Jim Evans believes in a government "of the people, by the people and for the people," which serves the purpose of protecting "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." He believes that we have a right to fair participation with accurate information regarding the operations of government.
Only effective government can protect personal liberty and establish a fair economic playing field.
Jim believes that the Preamble to the Constitution states our mission quite well:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
He is troubled by the corrosive effect of partisan political ideologies on the quality of government. He is dismayed by a political system that responds to lobbyists and big money special interests rather than the general welfare of citizens.
Jim believes that in the modern high-tech world, general prosperity and widespread individual liberty is possible. Good government is the key.
Jim knows that in many respects, life in America is great for most of us, yet there is still too much social and economic injustice. American continues to make progress in reducing the effects of bigotry and discrimination but we cannot rest in our effort to eliminate injustice and protect liberty for all people.
Keeping Our Commitments (Social Security, Medicare and Veterans Benefits)
Whenever the pundits and politicians start blathering on about "entitlements" and decrying the future "unsustainable" burden they create, they are really just dishonestly attempting to steal the earned benefits of retired American workers. Sometimes this is for the purpose of handing over trillions of dollars to Wall Street casino operators and private health insurers. Sometimes it is the residue of opposition to both Social Security and Medicare from the ideologues that believe that every American ought to be constantly insecure economically at all stages of life.
Whatever their motive, these Beltway, K Street and Wall Street predators are just wrong, wrong about the condition of these programs, wrong about the prescriptions they offer and wrong morally in their desire to default on the obligations America has to these older citizens.
Actuarial analysis of Social Security makes clear that it will be fiscally sound for another seventy-five years or more simply by equalizing the payroll tax on all wage and salary income. Presently, high income earners pay only for a portion of their earnings while lower income workers pay the same tax on every dollar of their earned income. This makes the Social Security tax regressive in that it taxes poorer workers at an effective rate that is higher than that of high income earners.
Medicare's costs are reflective of a rise in the number of senior citizens, longer lives, advanced and expensive medical technology and the extraordinary charges incurred during the final days of life. It is also true that private insurance plans, funded by Medicare, which were allowed in the law as a means of reducing costs through private business efficiency, have proven to be consistently more expensive as a means of delivering care. Other Medicare-related costs have accrued due to the failure to allow for centralized Medicare price negotiations for drugs under Part D.
Traditional Medicare continues to demonstrate exceptionally low administrative costs while providing access to quality care for millions of Americans who could not possibly otherwise afford it.
An improved Medicare for All system, such as that promoted by groups like Physicians for a National Health Program and National Nurses United, will be the best means of assuring that all Americans, regardless of age or income, have an equal opportunity for a long, healthy life.
Veterans benefits also must be improved and fully funded. The excruciating physical toll of America's recent wars, in which improved battlefield and surgical techniques saved many lives but left many permanently injured in traumatic ways previously largely unknown, will also exact a fiscal toll that is unprecedented.
These men and women have sacrificed their well-being for the security of the nation as they were ordered to do. They volunteered to serve, at grave personal risk, as testimony to their devotion to freedom. Whether the wars in which they participated were wise or unwise, their service must be honored by fulfilling the obligations and promises made to them and their families.
Meeting our collective obligations to these seniors and servicemembers is a true test of national integrity. Jim Evans will strenuously resist any effort to shortchange these fellow citizens who have given so much to our country.
Deficits, Debt and Expanded Opportunity
There are occasional periods in which public deficits serve a useful macroeconomic purpose in generating demand for goods and services when consumers and businesses are unable or unwilling to do so. Conventional economic theory also assumes that there will be periods in which public surpluses will help to stabilize the economy when demand outpaces supply. In this model, the national government's budget is balanced over the business cycle.
However, beginning with the unwillingness to fully fund operations of the Vietnam War alongside increased domestic expenditures, both parties have abandoned fiscally responsible policies. Through the use of constant tax cuts skewed to upper income earners, regardless of the circumstances, and to ongoing increases in both military and domestic spending, current consumption has been routinely financed by borrowing.
This is unacceptable and is the cause for the structural deficits and debt increases of recent decades. A return to fiscal discipline and adequate revenues to cover annual expenditures is necessary.
Such deficits also serve as an income transfer program that primarily benefits large financial institutions, wealthy bondholders and foreign governments purchasing Treasury instruments.
Bonded indebtedness should be incurred for the purpose of financing long-term investments in infrastructure, for example, that provide long-term economic gains and thus pay for themselves over time. It is especially desirable to borrow for such specific purposes when the cost to do so is extremely low.
Jim Evans believes that Americans know how to build a strong economy.
Those economic golden years of the postwar era were not a fluke. They were the consequence of smart conservative economic principles that were abandoned.
