Dan Coats: "No one fully understands this thing"

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Jeffersonville, IN - By Matt McCutcheon - e-mail | bio

JEFFERSONVILLE, IN (WAVE) - In just a little more than a month, voters head to the polls across Kentuckiana, and ads continue to pop up in people's yards, and on TV and the radio.

Southern Indiana voters have a major race to vote for, after Senator Evan Bayh announced earlier this year that he is giving up his Senate seat.

Fellow Democrat Brad Ellsworth fills the Democrat ticket; on the Republican side, Dan Coats is on the ballot.

Coats stopped in Jeffersonville Friday at noontime to tour Pfau – a small, family-owned company specializing in the production of industrial animal oils.

WAVE 3 News talked to Coats on a variety of issues; perhaps the top three that voters say are most important deal with President Bush-era tax cuts expiring and whether to renew those to Americans with certain incomes; views on healthcare reform; and immigration.

In talking about potential tax hikes if those Bush-era cuts evaporate, Coats says any tax hike for any income, "just stifles growth. You've got to lower taxes or assure people that their taxes aren't going to go up if you want to send signals that companies should expand and people will have more spending money in their pocket so this idea of raising taxes on anybody at this point and time is a failed policy," Coats said.

Coats said he is adamantly against the new healthcare bill.

"I could not have supported that bill. I've never been in favor of this one size fits all, jam everything and 1/6 of the economy into one big piece of legislation. No one fully understands this thing and we are now learning things about the bill that are posing new taxes and new regulations and we're talking about doctor shortages," Coats said.

Immigration is also a big issue; more specifically, the growing number of pregnant women who are not U. S. residents and come to America to give birth.

"I think it deserves examination in terms of whether or not there needs to be changes in that. Those who've deliberately come across the border for the sole purpose of establishing citizenship for a child - so called 'anchor babies' I think is a real problem," Coats said.

To find out more about Coats, click here.

WAVE 3 News continues to follow his opponent, Democrat Brad Ellsworth. We'll have reports about his future visits to the area. In the meantime, click here for more about Ellsworth.