For U.S. House: Tiberi, Stivers and Beatty are best choices for Congress: The Columbus Dispatch, October 30, 2012

By The Columbus Dispatch

This year, Dispatch readers in Franklin and nearby counties are divided into newly configured congressional districts. Along with the 15th to the west and south and the 12th to the east and north, a new 3rd District includes much of the city of Columbus.

For the U.S. House, The Dispatch endorses Republican incumbents Pat Tiberi for the 12th and Steve Stivers for the 15th, and Democrat Joyce Beatty for the 3rd.

Tiberi, 50, seeks a seventh term in the House, where he not only has supported a balanced-budget amendment but since 2007 has declined to seek earmarks — pork-barrel spending items, often sneaked into unrelated legislation, that might win him favor with constituents but would further increase the deficit.

Such principle is rare and welcome in Congress. He regards the national debt, now more than $16 t rillion, as a major problem, and one that grows out of runaway spending.

He also favors repealing the health-care overhaul and proposes focusing instead on lowering premiums and creating high-risk insurance pools for individuals without coverage.

Tiberi cites as his top goals reforming the tax code and doing away with regulations that prevent job creation. He thinks Obama administration policies have created a climate of uncertainty that is inhibiting businesses from making the investments that will drive the economy and create jobs.

The voters of northeastern Franklin County have expressed their confidence in Tiberi and his common-sense principles consistently for two decades, granting him four terms as a state representative and six in Congress.

As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, he is in a position to craft answers to some of the nation’s biggest questions: how to reform taxes, trade agreements and entitlement programs.

Tiberi deserves another term in Congress.

Stivers, 47, finishing his first term representing the 15th, has proved to be the type of sensible moderate that most Ohioans want to see in Congress.

Steadfastly pushing to reduce the nation’s crippling deficit and supporting measures to encourage private-sector economic development, he is faithful to the best of conservative principles but also is known for introducing bipartisan legislation.

He supports a balanced-budget amendment, which is the surest way to enforce fiscal discipline in Congress. He favors encouraging job creation not by spending borrowed money but rather with laws to give businesses certainty about taxes, regulation, health-care costs and energy costs.

He would repeal the destructive health-care overhaul passed by Congress and replace it with measures to expand consumer choice, cut costs by limiting lawsuits and reform the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Stivers, a former state senator and Iraq veteran, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Ohio Army National Guard, has more than earned the chance to continue his service in Congress.

Beatty, 62, comes to the race with a long record of public service, including nine years as a state representative, during which she became the first woman to be named leader of the Democratic Caucus, and at Ohio State University, where she served as senior vice president for outreach and engagement.

As a state lawmaker, Beatty proved willing to work across the aisle to solve problems and create opportunities for Ohioans. She helped ensure passage of laws to encourage STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education as well as financial-literacy curricula in public schools.

The Dispatch urges voters to vote for Tiberi, Stivers and Beatty on Nov. 6.