These were the policies that generated the interstate highway system, national science and technology research and development and advances in higher education during that period. These are the policies we should return to today.
Jim believes that America lost its economic compass when Congress began enacting irresponsible tax cuts disconnected from budgetary realities, deregulating financial institutions, ignoring antitrust laws, entering into destructive trade agreements, and weakening workers' rights.
Economic injustice is reducing the general standard of living. Success is becoming less and less based on merit and more and more based on birthright and dumb luck. Upward mobility is declining. Hard work and responsible behavior no longer guarantee financial independence. People are becoming discouraged because they see an economy where "gaming the system" is more profitable than hard-work, innovation, or skill.
Jim Evans believes that America must reward work rather than financial speculation, genuine entrepreneurship rather than corporate asset shuffling and innovation rather than piracy.
Jim believes it is folly to ignore past success. He believes that growing middle-class prosperity is far more important than ideological experimentation. He will fight for an economic policy that is based on the success of the postwar period but adjusted for the modern world.
Jim believes that a strong economy that lifts all people has many benefits:
Lowers poverty and eases dependence on government welfare
Reduces deficits
Helps small business
Lowers abortion rates
Reduces crime
As a start toward essential fairness and rewarding work, he will fight to make the minimum wage a living wage. The increased spending power this will provide to low income workers and the new floor it will establish for other workers will generate a surge in revenues for local businesses and additional jobs in the local economy. This is the bottom-up "rising tide that lifts all boats" approach to economic growth that helped to build shared prosperity in the past.
It is precisely the reverse of the recent history of top-down redistribution of income and wealth to a very few in the vain hope that some of it will "trickle down" to the rest of us.
Fair Taxation
The current IRS code is a bloated and arcane set of documents that serves as full employment program for tax attorneys and accountants but fails to serve the public interest.
The federal tax code is the purest example of the power of big money special interests to purchase, or rent, government for their own private benefit. It is a direct product of the corrupt pay-to-play campaign financing scheme that distorts policy making.
The basic principles that should govern a program of "taxation with representation" are:
Fairness. Fairness requires that persons with similar incomes and assets should be taxed alike. Fairness also requires that those who have more should pay more than those who have less.
Simplicity. A tax system is unsuitable for a democratic republic if it cannot be understood by the taxpayers themselves. Our present tax system is exceedingly complex and demands simplification.
Fiscal Goals. A tax system should be used primarily to raise revenue. It should not be used to subsidize business activity or to influence personal conduct.
Efficiency. Tax deductions, credits and exclusions usually confer their greatest benefit on wealthier persons and give little or no help to those who are desperately in need. The most efficient way to implement government programs is through direct appropriations, which are subject to annual budget review, and which relate benefits to needs. Tax subsidies should be rejected because they waste scarce government resources and are seldom subject to budget review.
Burden Shifting. When tax breaks allow others to escape their fair share of the tax burden, others have to pay more to make up the difference. This shifting of tax burdens is an important source of the unfairness in the federal tax system. It must be halted.
Creation Care, Stewardship and Conservation
Whatever our differing faith perspectives, Ozarkers know that we did not bring the natural world into existence through our own actions. We also know that we do bear responsibility now for care of this gift of creation, whether we deem its origin to have been by divine act or non-theistic process.
Growing up on a dairy farm, Jim Evans learned the importance of good stewardship of land and water resources at an early age. He's always understood the fundamental interconnection between our lives and the health of nature.
From his early years as a hunter to his long history as an outdoorsman, Jim has also appreciated the need for conservation of habitat and wildlife. His experiences in the undeveloped countryside, whether they were from trail runs, camping, hiking, canoeing, hunting or fishing, are cherished moments he treasures and fervently desires to be equally available to subsequent generations.
Jim believes that a common commitment to the preservation of the natural heritage of our beautiful country and precious Ozarks is a core value that we must affirm as a community and as individuals.
We must act together in partnership to protect our watersheds and groundwater, our clean air and wild places. This is our charge as custodians of creation, as faithful earthkeepers.
Additionally, as we look beyond our region to the nation and globe, we must hold true to our shared Ozarks principles and seek the same standards of responsible practice in our country and abroad that we insist upon and exercise here at home.
For some of us this will be a matter of sustainable economics or science, for others a matter of the call of scripture and for still others a matter of simple good neighborliness but for all of us it will be a matter of the quality of life or even survival for ourselves and our posterity.
Climate Change
From the wave of unprecedented meteorological events alone, most of us know that something is markedly different in the natural world in our lifetimes. The now frequently occurring phenomenon of "once in a hundred years" floods, droughts, fires, hurricanes, typhoons, tornados and other devastating incidents certainly has caused many of us, even if we don't fully understand the science, to seriously ponder the possibility of climate change.
What has become more evident to us may have long been evident to some of our wisest Ozarks sages.
