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Vol. 13, No. 1, July 3, 2000
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Political Update From Senator Dan McDonald
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Senator Dan McDonald getting warmed up.
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Tony Banks introduced his friend and neighbor, 48th District Republican State Senator Dan McDonald. Dan, who has been an annual speaker at the BBRC for the past five years, updated
BBRC members on his perspectives of legislation in the last legislative session in Olympia and shared his plan to run for a U.S. Congressional seat.
Dan, a state senator for 16 years, indicated that the last legislative session was dominated with issues concerning funding for programs impacted by passage of Initiative 695.
His general assessment was that the session was too long and did not do a good job to positively address the issues. He suggested a savings of about
$750 million per biennium would be possible if the State could implement a system of competitive bidding for many state services, rather than having
such services solely provided by State employees. This process would mirror approaches used by private industry and could allow current State
employees to bid on such services. Savings could then be provided to enhance areas of need in K-12 education and transportation.
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Trees for Dan, from Cary.
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Dan indicated education, taxes, and national defense would be the predominant issues in his Congressional campaign. Concerning education, Dan feels that more power should be placed
in the hands of individuals and school boards and not bureaucrats. Additional funding should be made available to enhance the starting salaries for teachers and implementation of a merit system to reward
exceptional teachers. In the area of taxes, he indicated that taking care of Social Security and paying down the national debt are very important, but
that a balance should also be struck between these programs and addressing the unfairness of estate taxes and the marriage tax penalty. On
national defense, Dan feels that war results from failure of diplomacy and that diplomacy is enhanced by a sharpened sword. The U.S. has lost
strength in this area from the beginning of the 1990’s, and this strength needs to be improved.
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