Before Congressman Todd Young can take over Dan Coats’ seat in the U.S. Senate, he has to beat Congressman Marlin Stutzman in the Republican May primary and then former Congressman Democrat Baron Hill in the November general election.
Having defeated Hill before on Nov. 2, 2010, for Indiana’s 9th district U.S. House of Representatives chair, Young feels good about his prospects this year.
“I’m feeling very confident,” Young said in an interview Monday evening before a political fundraiser at Bella Vitale Italian Eatery in Warsaw. “I defeated Baron Hill back in 2010 because his voting record was out of step with the values of Hoosiers. He voted for Obamacare; he voted for Cap and Trade tax on carbon emissions, which would decimate our manufacturing industry; and he voted for President Obama’s failed stimulus package.”
On the other hand, Young said he has a record in Washington of “getting things done.” He’s a U.S. Marine that “understands how to keep Americans safe and secure” and has a background in the private sector to “know how to create jobs that pay well and turn into meaningful careers in places like Indiana, so I’m very confident about our prospects.”
ISIS terrorists attacked a subway and airport in Brussels March 22, and then a Pakistan Taliban faction carried out an attack in Pakistan Sunday targeting Christians. Asked how the U.S. should get involved in foreign terrorist attacks, Young replied, “The United States needs to lead. I favor invoking Article 5, which is the Mutual Defense Clause of the NATO Treaty. It was last invoked after 9/11. That was when the European countries said this is not just an attack on the United States, but it’s an attack on all of the allies as well.”
He said since Obama has not adopted a coherent, cohesive, winning strategy to defeat ISIS, “We should work with our NATO allies to do so. That can be done immediately, essentially, if this president would show some leadership and show his willingness to do so.”
Young said he believes a change in leadership can shorten the fight against ISIS.
“I think that ISIS can be defeated,” he said. “We need to make the life of an ISIS soldier look very, very hard and unglamourous. And the only way we’re going to do that is by taking the fight to them. That means flying more sorties. That means deploying the troops we already have on the ground more smartly so that each of our bombing missions is more accurate. That means reassuring our allies in the region, and our partners in the region, that we’re going to be there and we’ve got their backs so that the Sunni Arab countries – the Saudis and the Jordanians and the Egyptians – will put their boots on the ground and fight. So there’s a way to win this, and we need to work with our NATO allies to put together a more coherent, cohesive strategy.”
At home, Young is adamant about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“We can transition into a new system that gets rid of these junk lawsuits – medical malpractice lawsuits – that drives up the cost of insurance for our doctors. Those costs are passed onto patients,” Young said.
“We ought to allow Hoosiers and other Americans to purchase health insurance from anywhere around the country, whichever policy they like. Right now, they’re not allowed to do that. That would create more market competition and drive down the cost of health care.”
He said the use of Health Savings Accounts and Medical Savings Accounts should be expanded to incentivize people to take better care of themselves, save people out-of-pocket money and result in lower health care expenditures.
“And we need to explore the use of a refundable tax credit, giving each American a certain sum of money so they can go out into the free market and purchase health insurance from whatever provider they think best suits their needs,” he continued.
He said there’s a host of other things that could be done that could be discussed for hours.
“My preference would be to hold open hearings in the light of day and cobble together a series of different targeted solutions to improve health care delivery, incentivize innovation and not reduce access,” he said. “Instead, what we’ve done is we’ve reduced access, disincentivize innovation and the cost of health insurance, which was promised to go down by about $2,500 per American household, has gone up by about a few grand.”
Young’s campaign also makes it clear that he’s pro-life on the abortion issue.
“We have one Supreme Court justice that just passed away that needs to be replaced, confirmed by the United States Senate. The next president could well nominate another couple of Supreme Court justices. … My deference is going to be to the Constitution of the United States. I need to make sure that justices aren’t inventing new rights out of whole cloth within the Constitution. That should not be controversial. That should be consistent with our duties, and I pledge to offer that to Hoosiers should I become the next U.S. senator,” he said.
As for the GOP not holding any confirmation hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, because Republicans believe the next U.S. president should pick the justice, Young responded, “Just over a year ago, the American people spoke very clearly and said they wanted a Republican United States Senate, so that’s the most recent election we’ve had. And the role of the U.S. Senate is to advise the president about nominees, which starts before he nominates someone, and then to ultimately to consent to those they feel are suitable candidates to sit on the Supreme Court. That’s occurring right now. They’ve advised this president not to bring it forth. I call it the Biden Rule … because Vice President Biden indicated years ago that it would be unfair during what was a heated presidential year to the nominee because the process would be politicized, it would be unfair to the American people, it even would be unfair to the president to put forward a nominee, so I think that argument has equal, maybe stronger force, during this very politicized atmosphere which is 2016.”
In remarks Thursday, Biden said, “There is no ‘Biden rule.’ It doesn’t exist.”
“Of course he did. He’s a politician,” Young said Monday.
Indiana is an agricultural state. Asked about agricultural issues that need to be addressed over the next few years, Young said he put forward the Signature Regulatory Reform Bill of the Republican Party.
“There is a rule being reinterpreted by the Federal Government called the Waters of the United States giving our Federal bureaucrats the authority to regulate irrigation streams and bodies of water that frankly aren’t navigable waterways, that were never intended to be regulated in this sort of way. So we need regulatory reform. This is an area where I’ve led,” Young said. “And secondarily, we need to open up foreign markets for our farmers. With 95 percent of the world’s consumers lying outside of the U.S., it is essential that our fiber, our food and so on have other markets to be sold into.”
For more on Young, visit his campaign website at www.ToddYoung.org
