On March 1st, the Millard Business Association held a forum allowing candidates on the local area to speak to the community about their platforms.  As Congressional candidates, Matt Sakalosky, Lee Terry, and Tom White all spoke and took questions submitted from the audience. Here is the transcript of Matt's speech: My name is Matt Sakalosky and I am a candidate for Nebraska's 2nd District Congressional seat. I thank-you for allowing me to participate in the forum this evening.   A little on my background, I've been married almost 16 years now and my wife and I are proud parents of 4 children. My family were residents of the neighborhood Millard Park for nearly a decade before moving to the opposite side of Millard West a couple of years ago.  My family has truly been a part of this vibrant and very responsible community.  I coached baseball in the Millard Athletic Association for several years and my kids are still involved in the softball and football programs there.  I want to thank the local businesses for their support of these youth organizations as it is critical to their continued success. I am also a business owner in the health care field. My company focuses on hospital operations and efficiencies, the implementation of electronic medical records, assisting physicians and nurses with implementing evidence based medicine, best practices, and patient safety. When it comes to the health care discussion, I have the expertise necessary to help address the inflationary costs in health care to ensure affordability for all our families well into the future.  One of the other things we have to look at is the pooling of insurance risk which will be another step towards affordability for both individuals and small businesses.  I will also fight to include tort reform as part of the health care discussion because practicing defensive medicine costs us 26% of all our health care dollars, these are dollars that would be better utilized here in our community.  We can do this while keeping our system the best private health care system in the world. I will not support government run or socialized health care in any shape or form. As a business owner, I also understand what it's like to make payroll and to meet the challenges that businesses face on a day to day basis. I connect with the mindset of other business owners who have pursued their part of the American dream.  I think as business people, we all have that same attitude that can be summed up by Sir Winston Churchill , "History will be kind to me because I intend to write it." As business owners we have all imparted on this course of self destiny. But lately, our self-destiny seems to be on shaky grounds.  There doesn't seem to be much we can count on with today's economic challenges.  With 2 TARP bills and numerous government spending programs reaching into the trillions of dollars, one would think we would be headed in the right direction.  But the picture continues to grow a little more dim.  We currently have an unemployment rate hovering around 10%.  And just within the last couple of weeks jobless claims are up 12% and the consumer confidence index hit a new 27 year low. This takes us back to 1983 when we were climbing out of the Carter economy. But with all the tumult we face, there is one thing that it seems we can always count on and it's one of our biggest challenges that has become a national security risk...and that's government spending and debt. Government spending is the gift that seems to keep on giving.  Just a couple months ago on Christmas Eve the United States Congress gave the tax payers of our country a gift by raising the debt ceiling to a record $12.3 trillion dollars.  Just a couple of months later they raised it again to a new record of $14.3 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office expects deficit spending to be at least 1 trillion dollars each year over the next decade adding $10 trillion more to our national debt.  None of this includes the President's new jobs bill or the Health Care bill now being discussed.  I heard a quote the other day that stated we have a Congress that's spending money like John Edwards in a beauty shop and it's true.  So the question must be asked, do we want to continue down the path of becoming a debtor nation to the world that owns and produces nothing?  The problem we face is bigger than party. Earlier in the decade, under a Republican President and Congress we hit record spending and deficits only to elect a Democratic President and Congress that took these records to startling new highs.  We are headed down the wrong path and it is unsustainable...but the more the plans fail the more the planners plan....knowing that they can reach into your registers and take from the labor and sweat from behind your counters...the businesses here in Millard that aren't too big to fail.  I contend that the crisis we face right now is not one of government, but one of leadership. I am the candidate that you can trust to fight to reduce spending and get the debt under control.  I will fight to protect the businesses that aren't to big to fail and will fight to keep Uncle Sam out of your pockets.  I will work to remove the current obstacles so that American business and the American worker can be the catalyts that lead us back to economic prosperity, not the government.