Why run?

Complete strangers come up to me – I guess because my face is now plastered on billboards around the 4th Congressional District – and ask, “Why are you running for Congress?”

My education and life’s work have been in the field of economics. For too long, members of Congress – from both parties – have attempted to circumvent the laws of economics. For instance, Congressman Crenshaw’s response to the out-of-control federal spending is to increase the debt ceiling limit. (He has voted to increase the debt ceiling 6 times in his 12 years in Congress.)

The over-riding issue in this election is the national debt, which now stands at more than 16 trillion dollars. Federal spending is out-of-control and for the past three years Ander has been voting for the ever-increasing appropriation bills that are driving the debt higher at the rate of 100 billion dollars a month. Right now, we borrow 45 cents of every dollar Washington spends. That is not sustainable. It must stop.

I decided to run for the 4th District Congressional seat last August when Ander voted for the 2.4 trillion dollar debt increase package. The fact that he had voted earlier to give Wall Street bankers a 750 billion dollar bailout hadn’t helped. (The list goes on and on.) Ander has been a fiscal failure, aiding and abetting the out-of-control spending. He is part of the problem. If he were in the private sector and judged on performance, he would have been fired long ago.

My strongest qualification for running may be that I am not a career politician – I’m just a hard-working, middle-class, tax-paying veteran who thinks Congress is dysfunctional and self-serving. I wanted voters in the 4th Congressional District to have a choice in the General Election on November 6th. We need a return to basic economic principles and common sense in Congress. That’s why I am running.

Jim Klauder
Independent Candidate for Congress
4th Congressional District, FL