Issues

Issues

Second Amendment - The Right to Bear Arms

Only one candidate for Congress in Louisiana’s Sixth District opposes the election of the “most anti-gun President in U.S. history”.  Don Cazayoux claims that he supports gun owners, but abandons them when he supports Barack Obama for President.  The NRA is spending more that $10 million to defeat Obama, but Cazayoux has endorsed Obama for President.

Bill Cassidy will defend the Second Amendment rights of Louisiana citizens and supports the NRA’s preferred candidate for President, John McCain.  According to the NRA, Bill Cassidy is a “solidly pro-gun candidate” who has supported NRA positions on key votes in the Louisiana Legislature. The NRA gave Bill Cassidy an “A” rating, the highest rating earned by any Louisiana candidate for Congress.

Bill Cassidy agrees with the NRA, and :

·         believes the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding individuals the right to keep and bear arms;

·         supports national Right-to-Carry reciprocity legislation;

·         believes the federal government should not ban firearms;

·         opposes reinstating the Clinton Gun Ban;

·         opposes banning of ammunition magazines;

·         opposes imposition of a new waiting period;

·         opposes federal government maintaining records lawful gun buyers;

·         opposes federal firearm licensing or registration;

·         opposes “one-gun-a-month” restrictions;

·         supports BATFE reform legislation;

·         and opposes the election of the “most anti-gun President in US history”. 

Energy Independence 

Energy independence is essential to America’s long term financial stability and national security. We can accomplish this with tax incentives for individuals and businesses that encourage these and other forms of Alternative Energy and Conservation:
-Promoting the development of alternatively fueled vehicles such as hydrogen cells
-Developing and expanding alternative technologies such as as solar, wind, and clean coal
-Increasing fuel standards and promoting the use of hybrid vehicles

For Louisiana, the benefits for expanded off shore drilling are more than just lowering the price at the gas pump. Louisiana benefits because:
-Louisiana companies and workers will build the oil rigs, and the boats that service them.
-Louisiana companies and workers will build and maintain the new pipelines that transport the petroleum
-Expanded natural gas supplies lower production costs of Louisiana chemical plants, preserving these jobs producing fertilizers, plastics, and other natural gas products.

Increasing our supply of oil will lower prices at the pump. We can accomplish this by:
-Lifting the bans on domestic offshore drilling and extracting oil from shale in the Western United States
-Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other potential energy sources to exploration and drilling
-Reducing the costly, complicated, and time-consuming maze of federal regulatory requirements affecting refineries.
-Increasing the capacity of existing refineries by reducing the costly federal regulations that affect them

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Health Care

My Background
I am passionate about improving the United States Health Care System. I have worked in the Charity/Public Hospital System as well as private practice for 20 years treating the uninsured and the under-insured. I co-founded a clinic which provides free dental and medical care to the working uninsured. I developed public health programs giving free hepatitis B vaccination to 36,000 school children at schools so that working moms, who could not miss work, could still have their children protected. As a teacher with LSU Medical School, I know that there is a shortage of primary care physicians and what this means for our nations health. I know from these experiences and others that Americans have an increasingly difficult time paying premiums and co-pays while their employers have a similarly difficult time continuing to find affordable insurance products to offer and that there must be innovative solutions.

Health care is a complex issue. I know firsthand the problems and have worked for solutions. As your next Congressman, I will work for real reform which insures access to quality health care for all Americans at a cost we can afford.

Solutions
Solutions must simultaneously address access, cost, and quality. Any plan that focuses on only one of these 3 things, or even 2, will fail. An example is that Medicare has expanded access for older Americans to physicians, hospitals and prescription drugs. While doing this, Medicare has ineffectively addressed cost. Now the Medicare trust fund is seriously underfunded potentially endangering this access that is so important. The American people have learned that while it is easy to say that we will give coverage to everyone, we must ask: “How is it paid for?”.

We start by using the money we have to treat the uninsured and under-insured more effectively. This is why as a State Senator, I advocated changing how Louisiana uses its money for the uninsured. I opposed re-building the new Charity Hospital in New Orleans. To finance this $1,400,000,000 hospital, Louisiana will spend 50% of the tax money for the uninsured in South Louisiana in one city with 20% of the people. This money should be spent evenly depending on where people live, not concentrated in one place because of political pressure. We cannot ask taxpayers to pay higher taxes when we waste the money they already provide.

Real change would be for us to set up portability of insurance so that workers could keep their insurance if they changed jobs, allow interstate competition among insurance companies and establish insurance pools to expand the range of products for people to choose between. All these reforms would help more lower income Americans purchase private insurance.

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Worker’s Rights

Cazayoux and Obama Agree: Get rid of secret ballots.

The Facts on the Union “Card Check” Agenda
The “Employee Free Choice Act” (EFCA), also known as “Card Check” is a bill labor unions are promoting that would rewrite the rules of union organizing and get rid of employee private-ballot voting. Under current law, employers are required to collectively bargain with unions only when a majority of employees vote privately for union representation in an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

The EFCA would force employers to deal with unions whenever the unions can force a majority of employees to sign a union card– without the employees provided the freedom of a private ballot. Since it is union organizers, not employees, who typically pick which method is used, EFCA would allow unions to effectively replace all private-ballot voting with the high-pressure, signature-collection method.

What the Unions Say:
In 2006, President Joe Hansen of the United Food and Commercial Workers union – a supporter of the signature-collection method – admitted about private-ballot elections: “We can’t win that way anymore.”

Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union says: “If we pass the Employee Free Choice Act, these unions will grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years.”

What Cazayoux Says:
In March, Don Cazayoux told the Annual Convention of the Louisiana AFL-CIO that “a strong union movement is vital for a strong economy” and that he would support eliminating the secret ballot for workers. (Advocate, 3/18/08)

What Obama Says:
“‘We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,’ said Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). ‘We may have to wait for the next president to sign it, but we will get this thing done.’” (Chicago Tribune, 3/4/07)

What Bill Cassidy will do:
I will defend the rights of every worker. I will oppose efforts by Barack Obama, congressional Democrats, and labor unions to put their agenda above Louisiana workers who currently enjoy the right to work without interference. I believe one of the basic tenets of democratic elections is the secret ballot. The reason this is necessary for political elections is the same reason it is needed for decisions on union organizing – it reduces the ability of leaders on one side, or the other, to intimidate voters. I will not allow the elimination of the secret ballot and other infringements on the rights of individuals who want to work.