Control Taxes: The $5 billion tax increases passed by the state legislature harm small business owners and individuals of all income levels. This is a trend that must be reversed!

Promote Jobs: We must do everything possible to encourage the retention and creation of more jobs in Wisconsin. That means lowering taxes, streamlining regulations, reigning in spending, and promoting quality education for our future workers.

Reduce spending: Earmarks and out-of-control spending have propelled Wisconsin to number one in per capita deficit.

Holding true to what Wisconsin values:

• I'm 100 percent Pro-Life
• I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman
• I'm a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment, including concealed carry and the Castle Doctrine.

We need more doctors in our legislatures

Dr. David V. Crossman, MD, has presented arguments favoring more doctors in the US Congress. In an opinion piece entitled “In our own image,” published in the March 2010 edition of General Surgery News, Crossman focused his attention on the recent health care reform law, saying that “we didn’t get the needed reform.”

He argued that “Congress, not the institution, but the malfeasant bunch that inhabit it, seems to be the problem.” He wants to see Congress “repopulated with a total different species” that ought to include more doctors. He said that “temperamentally, emotionally and intellectually, the physician who has been in private practice for a decade or more is, in my opinion, more suited for public service as a legislator than the species most commonly found in the hallowed halls of Congress.”

Among the issues raised by Crossman is that he feels the present “species” in Congress does not know anything about health care, and worse yet, they seem uninterested in learning.

He states that “physicians would make better legislators ... by virtue of their training and experience. Physicians are taught to start with a differential diagnosis and move in a logical direction to prune the list based on the discovery of evidence that leads to a final diagnosis and targets treatment.”

He added, “Doctors who practice are taught to think quickly and analytically under pressure ... Doctors don’t have the luxury of sidebars, recesses, dark days and calendar changes .... Doctors answer to a different master ... There really is no appeal process in medicine. Second chances are rare, especially in surgery. Negotiation doesn’t exist. Leverage and lobbying are not terms associated with the natural history of disease or the treatments we have available to alter course. There’s no nuance, misspeaking or recalibration in medicine like there is in politics. If doctors were representatives and senators, the public would lose its cynicism about politics because they would be dealt with in the same manner in which we talk to our patients on a daily basis with good news and bad, openly, honestly and with compassion.”

Dr. Crossman has noted that doctors have traditionally avoided politics and elected office, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that doctors do not usually lust for control, a character trait he suggests recommends them highly for the job.

He closes his op-ed by saying: "As physicians, we understand justice and equality in their purest sense. We would make very good Congressmen and women, and should start making public service a formal part of the medical profession. I’ll write a check for you when you decide to run—Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter. I know who you are and trust you. (041010)

Wisconsin Medical Society presents oral arguments to restore funds to Injured Patients and Family Compensation Fund

The Wisconsin Medical Society issued a "Medigram"on April 16, 2010 reporting that it had presented oral arguments before the Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 15 requesting that the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturn the Dane County Circuit Court's ruling allowing the state to take funds from the Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund (IPFCF). The IPFCF was created to allow health care professionals to pool money for excess liability insurance, guarantee payments to injured patients and lower health care costs. It was never intended to be a revenue raising measure for the State. However, the Dane County Circuit Court ruling has agreed that the state could raid the fund; the state has taken in the region of $200 million already. If the Society loses this lawsuit, it will have a very negative impact for Wisconsin patients. This action would render the IPFCF ineffective, therefore destabilizing the medical malpractice climate in Wisconsin. The stable environment here makes Wisconsin an attractive place for physicians to practice. We're already facing doctor shortages because of Obamacare. This would only make the situation worse. Watch this situation very closely. (041810)

According to The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems Canada is 30th and the United States is 37th. Do you see this as a problem and, if so, what would you do to get the US higher on the list?

There are many problems with the WHO ranking. For example countries have different definitions of infant mortality. In the U.S. any infant born who takes a breath is considered a live born infant. Some countries have a gestational cut-off, so a live born highly premature infant here would be considered a stillborn elsewhere. There are lifestyle problems here that countries don't have;homicide,drug abuse, drunk driving, etc. (022810)

What's your position on national healthcare?

