price are those who are nearing retirement or who have retired with the expectation that their investments were safe and who lost a whole bunch of money. That changes their lives immediately, and they do not have earning capacity left to rebuild."
Gard said he also feared that, with the $700 billion bailout, too much power had been concentrated in the hands of a single individual: the treasury secretary.
Fiscal and budget issues
Gard said he would pledge never to ask for any congressional earmarks.
"There's an old saying that if you take care of the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves," he said. "Two years ago, Steve Kagen said he would balance the federal budget, enact pay-as-you-go legislation, wouldn't raise taxes, and end earmark spending. Since he has been there he has voted for spending that has more than doubled the federal deficit, voted for a massive tax hike - that didn't get passed - supported more than 12,000 earmarks, and he's right in the middle of all this unethical behavior where they add all of this spending to bills in order to get people to vote for them."
Gard said if confidence is to be restored and if the spending side of government is to be controlled, earmark spending must be ended. As an example, Gard said Kagen was extolling the virtues of a federal farming bill but that 70 percent of that legislation had nothing to do with farming.
"There's $170 million in subsidies for salmon fishing in San Francisco and $70 million in subsidies for thoroughbred race horses in Kentucky in the so-called farm bill," Gard said.
Gard said he could not be more politically different than U.S. Senator Russ Feingold but that Feingold has never asked for an earmark.
"I believe if there are enough of us, we can clean up a lot of this behavior," Gard said. "If you're going to fix Social Security, if you're going to fix Medicare, which I believe we can do, we have to stop this over-the-top wasteful, unethical earmark spending and other practices that have flourished in the Congress under Steve Kagen. He simply did not keep his word. He promised to be different and it's just been more of the same."
Gard said he has pledged never to support an income tax increase.
"When you look at the amount of income that the government takes from people's pockets right now, the average person works until almost the end of May before they start keeping their own money," he said. "When you add in state taxes, local taxes, property taxes and fees, government takes a big enough piece of the pie right now. And if people raise taxes, I guarantee you the government will spend more money."
Gard said the United States was already the second highest taxed industrialized country in the world, and, given the state of the economy, it would be an especially bad time to raise taxes.
"The ultimate goal of any tax policy must be to stimulate economic growth and behavior," he said.
Kagen's policies went in the opposite direction, he said. Kagen, he said, had voted to raise taxes on all income tax brackets.
"I support capital gains tax reductions, but on any tax reduction we have to make sure we stay focused on middle-income brackets and make sure those people have more money in their pockets and that not all the tax breaks are targeted to the highest incomes," he said.
There are a variety of things we can do, he said, such as a series of job growth initiatives, eliminating taxes on exports to make those products more competitive, and targeted tax breaks to middle-income earners.
The Republican candidate also supports a balanced budget amendment.
Energy policy
On oil and energy, Gard said he favors environmentally safe drilling in Alaska while his opponent has voted against efforts to increase the domestic oil supply.
"My plan would be to drill for American oil on American soil, or off our coastlines, in an environmentally responsible way and reduce our dependence on foreign oil," Gard said. "Steve Kagen's only action has been to bring forth a bill to sue OPEC. Somehow he believes we're going to find a court where Saudi Arabia would agree to forego their sovereign nation status and allow us to sue them."
The reality is, he said, every permit application for drilling in the last four years is being held up in court by groups such as the Sierra Club.
"All of this hurts the average consumer, or anybody who is in manufacturing or the logging industry where there is a lot of fuel use to create products," Gard said.
He said Alaskan drilling could yield as much as $200 billion in leasing rights, a big portion of which he says he would invest in renewable and alternative fuel development.
"You wouldn't have to raise rates on electricity and you wouldn't have to raise taxes," Gard said. "You would have this windfall of dollars that we could keep in America, and we could become the leader in alternative fuels or renewable energy sources down the road."
Gard said he's a big proponent of nuclear power.
"It's cleaner and it's cheaper long term, and you don't have to rely on all kinds of other countries," he said. "Right now 20 percent of Wisconsin's power is nuclear generated. We need to expand that. The other thing is, those facilities would be built with Wisconsin jobs and Wisconsin materials."
Gard said Kagen voted for an energy initiative last year - which President Bush signed into law - that did not include nuclear power.
The Suamico Republican said he believes scientists and companies are getting very close to making big breakthroughs in electric-powered vehicles.
"When we do that, we need additional electrical generation, and nuclear is the easiest and quickest way to do it, if the government will do what we need to do with permitting those facilities," he said. "For some reason the Democratic-controlled Congress won't let us touch nuclear, and I would argue that Steve Kagen had his chance and did not lift a finger."
Oil speculation is a problem, too, Gard said, and believes there should be an increase in the amount of equity somebody takes when purchasing a barrel of oil.
