Republican Sensibility with Libertarian Ideals

Healthcare:

Access to preventative care: Preventative health care, such as routine blood tests, cancer screening, and vaccinations, should be universal. This provides a revenue base for rural and urban healthcare facilities.

Lowering medical costs for patients: Redefining nonprofit medicine and standardizing billing and reimbursement practices across providers, insurers, and billers to ensure dollars spent go back to the providers and insurers in amounts that benefit both without costing citizens more.

Use of technology in healthcare should be encouraged: Providers should be incentivized to use technology, such as telehealth, more broadly to keep non-urgent and sick patients that can be managed via home care out of the office to prevent the spread of seasonal illness and leave more time for in-office care for patients who require it.

Mental healthcare should be a priority: Mental healthcare should be treated with the same urgency and compassion as physical illness. Telemedicine can assist prior to in-patient treatments.

Access to healthy food and physical fitness: The government should ensure citizens have access to healthy food and physical fitness. The state of Kansas and the nation should work to ensure everyone who wants to eat a healthy diet and participate in physical fitness activities is able to do so.  For example, that could be subsidizing farmers to provide healthy foods at lower cost or providing tax incentives to encourage folks involved in any physical activity, whether it be hiking, running, horseback riding, local leagues, etc.  to include and provide instruction to members of their communities. We should be open to all ideas when it comes to encouraging our citizens to eat and move their bodies in healthy ways they enjoy.

Women's Rights

The government should not condescend to women by dictating to them what's best for their lives and their bodies. Every woman is uniquely qualified and wholly capable of defining and following her own path to personal fulfillment and well-being. Women's healthcare decisions belong to women and their doctors, not lawyers, not legislators, and not religious organizations. Our maternal mortality rate reflects a lack of real support, and the mothers of Kansas deserve better than a system that fails them. Every woman in this state deserves access to the healthcare she needs, without barriers or judgement.

Being Pro Child

Being pro-child means that I believe strongly that all children, regardless of the circumstances in which they come into the world, need to be properly supported.  It does not mean that we force women to give birth or encourage them to relinquish their children.  Keeping children with their families and providing care to children who are displaced and mistreated is critical.  We should prioritize the health and safety of our nation’s children and, in doing so, seek to improve our child welfare system.  While we should be open to all ideas and points of view, I believe that adult adoptees and former foster youth are our best resource when it comes to understanding what effects our decisions, policy, and placement have on the children currently in the system on which we rely to provide for their well-being.

Saving Social Security

It’s mandatory that we maintain social security to ensure everyone who has paid in gets the income and benefits their money has provided others. To do that, we must maintain a substantial and well-trained workforce, keep the federal budget in line so we can honor our treasury notes, and remove the cap on FICA. Removing the cap will extend the length of viability of the social security fund.

The Future of Education

Pay for educators, training, and continuing education: More public funds need to be allocated to attract, educate, and continuously train quality teachers. We need to emphasize the importance of teachers and the education system.   

Requirements should come with resources, but some resources should come without requirements: State and federal governments should not be requiring programs in schools if they’re not willing to provide resources.  However, schools should also be granted resources to use at their discretion, free from political strings and agendas. This way, schools can fully implement required programs while directing funds toward things children in their community need.

Religious freedoms in education:  I learned my morals from my parents and the church. Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between a man and his God…” The separation of church and state is at the foundation of our democracy, and therefore any state-funded education should be free to teach about all the religions of the world but seek to promote none. 

Student loans and college debt: The student loan system needs to be reformed so that students and parents aren’t required to take out high-interest loans to fund the education they need to get a job.



Budget and Taxes

Using taxes to invest in our future: President Eisenhower had the foresight to invest in our infrastructure in ways that few people understood. Several presidents and Congresses have made further investments in transportation networks, water and sewer systems, energy grids, telecommunications, etc. It’s our turn to improve upon what has already been done and to add technology and energy innovation to the list. We need a consistent vision and coordinated, sustained effort from all parties to make wise investments that improve the lives of Kansans as they shore up the budget. 

Taxes and the IRS: The tax code and the way funds are directed need to be simplified, and at the same time, the IRS needs to function primarily as a service. That means making well-trained IRS staff available to the public for guidance. So, citizens can voluntarily take care of documentation or filing errors and pay small self-reported shortage amounts without incurring fines or penalties, regardless of the amount of time that’s passed.  The intent is to reduce costs associated with issuing, negotiating payments for, and collecting money based on past and present rules violations when tax obligations were fully or mostly met before penalties began accruing.   Enforcement and investigation need to focus on complex tax returns and accounting for large tax obligations that have not been received, which directly affects the government’s budget.

Agriculture

Stabilizing markets is paramount: Mother Nature provides farmers with plenty of variables. Once the hard work of plying their minds and trade to overcome those variables is done, we should be doing our part to reduce variability in the markets on which they rely.  Whether it’s ideas like passing legislation that prevents the government from making changes that will upset markets within crucial timeframes for farmers or working to expand into new markets, we need to entertain all ideas to stabilize and diversify the markets for farmers.