A few years back, radio station KWTO celebrated a milestone anniversary. As part of its recognition of that occasion the station broadcast archived clips of some of the personalities that had shaped its history.
One of those featured was the late May Kennedy McCord, a renowned local folklorist and naturalist, who had a passionate following through her regular spot on the KWTO schedule and the column she wrote for the Springfield newspaper for many years.
In the piece that was aired, Ms. McCord was noting the changes she had perceived in the seasons in the Ozarks over her years of exceptionally careful observation. She spoke particularly of the discernibly warmer winters and altered weather patterns she had personally documented over her long life here.
Having experienced a wide range of periods marked by their weather-related identifications such as the drought of the 1930s or the extreme heat of 1954, for example, she was able to separate out the short-term anomalies from the long-term trend.
This commentary had aired in the 1960s or early 1970s, long before any phrase like "global warming" was known, long before Al Gore's "inconvenient truth" was circulated and long before the latest IPCC report was drafted.
Indeed, her observation was one free of any contemporary contentious partisan taint but was simply the report of someone who was of a rural generation who carefully noticed, recorded and remembered every detail of their natural surroundings.
Is this just anecdotal evidence of climate change from a single observer, a single moment in time, a single place in the world? Yes.
But is also evidence that is confirmed by property and casualty insurance companies, the vast majority of the scientific community, by an increasing number of investment managers and business executives and by our own experience.
Whatever the precise effect or cause, there is unmistakable evidence of some form of climate change.
It may eventuate in some macro adjustment of the biosphere that is salutary, though that is the least likely outcome.
NASA, DoD, USDA, NOAA, and other scientific authorities predict that it is far more likely that a long-term or permanent disruption of patterns of rainfall and consequent agricultural failures, widespread destruction of coastal communities and increases in environmentally driven migration will ensue. Along with this will be the ongoing prevalence of catastrophic weather events.
As in other matters, conventional politicians cannot be depended upon to act in the public interest of the future against their personal interest in the present. But science and nature do not respond to the whims of politicians. Whether or not climate change is real or caused by human activity will not be solved by more pointless partisan public debate. It takes keen observation and powerful sophisticated models, not arm-chair quarterbacks beholden to special interest contributors, to objectively examine the evidence and offer informed forecasts.
In all this, it is surely hubris of the highest order to insist that human engineering can overcome any challenges of nature. It is folly of an equal magnitude to insist that humankind's actions, whether through deforestation, global industrialization or burning of hydrocarbon fuels, have either no or a benign consequence-even if we cannot know all we wish to with certainty.
Therefore, it is also surely foolishness to stick our head in the sand. If the predictions of the scientific community are even close to accurate then the consequences of inaction will be devastating for future generations. If we make a high-tech preemptive strike against this enemy we create thousands of jobs and a lucrative new industry building the tools necessary for improved efficient use of energy and harnessing new clean sustainable sources of energy.
Clean Energy
Jim Evans is not only an advocate for but an avid practitioner of clean energy technologies. He constructed the solar photovoltaic array that powers his house. He made conservation and efficiency modifications to his home that cut his utilities by half. He drives a Chevy Volt, the first mass-produced American electric car. That automobile is also fueled by the same solar panels that provide electricity to his home.
Jim knows that the best energy future for America is one that is efficient, decentralized and renewable. He supports the use of solar, wind and biomass that is scaled to the individual residence, business, farm and factory.
As is true of his own situation, he favors systems that feed back into the grid and thus need to share power sourced from other fuels only very sparingly if at all.
Replacing massive fossil fuel plants with massive land-consuming solar and wind installations is not his ideal solution to the problem of energy substitution.
Jim is not opposed to the use of fossil fuels as an energy source, but does oppose reckless extraction and accelerated depletion of these precious national resources.
He will therefore seek greater regulation of current practices such as "mountaintop removal" for coal and hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" which permanently scar the landscape and poison both ground and surface water. He opposes marketing North American fossil fuel reserves on international markets when we still lack energy independence.
Even some biofuels have the intrinsic problem of massive water consumption during production and subsequent despoliation. This is in addition to various potential issues surrounding the grain production itself, again involving water use among other matters.
Employing clean technologies and efficient use that preserves conventional resources is the genuinely conservative approach to our energy future. It builds on our heritage of self-reliance. It is a domestic resource not subject to foreign supply problems. It creates local jobs. It is prudent and frugal, virtues we have long recognized and admired.
The Ozarks imports 100% of the fossil fuel used in the region. However, the Ozarks is an ideal locale for renewable energy from biomass, solar, and hydro and will benefit greatly from its wide use as dollars now exported from our region to giant global oil and gas companies and foreign countries will stay here in our local economy.
As our Congressman, Jim Evans will work hard every day to insure that Ozarkers can control our own destiny through our access to nature's free gifts of renewable energy.
