5. I support the DREAM Act, and President Obama’s efforts to help young people who have lived in the United States for years to have a shot at the American Dream. Even though it is a fair and bipartisan bill, Republican Scott Brown has opposed the DREAM Act.

Throughout our history, America’s diversity has made us stronger, more innovative, and more creative. That’s why I support common sense, comprehensive immigration reform. I believe we need reform that is true to the rule of law, to our tradition as a nation of immigrants, and to our need to invest in the future.

U.S. Senator Scott Brown's Responses:

According to studies by the Kaufmann Foundation, new start-up businesses are the source of all the net job growth in the country over the past 20 years. Scott Brown has a record of working across the aisle to boost the MA innovation economy, and he will work with either President Obama or a President Romney on policies that will create a stronger economy for all Americans.

For recent college graduates, one of the biggest policies he will continue to work on is innovation and entrepreneurship. Many recent graduates today are interested in raising funds to launch their own start-up business. Senator Brown was invited to the White House for the signing of his crowdfunding bill, which will allow entrepreneurs­­­—such as student entrepreneurs at the Cambridge Innovation Center—to raise up to $1 million per year in equity financing over the internet. The crowdfunding bill is currently in the final rulemaking phase at the SEC.

In addition to implementing the crowdfunding bill next year, Sen. Brown is a co-sponsor of the START-UP 2.0 bill, which will give visas to entrepreneurs from other countries who want to start a business in America and students with an M.A. degree or PhD. Additionally, Start-UP 2.0 streamlines regulations, provides a capital gains exemption for investments in start-ups that are held longer than 5 years. The final provision would provide accelerated commercialization of university-based research. Promising students in STEM fields would have access to more business opportunities and connections with angel investors.

With her massive tax hikes, Elizabeth Warren would destroy jobs and make a bad economy even worse. She supports the largest tax hike in this country since World War II to the tune of $3.4 trillion dollars. According to economists at Ernst and Young, Elizabeth Warren’s policies of sharply higher taxes on the small businesses will destroy at least 700,000 jobs across the country, including more than 17,000 here in Massachusetts.

2. Yes—Senator Brown will continue to advocate for more federal support to defray the costs of higher education such as subsidized student loans and grants, but it’s also critical that colleges and universities get their costs under control, so that deficit spending by the federal government is not simply padding the bank accounts of overpaid university administrations. Administrative costs, such as Elizabeth Warren’s Harvard salary of $350,000 for teaching one class, have been accelerating faster than any other form of university spending and have become a major driver of tuition increases. Additionally, Warren receives a zero interest loan from Harvard while she runs a lucrative corporate law practice out of her office, meaning that Harvard students have been going deep into debt to subsidize the lifestyle of a millionaire law professor. Today’s students are drowning in debt, and excessive salaries like Professor Warren’s a big reason why.

3. While all forms of government spending must be scrutinized for waste, fraud and abuse, cutting federal research funding isn’t the answer to our budget problems. Senator Brown has worked with other members of the Massachusetts delegation, writing letters urging the protection of NIH research funding and will continue to be an advocate for it. Before cutting research, we need to address wasteful spending on agriculture subsidies, fraud in our healthcare and defense budget, and freezing federal salaries and benefits before we look to try to reduce research spending.

But with our national debt soaring past $16 trillion and rising, we need to get a handle on out-of-control government spending immediately, and that is why Senator Brown supports a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution that would force the federal government to spend only as much money as it takes in each year. Our national debt is a moral and economic outrage, and we cannot just pass it on to future generations. It threatens the fiscal solvency of our nation, and if we don’t act soon, we risk going down the path of Greece and other European nations that find themselves on the verge of falling off a fiscal cliff. Professor Warren opposes a Balanced Budget Amendment, and has even called it a “trick.” This is a big difference between the candidates.

4. We know now that the Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable. With 18 new taxes, and higher costs for families and businesses, it needs to be replaced with simple, cost-efficient incentives to encourage states to expand coverage in a way that is best for their state. The bill will destroy jobs for recent college grads in promising Massachusetts industries in such as the medical device industry, which is getting slammed in the bill with a massive new excise tax. The bill is making healthcare more expensive for Americans rather than less—by as much as 30 percent according to former Obama economic advisor Jonathan Gruber. The Washington Post and other news outlets have reported that college students who used to be able to access affordable plans for a couple hundred dollars per semester are seeing premium increases of more than $1,000, because of all the government mandates in the federal bill. Elizabeth Warren supports the national health care law, even though it will destroy jobs in Massachusetts—a state that had already achieved 98 percent coverage. She has said she would like to go even further and implement a radical, single-payer, European health care system that would lead to rationing. As a state senator, Scott Brown voted for the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform law, and believes that health care is an issue that should be decided at the state level.

5. Senator Brown is a strong supporter of improving our legal immigration process. He believes that because of the extraordinary sacrifices involved, young people who have volunteered for military service to our nation should have the opportunity to pursue American citizenship. He does not support the current DREAM Act, because the bill rewards too many people who willfully broke the law, putting those families in front of immigrant families who are doing the right thing, following the law, and waiting years to get legal status in America. Without major reforms to improve our immigration system, the DREAM Act makes illegal immigration by parents much more attractive than legal immigration. Elizabeth Warren supports giving taxpayer-funded benefits, such as in-state tuition rate and driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, and she opposes the Secure Communities program, which allows law enforcement officials to simply check the immigration status of those who commit violent crimes.

Consulting Actuary Tom Tierney's Responses:

1. I’m running on a four-point platform. Three of those elements, a solution to health care (see Question 4 below), increasing taxes (see Question 3 below), and restricted job guarantees for the long term unemployed will greatly enhance job creation. The last one [no further cuts in Social Security’s benefit structure] will also, in a smaller way, affect the noted enhancement.

2. Read my answer to Question No. 3 below and then return. And beware of any candidate who says he/she supports “measures to increase funding” and then tap dances around the requisite funding question.  President Obama’s [strategy of] borrow-what-you-need-from-the-Feds and pay it back via a percentage of your employment income for a number of years deserves further consideration.