I had the pleasure of speaking to Mark Bitz this afternoon. Mr. Bitz is a successful business man who told me he no longer recognizes his own country. So he’s decided to seek the Republican nomination to run for Congress in New York’s 25th Congressional District.
He explained that he lived in Poland in 1980 and1981 teaching English to agriculture researchers. His wife is from Poland so he has first hand experience of life under a socialist system. He’s amazed that the “Poles have shaken the socialist system off and become freer, while over the same period of time we keep moving incrementally towards cradle to grave care, and in the process we’re doing very serious harm to our economy.”
We talked about today’s front page article in our local newspaper, and Rep. Dan Maffei’s (the incumbent) ideas for economic growth and job creation. I mentioned that to me it seems the Democrats are just trying to target where they want jobs to be created, and they just don’t seem to get how the economy works. I asked if he has the same sense, and he noted how Obama has the fewest private sector people working for him than any other administration. He said he’s a unique candidate because he’s created over 100 private sector jobs, and has employed as many as 300 individuals. In fact, he has 25 years of private sector experience. He knows what it takes to grow a business and make a payroll, and said “we can’t have ridiculous burdens placed on us by our government” for economic growth to happen.
Bitz finds it a bit scary how the Democrats seem to do everything for their base. “We’ve seen it in their stimulus bill. Very little of it was stimulus, most of it was channeling taxpayer resources to the democratic base, and we saw the same thing with the health care bills.” He believes our representatives should be responsible enough to represent all of the citizens in their districts, and in Obama’s case the country, and not just channeling money to those who vote for them. He also said he supports term limits, and if elected he would not serve more than twelve years. He doesn’t seem to have much use for career politicians.
As for the stimulus bills, he told me “The hundred jobs I’ve created may not sound like much, but it’s a hundred more than our lawmakers have created with a trillion dollars of our children’s future. Borrowing from our kids is not the way to get the economy going.” He believes the government caused the economic crisis, that it was not a failure of capitalism. He wants to see the government give small business leaders confidence that the government won’t be dumping on them. Right now we don’t know if the 2001 tax cuts will expire, and businesses aren’t going to invest when there is so much uncertainty. He believes the only way to keep the Democrats from letting the tax cuts expire is for conservatives to raise our voices and create voter backlash.
Mr. Bitz mentioned David Walker, of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation who warns us that the unfunded public pensions, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are unsustainable. Today their website shows us that the real national debt is $56.4 trillion, or $184,000 per American. That’s unbelievable and Bitz said that was probably the deciding factor in his getting into the race.
As far as the race for NY25, Bitz said a poll shows he has 54% name recognition in the district. He believes that name recognition is in part due to his work on Reform Albany and his work in the business community. He’s able to fund part of his campaign, but could use a little help. Should he get the Republican nomination, he’ll be up against the incumbent Dan Maffei. He pointed out that 52% of Dan Maffei’s campaign contributions come from outside our district, and Maffei already has plenty of cash to spend on the campaign.
All in all, it was a nice conversation and I got the impression that Mark Bitz is a decent, hard working American who shares our concerns about what’s happening to our country. He seems to have common sense and he certainly understands the economy. If you’d like to help Mark Bitz get the GOP nomination and defeat Dan Maffei (a Keynesian) consider making a contribution to his campaign.
