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5. Guantanomo military prison:

• Keep it open or close it?
• If closed - where would you send those enemy combatants?
• Would you be willing to try those enemy combatants in our civilian courts (with its accompanying mandatory rights as due to citizens)?

Sen. Sununu response: I agree with Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Guantanamo should be closed and prisoners transferred to other secure military facilities.

6. Should President Bush attend the Summer Olympics' opening ceremonies in communist China?

Sen. Sununu response: No.

7. Are you in favor of using eminent domain in taking private property from one owner to another in order to expand taxable property values?

Sen. Sununu response: No.

8. Are you willing to sign an earmark moratorium?

Sen. Sununu response: I voted in favor of a one-year moratorium on earmarks and have co-sponsored and voted for legislation to reform the earmark process. These bills include the Pork-Barrel Reduction Act” of 2006 and the “Honest Leadership and Government Act of 2007.” I was also one of 15 Senators to vote against Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” in October of 2005.

9. You have a choice: raise corporate taxes or eliminate five Federal programs.  Which is your choice? If it is “eliminate five programs”, please list them. (Feel free to list more than five if you think more could go)

Sen Sununu response:

Eliminate the following programs:

1.      Amtrak Long-Distance Routes: This program subsidizes empty seats and ticket prices on long-distance train routes across the country by as much as $300 in subsidies for every passenger.

2.      New Farm Disaster Aid Program: Farmers already receive approximately $20 billion in annual subsidies, and billions from crop insurance subsidies and emergency spending.

3.      Federal Crop Insurance Corporation: Insurers are making billions of dollars in profits - more than double the industry average - while farm incomes are at record levels.

4.      Fossil Energy Research and Development:  This program provides hundreds of millions of dollars to private industry for research on oil and gas technology.

5.      Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program: This program provides billions of loan guarantees each year for mature energy businesses, including nuclear and coal, leaving taxpayers on the hook if the project fails.

6.      United States Department of Agriculture Sugar Program: The Farm Bill mandates sugar prices, restricts imports, and controls market share. The Farm Bill creates a sugar-to-ethanol program, requiring the government to purchase surplus sugar and resell that same sugar to ethanol plants at a lower cost. Sugar policy costs consumers billions of dollars at the checkout counter. 

10. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are “demographic time  bombs” in waiting. What steps should be taken to avoid future failures of these entitlements?

Sen Sununu response: I have authored legislation to modernize and strengthen Social Security and co-sponsored legislation to establish an entitlement commission with the power to submit legislation that Congress would have to act on.

11. How would you propose Congress and the president balance the federal budget?

Sen Sununu responds: Control spending and keep the economy growing by maintaining low tax rates.

12. Would you vote for the “Fair Tax”?   The “Flat Tax”?

Sen. Sununu responds: I have always been an advocate of fundamental tax reform, and endorsed a flat tax during my first campaign for Congress in 1996. 

 

~~~~~~ Visit Senator Sununu's website here.