On The Issues

Strong Schools

Education is the currency that will buy Arizona's future success, and the state legislature has for too long avoided investing in that currency.

Schools, both district and charter, have struggled under this state's 49th-in-the-nation spending on students. Our educators do great jobs with the paltry resources the legislature has given them, but important K-12 institutions have had to scrimp and cut despite doing the best they can.

Instead of trying to put guns in schools, we should be addressing how to keep class sizes small and preserve crucial school programs, including before-, after-, and during-school programs. In addition, we owe it to the children of Arizona to work toward attracting talented teachers and retaining the wonderful educators we have now.

Safe Neighborhoods

When it comes to preventing crime and decreasing recidivism, research shows prevention and rehabilitation are far more effective than simply building more prisons. Public safety officers must have the resources and manpower to catch behavioral problems and conflicts before they become criminal acts.

An important part of a prevention strategy is supplying enough community police officers and school resource officers to attack crime at its root. Necessary to rehabilitation is a fair system that will hold first-time offenders accountable while simultaneously providing them with healthier, more socially responsible options for navigating through life.

Fiscal Responsibility

A difficult economy, poor planning, and bitter partisanship have led to Arizona having the one of the worst budget outlook in the country, with a $1.7 billion deficit looming in 2009. Arizona's legislature must stop looking at short-term economic solutions that only last until the next election and begin planning for the long-term well-being of the state and its citizens.

Looking to the future means encouraging the creation of jobs and job training, as well as investing in high-tech and bio-tech industries. Simultaneously, we must support and nurture the businesses, both large and small, that are the backbone of Arizona's local economies.

We must also constantly and critically examine state programs and ensure they are functioning at top efficiency; curtailing government waste is priority No. 1 when it comes to eliminating Arizona's budget deficit.

Healthcare

The hard-working citizens of this state deserve access to quality, affordable health care, both for their individual well-being and the long-term well-being of the entire state. More than 1 million Arizonans lack health care, which will affect all of us now and in the future: Research shows uninsured patients are four times as likely to need emergency care and have higher disability rates.

Arizona's most vulnerable citizens deserve access to health care as well. Right now, 264,000 Arizona kids lack access to health care. Without quality health care now, these children are at risk to develop far more serious and more costly health problems in the future. Furthermore, healthy children have more capacity to learn, helping them later in life.

Our state's elderly, as well, deserve access to health care. The Federal health care systems, Medicare and Medicaid, are disjointed and oftentimes confusing. Most seniors are covered by Medicare, which doesn't pay for the nursing home care used mostly by seniors. Efforts need to be taken to ensure Arizona's seniors are well-attended and do not have to worry about choosing between buying medications or buying food.

Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration is, at its root, a supply-and-demand issue: an endless supply of illegal workers come to Arizona to fill unscrupulous business's demand for cheap labor. Because of this, we must continue to support strong employer sanctions laws to fight the demand side of this problem.

Border security as well must be a focus of combatting illegal immigration: where the Federal government has failed to live up to its responsibility to protect our borders, Arizona must step up by supporting more border patrol agents, utilizing the most advanced border security technology available, and pushing for more patrol support from the National Guard.

Perhaps most pressingly, we have to move aggressively to stop human smugglers that have turned parts of our state into dangerous crime centers, and shutter the drophouses that decimate neighborhoods, damage property values, and serve as havens for the abhorrent treatment of human beings.