Tillis talks about Senate race
By Steve Herring
Published in News on October 25, 2014 10:44 PM
State House Speaker Thom Tillis says his priorities if elected to the U.S. Senate would be the same ones he has championed for the past four years, with some key national questions thrown into the mix.
Tillis, a Republican, who is locked in a tight race with incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan, would add to his to-do list, which already includes job creation and regulatory reform,repealing Obamacare, responsible spending cuts buttressed by a balanced budget amendment, having a serious discussion on immigration and border security and ensuring veterans are cared for properly.
Other issues, like same-sex marriage, are best left up to the states and not the federal government -- a position Tillis said he would champion if picked for the Senate seat.
Tillis is party to a lawsuit challenging the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
"The first thing that we are going to do is to see our case through the circuit," he said. "I feel like when you swear an oath to uphold the law of your state and you had 60 percent of the people that voted (for the amendment) almost 29 months ago that the state has an obligation to see that through.
"Going forward I believe states should have the right to make these decisions as they see fit. This is just one of several examples of where states' rights are being trampled by this president and by Sen. Hagan."
Tillis said he would like to see the country's energies spent on regulatory reform and on getting spending and the deficit under control.
However, before those discussions can take place, the country is going to have to spend a lot more time than should be necessary on safety and security, he said.
Tillis disagrees with Obama, and Ms. Hagan's apparent concurrence, on reducing troop levels, saying there is still a battle going on in the Middle East that needs attention and resources.
He is critical as well of what he calls Obama's failure in the Middle East, which was heightened, he said, when the president publicized the U.S. withdrawal plan, which gave enemy forces the timetable they needed to plan their attack.
And cutting money to the nations defense was not the right move either, he said.
"At the federal level, one of the first things that we have to do is repeal sequestration," Tillis said. "You have to come up with a more responsible way to try to get spending in check. There are estimates of 20,000 to 30,000 private sector jobs that are lost with sequestration, not to mention the indiscriminate cuts and the impacts they have on the readiness and our ability to train our soldiers."
Tillis also said the nation needs to focus on taking better care of those who have already served their country, a pledge he says Sen. Hagan has broken.
He pointed to a Hagan campaign promise to care for the state's veterans, and what he calls a lack of action when the VA health scandal broke.
If Sen. Hagan is re-elected, her first vote will be to re-elect Harry Reid as Senate majority leader, clearing the way for him to once again stymie progress in the Congress, Tillis said.
And one of the other issues that will take centerstage if that happens is illegal immigration, Tillis said.
The goal is to prevent blanket amnesty and to stop the problem by controlling the borders, he said.
"We need to get to the point where we seal the border," he said. "Everybody says sealing the border is easy and they dismiss it. Then they want to talk about all of the other problems. Well, if it is so easy why haven't we been able to accomplish it for four decades?"
Both parties have failed on the issue, he said.
"I think if we would just marshal all of our focus around sealing the border then we can have a discussion about what we do with the illegally present population," Tillis said. "But until we do that I think it dilutes the message. I think now people are concerned about our economic security and the American worker. But they also are concerned about homeland security, our literal safety and security."
If a 12-year-old can get across the border, then human or drug traffickers, gang members or even terrorists can as well, he said.
One point that is "sorely missed" in the discussion is that the Hispanic community is concerned as well, and a blanket amnesty would probably threaten the Hispanic community's safety and security more than any other, he said.
When the criminals and gang members come into the country, they are not assimilated in other communities, they are going into the Hispanic communities, Tillis said.
All the work that needs to be done in Washington is going to take money.
And that will require responsible spending and debt management, Tillis said.
Both Obama and Sen. Hagan decried the level of debt when they ran for office the first time, Tillis said. Yet, she has voted for measures that have increased it to more than $17 trillion, he said.
And that includes Obamacare, which is projected to increase it even more over the next 10 years, Tillis said
"I support a balanced budget amendment," Tillis said. "I support spending control so we can get debt under control. We have got to find the policies that also improve economic activity. You do that through regulatory reform. One of the biggest regulatory overreaches in U.S. history is Obamacare, which has damaged the coverage of hundreds of millions of Americans and increased costs for policyholders and companies alike.
"Replace it with something that makes sense for the 30 million Americans that need solutions to their health care problems," Tillis said.
Tillis said he thinks a vote to repeal Obamacare would be vetoed by the president.
If the veto cannot be overridden, ways have to be found to defund or to delay the plan's worst elements until a way is found to replace it completely, he said.
People have probably forgotten the 470,000 insurance cancellation notices that went out to North Carolina residents last year that Obama delayed until after the election, Tillis said.
They are coming out next year, Tillis said.
Another 50,000 such notices for retirees came out just last month, he said.
That is what makes action on Obamacare critical, Tillis said.
Tillis didn't set out to be in hotly contest Senate race -- he was planning on returning to work, a term limit, he said he imposed upon himself.
"In 2006, I publicly stated I would not serve for more than four terms," he said.
But when no one he considered a viable candidate stepped up to the Senate job, he decided to throw his hat into the ring.
There was work to be done, he said.
"This president and Sen. Hagan and the Senate have really created problems that are going to require a change in the leadership. It is going to require a different (Senate) majority leader. This is more about (Republicans) getting to be a majority than me being a senator," he said.