Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is a senior Republican, who represents Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, including parts of Harford, Baltimore and Carroll counties.
Bartlett, 82, was the sole Maryland lawmaker to vote against the $700 billion bailout approved by Congress and President Bush.
Instead, he proposed legislation to provide unlimited insurance for accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a rescue plan that would create mandatory insurance for mortgage-backed securities paid for with premiums by the institutions that hold them.
He is also a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Bartlett is running against Democratic challenger Jennifer Dougherty as he seeks his ninth term. Heading into the final month of the campaign, Bartlett had more than $370,000 on hand, compared with Dougherty’s $28,000, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Bartlett spoke with The Examiner about the bailout and America’s military future.
Why were you the only Maryland lawmaker who voted against the bailout?
If you notice, I’m alone on many of my votes.
The first vote I wasn’t [Maryland Reps. Elijah Cummings and Donna Edwards also voted against it], but we lost them the second time.
A change of mind, I guess.
The plan basically rewards bad behavior with help from the federal government. We don’t have the kind of money to do that, and now it’s a debt we have passed on to our kids.
Given the current financial climate, should we reduce our military presence in Iraq?
I never wanted to go to war the way we did. I want to see an events calendar, not a timetable.
Set up goals, like creating a security force, and once they reach those goals, leave.
We’ve done all we can do. Those people have been at each other’s throats for 1,400 years. What we have is a fragile peace.
What should be the top military priority of the incoming administration?
We don’t have the proper military to fight two different kinds of wars.
We will see a resurging of a peer power, like Russia or China.
We’re spending huge amounts of money on high-tech stuff that we do not need for this current war.
We have to decide what kind of war we will face in the future, and develop our military around that. For example, there is little in the way of [electromagnetic pulse] protection.
Our invulnerability against EMP invites a future attack. With the right tools, even Saddam Hussein could have taken out the East Coast.
