It is the same problem that plagues the entire country. Crony capitalism, corruption in government to include Congress and people in power throughout our government that never seem to be held accountable. Much of this can be corrected with a balance budget amendment similar to the one that Jon Tester voted against in 2011. Our country holds the position of being in control of the reserve currency of the world. Our leadership has debased our currency by borrowing $35 trillion. This must stop. It is at the core of the corruption. It is also at the core of inflation, the most insidious tax on poor people. We must insist on a balanced budget amendment, restrict any person over the age of 74 from serving in the Federal government, and term limits of 12 years in Congress. We need voting laws that are beyond reproach. We need a federal clearing house for candidates so the voter can be well informed, and the candidates held responsible for what they say.

I believed Joe Biden when he said in 2020, He would only run for one term of office. I believed Joe Biden when he said Kamala Harris was qualified to be president if anything was to happen to him. The problem with old people is they forget what they tell people, and they are the last to know when it's time to quit. Just like George W. Bush said no more nation building when he was running for office, that didn't work out for the people. Our Senate is evenly split, giving each senator a unique position of power. The Senate confirms the presidents appointments to cabinet positions. I will not confirm any cabinet officer that will not answer direct questions with direct answers. The same for federal judges. I am not partisan, my only loyalty is to the people, and the country. I am of the opinion that Joe Biden is past his prime and that he should step aside and let Kamala Harris become president. He said she was qualified. This is the time to find out, we the people need to know.

In many ways Donald Trump provides evidence of his narcissism just like Joe Biden does. His ability to make cabinet appointments is also suspect. Ryan Zinke was no better prepared for interior secretary than the tiny little electrical company in his hometown that he was trying to hire to rebuild Puerto Rico's electrical grid. The president must work with Congress. Congress does not seek his approval, but he must seek our approval. The more independent a senator is from his party, the greater the influence he will have on the process. Jon Tester operates in lockstep with the Democrat leadership and that is why he has been ineffectual after 18 years. He refused to work with Donald Trump, nothing’s changed. There are things I can work on with Trump. Such as the southern border and immigration control. Maybe we can get our balanced budget amendment. We must move our country forward.

Please do not mischaracterize these statements. They are a starting point for negotiation on very important issues. Social Security and Medicare are currently not part of the deficit. They do need reform, they will be insolvent in less than nine years. We currently borrow approximately half of what we spend each year. Everything must be visited. We must stop lying to our people so they can rise to the occasion and understand the problems our current leadership has put us in. I support both, spending cuts and tax increases. It will take bold honest discussions and debates open to the public to resolve this issue. Either way there are dark days ahead of us. This will be our moment as a nation to come together and like our founding fathers we must make changes now to guide our country into the future and protect the Republic. A key component of this will be returning sovereignty and responsibility to the states. Sacrifices will be required, it is unthinkable not to succeed.

There have been many opportunities since 1973 for both parties to fix this problem. Neither one of them wanted to lose abortion as a wedge issue to drive us apart. While the Supreme Court provided pro choice with the opportunity to compromise with pro life and craft a piece of legislation both could live with, it was wasted. Now pro life is in the driver seat and it is unlikely they will craft a bill to compromise with pro choice. My starting point on the issue would be no state should restrict a woman's right to have an abortion in the first trimester. Rape and incest carve out. If two doctors are willing to sign off on an unviable pregnancy up to the sixth month, it should be granted. This should be a baseline and beyond this each state should have complete control of the abortion issue. It is unlikely the federal government will ever get involved with abortion based on past performance. It is now a states’ rights issue. It will remain so until the Supreme Court takes it up again.

The federal government should not get involved in affordable housing. Affordable housing is a regional problem. Best solved by the states. The federal government is in debt over $34 trillion. The federal government does not have money to spend on another issue. I was listening to the California Senate debate. Rep. Barbara Lee stated that if she won the Senate seat she would get $100 billion of funding for much-needed housing in California. Now you know why we are $34 trillion in debt. What Congress can do to affect the housing crisis is simply to balance the budget. This would drive inflation down and stabilize the cost of interest to purchase a home. Everything is interlinked. We have a housing shortage, yet we leave our southern border open and invite 9 million people into our country. We could drive the cost of building a house down if we harvested more timber instead of letting it burn.

Climate change is real, but it will most likely not be the cause of our extinction. Congress has not gotten anything right in the last 80 years, so why would you think they know what they're talking about this time. Keeling is responsible for the first carbon dioxide measurements of the atmosphere in 1958. It measured 313 ppm and is currently at 414 ppm. That's only 25% increase of our current carbon dioxide level in 66 years. I suspect the reason they are using this as the bogeyman to try and scare us is simply because Congress doesn't blame any one particular industry beyond transportation for the problem. Transportation uses only 15% of the total petroleum products. Pollution is the bigger problem that Congress does not want to address. Instead Congress has assisted our corporations in shipping the pollution overseas. There are over 1 million abandoned oil wells spewing methane that is 28 times more toxic to the environment than carbon dioxide. This is a threat to our environment.

This has been a problem for my entire life. We must seal the southern border completely. We need to re-examine all of our refugee and immigration programs. Immigration is a three to one loss for the federal government and state agencies. We simply do not have the money to support an immigrant population. It's not about compassion it's about common sense. We the people of this country have a culture. It has eroded due to bad policies of our federal government. Our government needs to stop sanctioning countries in an effort to destroy their economies. This does not make our people safer it just makes our politicians more powerful and dangerous. This is behavior that must be corrected in our state department. Middle East condition since 9/11 2001 are a prime example. Only a fool or politician would say it's a safer place. We have destroyed entire nations with our intervention. We must bring all of our military home to protect our boarders and the American people.

In 2000 a family of four's health care was about $6500 per year, 2010 affordable health care act was passed. At that time insurance was approximately $12,500. In 2020 it had increased by over $10,000 a year. That certainly does not seem very affordable to me. We still have tens of millions uninsured. A document, 1,000s of pages controlling our health care, Congress and Jon Tester did not read it. When Trump was president Tester could've revisited the problem, but he just voted no on repealing it. The medical industry reports record profits at the expense of the people. I cannot think of one thing that Congress has managed well. For this reason single-payer scares the hell out of me. If we are to balance our budget and move our country forward then everything must be examined. I do not have the answer for this one, yet. One thing is for sure, we must get it right this time. Other countries have models that we can explore, we do not have to reinvent the wheel.

We should allow our military industrial complex to sell arms to countries in order to protect their borders. It should be controlled by Congress. The keyword is sell, not provide them with the money to purchase. If we are to save our country from economic chaos and therefore the world from economic chaos. We must stop the policy of interfering in other countries issues. There have been more people killed in the past 60 years because of our intervention. It is a contributor to our $34 trillion debt. We should revisit every treaty we are involved in. Some will stand and some will need to be renegotiated. We need a strong navy, a well-trained expeditionary force, and a domestic force designed for the defense of our nation. We must harden our space and cyber defense. Once our debt has been paid off in full we can revisit helping other countries. We have a responsibility to our country to provide peace and tranquility within our borders.