The problem with the senator, as I see it, is that he doesn't seem to have any solutions to any of these problems. I'd love to hear the Voinovich Plan for reducing the national debt. Or maybe the Voinovich Plan for Energy Independence.
He is absolutely right when he says that there hasn't been a legitimate contender for the Presidency that has talked about the national debt since Ross Perot. Granted, Ron Paul made an attempt but then he always managed to drift off to the gold standard or some other Jedi Mind Trick that nobody really cared about.
I do find it rather ironical to hear the senator talking about the national debt when my Google Alerts light up nearly every day as if it were Christmas morning with news that the senator is handing out yet another grant or giveaway to somebody or other. The self-proclaimed Deficit Hawk should know better. We need to get control of government spending and that includes reducing the amount of bacon that the senator brings home.
Would the senator support tapping the Great Lakes for oil and natural gas? That is a question that I simply can not get an answer to and would really like to hear, particularly in light of his views on energy independence as it relates to national security. He states that we need to announce to the world that we are going to go after "every drop [of oil] that we can responsibly go after" from our reserves -- which he claims "we have more oil reserves than any nation in the world" -- but I am having a very difficult time getting a sense of whether or not he would support it even if there was a way to use the royalties from such exploration to clean up the Great Lakes and rid that environment of the "aquatic terrorists" that he's so worried about.
At any rate, it was pretty enlightening listening to what the senator had to say on these issues and I encourage everybody to check it out for yourselves.
SIDEBAR: He also takes a question about a "Gang of 20"-type group that is trying to come up with a "solution" to climate change that he had mentioned briefly in an answer to a question about the Gang of 20. I want to go on record as saying that I'm against compromise on this issue. If there is a "compromise" that can be had that will not ruin the American economy, then I think we should consider it -- in the interests of being good stewards of our planet -- but I stand strongly opposed to any "compromise" that violates that principle.
