Berg discusses Senate run in visit here

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John M. Steiner / The Sun Rep. Rick Berg, R-N.D., left, visits with Jim Boyd Thursday in Jamestown during a brief visit to discuss his bid for Senate in 2012.

Talk about it

Rep. Rick Berg, R-N.D., was in Jamestown on Thursday to speak on why he’s running for Sen. Kent Conrad’s soon-to-be-empty seat in 2012.

“Two years ago as North Dakotans, we saw that Washington wasn’t working very well,” Berg said. “We saw this out-of-control spending, the taxpayer bailout, the take over of health care, and what it was doing was creating this huge deficit on an annual basis.”

Berg told the group of about 20 people at the meeting that he is often approached by his peers in Washington who are looking for solutions to the nation’s problem.

“Every door has been open for me in Washington because what our country needs is what we got here in North Dakota,” he said at the meeting held at Shady’s.

He discussed the strong energy industry in North Dakota and said development must be made a priority to change the national energy industry,

“What we got to do is break our dependence on foreign oil and we’ve got to do that, and you do it by again, encouraging industry and — Washington, the EPA, Washington bureaucrats — they’re exactly on the opposite of what we need to do to encourage our energy sector to grow,” Berg said.

More specifically he was talking about being opposed to a $2 billion tax increase for 10 years on the oil industry in the U.S.

“We need to come together with a national energy policy that encourages the development of our energy resources in America,” he said before the meeting.

Berg said he believes energy is only one aspect but that Washington boils down to two ideologies.

The first is continued spending and borrowing with the hope the economy will correct itself.

The second ideology is not spending more than the nation is making and encourage private sector job growth versus public sector job growth, which would require taxes.

In his five months as the only representative from North Dakota in Washington, D.C., Berg said he’s seen how the system works.

Berg said President Barack Obama and Democrats in the Senate have blocked every reform the Republican-controlled House has passed.

Before the meeting Berg was asked about his opinion on the Essential Air Service Act. EAS provides a subsidy for commercial flights in and out of Jamestown.

EAS was debated in the Senate and senators decided not to cut the service. It is now being debated in the House.

“There are a number of airports that are receiving Essential Air that have a lot of Congress people concerned,” he said. “At this point what we’re looking at would be a proposal that would not impact any North Dakota airports.”

Sun reporter Ben Rodgers can be reached at 701-952-8455 or by e-mail at brodgers@jamestownsun.com

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