Economic Growth

Ryan will fight to ensure that all hard-working Americans are guaranteed a living wage and secure retirement. Working parents often work multiple jobs just to put food on the table when they should have time to spend with their families. Why? Because it's easier for the short-sighted CEOs and profit obsessed investors to aim for quick money rather than in investing in America's future. Ryan will fight to end the practice of giving tax breaks to companies that take American jobs overseas and will make sure that corporations and CEOs who abuse the public trust are held accountable for their actions. Ryan believes in the free market, but everyone must play by the same rules. His campaign’s primary focus is jobs and helping small businesses grow. That is how we get out of this financial mess that Wall Street created for us. Ryan's number one priority is economic REVIVAL for Central Pennsylvania, and economic revival means good-paying jobs.

Education and Job Training

There is no higher calling for government than to help its people reach their God-given potential. The way to do that is to ensure that all our children receive a quality education. No Child Left Behind must be revisited to improve outcomes and encourage innovative education. We must support good local teachers and help recruit and retain new ones. We must develop better ways of evaluating our schools to encourage a focus on knowledge and learning, particularly in math and science. Education must revolve around giving kids structure, discipline and a stake in the community they grow up in. That investment in community is more important than standards, money and tests. Educational opportunities must begin earlier and continue later in life by prioritizing a pre-Kindergarten year, affordable and accessible college education and vocational training, and the lifelong skills training required to ensure American workers remain competitive in the global economy.

Our colleges and universities are precious assets, but we have no serious plan to improve access to them for anyone wanting to attend. We are also not fulfilling our mission to prepare all our children adequately to attend them if they choose. We need more to have access to higher education. Our economy must have the skills to justify the high wages we want. Those skills only come from higher education, and we are fortunate to have the best universities in the world! We should be looking into mounting a serious program to provide access to higher education, like the G.I. Bill and National Science Foundation programs of earlier years.

Education is a way of life and it is our duty to encourage and support it. This means we must continually offer opportunity for job retraining after formal schooling ends. Unemployment is a fact of life but we can increase the efficiency of the system and help workers move more smoothly into new careers. Ryan proposes a system that encourages the unemployed off of benefits. After an extended period of unemployment the program will kick in as a last option to train and develop the essential working tools for the unemployed with limited skills. This program would be administered on the local level but funded through federal unemployment sources. It will not be high paying but will offer the structure needed to adjust to a life of work.

Lobbying and Corruption

Washington is broken, but it can be fixed. When private interests give money to public officials for personal and private gain, that is corruption. Ryan's record of research and experience in the United States and foreign countries that has brought him face to face with dishonest actors and corrupt regimes. He has a long record of standing up for the rights of the public; transparency and accountability. He believes we must strengthen ethics rules and hold lobbyists and politicians accountable for corrupt deals. He strongly believes that the redistricting process should be taken out of politicians hands and given to a non-partisan commission to ensure community based districts that encourage healthy political competition. He also supports public financing of elections so campaigns are not controlled by special interest money and candidates and elected officials can focus on policies and their constituents instead of fundraising among the rich and powerful.

National Security

What makes the Unites States unique is our commitment to the U.S. Constitution and the principles that drove its creation. By promoting accountability and transparency, democratic principles and protecting human rights our government will make us safer. Ryan has spent much of his career fighting for these principles and will do his best to ensure that every decision and agreement we make with regard to National Security should focus on increasing support for democratic principles and protecting human rights. Courage and Patriotism require that we face risks because of our principles, but we have the fortitude to face down and defeat our enemies. Ryan believes that the best way to protect the United States government is to give our intelligence officers, soldiers and ambassadors the resources they need and not give away any of our constitutional rights or moral authority.

Health Care

Every American must have access to a doctor, and none of our elderly should ever have to face the soul-crushing choice of whether to buy medicine for a spouse or put food on the table. Furthermore, our employers should not be burdened with healthcare costs that put them at a disadvantage to their competitors in other countries. As a small business owner Ryan has had to make the hard choice between preserving the healthcare coverage of his employees and keeping one of their jobs. Meeting payroll and growing a business are made harder by the high and constantly enormous increases in costs. We must focus on covering all Americans but just as importantly we must cut costs. This means increasing efficiencies, removing profit driven incentives that encourage rationing of care and reforming legislation to allow our doctors to practice without fear of frivolous lawsuit.

