Chris Hackett. Conservative values we can trust.
A conservative Republican.
The Republican Party is a party in need of conservative leadership. Chris is a bold leader
who will work tirelessly to restore the core principle of the GOP - limited government.
Uniquely qualified by his successful business experience, Chris will combine conservative
values and personal integrity with courage to right a GOP timid about its real strength -
freedom through individual liberty and responsibility. His back-to-basics approach will
focus on the critical issues of today.
A fiscal conservative.
Chris will reduce wasteful spending,
regulation, and litigation. He supports cutting taxes
to stimulate growth and create good jobs. Chris will
secure access to health care through the free market and strengthen education through choice.
A social conservative.
Chris will protect innocent life and support
traditional family values.
Uphold the Constitution.
Chris supports protecting property rights,
defending the Second Amendment, and
respecting federalism.
A safer America.
Chris wants to secure the border and
enforce existing immigration law.
Chris supports a strong Homeland Security
program, and he supports the troops and
their mission.
Free markets, capitalism and competition (and the efficiencies they create) and traditional values (and the stability they bring) serve as the foundation for his vision of a free people with a government restrained by the limits placed on it by the Founding Fathers. Please join Chris in his quest to right our party and our nation today.
Reduce wasteful spending, regulation, and
litigation.
As a businessman who has spent his entire career in the private sector, and
having previously practiced as a Certified Public Accountant, I know a few things
about numbers and balancing the books. It's a shame there aren't more people with
business and accounting backgrounds in Congress. The Washington politicians have
given us one giant financial mess, and I look forward to bringing my financial
expertise to bear on this crisis.
No matter which party has been in power, federal spending has exploded. When Pennsylvania taxpayers are forced to pay for thousands of ridiculous wasteful pork projects like the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska, we know we're getting a bad deal from Washington. The pork spending spree is at an all-time high and I will work to stop it.
Expensive and ineffective regulations have also proliferated. It seems that the bill for every trendy social scheme the liberals come up with is paid for by small businesses in the form of additional regulations. Of course, ultimately it's the employees and consumers who really end up paying for all this regulation in lost jobs, lower wages and higher prices. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, federal regulations now cost the economy $1.1 trillion per year. I will work to insert a sunset provision into every new regulation to insure ongoing evaluation of the impact of the regulation in the real world.
Finally, there are huge burdens imposed by runaway junk lawsuits. America has more lawyers than anywhere else in the world, and therefore it comes as no surprise that we have the highest rate of lawsuits and the highest legal costs. Junk lawsuits are job killers. The liberals who control Congress are beholden to the trial lawyers who fund their campaigns. I will support common-sense legal reforms like caps on non-economic damages and "loser pays" provisions that put an end to lawsuit abuse.
My fight will be for real spending restraint, opposing wasteful pork barrel spending, holding the bureaucracy accountable for common-sense and cost effective regulations and supporting litigation reform.
Cut taxes to stimulate growth and create good jobs.
No issue is more important in Northeast and Central Pennsylvania than creating and
maintaining jobs. As a local business owner who has created hundreds of jobs in our
community, I have first-hand knowledge of what helps, and what hurts, our local economy.
I have been actively involved with our local economic development organizations in bringing
new companies to our community and know what businesses look for when selecting a site for
relocation or expansion.
Washington impacts our local economy in several ways. Unfortunately it usually hurts more than it helps. Every time Washington takes a bite out of our paychecks, it reduces our standard of living to fund failing programs. I will fight every day for lower taxes and against the wasteful Washington spending that drives tax hikes.
The tax cuts of Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush all led to increased revenue and job growth.
For example, since the 2003 capital gains tax cut, we have more than doubled capital gains tax receipts. Most states are also experiencing huge increases in tax revenue as a direct result of increased economic activity from federal tax rate cuts.
But Liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chris Carney want to eliminate all of the recent tax cuts. Powerful Democratic Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel wants to go even further, proposing the "Mother of All Tax Hikes" (over $1 trillion in the next 10 years).
I will fight against the Pelosi-Rangel-Carney tax hikes every way I can. Our part of Pennsylvania simply can’t afford to pay higher taxes to Washington. I will support making the 2001 and 2003 Republican tax cuts permanent and will work for permanent elimination of the death tax. At the top of my agenda will be more tax cuts and a dramatically simpler and fairer tax code.
Finally, when it comes to job creation, there are trade policies that don't give the best deal to our farmers and manufacturers. The global economy is here to stay, and that is a good thing since we have the most skilled and best workers in the world. When foreign companies sell goods in America, our consumers benefit and we should preserve that. But when foreign countries do not allow our domestic producers to sell our goods in their markets, we must not stand for it. I will fight to ensure that foreign markets are fully open for our farmers and manufacturers.
Secure health care through the free market.
Exploding health care costs impact our lives in so many ways; from the availability of
quality care for our loved ones who are sick, to the impact on family budgets, to the
burden of health insurance costs on local businesses, health care issues are a major
concern for all of us.
To make health care more affordable and expand coverage for children the last thing we need is the Hillary Clinton model of socialized medicine. That model always leads to increased costs, year-long waits for care and ultimately rationing. We don't want to put the people who couldn't figure out how to deal with Hurricane Katrina in charge of health care! What right thinking individual would put one-seventh of our national economy under government control?
