Hartman enters race for 4th District

Wink Hartman wants to bring common sense and business experience to the 4th District Congressional seat.
He stopped in El Dorado Thursday to speak with people at Susie’s Chili Parlor about ideas important to them.

Hartman feels an important aspect of life is family.
“If the government continues to attack the family unit through taxation we don’t have much opportunity to prosper,” said Hartman, who is from Wichita.

He said as those in Washington continue to create more things and programs, that filters down as more taxation on the people.
Another important issue to Hartman is cap and trade.
He said this will have a large impact, especially in rural Kansas.

“Cap and Trade was tried in Europe and failed,” he pointed out. “It is going to trickle down to all of us.”
He said if government controls continue to increase the United States is going to lose millions of jobs to overseas companies, making the problem even worse than it is today.
“It will be cheaper to manufacture things overseas,” he said.

A point brought up by one of the constituents attending was the change needed in leadership.
“It’s a race that has to be started and we have to put people in place,” Hartman said. “There is nothing wrong saying no.”
He added that politicians seldom say no in Washington.
“You and I, we have to balance our budgets; we don’t just keep writing checks,” he said, adding that bailouts are not a way of life.
“Being a business person I still have to grow,” he said.
As a person he expressed an understanding in the importance of jobs.

“The jobs aren’t in DC, they are out in America,” he said. “Someone needs to go shake their hand and convince them to build their new plant here.

“This district still has that same approach.”
He said people here understand they have to work and earn a paycheck.

He pointed out that 47 million people work for small businesses and they are the backbone of this country.
With the new proposed taxes, those businesses would see a 35 to 40 percent tax rate.
“You are going to have to get off the small businessmen’s backs and let them run their business,” he said.

“We are creating a society, slowly but surely, that doesn’t understand they have to go to work and they have to have an education.”
He also addressed health care with the group.

He said they are not using the word tort reform, but rather defensive medicine in the proposed health care plan.
“Tort reform today is not in the health care bill and it should be,” he said.
“We truly have an opportunity in the 4th District to change the course and elect a businessman.”
Another topic of concern to the constituents was gun control.
“The second amendment makes it very clear,” Hartman said. “That is your right.
“The thing in Washington you find is the leader of the party comes in and it’s follow the sheep,” he said.
“Gun control is important. There have been many times they have tried to incorporate that into other bills and limit your rights.”
He felt the day might come when politicians try to tell people they can only buy one box of ammunition a year.

“We have to have people with common sense and who know how to read the Constitution, and we are moving so far away from that,” he said, adding they have been moving away from it at an even faster rate today.
One other concern was the education system. He felt it needed to be under local control, not having the government decide what is good for the children.

“My fear is the next thing that will happen is someone in Washington will select the text books,” he said.

He also was concerned that student loans had been moved to the federal government.

“My fear is they will give students a list of approved schools where they can spend that money,” he said. “That is very scary. That is government control of education.
“First we need to make sure we keep control of the education system.”

Hartman didn’t think the number of days kids get out of school during a school year was beneficial either.

“Maybe if they (educators) spend more time with kids in the classroom than on periphery things, our kids might be better off,” he said.
A final topic he covered was immigration.

He felt there were three points to this.
“First of all the borders need to be secured in the United States,” Hartman said.

“Second of all, we cannot take and return 10, 11, 12 million immigrants in one afternoon. What we need to do is as we find illegal immigrants to send them back, not coddle them.
“Third,” he continued, “we need to work on the VISA program so it works.”

He thinks this would let them be productive, tax paying members of the society.
“Pelosi and her group don’t want to deal with those people because they depend on them for votes,” he said. “Their political views are just quite a bit different than the norm.”

Hartman is running for the seat being vacated by Congressman Todd Tiahrt.