Less Government
Efficiency, Ethics and Personal Freedoms
Kissell for Congress
Tuesday, January 17, 2024

As outlined in my New Year's message, The Road Ahead, I have already framed the campaign along the lines of the four areas revealed to have been of most concern to voters in the last election. These concerns have not changed and our point of emphasis will be to give both voice and hope to voters disappointed in the results since 2004. These concerns are national security, less government, less taxes and real family values.

When examined closely, it is scary to see how failed, incompetent and deceiving the results have actually been. We've examined the first in the form of National Security. Let's examine the second now.

Less Government

Government Growth: Decrease Bureaucracy, Increase Efficiency and Ethics

A simple accounting of our government's record deficit and review of an administration yet to veto a single spending measure demonstrates how they have not delivered on their promise to decrease bureaucracy. It's simply bogus to state that there has effectively been any meaningful decrease in the size of government except for the reduction in some programs that actually help the working people, children, students, and veterans of this nation. Even then, those modest cuts were simply passed along as more massive tax breaks targeting the wealthy like our own incumbent representative, increasing our deficit further.

Massive new programs, even if well meaning, such as federal intrusion into the traditional area of state interest with No Child Left Behind, the creation of the enormous and lumbering Homeland Security Department and the confusing boondoggle of the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan all demonstrate the contradiction of what was promised versus delivered. As to the efficiency of our newly bloated government, FEMA is not doing a "heckofva job," we still can't get flu vaccines for the second year in a row and our seniors are more confused and scared than ever, with a government that raids our social security coffers to pay for its expansion, then threatens to "fix" social security in the manner it "fixed" Medicare. Not on my watch.

Congressional pork spending, cronyism, lobbying and rubber stamping are at an all time high in Washington, while ethics, integrity and accountability are at an all time low. It's truly going to take one of us to return our values to Congress. I will be the change honest people seek.

Privacy: Protecting Our Personal Freedoms

A hallmark of a commitment to "less government" includes a commitment to protecting our personal freedoms and civil liberties, not the dangerous consolidation of executive power, abusive efforts to spy on our citizens, and intrusive legislation from a federal government treading in unchartered areas it has no business. "Less government" means that our privacy as autonomous individuals must be respected as per the Constitution. We must follow the rule of law as our Founders intended, applying to both the government and governed.

I am a pro-privacy candidate for Congress. The concept of "privacy" means that neither our government, nor any others, can make our most personal decisions for us. I therefore recognize all the prevailing laws of our land as derived from the Constitution, including the reproductive sovereignty of women, the right to bear arms and the fundamental right of religious freedom, including the traditional value of seperation of church and state. We must not legislate any ideology that intrudes on our individual freedoms as Americans.

I subscribe to the Founders' notion of popular sovereignty - that all government's power should be derived from consent of the people, representative of the governed and limited in scope. I firmly believe the people should have more rights than the government.

I know I can make a difference.

Larry Kissell
Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives
North Carolina, 8th District

Someone Working ... For a Change