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Conaway faces three contenders in District 11 congressional race

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Incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway has drawn three opponents in the District 11 race for Congress as he seeks his fourth term.

Democrat James Quillian, Libertarian James A. Powell and Green Party candidate Jim Howe are vying for the Republican's position.

Conaway is advocating rural Texas and its agricultural economy, immigration reform and border security and temporary worker programs as key issues.

"We should put in place the right tools and trained professionals to interdict every individual who tries to cross the border illegally," Conaway said. "We will disagree, perhaps, about how this is done, but we can agree on the goal, which will be easier to accomplish if we reduce the number of individuals trying to sneak into our country. I look forward to an open debate in Congress on all immigration reform proposals to fight illegal immigration and work to secure our borders, while modernizing the system to provide opportunities for those who would like to legally find work in the U.S."

On the economy, Conaway said he is committed to working with his colleagues to restrain spending and spend taxpayer dollars wisely.

"I believe that Washington cannot magically make jobs appear for people back in West Texas, as our President seems to think," Conaway said. "However, there are things that can be done to help aid in job growth, such as stopping the tax hikes on working families and small businesses and cutting government red tape. We need to provide incentives for small business growth and reduce unnecessary paperwork. We need spending cuts instead of more stimulus spending.

Conaway said he is focused on repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replacing it with a law that creates a competitive health care market that is responsive to the needs of its consumers. On energy, he is also an advocate of carbon capture and storage, clean coal, biofuels, and other clean fossil fuel technologies.

"I hold dozens of town hall meetings every year in hopes to be as accessible as possible for the constituents of District 11," Conaway said. "Whether you need help with a federal agency, a veterans issue, you want to apply to a military service academy, are visiting Washington, D.C., want to help out our troops, our just simply want to talk about the state of our union, I hope that you have found that I am as available and easy to reach as possible."

Quillian is making the delegate model of representation the central issue of his campaign. He said Congress has dismantled the country's free market system and has replaced it with central economic planning.

"Our economic circum stances are more dire than most realize," Quillian said. "I will make specific recommendations toward removing the government from its role of central economic planning. A good place to start would be by repealing laws such as the Full Employment Act of 1978 and replacing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 with a law that limits the central bank's authority to engage in proactive monetary policy."

On health care, Quillian said that government already pays for over half of all health care costs.

"More than anything, government involvement in healthcare supports the market for providers and supports high profit margins," Quillian said. "The system can only be improved by introducing incentives to economize in the form of price competition. The recent health care bill reduces incentives to economize and needs to be repealed."

Quillian points out that price alone is the only solution to any energy problems the country has and that District 11 will likely benefit if the price of oil is allowed to float.

"If citizens want to govern themselves they should vote for a candidate who will utilize the delegate model of representation, they should vote for James Quillian," Quillian said. "Citizens who want to empower a representative to make decisions for them should vote for one of the other candidates."

Powell is advocating protecting the Constitution by requiring every piece of legislation in the Congress to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives the Congress the power to enact what that legislation does.

On the economy, Powell said Congress must restore fiscal responsibility and end runaway government spending by restoring limited government consistent with the U.S. Constitution's meaning.

"We must stop all tax increases currently scheduled to begin in 2011, including those to the income, capital gains and death taxes." Powell said. "We must then replace the existing internal revenue code with a simple and fair single-rate tax on economic transactions."

Powell is also in favor of repealing the recently passed health care legislation, and replace it with a competitive free-market health insurance system that is not restricted by state boundaries.

On energy, Powell said the country must reduce its dependence on foreign sources of energy by eliminating regulatory barriers and encouraging the development of domestic energy reserves.

"This will create jobs in the energy-rich 11th Congressional District," Powell said.

Powell is also in favor of rejecting any form of cap and trade legislation or actions by the Environmental Protection Agency to enact similar regulations.

"I will act on behalf of individual liberty, limited government and economic freedom,"

Powell said.

Howe is advocating ending the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I believe our current Congress and Senate have made some very bad decisions but seem to conduct business as if bad decisions can never be corrected and we must stay the course," Howe said. "I will be a strong voice for bringing our troops home immediately and for cutting our military budget. I will support out troops by bringing them home, helping them with medical and psychological assistance, college and trade school assistance, and low interest home loans."

Howe is also for releasing all non-violent drug offenders from U.S. prisons, removing the offenses from their records and creating programs to help drug users to get off drugs. He is an advocate for taxing imports proportionally to the pay given to the workers that produce them and the environmental laws in the importing countries.

On the economy, Howe promises to be a strong advocate for putting all the unemployed to work with federal funding in education, energy/environment and infrastructure. He also plans to introduce legislation to cut the workweek from 40 hours to 35 hours and legislation that will mandate more vacation time.

On health care, Howe said the U.S. currently ranks No. 33 in infant mortality rate and No. 38 in life expectancy but No. 1 in spending.

"The health care 'reform' passed earlier this year only forces everyone into an inefficient system that is still dominated by the insurance industry," Howe said. "We need a rational single payer system with one set of rules for everyone. With such a system we can move forward to again have the best healthcare system in the world, a system that can deliver better results at about half the cost."

On energy, Howe is pushing that all nuclear power plants be shut down and decommissioned, but said he understands the world will still run on oil.

"I know that the world will need to burn oil and coal for many years to come," Howe said. "I also know that burning oil and coal produces pollution of our water and air. We need to start moving to clean environmental sound alternatives, like geothermal, solar, tidal, and wind energy. The people of the United

States own all our oil and coal but we allow the oil and coal industries to extract it and sell it back to us. The government should be getting more money from the oil and gas industries for our oil and coal and should be investing some

of that money in alternative energy sources."

Howe also advocates job programs to create 20 million jobs; he said a 70 percent cut in military spending would help in this effort.

The job of the congress is

to set the budget of the United States," Howe said. "Setting the budget, to me, means setting our national priorities. I would vote for a budget and priorities that serve working people and not the giant corporations."



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© 2010 Burnet Bulletin Burnet, Texas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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