This August, I set out on my Summer of Solutions tour, traveling Indiana and visiting more than 50 communities to speak with businesses and Hoosiers to discuss what’s most important to them, and to discuss solutions for the issues affecting Hoosiers every day, like health care, opioid addiction, jobs, education and the national debt.
If you didn’t get a chance to catch me on my tour this time around, I’d like to share with you some of the solutions I’ve been working on for Hoosiers in the Senate, specifically on the issues of health care, the opioid crisis, gun safety, and the economy:
One issue that affects every American is health care. As I spoke to companies and Hoosiers around the state, it was clear our current health care system isn’t working. One Hoosier I spoke to is concerned he will no longer have the means to pay for his wife’s medication. Unfortunately, his situation is not rare, and many Americans are facing the same predicament.
It’s critical that we lower the cost of prescription drugs and develop a health care plan that works for all Americans. In my own business, I took on the insurance companies and built my own self-insured plan for my employees that was cost effective and included no caps on coverage, coverage for pre-existing conditions, and allowed kids to stay on their parents’ plan until they turned 26. I started doing all of this before Obamacare become law, and I believe if we are going to move beyond Obamacare, we must first have a clear replacement that includes all of these pillars and lowers the cost of drugs.
Crisscrossing the state, I saw the evidence firsthand that the opioid crisis is plaguing Hoosier communities. The Trump administration recently announced $2 billion in opioid grants for the country, and Indiana will receive $18 million of significant funding to put towards making measurable movement on the crisis. The opioid epidemic is a concern for all Hoosier families, and I have offered bipartisan solutions that tackle this issue.
One issue I heard questions on in every community was border security and funding President Trump’s wall. We have a humanitarian and security crisis on our southern border that needs to be addressed. Due to the Democrats’ inaction and our inability to compromise in Washington, we are seeing illegal immigrants flood in through our porous border. It is imperative that we find common ground and enact legislation that will fund President Trump’s border wall and protect Americans from the deadly drugs and criminals coming in through our open border.
To conclude, a few words on the economy: It’s clear when visiting businesses here in Indiana that the Hoosier State is hiring and business is booming thanks to President Trump’s pro-growth policies. Hoosier businesses are in a rare position of having more jobs than qualified candidates to fill them. As our economy continues to grow and available jobs continue to rise, it’s important that we continue to promote trade schools, certificates, and other avenues of education that will help Hoosiers fill these great available jobs.
I left my business to run for the Senate because I believe the government needs to run more like a business. We simply cannot be operating on trillion-dollar deficits and handing out free health care, schooling and loan forgiveness without a thought to who is going to pay for it and how. We need to send more businesspeople to Washington who know how to balance a budget and make a payroll, and I’m glad to be part of changing the dynamic here in D.C. to produce real results for Hoosiers.
It’s an honor that Hoosiers chose me to represent them in the Senate, and they can expect that I will take the discussions I had here in Indiana back to D.C. The swamp could benefit from some more Hoosier common-sense ideas.
