Guest Post: David McIntosh for Congress, IN05

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor that the David McIntosh campaign has been distributing. McIntosh is running in the GOP primary for the 5th Congressional District on May 8th. It is written by Marc Applegate, a Boone County resident.

As a Boone County Commissioner, I constantly think about how to improve the quality of life for residents and businesses in my county. From a county level, we have worked very hard to adjust to spending levels by taking necessary steps to cut our costs and to be good fiscal stewards.  The frustration is that no matter how successful we are, we feel like we have very little control of recklessness of our federal government on the lack of controls when it comes to spending.  Our citizens are fed up also and feel hopeless when it comes to this runaway spending.

 

The taxpayers of my county feel overtaxed and under-served. We are sending all of this money to Washington, DC, and politicians complain that it’s not enough while at the same time we’re reading about embarrassing levels of wasteful spending. Whether it’s the billions of dollars in Medicare mispayments or $800,000 parties in Las Vegas, Washington’s handling of the nation’s finances is out of control.

 

Besides serving as a commissioner, I am also a small business owner.  I know I can speak for all business owners when I say that the increased burden of government regulation has stymied our growth and kept us from hiring new employees.  Worse than this, the Obama administration has created an environment of uncertainty among employers by promising even more restrictive regulations, especially in health care and anything the EPA can get its hands on.

 

More than ever, it is crucial that we stop sending people to Washington who aren’t serious about taking on the big issues. Voters want to hear specifics about what they propose to do. We shouldn’t let candidates off the hook who remain vague on such important issues as bailouts, tax rates, regulatory reform, entitlements, and which parts of the federal government they will cut to get Washington’s spending under control.

If a Republican candidate can’t be specific on these kinds of issues, it usually means he or she will just get in step with the Republican establishment in Washington, and that’s not good enough. We’re all sick of this. We need policy leadership.

 

For these reasons, as a voter in the new 5th congressional district, I’ve thrown my support behind David McIntosh. There are a number of good candidates in the 5th district, but McIntosh is clearly the conservative’s conservative. He’s the only leading candidate in the race to oppose the Washington bailouts. He has gotten the highest rating of all the candidates from the NRA and is the lone candidate the NRA is endorsing. He’s also the only candidate in the race endorsed by the national free market groups, FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, as well as National Right to Life. When Fortune magazine’s Nina Easton wrote a book on five people who have shaped the conservative movement, David McIntosh was on this list because of all he has done to fight regulatory regimes in Washington. David McIntosh was also one of the founders of the Federalist Society, which has done more than any group to raise up conservative judges around the country.

 

When the 5th district race began, I wasn’t sure whom I was going to support. But as I’ve read up on where candidates stand on the issues, I came to the conclusion that McIntosh is the most conservative, the clearest on the issues, and a history of doing what he says he will do. Let’s hope that in all of Indiana’s districts, we send the candidates to Washington who won’t shy from the big issues – and who aren’t afraid to tell us where they stand on them now.

 

Marc Applegate

Small Business Owner and Boone County Commissioner