Cong. Tom Cotton: The Most Important Issues Facing Arkansas

Editor’s note: This guest commentary from GOP Senate candidate, Cong. Tom Cotton, appears in the latest magazine edition of Talk Business & Politics, which you can read here.

This election is about which candidate will put Arkansas first. When he campaigned for U.S. Senate in 2002, Sen. Mark Pryor promised Arkansans that he would always put Arkansas first. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case during the last six years under President Obama. During that time, Senator Pryor has consistently put President Obama and his agenda first, voting over 90% of the time with President Obama’s big-spending, big-government agenda. I will be a senator who fights for lower taxes, less spending and less regulation. I won’t just say Arkansas comes first – I’ll vote that way, too.

I’m currently traveling across our beautiful state on my “Arkansas First” tour, and along the way, I hear a common refrain from voters: Arkansans need a senator who is looking out for us, not rubber-stamping President Obama’s agenda.

Sixty-three percent of Arkansans (including nearly one-fourth of Democrats) disapprove of Obamacare, and for good reason. This law has driven up the cost of health insurance, increased taxes on working families, caused millions of Americans to lose health-care plans they liked and were promised they could keep, and continues to hamper job creation and hold back our economy with its massive regulatory burdens.

Yet Senator Pryor cast a deciding vote for Obamacare, and he insists that it has been “an amazing success.” Obamacare hasn’t been “an amazing success.” It’s been a failure, especially for Arkansas’ seniors and Medicare recipients, who are having to endure $700 billion in cuts that Senator Pryor voted for in order to pay for Obamacare. I believe we need to start over on health-care reform and enact patient-centered solutions that give individuals and families more choices, including allowing consumers to shop across state lines, just like we currently do for car insurance.

Arkansas families and businesses balance their budgets, but Washington doesn’t play by those rules. While we work hard and pay our taxes, Washington takes an increasingly large chunk of our paychecks because liberals like Mark Pryor think they can spend our money more wisely than we can. So when Senator Pryor voted to bail out Wall Street banks and Detroit automakers, it was Arkansans who got stuck with the bill.

Senator Pryor’s entire campaign is based on the fact that I’ve supported budgets in the House that balance over a period of years. I won’t apologize for meaning it when I say that I support a balanced budget. For far too long, Washington politicians in both parties have spent too much money, and we’re now mortgaging our children’s future to countries like China who hold much of our debt. A politician is always worried about the next election; I’m worried about our next generation.

Arkansas values run deep in our state, even though the cultural elites in Washington don’t always understand those values. That’s why I was so disappointed to see Senator Pryor support a so-called “assault weapons” ban in 2004 that would ban many guns commonly used by Arkansas sportsmen. We also value the sanctity of life in Arkansas. Our state was recently ranked as the third most pro-life state in America, yet our senior senator refuses to take a stand on legislation passed by the U.S. House (and 80% of the Arkansas House of Representatives) that would stop gruesome abortion once an unborn child can feel pain.

And one of the most important of all Arkansas values is hard work, which I learned from my mother and father growing up on our family’s cattle farm in Yell County. So when Senator Pryor stood with Harry Reid and President Obama to block common-sense work requirements for food stamp recipients, he once again chose to put President Obama ahead of our Arkansas values.

Traveling our state on my “Arkansas First” tour, I’ve shaken the hands and listened to the ideas of thousands of great Arkansans. I’ve met people from all walks of life with very diverse views and opinions, but I still have yet to meet an Arkansan who agrees with President Obama over 90% of the time. The only time I see 90% support for President Obama is when I see Senator Pryor cast votes against our interests in the U.S. Senate.

The contrast in this election couldn’t be clearer: Arkansas needs a senator who will be an independent fighter and who will mean it when he says he will put Arkansas first. I will be that senator.