By Mark Waite

The American dream is no longer alive under the Obama administration.

At least that’s what a number of Republican speakers agreed upon during the Third Annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner at the Pahrump Nugget Friday night.

Other common themes were balancing the budget, cutting taxes, repealing President Obama’s health care plan, reducing government regulations, giving more power to states and endorsing the free market system.

Keynote speaker U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, who was appointed by Gov. Brian Sandoval last May and is facing a tough election campaign against U.S. Rep. Shelly Berkeley, D-Nev., in the November campaign, said his bills would restore that American dream. Heller recalled how his father, a Carson City auto mechanic, would toil for 12 to 14 hours per day so his children and grandchildren could have a better life than he did.

“If you play by all the rules, you will be rewarded; and if you don’t, there’s consequences. That is the American dream and that is what disappeared under this president,” Heller said.

The senator outlined his no budget, no pay legislation. He said the federal government should be required to balance its budget, just like county commissioners and state legislators.

“Everybody balances their budget except for the federal government. We haven’t done it for 1,000 days. That’s probably the most important job we have,” Heller said. “I have a proposal, if at the end of the fiscal year, if we don’t pass a budget, no members of Congress should be paid.”

He touted another piece of legislation to reform the Federal Communications Commission, reforms he wants to expand to other federal agencies, like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA , U.S. Bureau of Land Management BLM and U.S. Forest Service.

“What the reform bill says is: one is, if you introduce any regulations you have to talk to the industry first,” Heller said. “No. 2, you have to do an analysis on any new regulation. Does it create jobs or does it destroy jobs?”

He said a third part of the legislation, is a rule forbidding agencies from voting on any new regulation between midnight and 6 a.m.

“The truth is the FCC votes on their new regulations at three in the morning so that nobody can come and oppose what they’re trying to do,” Heller said.

The senator poked fun at the low public image of congressmen these days.

“I saw a bumper sticker last week. I was in Fernley and boy you think about some of these things and this is what it says: ‘Dear Lord, I hope that I am the man that my dog thinks I am.’ And I wonder sometimes if that canine group had a level of expectations for some of us in Washington D.C. if we could just meet that,” he said.

Heller thanked Nye County voters for electing him to Congress, an election he won by just over 400 votes over Democrat Jill Derby in 2006, despite losing four of the five biggest counties in the state, Clark, Washoe, Elko and Douglas counties. But Heller said he won big in Nye County.

Heller said he had a visit from Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis at his office in Washington D.C. last week.

“I like his wife a lot more than I like him. But Gary was in my office and I have to tell you, you guys are well represented, all your county commissioners, they do a great job and Gary has spent time chewing me out more than any other county commissioner in the State of Nevada,” Heller said.

A surprise visitor, Jackie Cushman, daughter of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, stumped for her father, saying he was the only candidate to balance a federal budget.

“Last time we had a balanced budget was due to my father’s work. As speaker of the House he passed a balanced budget, he cut welfare, he cut spending, he cut taxes, he got things done that mattered to conservatives and he did that with a Democratic president,” Cushman said.

Three candidates for the new fourth congressional district seat spoke at the dinner.

State Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, said she believes in a five year plan to balance the federal budget, along with a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“I believe in small government and a balanced budget and the problem we have right now is a $15 trillion debt. That is absolutely unacceptable and something that needs to go away,” Cegavske said.

She said the federal stimulus package was wasteful and didn’t create many jobs.

“Government regulations are costing too much. They’re hurting our businesses. Federal agencies are bloated and ineffective. Entitlement spending threatens to send us into bankruptcy. The solutions are simple: I’ll fight to cut $1 trillion in spending during my first year in Congress and I will oppose any new stimulus spending. I will vote for federal block granting any Medicaid and education spending in the state. Who knows how to spend that money better than the states? And we will remove any strings that are attached to funds that states receive from the federal government,” Cegavske said.

She advocated for repealing Obama’s health care plan, repealing the Dodd-Frank legislation regulating the financial industry, which she said is stopping banks from giving loans and advocated building the Keystone oil pipeline.

Congressional candidate Danny Tarkanian said, “pretty soon, if it’s not already happened, we won’t even recognize what happened to the Constitution any more.”

Tarkanian said voters want someone who can go back to Washington D.C. who is going to be a fighter, who won’t back down, who will stand up for what they believe in.

“I am the only from Clark County that has ever come out and unequivocally said we need a good solution for the $12 billion we spent on Yucca Mountain,” Tarkanian said to some applause. “Reprocessing will be something that will immediately create thousands of jobs in the state, billions of dollars in state revenue. We got to think outside the box if we’re going to get out of these economic doldrums.”

Congressional candidate Dan Schwartz said many in the rural areas were unhappy with the redistricting of congressional boundaries approved by a committee of three special masters and rightly so.

“This district will be very, very difficult to represent in Congress. There are serious differences between North Las Vegas, Pahrump and the rural counties. The size of the district is enormous,” Schwartz said. He recalled a 650-mile round trip drive to Hawthorne to attend a lunch.

“But make no mistakes about it, the issues we face are daunting. Our deficits, out of control spending and national debt leave no money to fund innovation, infrastructure and education that our kids and grandkids deserve. Instead of a country with a promising tomorrow, they will be left with a stack of bills,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz pledged to bring more decision making powers back to the states, instead of agencies like the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Energy and the BLM. He said his time spent in Hong Kong convinced him a flat tax is a good place to start.

“Furthermore, everything must be put under the microscope. That includes entitlements, military procurement and a swelling bureaucracy. The loss of jobs and record home foreclosures are problems that are not easily solved. I will create an environment that relies on private initiative, the free markets, to restore capital to small businesses, reduce burdensome regulations and cut a deal with the banks that allows residents with underwater mortgages to stay, while allowing bank balance sheets to stay whole,” Schwartz said.