Dave Camp (R-Mich.)

"I'm a conservative on fiscal policy, but I'm a moderate on some other issues," he told Congressional Quarterly in 2006, though he told National Review the following year that he feels "more at home" with the conservative Republican Steering Committee.

Camp opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage. He voted twice for President George W. Bush's tax cuts, and he supports their full extension. He has pushed for private accounts for Social Security and supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

On foreign policy, Camp supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he backed - with some reservations - President Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq in earlier 2007.

The Economy

Camp supported the $700 billion Wall Street bailout in the fall of 2008, a position that drew criticism from Andy Concannon, his Democratic opponent for reelection. "This is not something that anyone really wanted to do, but it was something that had to be done because the risk of (doing) nothing was far too great," Camp said in defending his vote. "This is a stop-gap measure. It is not going to fix all our economic problems."

Camp's post as ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee earned him a spot on the House-Senate conference committee that reconciled the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in February 2009. But the invitation to the negotiating table didn't change his opposition to the package. Camp said the legislation contained "far too much spending, and the tax relief is the not right kind of tax relief to create jobs."

He also complained that Republicans were "frozen out" of the process by the Congressional Democratic leadership. He helped draft a GOP alternative stimulus package that focused heavily on tax cuts and aid to small businesses, homeowners, and the unemployed.

While Camp has praised President Obama for reaching out to Republicans, he broadly criticized his 2010 budget for excessive spending and taxation. Its spending and borrowing, he said, would make the current generation of Americans the first to fail to improve the nation's prosperity.

Health Care

Camp played a leading Republican role in the debate over a health-care overhaul at the center of President Obama's domestic agenda.

In November 2009, Camp introduced the chief Republican alternative to the Democrats' bill called the "Common Sense Health Care Reform and Accountability Act," which Republicans said would lower costs by allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, permit small businesses access to combine and form pools; and prevent insurance companies from denying insurance to those with preexisting conditions.

The chief obstacle to a consensus, Camp suggested, was the push by many Democrats for the creation of a public-health plan to compete with private insurers.

"A government plan would eliminate the current coverage for 120 million Americans who get it from their employers," the congressman said in a statement prior to a Ways and Means Committee hearing on health care in April. "I am sure most Americans get their health care this way, and taking that away from you is unacceptable."

The public plan option, he has said, is a "bright line" dividing Democrats and Republicans who are open to reform.

Camp strongly opposed the ultimate legislation, enacted in March 2010, arguing that it implemented a variety of new tax increases and didn't comply with "pay-as-you-go" budget rules.

Over the years Camp has spoken out on other areas of the health-care debate. In 2003, he championed a provision in the Medicare prescription-drug bill that would protect nurse training programs, warning that to scrap the initiative would exacerbate a nationwide nursing shortage. He also pushed legislation expanding coverage of cholesterol screenings and aid for patients with kidney disease.

At the same time, Camp steadfastly opposed legislation to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. He called the bill, which was enacted under President Obama after vetoes by President Bush, "woefully flawed" and said it inappropriately covers children of families with high incomes.

Trade

A longtime supporter of free trade, Camp voted for both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

In February 2009, he hailed a bipartisan agreement to expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, praising the new inclusion of service workers in the initiative and calling it "a coherent, rational, accountable, and cost-effective system for training trade-affected workers and putting them back to work quickly and at better jobs."

Welfare Reform

Camp's first real brush with the Washington spotlight came in 1996 during the intense negotiations on a bill to overhaul the nation's welfare system. Camp partnered with then-Rep. John Ensign (R-Nev.) to lobby a reluctant GOP leadership to strip out provisions making significant changes to Medicaid, the inclusion of which was sure to draw a veto from President Clinton.

The move quickly garnered support from the Republican rank-and-file in the House, and it was later cited as the "decisive breakthrough" in the bill that Clinton eventually signed.

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