Presidential hopeful waxes conservative
Lawmaker addresses trade issues, abortion

By P.J. Reilly, Staff
Intelligencer Journal

Published: May 08, 2007 1:50 AM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. - U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter told a packed room of Lancaster County Republicans Monday night that he's a man with a plan.

If elected president in 2008, the California congressman vowed to:

Level the foreign-trade playing field, which he said currently favors China over the U.S.


Complete within six months the 854-mile security fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.


Never appoint a federal judge who supports abortion.
A Republican candidate in the upcoming presidential primaries, Hunter was the keynote speaker Monday at the Lancaster County Republican Committee's annual spring banquet at Willow Valley Resort & Conference Center.

U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts of Kennett Square, who represents Lancaster County, introduced Hunter — an attorney and Vietnam War veteran — as someone who "shares the same values that we all hold here in Lancaster County."

Among those values is a strong work ethic, something Hunter believes is deteriorating in the United States because of China's foreign trade policies, which he calls "unfair."

Hunter, who was first elected to Congress in 1980, recalled how American manufacturing companies supplied the military during World War II with everything the armed forces needed.

"We really carried Eisenhower to victory in Berlin, and pushed the enemy across the Pacific," he said.

Yet, when Hunter, who serves on the House Armed Service Committee, went looking for an American company two years ago to provide steel armor plating for military vehicles being destroyed by roadside bombs in Iraq, he could find only one.

"In the old days, there were dozens" of companies that could have fabricated the plates, he said.

Many of those companies have relocated to China, where Hunter said the government refunds tax money to companies that export products from the country, while charging taxes to American companies trying to import products to the country.

"That's the factor that is sending American companies offshore," he said.

If elected president, Hunter plans to "stop China from cheating" on foreign trade and "make trading a two-way street between the United States and China."

Doing so will "make sure that American businesses can make a profit and workers can have access to good jobs," he said.

Hunter, who represents part of San Diego County, which borders Mexico, is probably best known as the author of the Secure Fence Act. The act requires the federal government to build a security fence along 854 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, including stretches of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Hunter got the idea to build the fence after seeing how fencing helped keep drug dealers and other criminals from Tijuana from moving back and forth across the U.S. border into San Diego.

When San Diego built a fence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hunter said, the city's crime rate fell by 53 percent.

Although the Secure Fence Act was signed into law by President Bush last fall, only 2 miles of the new fence have been built so far.

"If I'm elected president of the United States, I will complete that border fence — all 854 miles — within six months," he said.

Hunter said he is impressed by the dedication Americans have to "their country, their community and their fellow man."

"We believe in the value of human life," he added. "That's the basis upon which this country was founded."

One of the duties of the president of the United States is to appoint judges to the federal bench.

"If a candidate for the federal bench can look at a sonogram of an unborn child and not see a valuable human life … I will not appoint that candidate to the federal bench," Hunter said.

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