ISSUES

Here are a few issues I see that we, the legal citizens of North Carolina need Washington to address:

Secure Our Porous Borders. Stop Drug and Human Trafficking.

Our country is in a code blue emergency right now! Washington needs to stop talking about band-aids and fix this huge threat to our safety and security.

Yes, throughout our history, legal immigration has helped fuel our economic engine. Legal Immigrants have helped make ours a vibrant, prosperous country. But we and we alone, should decide who comes in and who does not.

No sovereign country can remain sovereign absent secure borders. A country that cannot control its borders cannot control its destiny.

Once the border is secure, we can have a discussion about those allowed to come in as guest workers, and who is eligible for a path to citizenship once they have entered into our country legally!

Reducing Our National Debt

When President Bush was elected in 2000, our national debt was six trillion dollars. By the year 2030, it is projected to grow to more than fifty trillion dollars. Interest costs are expected to exceed $70 trillion over the next 30 years. By the end of this decade, interest costs will exceed the entire military budget of the United States.

Thanks to office holders that fumble when asked to make difficult decisions, our Congress is saddling America’s young generation with an unconscionable burden; a level of debt unseen in our nation’s history.

It is time to reign in deficit spending:

We need to cap the amount of deficit spending allowed when budgets are passed by Congress instead of spending first and raising the debt limit later to pay the bills.
Congress must do its job, which includes a comprehensive audit of federal agencies and spending programs to find ways to reduce their cost, eliminate duplicate programs, and improve technology so that more can be done with less.
We should pass a constitutional amendment requiring that Congress balance the budget, with a provision that deficits are permitted only in a national emergency, and passed by a two-thirds margin by both the House and the Senate.

Pro-Life. Pro-2A. Pro-Parent.

Pro-Life.
I believe God is the author of life; that life begins at conception; that the unborn have a right to life. It is our obligation as Americans and as a society to protect life.

Pro-2A.
I believe the second amendment to the Constitution means what it says. That all law-abiding Americans have an inalienable right to keep and bear arms.

Pro-Parent.
I believe parents have an absolute right to know what their children are being taught. The right to be heard when questions arise about school curriculums, the right to object when attempts are made to indoctrinate their children. Schools are not the right place to have teacher-child discussions about a child's gender identity or sexual orientation. Schools should not be the place to discuss topics like Critical Race Theory (CRT). I have a child in the North Carolina Public School system and I have vocalized and defended my family's beliefs about sex education, CRT and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) topics. I have said NO and the school personnel have respected my wishes to keep these harmful discussions away from my child.

Containing China’s Threat to the United States

For years, the United States tolerated a Communist Regime that manipulated its currency, ran up huge trade surpluses, stole the intellectual property of U.S. companies, and lied about what they were doing.

China is now an economic and military superpower with the largest Navy on the planet; a hostile regime that threatens trade routes of free nations in the South China Sea; a surveillance state that locks up minorities in concentration camps and persecutes Christians who worship the same God we do.

In the face of this threat, we must:

Make our Navy the largest and most technologically advanced in the world.
Establish a new trade alliance with democratic and freedom loving nations that treat Chinese aggression on one as an attack on all.
Strengthen the security of our dams, water supply, electric grid and energy supplies.

Ours is the only country on the planet with the power to contain China’s goal of world domination, and force it to abide the rules of peaceful nations.

We must lead.

Reversing the Decline of American Education

We are failing to adequately prepare school aged children for the challenges of a 21st century world. American children lag behind the rest of the world in reading, math and science. They are being outperformed by students in East Asia, Europe and Canada.

In a 21st century world about to enter a second technological revolution, and an America facing fierce competition from China for dominance in technology, we must do a better job educating our young in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We must:

Increase the supply of science and math teachers and deploy them to the classrooms by increasing college scholarships for those willing to enter the field.
Encourage school systems to establish specialty High Schools that focus on advanced studies in science, technology and math.
Encourage high schools to offer specialize job training for students who plan to enter the work force after receiving their high school diploma.
Encourage the creation of Trade Schools for students that are not college bound.
Insist that all who are granted a high school diploma have the skills required to get a job, join the military or go to college.

Made in the U.S.A.

Some industries are too important and too vital to the security of the United States to be located anywhere other than on U.S. soil. Never again should we have to depend on foreign countries for vital medical supplies or life-saving drugs. Never again should new cars sit unsold because we outsourced computer chips to a foreign country. We should never allow any country to corner the market on rare earth metals that we need to make computers, wind turbines, lasers, fiber optics and superconductors.

It is critical to our national security that products critical to our economic engine and our military might be made in American factories that employ American workers.

Ban Stock Trading by Members of Congress

No Member of Congress should be allowed to profit from information not available to the public. And Members who are provided private classified briefings, advance notice of policy decisions or closed-door meetings with key decision makers should not be allowed to use that information to feather their financial nest.

What is illegal on Wall Street should be illegal for Members of Congress. I will support the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, which would force Members of Congress to divest or place in a blind trust stocks owned by the Member, the Member's spouse, or their dependents.

Protecting America from Cyber Attacks

We face daily assaults from hostile regimes -- cyberattacks, malware, viruses and spyware that attack our pipelines, ports, dams, hospitals, factories and electric grid. A successful strike that shuts down a portion of our electric grid would cripple our food supply chains, water systems, pipelines and knock a crater sized hole in the American economy.

It is a national security threat that requires a coordinated national response:

Redouble our efforts to protect vital and critical infrastructure, electric lines and power supplies.
Ensure that the newly created Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency has the funding and teeth necessary to protect us.
Work with state and local governments, schools and law enforcement agencies to modernize their technology and security systems.

Strengthening the American Family

While the arguments over the direction of the United States and the country we shall be in ten, twenty or fifty years from now continue, a fundamental part of the discussion is missing -- the future of the American family. It's an institution that is disintegrating before our eyes.

Too many children are growing up in single-parent households without a father in their life. Forty percent (40%) of children raised by single mothers live in poverty.

Children who grow up in single-parent families are more likely to have mental-health problems, perform poorly in school, drop out of school, attempt suicide, commit crimes or end up in prisons.

Our country faces many challenges. We speak too little of the gravest of all, for the most important institution in America is the family. Our social welfare system penalizes parents who stay together. It fails to lift people out of poverty. It snares too many in a cycle of dependence that often lasts for generations. Children are the victims.

We can do better. We have to.

As we look for ways to reduce federal spending and streamline essential programs…as we examine the budget for food stamps, welfare, housing assistance, child care, health care, family and mental health counseling, we must find a better and more efficient way to deliver help to those who need it - to get them back on their feet so they can scale the rungs of the economic ladder without a lifetime of dependence.