Gregg Harper at Editorial Boards

The Meridian Star:

It has been a little bit of a whirlwind. Obviously there have been a whole bunch of issues. But the overriding topic right now is health care reform.

And there's another piece of legislation that's just as bad, which is the cap and trade, basically the national energy tax. That's out there. There are still issues on what's going to happen with card check. And there's that the President in effect said that if you don't see a path for people that are in the country illegally to get citizenship then you're a demagogue.

Underneath all this, I think, is the spending. It's a major part of what we see when we come home in the district or we get e-mails or phone calls, the big concern seems to be how can we spend at the level we're doing, how can you do deficit spending at this level. Bush's deficit was $400 billion his last year. Well this year, it's projected to hit $1.8 trillion. Almost 4 and a half times what it was the last year of Bush's term. So that to me is something. You know that when the Republicans were in control and we had the deficit spending even with the war situation going on the Democrats complained about it. Now the Democrats are doing it and the Republicans are complaining about it. I would really prefer that the Republicans and Democrats both complain about it and you realize that we cannot do the level that we're doing at this point.

Laurel Leader Call:

I believe we already have good health care in this country. Do we trust the government to come in, take it over and make it better? Will they help reduce costs, increase coverage and not lead to rationed health care?

Mississippi just had three special sessions to handle a $90 million deficit. What do you think will happen with $297 million? Unfunded mandates always trickle down, even to local communities.

The top spending in the country is Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, national defense and then interest on the national debt.

We were told that if we didn’t pass the stimulus, unemployment would hit 8 percent. Of course, now it’s on its way to 10 percent. It created 33 new federal government programs and the National Health Care Officer. It’s not done anything to help us at this point. The only jobs it’s created are federal employees, and that’s not doing anybody any good.