North Dakota U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer speaks from the debate stage at Legacy High School in Bismarck on Oct. 16, 2024. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)
(Michael Achterling – North Dakota Monitor) -Republican U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer believes North Dakotans want to get the federal government out of their everyday lives. He plans to make that his top issue if voters send him back to Washington.
Cramer is seeking a second term in the Senate, fending off a challenge from Democratic-NPL candidate Katrina Christiansen in the Nov. 5 election.
Cramer ranked securing the nation and “restoring economic sanity” as his other top priorities to pursue. He also discussed Social Security, Iran and the nation’s debt in an interview with the North Dakota Monitor.
Government overreach
Cramer said he wants to continue to reduce the reach of the federal government into the “personal, private lives” of Americans and individual states.
He said U.S. Supreme Court decisions that overturned the Chevron doctrine and other rulings that narrowed the scope of regulatory agencies greatly reduced the power of the federal government during his first term in office. He added the rulings set the table for future reductions in federal powers.
He said if Republicans retake the Senate majority this November, his position would be elevated on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“I’ll be in a position to have a lot of sway on reducing a lot of the overbearing regulations of the government,” he said. “And I think the only way to do that, by the way, now that the table is set, is to reduce their funding commensurate with the reduction of their authority. Reduce their workforce commensurate with their workload.”
Securing the nation
Cramer acknowledges his priority of securing the nation is broad and would include the modernization of the military and addressing southern border concerns. He said he hopes to continue advocating for Air Force bases in Minot and Grand Forks.
He cited the Russia-Ukraine war as a reminder of the dangers that dictators can cause. Cramer serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which works on national defense issues and is responsible for the National Defense Authorization Act.
This year, Cramer and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., launched the bipartisan Defense Modernization Caucus, with the mission to foster defense investments and innovative capabilities to deter and counter foreign adversaries, according to a Cramer news release.
“We have to move at the speed of China and our bureaucracy doesn’t do that very well,” he said.
On the southern border, Cramer said, “If the homeland is not secure, the world is not secure.”
He added that solutions at the southern border are more regulatory in nature with ensuring laws already on the books are being enforced.
Bridging foreign, domestic policy
Cramer said the country needs to do a better job of working closer with allies, decoupling from enemies and ensuring “frenemies” such as Saudi Arabia are pulled closer, instead of pushed away.
“We have become way too economically dependent on, particularly China, and we have to fix that, and I think we are,” Cramer said.
He said many Muslim nations want to be more closely associated with the United States, which could be beneficial in combating Islamic extremism.
Domestically, he added, one of the reasons the country doesn’t have a farm bill is because Democrats have tied some of the SNAP nutrition programs and conservation programs to inflated spending levels set during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“SNAP is now 80% of the farm bill and if that remains the same, it just dilutes the safety net for our farmers who actually have to produce the food,” he said. “They also want to move the conservation title into mandatory spending so it’s never going to be appropriated again. It’s just going to be automatic.”
He also derided the appropriation processes of Congress and lamented the need to return to regular order to avoid omnibus spending bills.
Social Security
Cramer said he and a group of about 20 bipartisan senators want to fix Social Security’s solvency issues before the country is left with “really bad choices.”
Increasing the retirement age by six months over the next 20 years and raising the taxable income cap on Social Security from $168,600 to around $250,000 could be reasonable fixes to address the fund’s future shortfall, he said.
Cramer said Americans shouldn’t think that increasing taxes on billionaires to “100%” will solve the problem.
He added that as soon as he mentions any potential fixes to the Social Security system and funding formula, he’ll be attacked by political rivals for going after retirement benefits.
“No. I’m saving your benefits,” Cramer said.
Debt
Cramer said spending during the COVID-19 pandemic was necessary to address the once-in-a-generation health crisis, but that has led to a new baseline in federal spending.
“We’re trying to get them back to the pre-pandemic levels,” Cramer said. He added spending on the American Rescue Plan Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which he calls the Inflation “Enhancement” Act, by President Biden’s administration has exacerbated the nation’s debt.
“The only way we deal with debt and deficit is to get after mandatory spending because the discretionary spending is now less than a quarter of the entire budget,” Cramer said.
Cramer chaired the North Dakota Republican Party from 1991 to 1993, and was the youngest NDGOP chair in state history at age 30, before being appointed as the state’s director of tourism. He was appointed by then-Gov. John Hoeven onto the Public Service Commission in 2003 where he stayed until being elected to the U.S. House in 2012. He defeated North Dakota Dem-NPL Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in 2018 with 55% of the vote.
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