Guiding Principles
My guiding principles on the issues are individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise. We must return more choices to individuals, limit the size of the federal government to restore more control to the states, and allow our free enterprise system along with the function of markets to allow individuals making their own choices in their every day lives to drive the economy, not government bureaucrats. It is time to restore the vision that our founders intended – a limited federal government with very specific, enumerated powers.
Small business drives our economy, not big government. Government regulations and complex laws stifle innovation and creativity. Uncertainty in the rules and what additional major overhaul may come out of Congress next are causing those who might otherwise take risks to invest in new ideas to put them on hold. The most oppressive force right now stopping the creation of new business and new jobs is the government.
I have owned and operated businesses in Fort Collins and Greeley and am a founding partner of a software company started this past August, employing sixteen people. The hardest part of starting a business is obtaining the initial money to do so. My friends who are bankers say they are simply afraid to lend, because the regulators are in there tightening down on loan ratios and creating new restrictions. They are paralyzed.
We need more leaders in Washington who understand the small business perspective. I never thought I would point to the extremely liberal George McGovern in any positive way, but his story speaks volumes to the trouble that career politicians and lawyers have caused.
George McGovern’s later regrets: When politicians in Washington start dreaming, it is a nightmare for business—in the words of former career-politician, George McGovern. McGovern made some eye-opening revelations after leaving congress. After a twenty-four year career in Congress, he set out to realize “a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility”. He wrote the following in an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal after experiencing the realities of operating a business amidst the complex regulations and legal environment he had helped create:
“In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties. . . I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator …. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.”
A Politician's Dream Is a Businessman's Nightmare, (BY GEORGE MCGOVERN). (Congressional Record, [Page: S7535], Senate, June 4, 1992).
View a video of Tom discussing George McGovern:
Healthcare
This country has the best healthcare in the world. I have a friend who uprooted his family from Canada to move the United States when he started having kids—specifically because he was scared to be at the mercy of socialized medicine. We cannot go down the path of socialized medicine. There are most definitely some fundamental shortcomings in our healthcare delivery system that we must address, and shame on us as Republicans for not addressing them and taking on tough problems when we were in the majority. I will tackle tough problems like this, and will not be scared to go up against special interests in healthcare.
The key areas we need to address are portability between jobs, pre-existing conditions, and lawsuit reform. Above all, we must protect the relationship between patient and doctor.
We spend more on education on this country than ever before—with lower and lower results. Throwing money at something does not necessarily achieve results. In order to obtain results, they have to be expected and demanded. We need more accountability, higher standards, and we must ensure that the top priority of our education system is educating kids with the core skills they must have to participate in a more and more technologically advanced society. The federal government should return more control over education to state and local levels. We do not need a federal bureaucracy in charge of education. Parents should have choices to ensure their kids receive a quality education, and with competition we see more innovative options like charter schools that are able to show results where the existing system could not.
Higher education is way too expensive, we need to strengthen core curriculum so that students are learning the critical skills and knowledge to be educated and productive citizens, and we need more fiscal responsibility.
More on Tom's service in Education...
"The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled" --Cicero. 106-43 B.C.
I will fight for greater accountability and transparency in the budget process (as well as in Congress overall), fight to eliminate earmarks, and fight to stop the runaway federal spending train. If we don’t stop this out of control spending, we will bankrupt this country—and who will bail us out then?
You have my pledge not to submit any earmark requests as a member of Congress.
“Earmarking” is a process used by members of Congress in both political parties to redirect taxpayer funds to identified projects without going through a rigorous merit review process. The practice of earmarking has increasingly contributed to misuse, fraud and abuse in the federal budgeting process and wastes the hard-earned money of working families in Colorado.
I, Tom Lucero, a member of/candidate for the U.S. Congress from Colorado do hereby pledge to my constituents that I will refuse to seek or support earmarks during the Congressional appropriations process through the end of the 112th Session of Congress in 2012.”
- American for Prosperity, Colorado Earmarks Pledge
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government ended its 2009 fiscal year with a deficit of $1.4 trillion, the biggest since 1945. Washington spent $33,932 per household in 2009–$8,000 per household more than 2008. Continuing to run these extraordinary annual deficits is not sustainable, and unfair to our children and all future generations. The federal debt load stands at over 12 trillion, almost $40,000 per citizen.
The federal government is way too large—forget “too big to fail”, it is just “too big to succeed.” Such a large bureaucratic organization is inherently full of waste, fraud, and abuse. The Heritage Foundation published their top “50 Examples of Government Waste” (October 6, 2009, Brian M. Riedl). Some highlights:
#2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security.
#4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them--costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually--fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.
#12. Over half of all farm subsidies go to commercial farms, which report average household incomes of $200,000.
#13. Health care fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually.
#17. Federal investigators have launched more than 20 criminal fraud investigations related to the TARP financial bailout.
#48. Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education.
#49. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.
I will make it my personal mission to identify and expose waste and abuse like this!
