Issue Position: Fiscal Responsibility

Issue Position

As your State Senator and Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I am particularly proud of the 2011 and 2012 state budgets. We had to make some tough decisions, decisions we did not make lightly, but for years our state has been spending more money than it has been bringing in. We have not had a balanced budget in over five years and big-spending politicians from both parties had been using accounting tricks, gimmicks and loans to pay Arizona's bills. Along with several other conservatives, I stood up for the taxpayers, and insisted on cutting spending and produced a truly structurally balanced budget, meaning we spent less than we took in. In these tough times, every Arizona family has had to do this, and our government needed to do the same. Thankfully, Arizona is finally on the road to economic recovery. Where a couple of years ago we had record deficits and politicians just "kicking the can" down the road, we held the line, made the tough decisions and have turned our old $3 Billion deficit into a $600 Million surplus.

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