news-record.com

Name: Richard Burr
Office sought: U.S. Senator. Burr is the incumbent at the end of his first six-year term.
Party: Republican
Age: 54
Family: Married, two sons.
Address: Winston-Salem
Occupation: Before becoming a member of the U.S. House in 1995, Burr was a sales manager for Carswell Distributing.
Education: Graduate of Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem; BA in Communications from Wake Forest University.
Political experience: Senator since 2005; U.S. Representative 1995-2004
Online: http://www.burrforsenate.org/

This is the latest in a series of meet-the-candidate interviews posted on this blog. I’m focusing this spring on those who will face primaries.

Typically, incumbent Senators don’t worry about their primaries unless they’ve engaged in some publically-exposed hinky behavior. And most of the political scientists do not see Burr having to sweat the Republican primary this year too much. (The general election in November may or may not be a different story.) That said, there are other folks on the ballot in May and time for one of them to catch fire.

“I believe that it is absolutely crucial the leadership of the Congress reflect more where the American people would like us to go,” Burr said as he spoke to a group of political reporters on Feb. 22. Click below to listen to his opening statement to the group.

On health care: “I have been vocal and critical of the proposal on the table and I felt that I was justified because I had laid my cards and proposals on the table,” Burr said. Burr was among the first Republicans to sign onto their own version of health care reform that focused on things like allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines.

Burr told reporters that any health reform plan needed to included tort reform – protection from doctors from lawsuits – and “massive insurance reform. I think the American people are dissatisfied with the products that are available in the market place. I don’t believe it needs the federal government in the game to provide competition. I think if you unleash the private sector, if you take the chains off, if you allow people to become creative, we will see new, innovative products hit the marketplace that address the issue of affordability and accessibility.”

When asked about the politics of 2010, Burr said that he planned to raise $15 million or more this year. That money, he said, would be needed to counter outside forces that appeared poised to interfere in the state’s elections.

“My election is really not about who I run against,” he said. “It’s about the outside money that could potentially come into North Carolina.” The DSCC and other entities spent heavily in the 2008 election in which Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, upset Republican incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

When asked why he was facing challenges from his political right, Burr said, essentially, that it was just the nature of primaries.

“The fact is, it is impossible for any candidate to get to the right of me from an ideological standpoint and from the standpoint of my record,” Burr said. “The unfortunate thing is that’s where anybody would have to attempt to go to really make any type of progress in a Republican primary…I’ll let my record stand for itself as it relates to the primary.”

Click below to listen to Burr talk more about politics and the 2010 election.

Reporters asked Burr quite a bit about the economy and his ideas to spur economic development.

“How about a retail tax holiday, national…I’ve talked to North Carolina retailers and they tell me if you want to generate consumer activity, then just go out and have a tax holiday for the person who is purchasing,” he said. “It could be a game changer at restarting economic activity. None of these ideas are on the table.”

He called the stimulus package passed in 2009 a “missed opportunity.”

Burr said the federal government needed to reduce its spending, deficit and taxes. I asked how he thought the federal government could reign in spending when entitlement programs like Social Security were held sacrosanct.

“There’s no question that Social Security (and) Medicare have to be restructured,” Burr said.

He then launched into an explanation of how health reform could actually help the budget situation.

“I think health care in the future has to be a product that we individually construct for ourselves to meet our age, our income and our health condition,” Burr said. He favors health savings plans that younger people could roll over into retirement savings if they weren’t used and that, he said, could help bridge the gap for younger workers who might see less in terms of a Social Security benefit.

“We can knock out two birds with one stone on this one,” Burr said.

For more of Burr’s take on the economy, click on the two audio segments below.

Burr said he welcomes the involvement of the Tea Party movement in this year’s elections. He said the coalition of conservatives calling for smaller government aligns well with his own beliefs.

“I think their message is quite simple: government is out of touch with the American people. Government has been doing unnatural things by owning car companies and owning insurance companies. They want us to get out of the business of doing that. I do as well,” Burr said.

But the Tea Party, I pointed out, doesn’t really seem to mind if they knock off a few Republican incumbents along the way.

“I think that shows you the degree of passion they have about making sure the current leadership is not there. The challenge is on me is to present myself to all voters…as to why not just my vision of where we want to go but my record of where we’ve been is consistent with what in fact their major issues are in this country,” Burr said.

For more of Burr’s thoughts on the Tea Party movement, click below.

“Big issues in the United States Senate, no matter how far back you go, have always required a degree of bipartisanship. It’s tough for me to believe without bipartisanship we’ll accomplish big things,” Burr said.

Burr said that it is Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat and the majority leader in the chamber, who has forced debates to partisan loggerheads over the past few years.

“Let me try to describe it this way,” Burr said. “When you deny one side or the other the ability to amend legislation, then the message you’re sending is it’s either what I’ve put on the table or nothing. If Sen. Reid wanted to change the dynamics of Washington tomorrow, then he would allow a deal to be struck that would allow even a limited number of amendments … If he did that, you would find potentially some Republicans that support the final product, some Democrats that might not support the final product. It (would then be) no longer driven based on part affiliation. But the denial then causes both camps to entrench.”

For more of those thoughts, click below.

Burr is particularly proud of his work on the Veterans Affairs committee and he touted a program that will open new VA healthcare centers. The centers – “mega outpatient clinics” as Burr describes them – will be built by private contractors and leased back to the federal government. Those centers should be open in 2013, he said.

Click below to hear him talk more about that program.