Chris Bournea, ThisWeek papers
State Sen. Steve Stivers and Robert Wagner will face off in the March 4 primary to be the Republican candidate representing the 15th Congressional District on the fall ballot. Both seek to fill the seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce. The winner will vie with Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, who is unopposed for the Democratic nomination, in the November election.
Wagner, 42, is an economics instructor at Ohio State University's Marion campus. Stivers, also 42, is a member of the Ohio Senate representing the 16th district. He was appointed to fill the unexpired term of state Sen. Priscilla Mead in 2003.
Stivers said job creation and the economy are the major issues he plans to focus on if elected. He said his plan for the economy centers on workforce development, strengthening job security and promoting innovation.
"Innovation is really key," he said. "I would double the research and development tax credit for companies
"I'd create 250 science, technology and math schools across the country and I would create university-based venture capital funds," Stivers said. "We need workers who are ready for the new economy. I would create the American Dream grant that would allow students to attend undergraduate and graduate schools in their state." Stivers said he would also promote a college tuition tax credit for families earning less than $100,000. Wagner said education is one of the key issues he will focus on if elected. He supports school choice, providing resources for students in underperforming public schools to transfer to private schools.
Allowing school choice will not only put education funding to better use, he said, but will also prepare more students for higher education.
"I call education the civil rights issue of our time," he said. Addressing public school funding should be left to state and local governments, with assistance provided by the federal government when necessary, Stivers said.
"We've done a lot of things to help the people on the bottom rung in Ohio to help school funding. The poorest school districts get the majority of poverty-based assistance," he said. "We've taken away the big disparity between rich and poor, but what we need to do now is go completely back to the drawing board and create a building block approach to allow communities to make those decisions." Both candidates said they were opposed to allowing federal tax cuts to expire, noting that to do so would be tantamount to a tax increase.
"Going into a recession, the worst thing you could do is to allow taxes to increase," Wagner said. "The optimal thing would be to revamp the tax code to make us more competitive in the global economy."
"I think it's morally wrong to allow a tax increase on the American people when they can't afford it," Stivers said. To expand health coverage for more Americans, Wagner said he will push for a tax credit system that encourages people to fund their own coverage.
"What a tax credit does is it empowers the individual to purchase their own health care at low or no cost," he said. Stivers' approach would be for the federal government to require all Americans to carry health insurance.
"The first thing we need to do is create a market for individual policies," Stivers said. "One way to do that is create an individual mandate, just like we do for car insurance." Stivers said money can also be saved by eliminating waste and duplication in the health care system by implementing electronic record keeping. He also favors promoting individual medical savings accounts as an alternative to traditional health insurance and allowing small businesses to form coalitions purchase health insurance at bulk rates. Revamping Social Security is another issue Wagner said he plans to focus on.
"I support Social Security choice and believe we should eliminate the separate and unequal pension plans offered by our various governmental agencies," Wagner said. "Every American should be allowed to choose the government pension plans offered to our teachers, government workers, elected officials, qualified union, IRA or corporation pension plans or stay in the existing Social Security system." In the area of immigration reform, both candidates said that working with the Mexican government is key to solving the problem, but they recommended different approaches.
"The only real solution to immigration is to revive the Mexican economy," Wagner said. "We don't have a problem on the northern border because Canada supports itself. Mexico doesn't." Wagner said he also favors providing work visas to encourage immigrants to come to the United States legally, in addition to a North American Free Trade Agreement tariff to cover the costs of illegal immigration. Stivers said the federal government should consider imposing a tariff on Mexico for every illegal alien who lives in the U.S.
"Right now the Mexican government is disengaged on this issue," he said. "We need to bring them into the fold to show them it's not just a Mexican problem, it's everybody's problem. We should do that with every country." Stivers said he believes in securing borders to promote national safety. While he opposes outright amnesty for illegal immigrants, he said the government should create a conditional path to citizenship that includes penalties for undocumented workers. On the international front, the two candidates agree that the U.S. should work with other nations to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iran.
"We need to work with Russia, we need to work with Middle Eastern partners and do everything we can to slow the progress toward nuclear armament in Iran," Wagner said. Preventing the nuclear threat in Iran and stabilizing Iraq will bolster homeland security within the U.S. borders, Wagner said.
"The best way to protect our own country is to kill the terrorists over there," he said. Regarding Iraq, Wagner believes the troop surge is working and that the U.S. should maintain a military presence in the region for as long as it takes to help the Iraqi government rebuild its infrastructure and sustain a stable democracy. Stivers, who has served tours of duty in Iraq as a member of the Ohio Army National Guard, said the U.S. should maintain a military presence in the region to promote democracy.
"The Middle East, if we pulled out now, it would make it worse," he said. "That's not in the best interest of America or any of the citizens of America."
Click here to read the full ThisWeek story
Index of all News Articles
Index of all Multimedia Articles
|
