Here's my vision:
Let's represent North Dakota in Washington D.C. as a business with a plan of success.
The current method of heralding how much of the nation's money we can bring without asking, "What can we do for our country?" is going to, in the long run, and has already begun to, cause a loss of support among Congressional members for our state. In order to continue along the current path, Senator Conrad will be forced to compromise on issues of independence for North Dakota, i.e. out of state environmentalism, etc.
One of my plans is to:
Introduce strategic legislation that increases our infrastructure for energy production and distribution. It looks like we are headed for $3.00+ fuel again. Our oil people in western ND are getting discounted for their crude and it looks to me like that could be helped with improved transportation. We currently have in this country an ethanol shortage yet we had some of our biggest corn LDP's, which are subsidies paid to us when prices are low, in recent history.
To accelerate this legislation we need to make energy a National Security issue. It's time to stop looking to the Middle East and pay our people instead.
The economic impact to this state and other rural states will be HUGE. We can serve North Dakota better than the current delegation by bringing big picture economics to Congress, which will, in the end, allow more federal money to be in reserve for this state for it's boom-bust cycles, and reduce the need for emergency funding that gets tacked onto things like hurricanes and wars.
There have been questions about the farm subsidies I and farmers across this state have received. As your Senator, I will implement and support legislation that redirects our source of income back to the marketplace, where it belongs. This will, in turn, allow for more funds to be put into a reserve that can be tapped into for disasters and hard times. The kind of leadership that we have from North Dakota will not help North Dakota and the United States as a whole the way it should. I believe we can provide that kind of leadership.
Keep up the dialogue. There’s much more we can do for our state and our nation, let’s get started!
A few of my reactions:
- I like that Grotberg is coming out against defining the success of our legislators by how many federal dollars they bring home. As a state we should not be proud of our reliance on federal money. We shouldn't be asking ourselves how we get more of it, we should be asking ourselves how we fix things in this state so that we need less of it. Grotberg seems to get that, and it is heartening.
- His ideas for building infrastructure for energy development in the state sounds promising, and is the right approach to the situation I think. As one of our other Senators tries to punish the energy industry for daring to make too much money, Grotberg is talking about what we can do to foster energy industry development. This is both a good idea (oil workers and other types of energy industry jobs are a boon for North Dakota's economy) and the right approach to the situation. Rather than handing companies money to come to our state Grotberg is in favor of luring them in by creating a favorable environment for them to produce in.
- His overall focus on making us less reliant on foreign energy (read: oil) is also something I am cheered by. I can only hope this translates into his support for initiatives to exploit domestic oil resources like that found in ANWR and other places.
- I also like his ideas on farm subsidies. Grotberg seems to be in favor of reducing agriculture's dependence on subsidies. That is a great thing, though I'd certainly like to hear how he plans to go about doing this.
I should also mention that Mr. Grotberg apologized to me for skimping on my interview with him. I wasn't exactly impressed with his answers, which seemed like they were written in a hurry, but he was a last-minute candidate trying to deal with a media blitz in the days before the nominating conference. I certainly understand that he was rushed and he didn't need to apologize to me for it.
Mr. Grotberg has offered me another interview during the course of his campaign which I plan on taking him up on once things get rolling. I also want to interview Senator Conrad around the same time, if he'll grant me an interview.