Op-Ed: Jobs Remain the Focus in Concord
By Rep. D.J. Bettencourt
2011 was a year of extraordinary achievements for this Legislature. We committed to voters to live within our means and balance our budget without raising taxes and did an uncommon thing for elected officials — we kept our promises.
The over 100 tax and fee increases of the four years prior to this Legislature were simply too much for our employers, and our citizens, to bear.
Last year, we inherited a $900 million budget deficit. Rather than default to the usual solution of more taxes and fees, we lived up to our word and closed that deficit without creating or increasing a single tax. In fact, we reduced or eliminated 12 taxes and fees.
Included in those tax and fee cuts were several reductions in business taxes. As a result of these actions and based on Republican reforms, the monthly employment report by the state Department of Employment Security through January showed that roughly 708,000 more people are now working in New Hampshire than at any time since the start of the recession in 2008.
This is how businesses respond to state government that is a partner, not an adversary.
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Op-Ed: We must reject health exchange. New Hampshire Advantage at stake.
By Andrew Manuse and Reps. William O’brien, D.j. Bettencourt / For the Monitor
January 31, 2012
The New Hampshire House will take up legislation soon that would prohibit a state health insurance exchange and force Washington to repeal, replace or amend Obamacare.
A health insurance exchange is a bureaucratic set of state-regulated and standardized health care plans in the United States, from which individuals may purchase health insurance eligible for federal subsidies. Under Obamacare, states must implement these exchanges by Jan. 1, 2014, or the federal government will do it for them.
What some may not understand is an individual mandate is just one component of the health care overhaul that is not agreeable to our constitutional law. State health insurance exchanges are really the meat and potatoes of Obamacare, and also the structure that would enable enforcement of the individual mandate.
Health insurance exchanges involve the total takeover of the health-care market by the federal government, whether through a voluntary state health insurance exchange or a default federal exchange.
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Op-Ed: No help from Democrats on redistricting
By Rep. Spec Bowers / For the Monitor
January 5, 2012
Re “House redistricting plan is unconstitutional” (Sunday Monitor Viewpoints, Jan. 1):
It is sad that Rep. Terie Norelli is more interested in complaining about a problem than in helping solve the problem.
She admits that the House redistricting puzzle is “difficult to piece together,” but her team contributed nothing to the process. As one of the volunteers on the project I would have welcomed assistance from our Democratic colleagues; the process really is a mathematical problem much more than a partisan problem. It has been compared to solving a Rubik’s cube, a Sudoku puzzle or a jigsaw puzzle.
Despite the difficulties of complying strictly with the federal “one man, one vote” rule and as much as possible with the New Hampshire 2006 constitutional amendment, we produced a plan that has almost twice as many districts as the current (2002) districting. We have tripled, from 28 to 85, the number of single-town districts.
Norelli provides no details about her preferred plan. That’s not surprising because she likely would be laughed out of town if she tried to describe that plan. Under her “weighted voting” scheme, we would take the votes from one town and multiply them by 0.325 and the votes from some other town and multiply them by 0.273 then add up the votes to determine who the winner is. The end result could be that the candidate with a higher raw vote total loses to the person with a lower vote total.
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Op-Ed: Legislators have brought jobs and recovery to New Hampshire
By WILLIAM O’BRIEN and STEPHEN STEPANEK
After four years in which state government grew by 25 percent, fueled by more than 100 job-killing taxes and fees and many crushing regulations, New Hampshire citizens voted for change in 2010. They sent a clear message that we needed more economic growth, not more big government.
Last December, when this new Legislature took over, we made a simple and clear commitment to New Hampshire: we would bring back affordable government that lives within its means and we would create an atmosphere where economic growth could flourish and employers would have the confidence to create good, new jobs.
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Op-Ed: Courts needed major makeover
By Rep. Ken Weyler
Published in USA Today – December 6, 2011
Over the past three decades, New Hampshire‘s court system had become outdated and inefficient. Complaints about underfunding the courts ignored the reality that the system needed a major makeover.
First, some history:New Hampshirehas traditionally had three levels of courts, supreme, superior and district, plus a minor role for a probate court. The 1990s saw the addition of a family court, which was added a few counties at a time. Our population is 1.3 million people in 10 counties. Each county had a superior court, with an extra one in our largest county. There were 29 district courts, a leftover from horse and buggy days. Many of these courts were only part-time for the judge but were fully staffed five days a week.
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Op-Ed: NH GOP committed to fixing education
By MICHAEL A. BALBONI
When there’s something wrong with your home heating system, you either fix it or suffer the consequences. It amazes me that some would prefer our children suffer rather than fix our public education system.
Bill Duncan, in his Nov. 13 guest commentary (“Public education under attack in NH”), doesn’t appreciate the changes being made to our public education system by the Republican majority in the New Hampshire Legislature. Mr. Duncan believes no changes are needed, and he wrote: “New Hampshire’s public school system works well today.”
Oh, really?
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