By David P. Greisman
Sentinel Staff
Grant Bosse spent half a decade working for Sen. John E. Sununu as a congressional staffer in Washington, D.C. As the Hillsboro native runs for his own seat in the nation’s capital, he is advocating that the federal government play less of a role in the lives of Americans.
“I think there are areas where the government can establish a safety net, but that doesn’t mean the government should be the first solution,” Bosse of Hillsboro said Friday in a meeting with Sentinel editors.
“There are voices for reform down there (in Washington) right now that are standing up and saying, ‘I don’t need to have the right answer. I’m going to turn power back to the people, and we’re going to have a smaller government, and Congress is going to be making fewer decisions,’ ” he said. “Because it’s not our job to make those decisions for you. I’d add another voice to that chorus.”
Bosse must first best the four other Republicans seeking to challenge Democratic incumbent Paul W. Hodes for New Hampshire’s 2nd District seat of the U.S. House of Representatives: Bob Clegg of Hudson, Jennifer Horn of Nashua, Alfred L’Eplattenier of Rindge and Jim Steiner of Concord. They will face off in the state primary election on Sept. 9.
If elected to Congress, Bosse said, he will work to make smaller government the rule on issues such as education, energy and health care.
“There are other services that are popping up where we let them, where government gets out of the way, the minute clinics that are being offered through some of the pharmacies, Wal-Mart and CVS and Rite-Aid,” Bosse said. “And you get a licensed doctor, and you can come in for 10 or 20 bucks and get a quick check-up.
“If you just need a basic diagnosis, you don’t have to wait, and it’s meeting those health-care needs at reasonable costs, letting the market find a solution,” he said.
“The tremendous amount of money we pour into health care here in the United States without getting noticeably better health-care outcomes. I don’t trust the government to make those decisions. Some things are too important.”
When it comes to education, certain unfunded mandates involving special education and federal standards are unproductive, Bosse said.
“We have some ridiculous restrictions on local school boards that have nothing to do with education,” Bosse said.
“We’re delivering health care and babysitting services, but not education, in the form of special-education mandates. I think we can provide the best education reasonable for that kid, but if it’s a health-care concern and not an education concern, I don’t think that cost necessarily lies with the school district.”
As for No Child Left Behind, it “was a bad bill,” he said. “I don’t mind testing. I think we should have testing. But we should then give those test results to parents and let them decide how to respond to them. We can give them information, but we shouldn’t be having Washington involved in the daily education of our students.”
Similarly, Bosse said Congress shouldn’t restrict the development of alternative energy sources by offering incentives for some types of energy but not others.
“Right now we have tremendous tax credits for residential solar, and we push people to put in solar panels,” he said. “The sun doesn’t shine everywhere all the time. We should level that out.
“They want to put in wind power. They want to put in biomass. Leveling and making permanent the tax code would send signals to entrepreneurs that if they find a better way to generate clean energy, there will be a market for it.”
And drilling for more domestic oil in the meantime would provide lower gas prices, Bosse said.
“You’re going to increase production, and the futures market will immediately start lowering prices,” he said. “Just lifting the executive embargo on offshore drilling, by moving us one step closer, has caused something like a 20 percent decline over the last month and a half. Not entirely, but it was a big part of it. Another part of that was Americans started driving a little less.”
With the economy likely to be one of the major issues in the upcoming election, Bosse said a vote for him will bring back the core Republican principle of financial prudence.
“We stopped giving Republican voters a reason to support us when we abandoned those principles and we got into a bidding war with Democrats for the affection of New Hampshire’s voters with earmarks and pork-barrel projects and out-of-control federal spending,” Bosse said.
“We really lost credibility as the party of smaller government and lower taxes, and rightfully so. I’m running to restore that credibility.
Copyright © 2008 - The Keene Sentinel
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