Compare the plans being considered by Congress: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Environmental Issues

Growing up on a small farm convinced Ryan of the importance of frugality, conservation and practical policies. He believes that the threat to our climate is one of our top national security issues, one of our top economic issues, and one of our top moral issues. Central Pennsylvania has many businesses who are the forefront of alternative energy research and manufacturing. These businesses must be encouraged to continue growing and our citizens encouraged to gain the skills to work for them. Ryan believes we must support investigating second-generation bio-fuels, and is committed to getting us off our addiction to foreign oil.

Oil Independence

Our national security, our climate, and our economic competitiveness demand that we achieve independence from fossil fuels during this generation. Our leaders have lacked the courage to do what is necessary to make our country safe and to encourage the "dot-com" boom of the next generation: alternative energy and efficiency technologies. Ryan will ensure that the farmers, businesses, and consumers of Central Pennsylvania have the tools and the incentives to lead America through this challenge.

Farmland preservation

Ryan believes that supporting Pennsylvania agriculture is a key component in bringing economic revival to the 19th district. Central Pennsylvania has some of the best farmland in the world and it must be used and preserved to protect our future. Our farmers have always been the backbone of a healthy Pennsylvania economy. Whether producing biofuels or bringing locally grown produce to market, Pennsylvania's farmers and farmland must be supported. This includes assuring that small farmers, not big agribusiness, receive the benefits of subsidies. Ryan will support the Local Food movement, including removing regulations that make it difficult for schools and other local institutions to buy from local farmers. Ryan will shift farm subsidies to focus on small farmers who are central to the natural heritage of our community.

Because of our ideal location so close to Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington DC on major freeways, our District has the constant pressure of population growth and economic development. These are great opportunities if harnessed wisely. It is Ryan's intention to ensure that federal policies support healthy growth and preserve farmland in Central Pennsylvania. Tourism is a mainstay of our community, whether Gettysburg's historic battlefield, York's manufacturing centers or Cumberland's Appalachian trail. Ryan will make sure to support policies aimed at restoring and preserving our heritage through clean air and water, beautiful views of rolling farmland.

Supporting Our Troops and Honoring Our Veterans

There is no duty more sacred for an elected official than ensuring our troops are provided with a strategy for victory, protected in battle, and supported as veterans. Our support for troops must continue when they come home. There is no excuse for allowing our service men and women to be left unprotected after they sacrifice so much for us. Ryan will fight to ensure that all our veterans get the support they deserve, be it educational, healthcare or transitioning to civilian life after serving our nation honorably.

Second Amendment Rights

Ryan is a strong supporter of an individual's right to bear arms and will fight for clean streams and forests for Pennsylvania's sportsmen. He believes we should protect all individual constitutional rights, without politicians picking and choosing which Amendments deserve to be taken seriously.

Small Business

Small businesses account for 2/3 of the US workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that small businesses have created 65 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. over the last 12 years. But they are struggling to get access to credit to continue to grow and invest. The government must ensure the continued ability of small businesses to access credit to hire new employees, invest in research and development and develop new avenues of growth.

The Small Business Administration must be empowered to increase long-term loans to small businesses. We must put more emphasis on programs like the 7(a) loan guarantee program,which provide incentives to private banks to make more small business loans which tend to be less profitable.

All SBA programs that create incentives for investment and research should be increased because they directly and quickly support job creation. Other good programs include:

• The SBA Express program, which provides loans up to $50,000 with a 50 percent guarantee and an expedited loan process that uses credit scoring.
• The 504 loan program provides fixed-asset financing in conjunction with local community development corporations.
• The SBA Microloan program serves the smallest of the small. With a loan limit maxing out at $35,000, the Microloan program includes technical assistance aimed at start-ups and low-income individuals.

In addition to encouraging growth we must protect small business from the rapacious practices of the credit-card industry. One of the basic tenets of free-market capitalism is the sanctity and insolubility of contracts, but somehow the credit-card industry has managed to insulate itself from adherence to this principle, retaining the right to unilaterally change the conditions of their contracts at any time.

Because of the difficulty in getting financing for small loans and businesses and the economic recession, many entrepreneurs have been forced to finance their start-up or growing firms with credit cards. In recent NSBA surveys, nearly half of small-business owners identified credit cards as a source of financing they had used in the previous 12 months—more than any other source, including business earnings.

