House candidate reminds Mat-Su voters about his message

Spectrum, by Vic Kohring

As your state representative for the last 10 years, I have some tales to tell. My name is Vic Kohring and I have watched some interesting events relevant to this fall's election.

I was swept into office in 1994 with the Republican "Contract With America," to reduce wasteful spending and get government out of your wallet. It was such a grand time and I felt truly part of an historic move to make major changes, freeing Alaskans of 60 years of government power programs started by FDR.

I had grown up watching my honest father work his hands to the bone as a construction contractor, trying to be totally honest with his customers while dealing with cumbersome government bureaucracies.

I believed then in free enterprise and a limited government, as did Newt Gingrich in Washington, D.C., and several of my more conservative colleagues in Juneau.

While we were forced to restrict some of the wasteful spending in Juneau because of decreasing oil revenues, nothing happened on the federal level. Gradually things returned to big spending and big taxing.

The anti-big-government, pro-free-enterprise movement came to a hissing stop, both in Washington and in Juneau. Gingrich was maneuvered out of office and I found myself frequently the only one in the House voting against new taxes and what politicians are fatuously calling "fees."

Yet we did some positive things. I have been calling for the elimination of all wasteful government projects that spill dollars with abandon, such as the Science and Technology Foundation and the very embarrassing fish-processing plant in Anchorage, which lost millions of dollars before it was finally put up for sale.

I argued that this type of spending was outside the state constitution and lost more money than it earned, thus becoming walking welfare for the business sector. We did get rid of this, finally. But not out of principle -- we simply could not afford it any longer.

I have argued in writing and orally for 10 years that government should not engage in business, or prop up failing businesses or interfere in any way with the natural ebb and flow of the market.

Our nation was created by individual people having the freedom to engage their minds and hearts in whatever business they desired, to succeed or fail on their own merits. This system created the largest, most wealthy, freest, most-envied nation in the world.

Ten years ago this freedom-oriented philosophy was my argument, and after watching my colleagues waste millions of your dollars in feel-good government programs, I am all the more convinced that the Jeffersonian approach I held then was and is more important than ever.

When you see the vague, hopeless fence-sitters in Juneau who regularly give away the store to appease special interests, you might want to sit down and cry. I have not given up, though.

My purpose and resolve remain unchanged. For one reason I believe that freedom, free enterprise and limited government are the moral and only way to govern ourselves. For another, I am pleased to report that there are many in my community who agree with this philosophy and keep calling me and sending me letters, e-mails, and public-opinion messages telling me to stay the course.

I have. I will.

There is a undercurrent war going on in Alaska between government power and special-interest tax demands, versus the average working class who make it all happen.

I have taken a stand on the proposed income tax, or the percentage of market value raid on the permanent fund, and other substantial issues of the day.

It remains the same. We need to streamline government to allow people to be free again. That will buck up the economy. More and more taxing and spending will not.

We need to rethink and reject the entire New Deal mentality and think about how well we could live if we had a true regime of freedom. Or, put another way, imagine how productive we would be if we did not have to worry about breaking some law that we are not even aware exists. And imagine how we could get on with the business of becoming a prosperous state once again!

This I will defend.

Vic Kohring represents Wasilla and the Mat-Su in the Alaska State Legislature.