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Gary Lambert

Gary Lambert

Credit NHPR / Michael Brindley
Race: District 2, U.S. House of Representatives
Party: Republican
Political Experience:  2010-2012 – New Hampshire Senate
Personal: Married, two children; lives in Nashua
Education: Bachelor’s, Valparaiso University; J.D., Drake University Law School; Master’s, US Army War College

Candidate Website

The biggest topic of conversation on the campaign trail, Lambert says, is the Affordable Care Act. He supports repealing the law and replacing it with “free market alternatives,” such as allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines and encouraging individual health savings accounts.

“Folks are still suffering from the recession so to speak and they’re out there doing two jobs, three jobs, part-time jobs. The last thing they need is an increase in health care costs…. The free market can handle this a lot better than government. Government hasn’t been very good at picking winners and losers. The free market does that.”

Lambert has been criticized by members of his own party for supporting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions, when he was in the state Senate. In June, however, he signed a pledge from the Americans for Prosperity to oppose a tax carbon emissions.

“I looked at it from an economic, taxpayer point of view. If we had gotten out of RGGI, we still would have had to pay $5.6 million into that system because we’re tied in with the grid and our energy system. What we would not have received in return was $12 million in energy efficiency money. If you take a look at that math from the taxpayers’ point of view, from the best interest of the state, and decided to keep us in.

Lambert opposes the Common Core State Standards adopted for New Hampshire public schools in 2010, which he calls a “top-down, one-size-fits-all national education system.

“Our kids get the best education for their individual needs and talents when curriculum decisions are made at the local level. New Hampshire educators know better than Washington politicians how to educate our states children. The federal government's role in education should be limited. Since roughly 90% of education funding comes from town and state government, we should be the ones who determine our children’s curriculum.”

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