Rehberg: 'Small town America' will save us

Though he had to rush off after a talk with the Lake County Republican Women at Camp Marshall, near Big Arm, two weeks ago for his daughter's birthday, Congressman Denny Rehberg provided a private follow-up interview with the West Shore News last week.

Rehberg said that legislators must recognize the potential of small towns and small businesses to keep the country strong and provide smart solutions to real problems.

In fact, Rehberg stressed that stimulating the economy demands real and long term solutions for the businesses and taxpayers who fuel the local economy.

"If you really want to get economic development, one of the major employers out there is Semitool," Rehberg said. "The question is, 'How does [the] so-called stimulus package help keep Semitool going?' They don't happen to be a highway construction program or a water treatment facility, and yet they are a major part of your economy in that community, and when they're under stress it shows."

Rather than what he referred to as a "government-control, government-spending" solution, which he did not believe would truly help Americans or bolster the weakening economy, Rehberg called for an aggressive initiative to provide permanent tax relief - particularly, to small businesses and families - as the only proven way to stimulate both the local and national economy.

"Let's not forget that there is a difference between a job and a career," he said. "If you spend $10 million on a bridge project in Flathead County, the construction company comes in and uses their employees or other employees to build that bridge, but when that $10 million is gone, that job may be gone, unless there's another source of income behind it to build the next bridge and the next bridge"

Rehberg cited historic examples such as John F. Kennedy, who stimulated the economy in 1961 by lowering taxes and Ronald Reagan in 1981 who turned the economy around using the same approach, or George W. Bush, who use the same approach in 2000 and again after September 11 terrorist attacks and after Hurricane Katrina.

"What's the alternative?" he asked. "Government spending. That was the Great Depression of FDR. Now, they're beginning to talk about what brought us out of the depression and recession during that era, which was WWII, and we don't want that to bring us out."

At a more local level, Rehberg said Montana's taxes can be kept down at the state level because of a constitutional requirement that does not exist at the federal level: a balanced budget. Without such a requirement, the federal government does not have to match expenditures with revenues and can go on spending indefinitely and collect revenues later, once economic pressure demands it.

"We're creating debt," Rehberg said, "and ultimately the debt's going to have to be paid for."

However, Rehberg stressed that all hope is not lost-that is, as long as Americans learn to demand real solutions and bipartisan restraint from their representatives.

"The Congress will only restrain itself in voting for more spending if the public rises up and says 'Enough is enough,'" Rehberg said. "What stimulates the economy is not government spending on programs we'd like to have, it's bipartisan restraint and trying to slow down our spending."