In North Carolina’s 13th District race, Rep. Brad Miller, a Democrat, is seeking a fifth term, while political newcomer, Bill Randall, a former U.S. Naval officer, is on the campaign trail on the Republican ticket.
We posed the same questions to both candidates, and these are their responses.
What do you think about the state of health care, particularly in light of the health care overhaul recently passed, in this country?
Something had to give. Health care costs in the United States are twice what they are in other countries, and Americans don’t live as long and aren’t as healthy.
There are two areas where I think we can save a lot of money. One is by having pretty much standardized care rather than having pretty much every policy be different. Doctors are hospitals are spending billions fighting to get paid. “There will be a common understanding of what it means to have health insurance.” In North Carolina, every car insurance policy is the same. “We don’t have that in health insurance, and it leads to a great deal of frustration and it leads to a great deal of cost. And frequently families are surprised they don’t have coverage for care that they need.”
And, (the recently-passed legislation) will assure people with preexisting conditions will get covered on reasonable terms. “You won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for coverage or simply be unable to find coverage.”
What are your thoughts on Social Security? Is it working? Is it in danger of going bankrupt?
“I certainly do not favor privatization.” Anyone who has followed the stock market in the last two to three years knows when we had a financial crisis … I would be horrified to think the entire Social Security system depended on the stock market. “It should be a rock-solid guarantee.” You have worked your whole life and paid the payroll taxes for Social Security … so that if you’re disabled, you will get benefits and when you reach retirement age, in your old age, you will get retirement benefits. “And your last years should be a time of reward and not a time of financial desperation.”
There’s a possibility that in 30 or 40 years, Social Security will have some trouble paying full benefits, but the system will never go broke. It will probably get to a point where it would be paying 80 percent of benefits. I would rather deal with that by adjusting the tax system so it does not fall exclusively on wages of middle-class families and have those doing better have more income subject. “The reality is there is nothing immediate, there is no immediate danger to the Social Security system.”
What about our nation’s deficit/government spending?
“I am very proud of my votes against the policies that got us in this hole.” A decade ago, we had a surplus and were paying down the debt, “but Republican policies created the deficit that we have now.” I voted against the tax cuts that went largely to the highest-income people. And we took on significant expenses without paying for them – two wars and a Medicare prescription drug plan. Those decisions were “wildly irresponsible and we are going to have to deal with that.” The most important thing is “we have to put America back to work.” Problems stem from the recession and the number of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed; that drives up costs. The first thing we need to do is put American back to work, “but then we absolutely need to deal with the deficit. It’s comical for Republicans to talk about the deficit, because it is their policies that dug this hole.”
What are the solutions to turning around the economy?
We are in the toughest economy that we’ve had since the Great Depression. Several proposals I have supported have been geared to that, including helping with small business lending. They’re usually the ones who create jobs coming out of a recession. They have had a difficult time to get ordinary lending to expand and hire.
Second, we need to deal with immediately, we need to get control of the decline in housing values and the foreclosure crisis. For most middleclass families who own their own home, most of their equity and life savings are tied up in that. Seeing that evaporate, we have to get control of that. Those Americans are not going to buy consumer goods as long as they see their life savings continuing to fall. We have to deal with the foreclosure crisis. “I have worked on that as much as any member of Congress or probably more.”
And longer term issues of trying to protect our manufacturing base … that segment of the economy has been on the decline in particular in Rockingham County for my entire time in Congress, really for the last generation. We’ve seen the county with the most manufacturing jobs in the state, Rockingham County, the highest percentage of manufacturing workforce, just take one hit after another, with tobacco and furniture. And we need to bring manufacturing back. We need to stop giving American companies tax incentives to send our jobs overseas, and in the long term we need to make sure we are creating new jobs by being innovative, bringing the ideas from scientific research to the marketplace. We need to make sure those jobs that come out of American research stay in the United States.
And I’ve been a leading advocate of the community college system in Congress. That’s where people go to get skills for new jobs.
What else do people need to be thinking about this election year?
