State Senator Bill Stouffer to challenge Ike Skelton in 2012 race

State Senator Bill Stouffer, R-Napton, is intent on challenging Ike Skelton for his seat in the U.S. Congress in the 2012 election. To get there Stouffer must win the Republican primary and he has started a tour of the fourth Congressional district to meet and greet potential voters.

Last Tuesday Stouffer stopped in Nevada to tour the Precision Aero facility. President Ken Loomer took Stouffer and his wife, Sue Ellen, around the plant to show-off the work being done at the facility.

According to Stouffer, the federal government is causing the recession to last longer than it would without the intervention.

"Businesses are afraid to invest in expansion," Stouffer said. "They face increased spending and attacks on business. This nation was built on individual ingenuity and currently the Congress is punishing individuals and businesses with increased taxes and uncertainty over card check, cap and trade, and health care costs. No one wants to take a chance with the situation as it is.

"The federal government is elongating this recession and until we get some of this settled we're not going to pull out of it."

Stouffer said the majority of the country is opposed to the proposed health care legislation yet it was being asked to accept it.

"Government run health care is not where we want to be," Stouffer said. We're being asked to accept something we don't want."

The proposed Cap and Trade legislation also came in for some knocks from Stouffer.

"Cap and Trade does nothing to increase energy down the road," Stouffer said. "It just places a higher cost on businesses and represents a massive increase in electric rates. In effect it is a massive transfer of wealth."

Stouffer said that businesses needed to be free to fail, failure isn't just an option, but is also a learning experience. Using the government to do away with the prospect of failing would hamper companies in the long run.

"Nobody likes failure but that's how people learn," Stouffer said. "If you use government to remove the pain people can't learn life lessons."

Stouffer said the government had gone overboard with so many crises coming so quickly one after another.

"I always like to use the example of the frog in water," Stouffer said. "If you raise the temperature gradually the frog never notices but this administration is pouring boiling water on a bunch of them."

Stouffer said that he was raising campaign cash faster than any of his Republican opponents and was outdoing Skelton himself.

"I've raised quite a bit of money so far," Stouffer said. "I've raised more money in the first quarter than Ike's previous 13 opponents. I think people are going to vote with their pocketbooks and I think we're the obvious choice."