Name: Clement F. Munno
Party: Republican
Occupation: Retired
Years in District: Since 2004
Endorsements: None
Amendment 1: For. “I support that it should be a man and a woman.”
What do you think is the central issue for this election?
As I’ve been talking to people, it’s jobs and the economy. That’s what everybody is worried about, you know. Gas prices are soaring; food prices are soaring. You know, it’s hitting the middle class. We’re talking about everything we want to do for the middle class, but they always seem to be the person that ends up suffering the most. So that’s, I believe, the focus that we have to take care of the next couple of years, is get a robust economy, get some jobs started, started doing some things that makes business what they are.
What are the specific issues facing your district?
I think the issues in my district are the same. Those are the people I’ve been talking to. You know I’ve gotten out to as many of the people as I can. I [will] represent a piece of nine counties. A couple of them are 100 percent but the others are anywhere from 10 percent to three-quarters of the county. Wherever I go, the primary issues are the economy and jobs.
Why should your constituents elect you?
I’m going to Washington. I’ve already had a career. I’m not looking for a career. I’m going up there to fix some things and get out. So the longest I see myself staying is six years in Congress and then I’ll try to help find the person who’s going to replace me. So I’m not going up there for a career, I’m going there to fix things and come back home.
What are the biggest accomplishments and failures of U.S. House during the last two years?
Biggest accomplishments of the U.S. House? I haven’t seen any. I mean I’ve seen them pass a lot of bills knowing that they weren’t going to go anywhere. They’ve done nothing to make things happen. They’ve only made things stay in the status quo. And you know the agreements that they have come up with under the continuing resolutions, has led to more debt. You know we were supposed to go up there and stop debt as Republicans, not keep creating it. And so I really haven’t seen any major accomplishments out of the U.S. House in the last two years.
Again, the biggest failures are the things that they’re doing around the economy. And the economy is directly related to the jobs, having jobs or not having jobs. In a good economy we grow jobs; in a bad economy we don’t. And we can’t grow jobs by building debt.
You know, you and I in our house, when we get in trouble we can’t go out and print money or get money from somewhere to pay off our debt. So we got to cut our expenses. And that’s what the federal government has to do; it has to cut its expenses. I believe we can create jobs. I mean, the environmental sector is one that will create a tremendous amount of jobs if we go ahead and drill. Everybody says it takes too long, but if we started three years ago, we’d be pulling a lot of oil out of the ground right now. And our prices would be one heck of a lot lower. And when gas prices goes down, prices on food, on construction, on everything goes down, because energy is related to all those projects.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
I guess my favorite one is I play at a little golf. I’m not a great golfer, probably not even a good golfer, but I enjoy getting out there with friends, and just talking and laughing and hitting the ball.