"All this paper trading is driving up the price and there's no risk involved," he said. "Some people who were somewhat greedy were making a lot of money without ever taking ownership of the product, and Main Street Wisconsin was left holding the bag. With a lot of commodities you have to take 50 percent ownership but for some reason with oil you don't. That change will significantly improve stability in the marketplace and keep prices more stable."
On trade, Gard said the nation has to be more aggressive in enforcing anti-dumping provisions.
"For some reason, the Congress and the federal government pay lip service to it," he said. "They will go to a union rally and talk tough, but realistically they don't do much to stop it."
Part of the reason we don't act tougher with China, Gard argues, is because Congress has spent so much money - and consequently owes so much of our national debt to China - that they have lost some of their leverage in dealing with that country.
"Eighty to eighty-five percent of our trade problems are with countries we have no trade agreements with," he said. "Seventy percent of the trade deficit is oil. Now Steve Kagen hasn't allowed us to drill. He will talk tough and criticize China, but the brutal reality is that he even said, on two occasions this year, that he believes we should sell our strategic oil reserves to China."
Gard says the United States does not understand what it takes to compete.
"We've got to reduce taxes, and we've got to get our energy policy together so we are not beholden to OPEC," he said.
And Gard says no one is serious about free trade, perhaps talking tough about NAFTA but doing nothing about it. He also said Democrats killed a Colombian free trade agreement, even though that nation places massive tariffs on U.S. exports, while Colombian imports such as coffee face no tariffs from the United States.
"Nobody wants to have a conversation about fair trade," Gard said. "It is unfair to Americans. The Colombian free trade agreement would have torn down those tariffs on U.S. goods and in many ways would have been helpful to Green Bay and northeastern Wisconsin."
So what is the response of U.S. manufacturers?
"The way you get around tariffs is you go build factories and facilities in those countries," Gard said. "And that's what's happening."
Immigration
Gard says Kagen voted to give illegal immigrants free public health care and free housing, and he believes that's a misuse of taxpayer dollars.
"Like President Reagan used to say, if you subsidize something, there's just going to be more of it, and I believe his votes have led to higher rates of illegal immigration," Gard says. "I believe you need to secure the border and build confidence in the public that we are going to get serious about making people come here legally."
On the issue of the fence, Gard said Kagen voted against fully funding the fence, even though he said in the last campaign that he would fully support it.
Gard says he doesn't think Americans are ready to have a discussion on how to deal with illegal immigrants who are already here until they see that Congress is serious about securing the border, and that they have no confidence in that right now.
Health care
Gard says that two years ago, Kagen said he had a great health care plan called No Patient Left Behind and that he would introduce a bill to enact it on the first day of Congress.
"Here we are, 18 days before the next election, and he's never put it into writing," Gard said. "He broke his promise. He never brought it forward. It's one of those things that sounds good in front of a rally, but he didn't keep his word about bringing any serious health care bill forward."
The only thing Kagen did do, Gard says, was support legislation that Gard argues would have driven up health insurance rates for more than 30 percent of the nation's small businesses.
Gard says there are a couple of major things we can do in health care policy.
"The goal of health care reform should be to make sure people are healthy," he says. "Any reforms thus have to be patient-centered. So when you're going to see a doctor, when that doctor walks in the room and wants to prescribe a procedure, it's the patient and the doctor who make that decision, not outside groups trying to influence that decision."
Any other reforms must be built around that fundamental principle, he said.
He supports Health Savings Accounts and likes John McCain's idea that anybody buying health insurance - small businesses included - can do so with pre-tax dollars, though he does not like McCain's plan to start taxing employer provided health insurance premiums, which are not now taxed.
He also supports federal liability reform, and he thinks the federal government should "bock-grant' Medicaid to the states. Right now, he says, 60 percent of all government health care aid is federal money but millions are thrown away in wasteful spending.
"I believe the federal government should say, 'OK this is what we're going to spend on Medicaid, and we're going to block grant that back to the states and let them run any health care program they want that meets the needs of those low- and middle-income folks," Gard said.
Gard says the maze of federal regulations required to receive the federal money causes significant cost shifting and does not often lead to the proper care being delivered.
Finally, Gard says we need to emphasize prevention more.
Social issues
Gard said he is 100-percent pro-life.
"I think we have a responsibility to protect the least among us," he said. "You do it in two ways. You change the laws but you also lead by example and change hearts and minds and convince more and more people that an unborn child is a living human being."
On the other hand, he said, Kagen voted to use taxpayer money to perform abortions, voted to use taxpayer dollars to promote abortion and was supported by the most radical abortion groups in America.
On gun issues, Gard says he was disappointed he did not get this year's NRA endorsement - he was the NRA endorsed candidate two years ago - but he wasn't worried because he had the backing of local sportsmen's groups.
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