Herron talks jobs and deficit in Clarksville visit

By BRIAN EASON • The Leaf-Chronicle • April 13, 2010

State Sen. Roy Herron, the Dresden Democrat running for Congress in Tennessee’s Eighth District, stopped in Clarksville Monday morning on the final leg of his “Jobs Tour.”

Herron spoke to a small crowd of supporters at the Franklin Room at F&M Bank, where, aside from “jobs, jobs, jobs,” he spoke of the need for deficit reduction, calling it the “single biggest threat” to the country’s security.

“I am literally scared for the future of this country if we don’t get a handle on this debt,” he said. “I don’t know how long you can keep piling up a trillion and a half in debt year after year, but I know this — you can’t do it very long if you want to stay around.”

Herron, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, is one of three major party candidates looking to fill a seat left vacant after Rep. John Tanner’s December announcement that he would retire.

Like many other politicians who have stumped in the area lately, Herron praised Montgomery County’s business leaders and public officials for their leadership during a tough economic time.

“As we climb out of this ditch, there’s no state better positioned (than Tennessee) and no place better positioned than Montgomery County to move forward,” he said, noting Hemlock Semiconductor LLC, Austin Peay State University and Fort Campbell as key strengths for the area.

 
In an interview afterward, he noted infrastructure and education as areas that would benefit from federal investment, citing road projects and high-speed Internet in rural areas as examples.

On the issue of deficit reduction, Herron wouldn’t specify which areas he’d cut, pointing to a hazardous political culture, adding that bipartisan cooperation is needed if cuts are to be made.

“The challenge is, if you start singling out, ‘OK, I cut here,’ then your political opponent attacks you,” he said. “So it’s going to have to be done in a bipartisan way. In my opinion, the biggest threat to the country right now is the deficit spending; the biggest threat to getting the deficit spending under control is the excessive partisanship in Washington.”

Herron cited the health care bill — which he said he would not have voted for “in that form” — as an example of an area where cost control would be a challenge.

“I know what the Congressional Budget Office said, that over a period of time it would actually lower the deficits, but I — quite frankly, I’m not fully persuaded that Congress will do the things necessary to make that happen,” he said.

He added that some aspects of the bill — like protections for those with pre-existing conditions — were things “everybody oughta want,” but improvements needed to be made.

“You don’t just pass a bill like this and then walk away from it,” he said. “You can’t. You shouldn’t. You gotta go back, look at it, see how it’s working or not working and improve it.”