Republican congressional candidate George Faught was in Pryor Saturday where he sat down with The Times to talk about his candidacy.

Faught represents State House District 14, which covers parts of Muskogee, Fort Gibson and outlying areas of Hulbert. He was elected in 2006, despite a 72 percent Democrat voter registration. He is the first Republican ever elected to that seat and the only elected official running for congress in the second district. Faught is married with three grown children. He owns a small carpet cleaning business.

Faught said his carpet cleaning customers know that the government is too big. “We don’t see a lot of resolve of people who are elected remembering those things,” he said.

Faught said that repealing ObamaCare is his top priority. On creating jobs, Faught said he wants to work for further development of Oklahoma’s natural resources, mainly in energy.  

He mentioned Senator Tom Coburn’s book. titled “Back in Black,” which documents waste in the federal government by department and by agency. Faught said Coburn’s findings came to about $9 trillion in waste. Faught said there is a lack of resolve in congress to cut waste.

Faught said he would seek to build coalitions with other members of congress and use the Internet to get people to flood congress with calls demanding cuts in the government.

On the question of voting for the debt ceiling, Faught said that he would not vote to raise it if he is elected. Faught said when congress can’t agree on cuts, the responsibility is turned over to a so-called “supercommittee” which doesn’t fix anything and put things off until the next election.

One of Faught’s Republican colleagues in the state house complained that Faught voted against the final state budget and then switched his vote for the budget despite the fact that there were no cuts in the state income tax and the budget had been increased by $300 million. Faught said he did not want the legislature to go into a special session.

Faught said the original house proposal would have cut taxes by $32 million and that it was an across the board cut. He said if the legislature had gone into special session, it would have failed to do the one thing it was supposed to do — create a budget. He said in a special session, the legislature could have opted to spend even more money.

“Taking what we have, and the possibility of what we could have, I chose the lesser of two evils in my opinion.” Faught is running for congress and a special session would have required him to spend more time at the state capitol, instead of campaigning around this district.

Faught said the debt crisis is serious and he could see American currency losing its spot as the preferred currency in use around the world. Faught said he has talked to several congressmen who think the United States will “hit a real debt wall. It’s got to stop at some point.”

On the topic of war, Faught said the first thing the United States has to do is protect United States interests. He cited the state of Israel as a U.S. interest. “Have we extended ourselves too much? Probably so. Is Afghanistan going anywhere? Not really.”

Concerning future declarations of war, Faught said America needs to move constitutionally on wars but would not say he, as a member of Congress, would only support a war so long as it was declared by Congress.

On taxes, Faught said he could support either a fair or a flat tax. He likes the idea of the fair tax as it is a consumption tax. He believes there is enough momentum to get something going on changing the tax code. The fair tax would replace the income tax and become a national sales tax.

On auditing the federal reserve board, Faught said yes. “They’ve kind of run amok setting monetary policy and who is looking over their shoulder?”

Faught supports family values, such as the right to life of the unborn and traditional marriage between a man and a woman.