2013 August At-Large Senate Debate

[Donerail]

To start us off, we'll begin with an issue that has been on everybody's minds recently: how will you balance sticking to your principles with being able to work with elected members of the other party if victorious in this month's election?

Thank you, Scott, and thank you for agreeing to moderate this debate. My fellow candidates: it's good to be with you.

One of the nice things about not being part of either of the 'big two' is not having to worry about whether or not to compromise with the "other party" - there is no singular other party, just other parties, and you're able to work completely freely with both of them; I'll certainly have no worries about not voting with my other party members in the Senate. But to get back to the root of the question: I very rarely voted Nay on any piece of legislation during my early times in the IDS Legislature - the way we approached bills was to compromise, through amendments and debate, and produce bills largely acceptable to all sides. We've seen a bit less of that recently in the Legislature, and I'm uncertain of how easily such an approach will fit into the larger and more partisan atmosphere of the Senate, but I can at least promise to give each bill a fair hearing and suggestions for improvement to seek a mutually beneficial resolution.

Another major element, I believe, in learning to compromise is knowing where to focus your efforts. I'm not going to bring up legislation in the Senate related to gun control - my views on gun control are probably well to the right of the Senate and Administration, and it'd be a waste of my time and efforts to bring it up. I'll focus my efforts on fights I can win and not bog down the Senate in wasted legislative time. During my recent time as Emperor, I've worked with both the left and the right in passing legislation through our Legislature. In the Senate I will be fully willing to work with members of both major parties to get things done (of course, I'll have to work with members of other parties to pass legislation), and looking over the queue now there's legislation from both parties that I support and from both that I oppose.

In the Senate, I'll stand for my principles, but I'll be open to all legislation, and I'll focus my efforts on areas where my principles will be able to secure agreement with others' principles.

[Donerail]

My largest priority with regards to budget revenues is making sure we don't run deficits - one of our largest expenditures already is interest on our debt, and adding to that means we'll have less to spend on other vital programs. I'd like to look more deeply into the possibility of raising other taxes rather than the proposed hike in income tax brackets, in particular the estate tax (my preference is for Clinton-era rates) and capital gains tax (again Clinton-era rates; I can't find capital gains in the budget at all, actually). Our proposed payroll tax rate is 8%; I don't know what percentage of income that covers (the IRL payroll tax only covers around 80% of income), but I'd be interesting in raising the ceiling there. There are a lot of things we can look at besides those, but I'd be supportive of re-examining our other taxes and possibly raising them in exchange for cuts on middle and lower-income brackets of our income tax.

I'd be willing to go along with that proposed by Govs. Maxwell and Tmth in regards to adding more brackets (and regionalizing education), so long as we in the end don't suffer any revenue losses. I'd like to see what programs would be rendered irrelevant by the basic income proposal and how much that'd cost us as well. Overall, though, I'm generally supportive of what's been produced, and if I had to vote today right now I'd vote Aye.

[Donerail]

I've been involved in education reform from the beginning, with the Is Our Children Learning bills we passed in the IDS. My concerns about the Senator's legislation is that it may be too specific - education should be largely a matter for the regions, the districts, and the individual schools and classrooms to decide. My support for the legislation would largely depend upon how specifically the Framework is defined - if it's just "take a math class", that's acceptable, but if it's spelling out exactly what math classes, then I'd oppose it. I also question the necessity of the AECR and how flexible its implementation will be, though Maxwell already touched on this - I think this also loops into what I already said about how detailed and stringent these requirements will be.

To address fmr. Assemblyman JCL's question: I believe in a high-quality education for each and every Atlasian child. The personal wealth of the child's family and community should be entirely irrelevant to the quality of their education. Education is the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of change, and should serve our society as a great equalizer between people. The fact that some private schools outperform public ones is not because of their organization or their rules - it's because the private schools are making tens of thousands of dollars off of every student that walks in the door. Children shouldn't be segregated based on their income, and their access to a high-qualified teacher should not depend upon how much they are able to pay for one. Education should be a place of equal opportunity.