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Press Release
Kevin O'Neill Announces Candidacy for Republican Nomination in Virginia's First District Congressional Race
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Making the First District Safer For Our Citizens

Illegal Immigration: Secure our borders first and enforce existing laws to catch and deport illegal aliens.
  • Build a fence along key stretches of the southern border.
  • Hire more Border Patrol agents and deploy them more effectively.
  • Use our high-tech resources to stem the tidal wave of illegal immigrants.
  • Prohibit states and localities from issuing any driver’s licenses or other identification papers to illegal aliens.
  • Congress must give state and local government the authority and funding needed to help reduce the number of illegal aliens in the country.
Homeland Security: Stop searching grandmothers at airports and focus manpower and funding on real threats to safety.
  • Our porous borders are a homeland security problem that must be fixed.
  • Use technology to help us increase the amount of cargo searched as it departs foreign ports and /or enters our domestic ports.
  • Stop wasting homeland security funding on places terrorists aren’t going to target.
  • Do a better job of tracking foreign visitors as they enter and leave the United States.
The War on Terror: We will win the war on terror and we should fight the battle abroad so we can keep from having to fight the battle on the streets of our own cities. There is no safe harbor for terrorists who threaten the United States now or in the future.
  • Give our troops the resources and strategy needed to prevail.
  • Increase funding and speed delivery for equipment that better protect troops from IEDs and other terrorist threats.
  • Work closely with regional allies to root out terrorism.
  • Impose the harshest possible sanctions on war-mongering states such as Iran and Syria.
  • Don’t undermine our abilities to monitor the communications of terrorists and their supporters.
  • Use sanctions, diplomatic pressure from the world community and all other means to prevent Iran, North Korea or other rogue nations from becoming nuclear powers.



Improving the Quality of Life for First District Residents

Healthcare: The government should never control your personal healthcare decisions.
  • All Americans deserve access to affordable health care.
  • Allow nationwide insurance programs that stimulate competition in the marketplace, maximize consumer choices and help drive down costs.
  • Implement tax policies that maximize portability of healthcare coverage and deemphasize the employer’s role in providing that coverage.
  • Institute reforms that provide for market-driven transparency in pricing medical services, understanding quality of care, and measuring outcomes.
  • Give states more flexibility in spending federal healthcare dollars to maximize effectiveness and innovation.
Education: Let’s renew the principles needed to prepare our children for the future.
  • We care about public education - Patty and I are the children of public school teachers and our son will start kindergarten next fall in the City of Williamsburg public school system.
  • Control of the classroom and curriculum are decisions best made at the local level by the real stakeholders – parents and students.
  • Cut the education bureaucracy and push the savings back into our classrooms.
  • Demand better performance from our educational system rather than continuing to spend increasing amounts of money on results that never materialize.
  • Don’t doom our children to failing schools - federal education dollars should follow the students to the school of their choice.
  • Improve access to affordable higher education because it’s the best way to increase your standard of living.
  • Invest in education–provide the same full tax-deductibility on student loan interest that already exists for mortgage interest.
  • Sustain values based organizations on college campuses by giving them the same tax code benefits that universities have in building and maintaining not-for-profit student housing.
Energy Security: Energy security should be a key component of our national security strategy.
  • Allow oil exploration in ANWR and provide individual states on both coasts with the discretion to drill their portions of the Continental Shelf for oil and natural gas.
  • Expand use of clean, reliable and safe nuclear power.
  • Build more domestic refineries to expand our energy capacity.
  • Launch a Manhattan Project-style effort to create breakthrough new energy delivery systems for ethanol, hydrogen, electricity, natural gas and a variety of hybrids.
Transportation in the First District: Fix the traffic mess that makes life miserable for us all.
  • Get our fair share of federal funding for critical highways and roads like I-95, I-64 and Route 1.
  • Increase effectiveness of local and regional transit resources for workers who rely on mass transit for their daily commutes.
  • Encourage innovation in federal and state financing for transportation infrastructure to avoid the type of budget gimmicks used by the Virginia Assembly.
  • Require regular inspections of our region’s transportation bridges and fund repairs to those that are not in satisfactory shape.
  • Preserve the key economic role of the First District’s railroads in delivering freight.
Local Governments The federal government shouldn’t be in any business that local government can do better.
Eliminate unfunded mandates and streamline federal regulation that prevent state and local governments from making affordable and timely decisions that could improve the lives of their citizens.