“I think we need to fix our economy. For a generation, we’ve let our economy be controlled by a small group of people who were looking after themselves and not looking after the country.”
How often do you come back to North Carolina from Washington, D.C.?
Probably 52. I come home just about every weekend, I think all but two or three weekends a year. During the longer periods when Congress is not in session, I’m home continuously and out and about around the district, talking to all the different people.
Have you been able to serve the diverse needs of a diverse district?
They have different interests and points of view, but I have tried to listen to all the points of view and try to understand all the different circumstances people come from. I have liked the fact that it’s a very diverse district, not all one thing, some of it’s urban, some of it’s suburban and some of it’s rural and small town, and I have tried to understand the circumstances and concerns of everybody.
What do you think about the state of health care, particularly in light of the health care overhaul recently passed, in this country?
First of all, I believe the United States of America has the best health care system in the world. Of course there are some challenges and some areas where it could be improved, such as allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. Our community clinics could do more to replicate that. Many models of low-cost, low-overhead, high-efficiency clinics that do a good job across the country, the good ones could be replicated. And tort reform: the insurance lawsuits for malpractice levied against hospitals and practitioners for frivolous issues. We need to narrowly define areas where you can get monetary compensation. It shouldn’t be a situation where people are trying to fraudulently milk the insurance companies. Those costs are passed along to the consumer. Hefty insurance costs have to be passed on.
The health care bill wasn’t about health care, it was about taking over. It needs to be repealed or unfunded. Those that voted in favor did not vote in favor on the basis of knowledge. I want to emphasize that point. “That is a strong point of contention. They absolutely lied if they said they knew what was in it.” The crafters, they admitted that they did not write the bill, that they hired quote, unquote experts to put the verbiage in there for the parameters of the new legislation. So the ones who voted on it certainly did not read it, so that means that they put forth a bill that they had not read and didn’t know the contents. There are still horror stories emerging. They put student loans under the government now. We didn’t know that when it was passed. Also, they told us that the cost would come down; we are now finding the numbers they give the Congressional Budget Office were, let’s just say, wrong. The CBO projects costs based on input it receives from Congress, so if Congress gives hypothetical information, what will the results be? They took those numbers and, based on what Congress gave them, they came up with output that there would be a cost savings, “but it’s just like everything else, if you put in erroneous information, you’re going to get erroneous information.”
They require insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions, but people won’t buy insurance until they have a need, so when they find out they have a lump in their breast or an enlarged heart, they will go and say, ‘I need some insurance now.’ There is no way you can run any kind of business with those conditions. Companies are opting out of covering children. “Ultimately what’s going to happen is private insurance companies will not be able to operate and they’re going to be squeezed out of the market. The public option is oxymoronic; if the government is the only show-and-tell, how is that an option? The health care bill needs to be repealed or at least defunded. If you’re going to lie to the American people about health care, you’ll lie to them about anything.”
What are your thoughts on Social Security? Is it working? Is it in danger of going bankrupt?
I think we need to keep our promise to seniors, those of age 62 and older. For those that are ages 45 to 50, we should encourage them optionally to either take FICA Social Security withholdings and put them in a private account or continue to move toward Social Security. Those 50 to 61, we would probably lean toward putting in Social Security, but would encourage those under 50 to consider private accounts.
“I think that we need to change it, because we cannot sustain the rate of our retirement programs in the out years.”
“I really think we need to revamp entitlement.” That is where the bulk of our debt is, not strictly in government agencies. Social Security is something that we have explicitly or implicitly promised to our seniors, and we shouldn’t change the rules. In no way, shape or form should we go back on that promise. But, it’s something that can’t be sustained. When the program came online, it was never designed to be a sole source of income for seniors; a lot of people don’t realize that today.
