The Carter Plan:

• Lowering taxes
• Job creation
• Creating educational opportunities
• Minimizing government’s intrusion in our daily lives

Have you ever thought how many taxes there are? Personal property tax; real property tax; intangible tax; income tax; estate tax; sales tax; local option special purpose sales tax; capital gains tax; gift tax; payroll tax; social security tax; unemployment tax, excise tax; corporate tax, the list goes on and on and on. I plan to not only cut taxes, but cut the spending that goes along with them.As your state Senator, my first piece of legislation will be to introduce the following:

1. Get the State of Georgia out of the property tax evaluation business and put it into the hands of the local communities.
2. Abolish state income tax on both individuals and businesses. We should NOT tax what we own or what we make. Instead, we should be taxed on what we spend. That's called the fair tax, the one everyone pays equally, depending solely on how much money you spend.

I believe small businesses are the engine that will allow us to create jobs, IF we free them from undue burdens and outlandish taxation. Unemployment for the state is 10.3%, the highest unemployment rate in over 10 years. That percentage is even higher for the coastal area - it hovers from 8.4 to 10.9%. Small businesses are responsible for 2/3's of the net new jobs created over the last 35 years. New small businesses (less than 3 years old) are responsible for 80% of those new jobs. As your senator I will introduce and work to pass legislation that provides:

1. start up incentives to new small businesses
2. work to pass legislation to allow small businesses to pool together to purchase health insurance, even across state lines.
3. introduce legislation that completely eliminates state and county inventory taxes on small businesses.

We have new opportunities with The College of Coastal Georgia, Altamaha Technical College, and the Golden Isles Career Academy and I will be an advocate to continue to expand their offerings to prepare our workforce for tomorrow. In our public schools, our teachers should not be paper pushers. We need to let the teachers teach.I will support our schools in getting back to teaching the 3 R's. And while we're at it, let's give our principals the authority to replace teachers who don't belong in the classroom. Currently we rank 33rd in the nation - we can do better. We need to do better. The quality of our children's lives and tomorrow jobs depend our decisions today.

We need to reduce government spending which in turn reduces government intervention. One way this can be accomplished is by getting rid of duplication of services. As your state senator, I will be a proponent of streamlining services in an effort to consolidate some departments and eliminate dual offices. I will offer legislation that privatizes other functions of state government- this will create jobs, save taxpayers' dollars, and even improve services by offering them to our free enterprise system.