Horn speaks to gathered crowd at April 15th TeaParty in Manchester
Here are the remarks as prepared and delivered by Jennifer Horn as she announced her intention today to seek another go at the GOP nomination for NH’s 2nd Congressional District:
Good morning. Thank you all so much for being here this morning – it is great to see every one of you!
Ever since Charlie Bass announced his exploratory cmte last week I have been getting a lot questions about what I am going to do – will I run? Will I be squeezed out? Well, I am here to tell you – I am running for US Congress in the 2nd district and in November 2010 I will win back this seat for the people of New Hampshire.
As many of you know, I am the mom to five children. I feel so blessed to be able to raise those children in a nation of freedom and opportunity. I am raising my children to understand that they can achieve absolutely anything they set their minds to as long as they are willing to work hard and sacrifice for their dreams. That is what unlimited opportunity is all about. And unlimited opportunity is what the American dream is all about.
But as I watch this Congress spend with reckless abandon, and as I watch our government grow ever more bloated, and I as see our freedoms being slowly chipped away, I see that unlimited opportunity slipping away as well.
787B stimulus package. Billion dollar bailouts for banks, and auto companies. Trillion dollar budgets. 1.5 T health insurance reform bills. A cap and trade bill that will cost every family in NH 1700/year. 9.8 percent unemployment and foreclosure rates that continue to rise.
These are not numbers that encourage the American Dream, they are numbers that crush the American Dream.
I know that these numbers can feel overwhelming, to the point that they become very impersonal. But they are personal. They are very personal to those families that have lost their homes. It’s personal to the mom who can’t afford to fill the pantry. It’s personal to the small business owners across America who have been forced to lay off employees or shut down altogether.
The greatest challenge of all, however, is a Congress that has become so arrogant and so disconnected from the people that they no longer believe they have to answer to their own constituents. We saw it right here in NH this summer when our own Rep refused to hold a single open public town hall. Since the day he won the election, Paul Hodes has been running for his next seat and the people of the 2nd district have suffered as a result.
If we are to solve the problems we face today, we must first restore the integrity of Congress. We must eliminate the corrupting influence of special interests and career politicians. That means term limits, sunset provisions on all federal spending, elimination of the earmark process, and even if our representatives refuse to read the legislation they vote on, they should be required to post it online so that the people it affects can.
It is time for a new day in Washington. Government has become too big, too intrusive, and too expensive. NH deserves a congresswoman who will always put the people before politics or party, a congresswoman who will never hesitate to stand up and fight for what is right.
It is time to move forward, with real solutions to the challenges we face.
That means real health insurance reform that begins with tort reform, and allows for competition across state lines, and the ability for small and mid-sized businesses to pool their resources and buy in bulk. It means an energy plan that brings all energy sources to the table and leads to true energy independence. And most of all it means a government that is as fiscally responsible as we all try to be at home. We can not spend our way out of debt and we can not borrow our way to prosperity.
We began this journey twenty months ago. We have accomplished so much in that time, but we still have a long way to go.
Socialized medicine, nationalized financial institutions and government-owned auto companies is not the America our founding fathers envisioned, and it is not the America I want my grandchildren to know.
We can preserve the America we love and make Congress work for the people, just as our founding fathers intended. But to make it happen we are going to have to stand together and fight for what we know is right.