Instead, there are several common-sense reforms I would implement, like expanded access to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), that will return control of our healthcare to us and our doctors. Other examples include:
- Allow seniors to purchase their prescriptions from Canada or other Western countries with high safety standards where they sell the exact same drugs at half the price.
- Enact medical malpractice legal reforms that prevent trial lawyers from putting good doctors out of business and running up costs for all of us.
- Extending the tax advantages large corporations get to the rest of us by allowing everyone to get a full tax exemption for the purchase of health insurance.
These changes would increase our control over the healthcare choices we make and free us from having to stay in a job just because of the health benefits.
I will focus on using market forces to increase our choices while decreasing costs through competition and consumer control just like we do in every other area of the economy. Americans expect the freedom to choose their doctor and the kind of care they get and I will fight to make sure they have those choices.
Strengthen education through choice.
As the father of four daughters, I know that after a loving and stable home life, a good education is the most valuable gift parents can give to their children. Parents are best equipped to determine the educational needs of their children and should be able to choose schools and methods based on their children’s needs, not their address. This is a fundamental right.
As a Federalist, I believe education is inherently a state issue and the PA Constitution mandates that the state provide a “thorough and efficient” education system. The Pennsylvania Constitution does not specify how this is to be accomplished, but I would urge a free market solution with flexibility and choice as the hallmarks. Clearly, putting the needs of children first is paramount to any improvement in the system.
The US Constitution does not enumerate a role for the Federal government in education. While I support federal efforts to help ensure that education, particularly higher education, is affordable to all, I do not believe the federal government should be in the business of deciding curriculum and other standards that are better left to local decision makers and families. I will oppose efforts to expand federal mandates on local schools, and I will lead the way in expanding educational choices for parents including but not limited to: public schools, private schools, home school, charter schools, and magnate schools.
Protect innocent life.
As a person of faith and a father of four children, I recognize that all human life is
sacred and created in God's image. I am pro-life and I will work to foster respect for
the life of unborn children in every way that I can. My wife and I are also adoptive
parents and we have first-hand knowledge of the burdens that government places on those
who seek to promote life in this way. As we work to discourage and eliminate abortions,
it is so important that our laws encourage adoptions and I will work to do that in Congress.
Support traditional family values.
Beyond the sound bites that are used to divide us, there are values many of us share:
family as the central institution of society; church and community as the conduit for
good works. I will continue to support family values by:
- Fostering parental involvement in our children's education through choice.
- Defending traditional marriage defined as between a man and a woman.
- Promoting adoption over abortion.
- Respecting individual rights.
Protect property rights.
Too often these days, judges and politicians run roughshod over some of our basic
constitutional protections. Judges should be interpreting and applying the law, not
legislating from the bench.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that expanded eminent domain powers to allow state governments to take private property from one owner and give it to another private owner in the name of "economic development." That's an outrage. I will work to restore the traditional understanding of the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, to protect private property rights, and restrict the abuse of eminent domain.
Second Amendment rights.
I support the interests of sportsmen, and the rights of law-abiding citizens to bear
arms for the protection of themselves, their families, and their property. I will
oppose further restrictions on gun ownership rights.
Respect Federalism.
I respect the principle of Federalism enshrined in the Tenth Amendment.
The "Washington-knows-best" attitude has given us a bloated and un-affordable federal
government. Many of our needs (transportation, education, law enforcement, etc.)
are better handled at the state and local levels, without unfunded mandates from
Washington.
Secure the border.
Every day, thousands of illegal immigrants pour over our border with Mexico.
In a country that adheres to the rule of law, this is completely unacceptable.
Not only does illegal immigration create huge and unsustainable burdens on our social
services, open borders also pose a major national security threat in the age of terrorism.
I will support every measure that secures our border at the earliest possible time, and
I will oppose amnesty for those who are in our country illegally.
Enforce existing immigration law.
Our current immigration policy is an embarrassment. We have plenty of laws, but we
don't enforce them. And those entrusted to enforce them are often hampered by rules
of engagement that endanger their very lives. I will work to see that our laws are
enforced.
Homeland Security.
I support the Patriot Act and similar homeland security measures that deny terrorists
the opportunity to organize themselves on our soil. Thank God there have been no
successful terrorist attacks on our shores since September 11th, 2001. But that
doesn't mean the terrorists haven't tried. Indeed, they have tried many times, and
the enhanced law enforcement powers enacted after 9/11 have gone a long way toward
stopping their heinous acts. I will stand up for our law enforcement agencies and
give them all the tools they need to prevent future terrorist attacks.
Support the troops and their mission.
I will always support our men and women in uniform and their efforts to keep America safe.
Congress must not use the war for political purposes, but always do what's right for our
country. We must allow our military leaders to fight the war and provide them the
tools and resources they need to win.
If we abandon our mission now the progress we have recently seen will surely stop and the region will be overrun by our enemies with disastrous consequences for America's security. We must also continue to hold the Iraqi government accountable to stand up for their own security and the liberty we gave them so we can bring our troops home victorious.
Iraq is but one battlefield in the broader war on radical terrorist groups. The battle is now centered in the Middle East, but it stretches to the far reaches of the globe. We must never forget the thousands of innocent Americans who perished on September 11th. And we must always recognize that our enemies would do it all over again if they are given the opportunity. I will work to keep America on offense against the terrorists, hitting them and their sponsors in their bunkers and bases overseas, rather than waiting for another horrific attack on our soil.