Rep. Young speaks to Big Lake chamber

BIG LAKE — A relaxed U.S. Rep. Don Young talked about seeking re-election, access to federal lands and the state’s budget crisis among other topics in an hour-long visit at the Big Lake Chamber of Commerce meeting Monday. Young, as well as Sen. Lisa Murkowski, are in the state this week addressing business groups. Murkowski will speak to a joint meeting of the Greater Wasilla and Greater Palmer chambers of commerce Tuesday at noon at the Grandview Inn.

Young, 83, was elected to his 22^nd term in Congress in 2014 and plans to run again this year, he told an assembled group of nearly 40 people.

“It’s an election year, and you bet I am going to run,” Young said. “I am not going to change one bit. It has been an honor having this job.”

Young said he marked 44 years in Washington March 14.

“I have been able to see a lot of changes,” Young said. “Some of them for the better, a lot for the worse.”

Young said he tries to remind Americans that the country is still a republic.

“A lot of people have forgotten that,” Young said. “Right now are we on the verge of — and very likely close to — the United States of the federal government.”

He said the government has become too much a part of Americans’ lives.

“And some folks in the progressive part will say that’s better, because they’ll say ‘We know better for you,’” Young said. “What you can do, what you should do and how you should do it.”

Young said “somebody has to pay for that government,” which in the long run hurts the country.

“They take away that freedom, that entrepreneurship, that ability to have vision,” Young said. “And in the end it they will take away our republic.

Read more about both Young’s and Murkowski’s visits in the Friday edition of the Frontiersman.

Contact reporter Steven Merritt at 352-2269 or steven.merritt@frontiersman.com