Jobs & the Economy

As a business owner, I have been blessed to have grown my businesses from 15 employees in 2000 to 130 employees today, through both internal growth and targeted acquisitions. I believe this private sector experience, along with my prior commercial banking experience, gives me the necessary background to champion changes in Austin that will allow Texas businesses to be more competitive globally. While I am happy that Texas compares favorably to other states, the private sector understands that we compete on a global basis. It is not enough to simply be better than California, we must be better than our international competitors.

Small business, agriculture, ranching, and energy are important sectors for our region, and I will oppose bad legislation which makes it harder for those sectors to compete and prosper. Oil and gas remains the backbone of our district and state and in many ways our country. I will use my lending and manufacturing experience in the oil and gas industry to help fight unreasonable regulations from Austin and Washington. We simply cannot allow unreasonable EPA mandates to threaten jobs and economic opportunity for our citizens.