This is the good stewardship that our ancestors pursued for their and our benefit and that we must pursue for those who follow us as well.
Class Warfare
Many who oppose policies that benefit regular Americans condemn such policies as "class warfare." Indeed there has been such a conflict over the past few decades. It has been fought by a very small minority of individuals and institutions against the middle class, working class and poor workers and citizens of our country.
In the October 12, 1974 issue of Business Week magazine, the following appeared as part of a commentary by an editorial staff member of the publication:
"It is inevitable that the US economy will grow more slowly than it has. Some people will obviously have to do with less, indeed cities and states, the home mortgage market, small business, workers and consumers will all get less. It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow, the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more.
Nothing that this nation or any other nation has done in modern economic history compares in difficulty with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept the new reality."
This is, of course, precisely the class war that these groups, comprising the vast majority of Americans, have experienced during this period.
It was outrageous then and remains so now.
Supporting Quality Public Education For All Students
If there is any consensus among Americans of otherwise divergent views, it is that education is the key to future opportunity and prosperity for both individuals and the nation.
It is assumed that in order to create and sustain a future of high-tech, high-wage, high-productivity, high-value added jobs that education must provide the skills necessary for employment.
Disagreement begins with questions regarding the reduction of education to "workforce development" to the exclusion of its historical role in producing thoughtful citizens and practitioners of the arts and culture.
Additional disagreement concerns the means by which education is to be available. Many argue that the public schools must be radically reformed or abandoned. These advocates often campaign for a redirection of public resources to private and quasi-private schooling. These same activists also often support intensive testing of students and evaluation of teachers via various data and metrics.
Jim Evans and his wife Terri are both retired educators. Jim believes that only universal public education that cultivates the intellectual curiosity of students, promotes critical thinking skills and engenders a lifelong love for learning can truly meet the needs of young people and society.
He knows that the skills required for the modern economy are constructed upon the basic knowledge initially instilled in children in public schools. In his final years in education, Jim facilitated the implementation of a rigorous curriculum based on competitive international standards and coordinated a program that provides opportunities for a broader range of students to obtain higher education and career skills.
Jim will work every day in Congress to support the work of local classroom teachers and local schools as they help to empower the next generation of Americans through education.
Restoring a Government That Works For Everyone
"We are not rivals for power, but partners for progress. We are all trustees for the American People and custodians of our American heritage." -- John F Kennedy
Jim Evans believes that partisan politics, lobbyists, special interest money exacerbated by the "Citizens United" case and media complacency has corrupted politics and taken control of government away from American citizens.
He believes that we must take back our government.
He believes that a fundamental right is the right to cast a vote based on accurate information and for that vote to have the same influence on an election as any other vote.
Jim believes in a system of "one person, one vote" and not "one dollar, one vote."
Today's campaign finance system is one of legalized bribery and extortion in which candidates and officeholders are played like jukeboxes with big money naming the tune.
Secret unlimited contributions to "independent expenditure" campaigns distort elections and are wholly unaccountable. Ever more elaborate schemes are developed to thwart disclosure and frustrate transparency.
The revolving door between the Legislative and Executive branches and lobbying firms taints all legislation and regulation. When past and/or future lucrative employment dictates decision making by elected officials, their staffs or regulators, the public loses every time.
The present system is thoroughly corrupt. Minor reforms and tinkering along the edges will not be sufficient to restore a government worthy of its citizens.
Jim Evans is committed to systemic change that fundamentally alters the crooked campaign finance system, sharply restricts the power of lobbyists and revives the Founders' concept of the citizen legislator.
Conclusion
Jim Evans believes in a pragmatic, trans-partisan approach to moving our country forward.
Our common values of honesty, peacemaking, forgiveness, respect for life, love thy neighbor, do unto others, honoring our founding principles, advocacy for the least among us, stewardship of creation, honoring free will, and rejecting greed, are the foundation of his plan.
The American ideal to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the mission established in the Preamble define our purpose as he perceives it.
He may be criticized for tackling controversial issues and for bringing a diversity of ideas into the conversation, but he makes no apology for adopting this approach.
He believes that we are Americans and while our differences define us, they should not divide us. He believes that every American wants to live where liberty is secure and the American dream is attainable. And, he believes that every person is a rightful participant in democracy.
He believes that to by building unity, we can protect liberty, and grow prosperity.
In 1956, the Republican platform laid out an economic plan and a vision for bringing Americans closer to fully achieving the American dream.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated:
"In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."
Jim Evans believes that Ike, the iconic leader of our nation during both war and peace, got it right.
Jim Evans, progressive conservative and Eisenhower Democrat, seeks to take that truth to Washington and serve as a true representative of the Ozarks values of the Seventh District.