Oct 15 2008
Brown and Ketner Debate the Issues
Congressman Henry Brown (R) and his challenger Linda Ketner (D) appeared before over 100 people at the Rotary Club of Charleston to take time to discuss where they are on the issues and what they would explore in the next session of Congress is elected.
Ketner, who has never sought office before, said she agreed with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain when he said “government is broken.” She said President Clinton’s 1999 decision to get rid of Depression-era regulations that separated banks, insurance companies and investment houses is at the root of the problem.
“I’m not going to blame the Republicans because there’s a lot of blame to go around. A lot,” she said. “I believe it was preventable. I believe it was predictable, and I don’t believe we have the right solution to it yet.”
It’s nice to hear her give an honest take on this instead of just finger pointing at the GOP like a lot of Democrats have wrongly done in the past month. Indeed there is a lot of blame to go around and some of the major players who shaped this disaster aren’t being held accountable. In fact, a couple of them were put in charge of writing the bailout.
Brown, who is seeking a fifth term, said the nation’s toughest issue is coming up with a new energy policy that will help wean the nation from its $700 billion dependence on foreign oil, and he promised to pursue domestic sources even if environmental groups don’t like it.
It has to be done. We absolutely must continue to expand domestic drilling and build more refineries while we continue to explore other alternatives. There is no argument here.
On balancing the federal budget, Brown said he wants to see Congress be required to balance the budget, like the South Carolina General Assembly must do.
Another excellent suggestion by Brown, but quite frankly, I find it a very unlikely goal considering the way this Congress has behaved and in the face of an Obama presidency with a Congress with expanded Democrat majorities it will be impossible to balance the budget without raising taxes through the roof in order to cover the additional socialism they have been proposing.
On immigration, Ketner said she would like to see the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, or SPAWAR, get a contract to build a “virtual wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Brown said the nation needs to identify its 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants “and return them to their destination.”
Ketner said she also didn’t support amnesty.
I’m actually not that big on the wall, although I’m not opposed to it. I just think if we went after the employers with the approrpriate force and fierce aggression to stop the willful practice of hiring illegals for cheap slave labor we wouldn’t need to build a wall on the border because there would be no further reason for people to illegally come here.
I haven’t decided yet who I am supporting in this race, but Ketner scored a big plus with me when she said the following:
“I think I’m going to be the bane of Nancy Pelosi’s existence. I really do,” she said, adding that more members of Congress should take their cues from the people, not their party’s leaders.