Spending Your Tax Dollars Wisely

Fiscal Responsibility I am for completely reforming the tax code so we can fund our national priorities without passing our debts to our children.
  • Pass a balanced budget and live within our means.
  • Stop spending the Social Security surplus and start saving it to fund the Baby Boomer retirement.
  • Give the President line-item veto authority.
  • Use a bipartisan independent commission – similar to the process used for Base Realignment and Closure reviews - to force Congress into up or down votes on fundamental tax reform and restraining runaway entitlement programs.
Taxes The federal government’s financial problems come from overspending not a lack of revenue.
  • I have signed the Americans for Tax Reform “No New Taxes” pledge.
  • Permanently end the death tax.
  • Simplify the current tax code.
  • Make permanent the capital gains and dividend tax relief of 2003.
  • Extend family friendly tax policies like elimination of the marriage penalty and increasing the child tax credit.
Retirement Security: Keep our promises to senior citizens and the Baby Boomer generation approaching retirement age.
  • Stop spending the Social Security surplus and start saving it to fund the Baby Boomer retirement.
  • Encourage a culture of savings by passing innovative policies for younger workers to plan for their retirement.
Economic Security: Pass policies that stimulate the creation and preservation of domestic jobs and industries.
  • America is an attractive investment for foreign and domestic capital if we make permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts on capital gains and dividends.
  • Oppose efforts to change the taxation of carried interest.
  • Pass association health plans for small businesses to provide healthcare benefits that attract and sustain a talented workforce.
  • Hold other countries responsible for actions that harm our workforce or for introducing unsafe food and products into our country.




Core Conservative Values that are Right for Virginia

Gun Rights: The right to bear arms is rooted in our nation’s history and is consistent with a philosophy of maximizing citizen rights and minimizing state control.
  • Law abiding citizens have the right to own guns and the responsibility to ensure that ownership causes no harm to other law-abiding citizens.
  • Maximize federal penalties for criminals who use guns in the commission of a crime.
  • Ensure that individuals who are found to be mentally unstable are denied access to firearms.
The Right to Life: I am pro-life and support the widest possible range of federal efforts to enhance our nation’s abilities to find loving homes for all children.
Same-Sex Marriage: I believe the institution of marriage is one man and one woman.




Supporting the United States Military

National Defense: Provide the best resources for our nation’s soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen.
  • The best equipment, training and leadership means we will always have the capabilities to overwhelm any threat to our nation’s security.
  • Improve maintenance and modernization programs for military equipment.
  • Expand the size of our all-volunteer military.
  • Our allies should accept more of the burden of shared military efforts.
  • Fully fund timely development of strategic military assets that can project the full might of the American military power:
    • The new Ford Class of aircraft carriers
    • All 30 Virginia Class nuclear submarines
    • Full production of the Joint Strike Fighter
    • Fully deploy these assets at appropriate Virginia military bases
Military Quality of Life: Give our military families the support they need to thrive.
  • Raise military pay and benefits 5%.
  • Improve military housing infrastructure.
  • Hold the line on increasing costs of healthcare for military families.
  • Provide a smooth soldier to citizen transition via job training and rehabilitative services.
  • Build a package of federal, state and local benefits that encourage military personnel to settle permanently in Virginia after completing their service.
Veteran’s Health: Fulfill our promise to care for our nation’s veterans by ensuring the VA’s healthcare system provides timely, comprehensive and cost-effective services.