BROWNSBURG — Championing his 100 percent voting record on small business issues, Rep. Todd Rokita (R) met with a host of community leaders and spoke about his vision for turning around the nation’s debt crisis at a gathering at Green Street Pub and Eatery here earlier in the week.

“We try to be very open and very transparent and try to engage people as best we can, but this is important,” said Rokita of the impending debt crisis and inability of Congress to pass a balanced budget. “Unless people are involved at the kitchen table, the board room, at the fence post with their neighbors, coming out of church, getting out of their comfort zone, we will lose the republic. I guarantee it.”

Rokita’s meeting was put on by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and was designed to make local business owners aware of issues surrounding their livelihoods as it relates to what is going on in Congress. He also used it as a chance to explain his Red Tape Rollback initiative, which is intended to lift burdensome regulations that weigh down Hoosier job creators.

“I try to be a conduit of information,” Rokita said. “I’m happy to offer solutions and we have solutions, but what gets rewarded is what gets done. If sports get rewarded, sports is what gets done. You see that in our high schools, beautiful gymnasiums. Once again we’re the country with the most gold medals, and there are valuable lessons in that. Take the analogy further. What gets rewarded in China and India are math and science. So guess what gets done? Math and science. Translate that analogy to politics. If you start rewarding the truth, the truth will get done. We’ve been trying to do that for two years by giving the facts and having the confidence in the voters and the people that this country will solve our own problems. We don’t need the nanny federal government to do it for us.”

Rokita was candid about the problems Washington D.C. faces, saying bipartisan politics have hampered the ability to get a balanced budget passed, but he won’t stop fighting with his proposal, the Ryan-Rokita Budget.

“The Ryan-Rokita Budget is the only plan offered by members of a political party,” Rokita explained. “But the other shop doesn’t have a solution. They think they’re, A) going to be dead so they don’t have to deal with it, B) there isn’t a problem, or C) to the extent there is a debt problem, the only group of people that can solve it is government and therefore we have to have a bigger government, the bigger the problem.

“That’s why I come back and say unless the people of this country want to change that, it’ll be the discussion you have at the fence post that’s going to move this ball. You’ve got to know the truth to move this along.”

Taking aim at the Simpson-Bowles Budget plan, Rokita said he refuses to support any legislature that causes an unnecessary taxing on a specific portion of the population.

“The political buy off to the other side is, just tax the rich an ornamental amount,” he said. “You can tax Oprah Winfrey 100 percent, you can tax the Purdue football coach 100 percent, and the math is simple. You can’t take 100 percent of the fruit of their labor and pay off the debt. By definition, that part of Simpson-Bowles is a throwaway, an ornamental give out to the liberals that think the rich ought to pay more because they’re rich. We’re not going to buy into that because it’s morally wrong. We think everyone should keep the fruits of their labor, no matter what that fruit is.”

He then offered an alternative to that.

“Our goal here is revenue neutrality,” he said. “Our other goal is tax simplicity. The tax code is 73,000 pages long. It’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to buy a Turbo Tax software package or hire accountants to do your tax returns. We’re the only nation in the world that taxes our multi national corporations twice, if they bring their profits back. So what happens? They don’t bring their profits back. We estimate there is $2 trillion in cash sitting in other countries. Talk about the private stimulus package that would result if this money was allowed to come back on our shores.”