Donn Janes for Congress

Tax Reform

With over 20 volumes and an estimated 8000 pages, our current tax code has become too complex. We spend billions of dollars each year just to comply with the always changing tax code. I support the Fair Tax which will no longer tax our labor and capital. The Fair Tax is rightly named too since it fairly places the tax burden on all Americans. For more information regarding the Fair Tax, visit their website at www.fairtax.org.

Social Security & Medicare

According to the Trustee's report release this year for Medicare and Social Security, The Medicare Trust Fund will be depleted by 2017 and the Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted by 2027. Medicare, which is in worse shape than Social Security, paid out more in benefits last year than it received in taxes. Social Security isn't far behind though, current projections show that it will start paying more in benefits than what it receives in taxes by 2016.

What is worse is that, by law, both Trust funds are required to buy US Government Securities with any surpluses they received in any fiscal year. This only increases our National Debt since the money from the bonds is quickly spent by our government.

I will work to repeal the law that requires the Social Security Trust fund to purchase more debt with these surpluses and require them to save the surpluses in order to shore up Social Security.

Also, by addressing Immigration, we will relieve the strain on Medicare which is currently being depleted by illegal immigrants..

National Security

We need to provide the protection needed to keep this Nation safe.

We need to continue to invest in future weapon systems, giving us the needed capability to protect our Nation from the ever changing threat landscape.

Veterans: Having served our country, and being a veteran myself, I will fight hard for veterans rights and issues.

Energy Independence

We must attack this problem from all available angles.

First we need to to remove the government regulations preventing the development of our natural resources. This will enable US companies to begin off-shore drilling, drilling in Alaska's ANWR wildlife refuge, develop and explore for natural gas, as well as develop a cleaner method for burning coal.

At the same time we need to develop sustainable and cleaner forms of energy. This will also include a rebuilding of the power grid infrastructure to adapt to these new sources of energy. These should include Nuclear, Wind, Hydro-electric, Solar, Hydrogen, Clean Coal and Fuel Cell technologies

Education

Where we once led the world in education, this is no longer true. Our lead has slowly eroded over the years and recently test scores for 4th 8th and 12th grade students were released that ranked the US 19th out of 38 countries in Math, and 18th out of 38 countries in Science.

The State of Tennessee was also recently ranked as 42nd nationally. This was based on national test score results for Math, Science and Reading.

Nationally we spend $500 Billion dollars a year on education, which amounts to approximately $10,000 per student. The national graduation rate is 70% and the student to teacher ratio is 16 -1.

The State of Tennessee's budget for education is approximately $7.2 Billion dollars and averages $7300 dollars per student, has a graduation rate of 72% and a student to teacher ratio of 15.7 - 1.