If we go back to when it was started, it was intended to be something that would be a source of income for some, a bridge to help them, they even had the age of eligibility set at the upper end. The average life expectancy was below the threshold. They were counting on people not reaching the age. But it was sold to the American people and people got out of the habit of saving. Very few people save like they’re supposed to and put away for retirement. “We have conditioned generations to have this false sense of security with the Social Security program.” It was never intended to provide the sole source of income. “I really believe we need to change the way we do business on that.” We need to encourage people to save in private accounts, and if we don’t do that, we’re going to in a few years, we’re going to approach the national debt being the same thing as the GDP and that is unsustainable. “We need to get a hold of this debt, because it’s killing us.”
What about our nation’s deficit/government spending?
Government spending is interesting. Let’s start with government employees. The average federal employee makes more than twice the average American worker. The average American worker’s salary is about $36,000, while a federal employee makes more than $72,000 a year. “There’s something wrong with that picture.” The number of six-figure salaried federal employees has more than doubled since this administration has taken office. I’m not against six-figure income, “I am against bloated government where people are getting cushy positions in a bureaucracy that is taking care of itself.”
How do you address the issue of too large a government? I like to use an analogy. I am not in favor of across-the-board cuts or cutting government just for the sake of cutting government. I am in favor of getting rid of agencies whose missions are redundant, outdated or inefficient. And so, to show you what I mean, that I am not against government in general, let’s say you have a private industry. If you have two individuals that have electronics stores, and one store sells eight-track players and cassette players and phonographs in the year 2010. And then you have another electronics store, they’ve gotten into Blu-Ray and digital and mp3 and into all kinds of technology. Now, with the first store, even though you have a business that is striving to make an honest living, they are selling products that people don’t want or need, and their time has come and gone. “They did not change with the times.” Why should they remain in business? On the other hand, the store that’s got the latest technology, they are providing a great service. If you liken those to government agencies, if I were to do 20 percent cuts in their budgets, that’s not fair. We may want to increase funding because they’re doing such an outstanding job. A government agency that’s working should be supported on its own merit. After review, we’ll see if what they’re doing is outdated or not meeting needs. We would need to scale them back or need to consolidate them or cut them all together.
And, we need to examine our entitlement programs. Social Security is a big one. We need to rethink the way we handle entitlement programs; if we don’t, “we’re going to go under financially.”
What are the solutions to turning around the economy?
The North Carolina 13th Congressional District is composed of seven counties. And the thing that really has to be understood is that the General Assembly, the North Carolina House and Senate, are going to have a big influence on the economy in North Carolina. The governor of South Carolina has gone on record as saying that the best thing that has happened for the South Carolina economy is the tax rate in North Carolina. We have the highest tax rate of all the states in the Southeast. “A liberal General Assembly has really tied the hands of what people can do as far as this state is concerned. The General Assembly is going to have to change the conditions and change the tax rate in this state.”
We’re not going to attract business otherwise.
At the federal level, the two main things will be, No. 1, work to reduce the excessive level of taxation. “We’re being killed with taxes.” The Bush tax cuts expire in 2011, and those cuts amounted to $1.5 trillion. It is estimated unofficially that the tax revenue generated was $30 trillion to $40 trillion. Taking those numbers at face value, you can see it is definitely worthwhile for government to reduce the burden of taxes.
Tax cuts for America’s wealthiest – everybody benefits, there’s “nobody in the upper level of income that doesn’t impact people below them. If you’re taking more of their money, they’re going to have less activity and offer fewer services. “We demonize people that have money. …(But) no one has ever been hired by a poor person.”
“It’s absolutely shameful the way we have elevated the rhetoric of class warfare.”
What does it mean to be a favorite of the Tea Party?
I want people to know I believe that the Tea Party has gotten a bad rap. On two fronts, one being labeled racist, and I have been at Tea Party rallies across the Congressional District and I have yet to see overt racism at any of the rallies. I have seen more racial rhetoric at liberal rallies, but conservatives aren’t demonizing the liberal rallies.
The other thing is, it has been mislabeled as a wing of the Republican Party, and it’s not. The Tea Party “arose due to frustration people have had with both major parties.” It grew out of “dissatisfaction with the establishment.”
“It’s a true grassroots effort that many have tried to demonize and besmirch.”
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement