I believe our health care system is in drastic need of innovative, patient-centered reforms that encourage competition and increase consumer choice, not the bloated bureaucracy, tax increases, rationing, and mandates in the president's government takeover.
The health care law's individual mandate forces nearly all individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. The mandate cannot be severed from the rest of the law because it is the primary mechanism through which the law's changes are supported. Without the mandate, the law collapses.
We ought to be incentivizing people to save more of their own money for use taking care of their healthcare expenses, and what we have done is we have set it up where health savings accounts are harder and harder to use for narrower and narrower purposes.
We have decided that now is the time for me to focus intently on my top priority, my family, as Elizabeth and I raise our two young children. To that end, I will not seek reelection to a third term.
The solution is to change the cake recipe, and that's the way it is with government. We can start adopting policies that work and that encourage economic growth. If you got incentives for encouraging big business development but not small or medium business development, it's not going to work. It needs to work for all three.
Whether it was turning around failing companies, rescuing the Olympics, or improving the business climate in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney has proven that he is ready to be president on Day One.
I will complete my second term, but I have made no decision as to my plans after Congress except that I will continue in public service, including as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve.
I hear people saying we need this and we need that as a society, but is it really fair for the government - i.e. the taxpayers - to provide people with cell phones? I don't think so.
I had someone call me this morning telling me they had somebody who would only work a certain number of hours a week because if they worked too many hours a week, then they couldn't get their government assistance.
I don't care what party you belong to or what your background is. If you believe we are headed in the wrong direction and believe there needs to be a check and balance on the president and Congress, then join my campaign.
I'm going to spend some time with my family. My kids are really in the years where I'm starting to miss more stuff, and we're going to stay very involved in politics.
I believe 2014 will be another historic year for conservatives in Arkansas, and I stand ready to help with that effort and make sure a conservative wins the 2nd Congressional District.
For Arkansas, I think the sky is the limit, but I think we are going to have to fight the urge to avoid risks. We need to look first at where we are as a state. I think, as a state, we have made progress over the years, but there are two kinds of progress: absolute progress and relative progress.
During my childhood, my father, a Southern Baptist minister, and my mother, a teacher, made sure I took educational trips to cities such as Washington, D.C., Williamsburg, Va., Philadelphia, and Boston to learn about America's history.
Currently, the Pegasus Pipeline runs through about 13 miles of the Lake Maumelle watershed and also crosses some of the lake's tributaries. I am especially concerned that the steepness of the shoreline at Lake Maumelle could exacerbate contamination of the water supply in the event of an oil spill and make cleanup more difficult.
A lot of what you have seen with third-party groups - like the Tea Party - these folks are conservative, and they are fed up with people in Washington who are not working for them but against them.
