113th Congress: Robert Pittenger, R-N.C. (9th District)

By Emily Ethridge, CQ Staff

Robert Pittenger will fit in easily with conservatives whose top goals include limiting government spending. He has pledged to work on simplifying the tax code and will support attempts to add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Pittenger says he will also focus on shrinking the federal government.

“Those in government are proficient in adding. They never learned to subtract,” he says.

“Our government is too massive and too costly and too intrusive.”

He would like to limit the reach of the Department of Education, prevent federal testing standards and give states more autonomy in running their schools. He also wants to restrict regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In addition, he wants to repeal two Democrat-backed laws from 2010: the financial regulatory overhaul and the health care law. Pittenger says he would like to work on replacing the health care law with the standard GOP approach: permitting the sale of insurance across state lines and helping businesses bundle together to get lower insurance rates. In addition, he supports putting caps on medical malpractice awards and turning Medicaid into a block grant system under which states would get a set amount from the federal government and be able to structure their programs as they choose.

He also shares a number of orthodox conservative goals on energy, including opening more public land to oil drilling and expanding nuclear and coal sources.