We must enact responsible reforms to control entitlement programs that consume more and more of our federal budget each year. “The cost of the unfunded obligations for Social Security and Medicare are more than 61 times the cost of TARP's $700 billion federal program originally intended to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions alone."
Congress needs to fulfill its obligation under the Constitution to either declare war or stay out – and not abdicate this duty by allowing the President to fight undeclared wars! Our commitments to military action need to be made by the people’s elected representatives who were vested with this power.
Long term stability and victory must be the goals in Iraq and Afghanistan. That means: rooting out and crippling terrorist cells; stabilizing governments through honest, transparent elections that provide clear accountability to citizens; reconstruction funding for schools, infrastructure and assistance with security. Abandoning either country when long term stability is uncertain would jeopardize America's short and long term security for political gain. Further, if we are not there with a long-term commitment to succeed and win, then we should not risk American lives.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our men and women in uniform—as well as their families—that we truly can never repay. What we can do, however, is ensure they have the resources and services they need when they need them—while they are risking their lives for the rest of us, as well as when they return home. The way we can also best repay them, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, is to be ever-vigilant at home and each do our part to preserve our freedoms and values.
As a regent Tom supported the University of Colorado administration in negotiating a deal with the Veterans Administration for their new hospital. The Fitzsimmons campus is genuinely the envy of every other major medical campus in the country. It is important to make certain that our veterans have access to the best doctors and facilities in the country.
First, this entire scheme is based on a premise that man-made Global Warming is the cause of climate changes. That is not proven, and the recent insider emails by scientists attempting to fudge data to support their preconceived notions casts more doubt on the scientific justification for such programs. This legislation will result in a huge hidden “tax” on average Americans through higher energy costs.
Under a cap and trade system, the feds first determine an allowable amount of CO2, then issue permits to all polluting businesses, sort of a “license to pollute”, and then companies buy/sell credits depending on whether they are over or under their limits. The costs of the permits and the credits will all be passed onto you and me in the form of higher energy prices. The legislation will then direct some percentage of this new funding source to lower income citizens to help pay these higher energy costs and some percentage will be dedicated to alternative technology development (likely chosen more for political reasons than those with the best potential), so the federal government will then be picking winners and losers among various competing alternative technologies. Some progressive groups indicate that an ‘ideal’ cap and trade system would also include sending some of this money to other high-polluting countries to help them reduce their emissions. Initial estimates by the Congressional Budget Office project that an economy-wide cap-and-trade program would cost at least $50 billion per year, but could reach up to $300 billion.
See below for Tom responding to voter Question: "What is Cap & Trade?"
Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. The tax code is way too complex for everyone. The most oppressive force against the creation of business and new jobs is the government, in particular the tax code. We must seriously consider alternatives. According to Cato Institute:1. Income taxes are so complex that there are up to 1.2 million paid tax preparers in the country2. The number of pages in the tax code and regulations doubled from 26,300 in 1984 to 54,846 by 2003, and as of 2009 was over 67,000, according to tax publisher CCH. Since we are overhauling every other segment of the US economy it seems, let’s at least tackle this one.
We have to close our borders. The federal government needs to do its job if it will not allow the states to act. However, the flow of those coming here illegally will not stop until we remove the incentives: we must stop providing benefits, education, and hold accountable those who employ them.
TARP Bailouts & the “Stimulus”
I am opposed to the federal government bailing out major industries and institutions because they are “too big to fail”. It is too much government intervention that got us into this mess – by putting the full “faith and credit” of the hardworking American taxpayer behind risky mortgages and investment instruments. At the most basic level, the government cannot stimulate the economy, it can only raise taxes on some to fund pet programs for others. This will not result on long-term prosperity and job growth; it only increases the tax burden on the most productive segments of our society.
I strongly believe that we need to explore alternative forms of energy, and that this R&D work is already being pursued—and aggressively. Americans generally want more green solutions, and that is good. However, I do not believe the federal government should be in the business of picking the winners, most likely prematurely by subsidizing or propping up politically-favored interests. I think we will gradually make this transformation away from dependence on fossil fuels, but the in meantime, we need responsible productions and balance in our policies. In Colorado, Governor Ritter’s restrictions on oil and gas have practically shut down the industry in our state.
I am 100% pro-life, from conception to natural death. I believe that families form the core unit of our society, and parents should have more choices in their children’s education, their healthcare options, and every other aspect of their lives.
As a Colorado native, I understand that water is the life blood for everything in Colorado: development, job creation and agriculture; that’s why I am a 100% supporter of NISP.
As a hunter since age 11, I am a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment and gun rights.
Card Check
The right to cast a ballot in private, without undue coercion, in a fairly monitored election is fundamental to us as Americans. “Card check” would allow for unions to formally organize under nothing more than postcards that could be handed out at your doorstep, in closed rooms, or other places that would be highly subject to fraud, abuse and coercion. With a “vote” based on these collected cards, unions gain collective bargaining status, and employers would further be forced into a “contract” mandated by a government bureaucrat. Betsy Markey co-sponsored this legislation, that is fundamentally un-American.