I'm opposed to nationalizing health care. I believe it would result in waiting lists like Canada. Ontario has a website where patients can check what the waiting lists are, based on specialty and location. One of the best ways to control costs is to remove government mandates to insurance companies, and allow pooling of small businesses to purchase insurance (like the Council of Small Enterprises in Cleveland). (022810)

Where I Stand

Pam has taken a position on plenty of issues that concern you. Let's start with these, and she'll build on them as she interacts more with you during the campaign and beyond.

Health care issues are a passion. Pam has set up health care town halls in Wausau and Madison, cooperating with Americans for Prosperity. Thousands attended these sessions. She has also worked through the Chamber of Commerce Health Care Ad Hoc Committee.

Small businesses: Pam runs a small private medical practice. She is a small business owner. She is well aware of the challenges facing small businesses. A study by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute has shown that jobs and the economy are far and away the biggest concern of Wisconsinites, not health care reform. Pam understands this and has set her priorities accordingly.

State economy is broken: The nation, and our state, is in recession. We can all look with pain at the graphs and statistics. From Pam's perspective, this is an issue of ideology. On one side are those who favor redistribution of wealth, a theory which demands highly centralized government control of virtually everything --- they argue that all good flows from government only. Pam Galloway does not buy this theory at all. She believes prosperity is the result of the free open market, which, in turn, demands decentralized government that enables the market and the individual to prosper rather than impede and burden them. This ideological split is very important and central to the entire economic issue now on the table.

The State of Wisconsin is operating on a deficit. That is unlawful, so they call it a structural imbalance. The State keeps spending more than it brings in, and simply increases our tax burden either directly or through local governments. Private enterprise cannot operate in that kind of environment --- the Madison government has made our state an unfriendly place to do business. We must implement a tax and regulatory structure that makes our state a friendly place to do business. That in turn demands smaller, more helpful and efficient state government.

The Madison government does not understand simple economics. It maintains it needs more revenue, so it raises taxes. Soon we'll be taxed out of the state. The right solution is to lower taxes to attract more private enterprise, which in turn will put more people to work and more people paying taxes at lower rates. The government will get the revenues it needs to run a downsized operation while at the same time the people of the state will prosper. It is absurd to believe that increasing taxes and creating an unfriendly business environment is the way to work out of a recession.

Wisconsin ranks 12th in the nation for taxation and 25th in spending. How can that be? Revenues for the state consist of three things: taxes, fees and federal aid. The state has chosen to rely on taxes. It has very few fees such as tolls and tuition increases, and it is among the lowest in receiving federal aid. This is a tax, tax, and tax more state. That strategy will create a breaking point somewhere down the line, sooner rather than later.

Fix the state economy: As a state senator, the number one way Pam would work to fix the state economy is to dig in on the budget process. Get rid of the rubbish, the pork, the myriad little fiefdoms and demand value from every state dollar. This will demand a confrontation between the two ideologies, and Pam's ideology of achieving prosperity through promoting the private sector will win out over the anti-prosperity big government plan of her Democrat opponent, Russ Decker. Socialism demands highly centralized autocratic governance to proceed. Capitalism demands decentralized governance responsive to the needs of the people to proceed. Pam selects the latter.

Dr. Galloway's Prescription:

Restart the heart of Wisconsin's economy.

"Job creation is the key to restoring the Wisconsin economy. As the owner of a small independent medical practice I am fully aware of the challenges facing the business community.

"Government policies on regulation and taxation must change."

The important point to remember is that the private sector creates jobs, not the government. What Wisconsin urgently needs is an "enabling environment" that attracts private enterprises to the state, especially to central Wisconsin, and enables them to prosper, grow and create even more jobs.

Our state government has not only failed to do that, but has discouraged private enterprises from coming and encouraged those here to move elsewhere.

To build on and expand her economic approach, Pam has spoken with the experts from these organizations:

Centergy, the Central Wisconsin Alliance for Economic Development, Bill Tehan and Barb Fleisner

University of Wisconsin Marathon County, Dr. Hamid Milani, an expert in globalization and the global economy.

Greenheck Fan, with a facility in Schofield, Wisconsin, Dwight Davis who has shared his concerns with the lack of incentive to create jobs in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a business association dedicated to making Wisconsin the most competitive state in the nation. Jim Haney shares Dwight Davis' concerns about job creation.