Dan Truitt formally announces bid to represent Pennsylvania's 156th District
December 6th, 2009, West Chester, PA
On Sunday, December 6th, Dan Truitt officially declared his candidacy for State Representative in Pennsylvania's 156th district at a private gathering of family, friends, colleagues, and Republican committee members at Barnaby's of West Chester. Here is a rough transcript of Dan's formal remarks:
"Good afternoon. My name is Dan and I’m running for State Representative here in Pennsylvania’s 156th district.
First, I want to thank everyone for being here today. I don’t know if you realize how much it means. If today’s turn-out had been poor, the campaign would have ended today. This is going to be a lot of work and I would not be able to do it without knowing that I had the support of my family and friends.
This gathering demonstrates why I think I can win the general election in November. Although I’m a fairly conservative Republican, in this room today, we have conservative Republicans, moderate Republicans, Independents, and even some conservative Democrats. On almost every issue, we probably have at least one person in the room on each side of that issue. But, I’m not going to win an election by focusing on the issues that divide us. I’m going to win by focusing on the issues that unite us. The issue at the top of my list is one thing that I think we can all agree about: something needs to be done about wasteful government spending.
I’m always coming up with ways to save money. For example, I would not need to spend $30.00 per month on Rogaine if my family would simply stop telling me that there’s a bald spot on the back of my head. If my car is making a funny noise, I just turn up the radio. But seriously, I like searching for ways to save money. I recently joined the school district’s budget task force because I thought it would be fun and I learned even more about how loose government can be with other people’s money.
Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is quoted as saying “The measure of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.” Right now, our society is spending our children’s money. If I was having a hard time making ends meet and I raided my son’s savings account to buy a new set of golf clubs, people would not think much of me as a parent. The economy is bad, but, I don’t think it is so bad that it justifies stealing from our children to make ourselves more comfortable. It’s immoral. It might be justifiable if we were spending their money on things that will benefit THEM, but, instead, we are wasting it on things we don’t need.
Currently, there are about 5000 bridges around the country that are in urgent need of repair and stimulus money is being spent on repairing roughly 2500 bridges. But, only half of the bridges being repaired with stimulus money are on the list of 5000 bridges that NEED to be repaired. So, who here believes that stimulus money is being distributed based on the best interests of the people? Who thinks it is being distributed based on the best interests of politicians?
The pentagon wanted to buy a special luxury plane for transporting dignitaries. The cost was $65M. Of course, to the government, that’s only 0.065 Billion or 0.000065 Trillion dollars. That's peanuts to them! So, congress threw in two more to be stationed at Andrews Air Force base for use by… Congress. So, who here thinks that decision was made with the people’s best interests in mind? Who thinks that anyone gave any thought to who would ultimately pay for those planes?
I could go on with these examples for days. Some of you with a good understanding of government spending might be thinking “But Dan, that’s federal spending and you are running for a state-level office and the state is not allowed to have a deficit.” Essentially, that’s true, but, a huge chunk of the state’s budget is covered by federal funds which are stolen from our children and spent no more wisely at the state level. Right now, we’re repaving chunks of one of the newest highways in Chester County simply because we have money that needs to be spent. In my opinion, that’s a pretty stupid reason to spend money.
A big part of the problem is the fact that money is spent to settle political debts. I never liked Arlen Specter. It had nothing to do with his political flip-flopping or his position on social issues. His argument for being re-elected was that his seniority in the senate would enable him to get more federal money spent in PA. I don’t want more money to be wasted in PA. I want less money to be wasted everywhere. Pennsylvania’s recent budget impasse shed a lot of unflattering light on the PA legislature. We have the largest and most expensive legislature in the country and it can’t get anything done. Our current state representative for this district announced two weeks ago that she would not seek re-election because she felt that the system in Harrisburg was Fouled Up Beyond All Repair. By the way, that’s one of the more family-friendly versions of the acronym “FUBAR” which sounds funny, but, it’s not so funny when you are talking about a group of people that are deciding how to spend your children’s money.
I think there’s two ways we can respond to this: One, we can send another career politician to Harrisburg and hope for the best. Two, we can send someone to Harrisburg with a track-record of creative problem solving by thinking outside the box. Someone who won’t care if he’s not the most-popular legislator among the legislators. Someone who thinks for himself and won’t vote for bad legislation just because it was proposed by someone in his own party. Someone who is not looking at this office as a stepping-stone to something else. Someone who has learned to tactfully tell people that maybe there’s a better way than the way it has always been.
I don’t want to be a politician. I don’t want to run for governor in 4 or 8 or 12 years. I don’t want to be called the “Honorable” anything. I’m not doing this for power or prestige or influence or salary or benefits. I’m doing this because I feel an obligation to use my talents to benefit as many people as possible and I think I can have an impact in Harrisburg.
What makes me think that I can have an impact in Harrisburg? To answer that, I need to tell a story about one of my recent business trips. I’m reluctant to tell this story because it feeds my ego, but, it should help everyone understand what I want to do in Harrisburg. In September, I received a desperate call from a client. He hired a company to upgrade the control system on an older packaging machine that they had purchased from the same company years earlier. They took the machine out of production on Friday evening and started the upgrade. The plan was to complete the upgrade and have the machine back in production by Monday morning. It was Tuesday afternoon when I received the call. My client offered to make it worthwhile for me to be there on Wednesday morning to dig the other guy out of the hole he dug. My client was desperate, fearing the loss of his job. I said, “But Ed, I didn’t program it. I’ve never even seen this machine. I’d hate to waste your time and money for nothing.” He insisted, “Dan, I’ve seen what you can do, I know you can fix this, and I really need your help.” So, the next day, I drove to the site and fixed the machine in less time than it took for me to get there. The other programmer was still there. Can anyone say “awkward”? When I arrived, I told him not to feel bad if I had any immediate success solving his problem and reminded him that I was under less pressure and could still see the forest for the trees.
With your help I will go to Harrisburg with real-world experience, no political debts, no hidden agenda, and the ability to see the forest in spite of the trees."