In the June 8 primary election, Republican voters in Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District selected state Senator Robert Hurt of Chatham as their party’s nominee to face off against incumbent Representative Tom Perriello in November. Hurt took 48.4 percent of the vote against a field of six rival candidates for the GOP nomination.

At a GOP unity rally in Charlottesville on June 12, all but one of Hurt’s competitors appeared to show their support for him.

In an exclusive interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner after the rally, Hurt touched on some of the principles of political philosophy that will guide him if he is elected to Congress.

Reducing Government Across the Board

Asked which three government programs or agencies he would eliminate, Hurt said that is “a difficult question to answer.”

“Where do you go first?” he asked. “It’s got to be across the board,” he continued, and pointed to his experience in the General Assembly, where this year “we just came through a budget shortfall of $4 billion. That was not easy. We had to make tough choices.”

Hurt said that he would “look at every single agency," noting “we have to take a holistic approach to this. We have to look at everything.”

There was one department, he said, that could “probably” be eliminated.

“We all talk about the federal Department of Education as something that needs to be looked at very carefully. If there’s a good reason for its existence, it’s not clear to me.

“Why is it,” he asked, that “we send our local dollars to the federal Department of Education in Washington, have them take their cut, send it back to us, and expect us to be grateful?” That, he said, is “not clear to me.”

Returning to the original question, Hurt said that “I don’t know that you can just say three. I think that you have to look across the board. It has to be a complete reformulation of the way we do business.”

Constitutional Constraints on Congress

The “Enumerated Powers Act” has been introduced by Representative John Shadegg (R-Arizona) and by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma). It would “require Congress to specify the source of authority under the United States Constitution for the enactment of laws.”

Hurt said, depending on the details of the bill, he would back it. “I could support that,” he said, “I certainly agree with the concept.”

Continuing, Hurt said with emphasis, “There’s nothing more important -- nothing more important -- than the requirement … that we are constrained as legislators by our Constitution.”

His opponent doesn’t understand that, Hurt said. “When asked whether the health care bill was constitutional,” he explained, the incumbent congressman was quoted as saying “that’s not my concern, that’s something for the Supreme Court to do.”

Hurt shook his head ruefully and added, “There’s nothing that is further from the truth, or should be a greater concern to the people of the Fifth District, [than] that our congressman has that attitude about our constitution.

“As a member of the legislature for the last nine years,” he continued, “I have always understood that my oath to uphold our state constitution and our federal constitution [is] my primary responsibility.”

Note: Some Virginia bloggers are sponsoring a “money bomb” for Robert Hurt on his upcoming birthday, June 16.

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