We need the following credit-card reforms to protect both consumers and small businesses:

• Prohibit the practice of universal default (allowing a lender to change the terms of a loan from normal to default when that lender is informed that their customer has defaulted with another lender, even though the customer has not defaulted with the first lender)
• Prohibit the practice of double-cycle billing (double cycle billing involves considering not only the current balance on the credit card, but also the average daily balance from the previous billing period.), Prohibit the retroactive application of interest rate hikes—interest rate increases only should be applied to future card usage,
• Limit the interest rate percentage increases that card issuers can impose on holders, Require card issuers to apply a customer’s payments to the card balance with the highest interest rate first,
• Prohibit extra interest charges on card debt that the cardholder already paid in full,
• Prohibit interest charges on transaction fees,
• Prohibit late fees if an issuer’s action caused a delay in crediting a payment, and
• Establish an industry-wide practice regarding the time on which a payment must be received or sent to be considered on time.

Lastly, small research and development companies employ 38 percent of all scientists and engineers in America. This is more than all U.S. universities and more than all large businesses. These small companies produce five times as many patents per dollar as large companies and 20 times as many as universities—and more small-business innovations are commercialized. Yet small companies receive only 4.3 percent of the federal government’s R&D dollars. The importance of small business in research and development must not be ignored.

Supporting Local Law Enforcement

We must invest more in local law enforcement agencies. One of the greatest successes of the 1990s was the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Policing Services (COPS) program. But funding for this program has declined from $1 billion a year for most of the late 1990s to just $200 million in fiscal year 2008. Ryan has personal experience with the success of local community policing programs. In Congress, Ryan will make sure local police forces have the resources they need to enforce the law and hold criminals accountable.

Government Reform

We need to stop spending money that we don't have. We have to attack waste in a real way and the government needs to be more transparent in its spending. Government ordered mandates do not create effective or efficient laws that citizens respect requiring huge outlays for enforcement and monitoring. It is the job of the Congress to ensure that laws are simple, clear and create positive incentives for citizens to follow them. No more 3000 page bills! A law that is disrespected or not understood is a law ignored.

The federal government has not supported or protected the decentralization and regional specialization that drives our economy. State experimentalization has been a hallmark of successful policies like the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (Welfare Reform) of 1996. Congress and bureaucrats more often waste billions of dollars on top-down mandates, whether for federal economic development programs, environmental policy or poverty reduction. These programs too often do not send money where it will have the greatest impact in each region. For example, distressed urban communities (like York city), where poverty in America is concentrated, are starved of the infrastructure spending needed for job development. Or federal agricultural programs which mostly support large Agribusiness over small family farms who are the mainstay of Central Pennsylvania’s rural communities.

Federal policies have hobbled America's uniqueness by driving up the cost and complexity of doing business and reducing job growth, particularly for smaller companies. Burdensome mandates regulating employment, the environment, and product liability need to give way to better approaches involving less cost and litigation. But special interests block almost all reforms to protect their fiefdoms.

Collectively, these costs of doing business, coupled with skill gaps, are becoming significant enough to drive investments out of the country, including investments by American companies. It is up to our Representatives to take responsibility for changing the dialogue and protect consumers, educate skilled workers and encouraging business to invest in the USA.

National Debt

Although the economic stimulus is an essential tool for creating jobs and preserving the stability of our economy we must be careful to direct our attention to reducing the budget deficit as soon as the economy is growing steadily and unemployment is falling. We absolutely must reenact pay as you go rules that require all spending bills to be paid for with offsetting cuts or fee increases.

Term Limits

Term limits are great in theory, but less in practice. On one side it is important to have consistent changeover. That prevents corruption. The flipside of the argument however, is having too much turn over so that the representatives have no experience or understanding of how the government works. We then would have to keep reinventing the wheel and worry about the representatives being taken advantage of by bureaucrats, lobbyists and other DC insiders who have spent 30 yrs or more protecting their fiefs.

Some of the most effective representatives have been in for decades, as have some of the worst. So the solution is not as easy as just making term limits to force change. We'd then have the same problem just shorter terms!! In fact this questions points at one of my core interests: effective government doesn't work by mandate...it works by creating incentives that encourage positive results.

So we need to find a middle road that encourages turnover without mandating it. The first step would be to take the redistricting process out of the hands of politicians and give it to non-partisan commissions. (Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, New Jersey and Washington do that now). That would clean politics out of it and make districts more fairly balanced between political philosophies to encourage healthy competition.

The second step would be to take money out of the election process. It is such a huge hurdle to overcome that only the richest or the most well connected can make a strong run. And we know what "well-connected" can too often lead to...corruption. If more people were able to throw their hats in the ring without having to raise huge sums of money the merit process would operate much better. Ryan supports public financing of elections so campaigns are not controlled by special interest money and candidates and elected officials can focus on policies and their constituents instead of fundraising among the rich and powerful.