The State of the Union is clear. We are frustrated. We are tired, We are afraid. We have spent too long with leadership that ran up huge budget deficits, engaged in expensive wars and led our economy to the brink of disaster. We now must all come together to cooperate and return to the basic principles that make our country great: democracy and freedom.

President Obama gave the State of the Union address on Wednesday night and the American people watched, waiting to hear how we will fix the many problems bedeviling our great nation. What we heard was the direction and the vision. We need to now implement it.

My 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. The U.S. has prospered for so many years because it has enjoyed a set of unique competitive strengths. These strengths must be constantly tended to and we have unfortunately allowed ourselves to be distracted from them by the demonizing partisanship of recent years. This means we need a serious and effective reform of the financial services industry. The Volcker Rules, which gives regulators the right to limit the scope and scale of firms that pose a “grave” threat to stability, would be an excellent step and Congress should pass as soon as possible.

But the work doesn’t end there because fixing the financial industry only prevents things from getting worse. We still need to create jobs! Jobs will come from helping our small businesses get back to work and growing. Small business has accounted for more than 60% of all new jobs in the past 15 years. The President called for and I support tax cuts for small business and greater access to credit. A strongly support using $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. A new small business tax credit increased, Small Business Administration loans and reform of credit card laws are additional required steps that will allow small business to focus on what they do best: create jobs.

But just creating jobs is still not enough. We must reduce the burden of health care on the small businesses and everyday working person. The health care bill the Senate passed is the best chance we have in decades to address the lack of coverage amount tens of millions of Americans. We still need to address the costs. We still need to address frivolous lawsuits and defensive medicine. But we cannot take our eyes off the fact that the current health care system is too expensive for us to afford and doesn’t provide a fair level of service that a country as wealthy, and capable as the United States should. We have excellent health care for too few and average health care for too many. The House of Representatives needs to pass the Senate bill with no delay so we can take one step more in bringing the US health care system back to the very top of the world.

Finally, 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. No Child Left Behind must be revisited to improve outcomes and encourage innovative education.

I am a small business owner whose family has lived in Central Pennsylvania for over 10 generations. I am running for the United States House of Representatives in Pennsylvania's 19th District. I am campaigning to hear and address the your needs in these hard economic times. We need to fight for working families and small business. Focus on freedom, responsibility and smarter government.