Sean Bielat: It takes a Marine

Last week I participated in a blogger telecon with Congressional candidate Sean Bielat. A marine and a businessman, Sean is running as a Republican in the 4th Massachusetts District - the seat currently occupied by Barney Frank. In announcing his retirement, Barney conceded that the “spirited campaign for re-election” that Sean gave him in 2010 contributed to his decision to turn in his Congressional lapel pin after 32 years.

The author (lower right) records Massachusetts 4th Congressional District candidate Sean Bielat during a 2010 rally.

The 2012 election, Sean says, “is about jobs and the economy.” On the campaign trail, he’s had the opportunity to meet many small businessmen who told him how much damage the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress have inflicted on the economic front. Out-of-control regulations are undercutting job creation. A man with a painting business, for example, told him, “I’m in a position right now where I could hire one or two people, but I’m not because I don’t know what’s coming.” (For some stats on how Obama compares with his predecessors in this department, see my recent blog entry, With Obama You Get More—Regulations.)

During the telecon, I was impressed by Sean’s willingness to take on the difficult issues. I wrote previously that, without cuts in defense, Social Security, or Medicare, or increases in revenue, you could shut down the rest of the government and still have a deficit (The Budget Battle: What you need to know). Sean gets this. “There’s a lot of demagoguery about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” he says, “but there aren’t a lot of solutions.” I asked Sean for specifics. I confess I was somewhat skeptical that he would provide any, but he did: means-based testing and increased age of first benefit. As for military spending, he says, “There’s no way you can be serious about deficit reduction without taking a look at the Department of Defense…There’s a smart way you can do it and a dumb way you can do it…Cut civilians instead of soldiers.”

This commitment to budget cutting stands in stark contrast to that of the likely Democratic nominee, Joseph P. Kennedy III. The proposals for “Balancing our Budget” on Mr. Kennedy’s website are a laundry list of programs he won’t cut. His idea of cost "containment" is the trillion dollar Obamacare program. Mr. Kennedy is so wary of committing himself to anything that he won’t even comment on MTV’s Fantasy Election 2012 game.

Apparently, it takes a Marine to make the tough decisions.

You can learn more about Sean at SeanBielat.org. As always, if you like what you see, I encourage you to be generous with your time and financial support.