Q+A with Saxby Chambliss

As part of a 13-day tour, incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss, hit the campaign trail for the final stretch as the Nov. 4 election draws near. His third stop brought him Georgia College for a rally attended by bipartisan audience.

Chambliss rallied the young vote and answered tough questions from Democrat and Republican students.

After the rally, Chambliss took time to answer a few questions for The Colonnade.

Q: Both presidential candidates have focused on “change”. What would be our top 2 policy priorities for change in Georgia and how do you plan on advocating for such changes?

Well we need to change health care system in this country to make sure we can provide affordable healthcare for every single American. For other changes, I’m a strong advocate for changing our tax system. We have a tax code that is broken, it doesn’t work, it’s not fair, and it’s not equitable. We need to move in the direction providing a fair, simpler, and more equitable taxes.

Q: Given the likelihood of a sustained economic decline, what would you do to help further the in-sate job prospects for Georgia’s college students?

We are a very resilient country and we’re going to rebound from this current financial crisis. What we got to do rather than taxing our way out of it, we need to provide incentives to corporations to expand their businesses, to create more jobs for students graduating here from Milledgeville and from other institutions all over the state. The way we do that is through providing accelerated depreciation on capital assets, whether it’s other forms of tax credit or creating jobs in small places here in the community. There are number of ways we can do that and I’m a big proponent of that.

Q: There is a consensus that education provides the best opportunity to escape poverty, secure employment, and provide for family economic security. How would you as a senator improve the federal government role in education, especially as it applies to our state?

I’ve always been a strong advocate for local control when it comes to educating young people in the state and across the nation. We need to make sure that we don’t have a cookie cutter approach to education because what works in Atlanta may not work in Milledgeville, and what works in Milledgeville may not work in Savannah. So, we as a federal government need to have a federal policy that is broad and flexible and provides parameters within each school districts around the country and work with them.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 24 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry