SPECIAL ADVERTISING FEATURE
-2(
+
+ %$5721 &21*5(660$1 7+ ',675,&7 2) 7(;$6
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
&
ongressman Joe Barton’s roots run deep in the district he serves. Barton has lived or worked in Ennis, Waco, Crockett and Arlington before deciding to move back to Ennis in 1984. He now splits his time between his offices in Ennis, Arlington and Washington D.C., but he calls Ennis home. “Well, it’s 18,000 people so you can’t really say everybody knows everybody, but it appears as if everybody knows everybody,” Barton said. “It’s just a very friendly place and I just like the environment here.” While working as an industrial engineer before his political career, Barton was active in church, coached little league and volunteered with various campaigns. He was chosen for the White House Fellows program in the early eighties, which gave him a taste of federal politics. “After I became a White House Fellow, I looked at the federal level and thought that I may be able to help in some of the issues back in the eighties … and I could have an impact to help a lot of people and I still believe that.” When Congressman Phil Gramm ran for thde Senate in 1984, Barton decided to run for Congress. During his congressional career, he’s focused on
,0
LIVING-MAGAZINE.COM
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2012
energy policy, environmental policy, health care policy and budget issues. Barton is running for re-election in the upcoming congressional race. Recently, Ellis County Living Magazine was able to ask Barton about some topics of concern to residents in Ellis County. What follows are his responses to some of the issues our country is facing.
%8'*(7
We need to get the budget under control and I think you need to do that by reducing spending, so I think that will be the No. 1 issue. I don’t think there’s any area of the budget we couldn’t save money in ... And I think we just need to do a comprehensive review. We have so many federal agencies and so many programs that you literally can’t keep track of them and a lot of them can be consolidated. There’s a lot of administrative expense that, I think, could be reduced. And then programs that just have no benefit to the general population ... There’s not any federal program that can’t be looked at and there’s probably not many that can’t be reformed in some way to save money ... It would be nice to pass the balanced budget amendment and send it to the states before I retire. It would be nice to have a balanced federal budget. The next specific move is going to
be to implement sequestration since the super committee didn’t report a recommendation. And that’s an acrossthe-board cut ... The total is $1.2 trillion but that’s not in any year, that’s over a 10-year period. And Congress can change it, but it can’t change the total. In other words, we could pass on the floor instead of having an across-the-board sequestration we could say cut x amount here and y amount there, but the total still has to be $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
-2%6
You can’t increase jobs by just increasing federal spending. If that were the way to do it, we would be awash in jobs now. We’ve borrowed $1.5 trillion, and we’re in our third year in a row and it ain’t working. The way to do it is to restore confidence in the economy so people go out and invest more money and create jobs. You have to give the investor, the owner, the opportunity, the decision-making ability to decide what’s best for them—to make a profit so that they can hire people. I would hope that people would make the decision to do it right here in the U.S. ... The state of Texas has a program that if you bring a factory from outside of the state, they’ll help pay for the land and give you a break on utilities. That’s an incentive. If the jobs created offset the cost of it, I’m fine with that. But just to give something to somebody to locate and then they stay