If you'd told me a couple years ago that I would be here today announcing the start of this campaign, I would have thought you might be just a few sandwiches short of a picnic. But then, how often in life do we actually know what God has in store for us?

Two years before the shot heard round the world, do you think Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, or Benjamin Franklin would have believed that one day soon they'd find themselves cloistered in a hot room in Philadelphia debating whether to remain loyal to their oppressor or to give birth to the greatest experiment in government the world has ever seen? The only nation ever founded on an idea. That idea was freedom. That idea was liberty. You see, we are ALL born free, but our liberty is not guaranteed. Liberty must be fought for. It must be earned, and once it's held, it must be jealously guarded.

Our founding fathers had seen their countrymen purchase liberty with their very blood, and they were wise enough to enshrine it in the supreme law of our land, The Constitution. This document, this shining beacon of what government can aspire to be, acts not as a list of rights granted to the people, for all individual rights are natural; they are not granted by anyone on this earth. No... what the Constitution does, is act as a restraining order against the government. It is there to ensure that those who are elected remember that their power is limited and temporary, and comes only from the consent of the governed. This restraint was put in place because our founding fathers knew that liberty is inversely related to the size and scope of government. As President Reagan once said, "Man is not free, unless government is limited." I've always known this to be true, and I think many of us do, even if we don't give much thought to it. Over the past couple years I've seen more and more incursions on liberty made by those on the left. Now I'm not one to demonize groups of people based on their beliefs.

Oftentimes these folks are simply misguided. But I did notice one thing over the years.

As our President signed laws forcing religious institutions to pay for services that directly contradicted their faith and told Americans for the very first time that they were required to purchase something from a private entity or face the wrath of the State... As our President claimed the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without counsel or a right to a hearing and refused to admit that he did NOT have the power to unilaterally assassinate an American citizen on American soil who was not directly engaged in a terror attack... one thing became abundantly clear to me. There were very few people willing to stand up for freedom. Too few willing to push back against the ever rising tide of tyranny... But there were some. Some like Senator Rand Paul who refused to sit and be silent until the President admitted that he was NOT judge, jury, and executioner of Americans. Some like Senator Ted Cruz who asked a would be tyrant which of our other Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms she would like to do away with as long as she's getting rid of our second one. People like former Congressman Ron Paul who has been railing against the growth of the State for a generation, and who gave birth to a NEW GENERATION of revolutionaries for liberty that I'm proud to consider myself a part of. These individuals spoke up, and I noticed. I noticed that I agreed with just about every word they had to say. I also noticed when it came to defending individual freedom (and its other half, individual responsibility), it seemed almost as if those who called themselves conservatives had a monopoly on the subject! Take for example the following words President Reagan had to say on the matter:

"We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success - only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people."

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

"The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become."

"Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives."

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth."

Those champions of freedom that I've mentioned can't do it alone. Without people willing to stand with them and fight on the side of liberty all across the nation, their cause, OUR cause, will surely fail... Well I've fought for everything I have my entire life. I've fought for the freedom to do what I will with my life, and with that freedom comes responsibility. It is with that sense of responsibility that I find myself here today, announcing to you, that I am seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in the Illinois 17th District.

Now there is no greater guarantor of freedom, than economic prosperity, and folks, I don't need to tell you, that we've got our work cut out for us. Illinois just posted the largest increase of all 50 states in the number of people receiving food stamps. We have to ask ourselves, how do we turn things around? Are we going to continue down this path of simply throwing money at the problem? My money. Your money? Or is it time to finally accept the reality that giving people things doesn't satisfy a need, it only delays it for a while until it comes back worse than before. There are some, our current President and congresswoman included, that believe that more and more government is the answer. Who have forgotten that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But those forgetful individuals are simply mistaken.

Government is NOT the answer. You don't do anyone any favors by creating dependency and destroying individual responsibility. The fact is, economic freedom, and the prosperity it generates, reduces poverty like nothing else.

If we want to see jobs created here at home, we don't need more silly laws with pretty names like the "Government Waste Reduction Act", which wastes taxpayer money creating a new bureaucracy with the supposed goal of reducing bureaucracy and waste, or "Bring Jobs Home Act" that promise to punish companies for making decisions that benefit their investors but in reality would have the doubly bad effect of costing taxpayers untold sums of money as a result of these same companies being able to easily game the system.

Every "tax loophole" that is abhorred by the general public began as a "good intention" by some misguided politician who believed that MORE government, MORE regulation, and MORE complication of the tax code was a good thing. What we need is just the opposite.

If we want to see money invested here, jobs created here by multinational corporations, we need to make it financially sound for them to do so. That's all that matters to them.

Their bottom line. That's neither right nor wrong, it's simply the reason for their existence. Knowing that, why do we still have the highest corporate tax rate in the entire developed world??? Why don't we have the lowest? If we know that competition is won by being the best, then why aren't we being the best for business? One of the first bills I will author in Congress is a bill that slashes our corporate tax rate low enough to make us competitive again.

If we want to allow the middle class to grow and strengthen, then why do we keep politicians in office who believe that more government and more regulation is the answer. Why do we tax small business owners at such exorbitant rates? Why don't we make their burden lighter so they have more money to invest in their business and hire more folks, or to spend in their communities? Taxing businesses to their breaking point doesn't create more revenue for social welfare programs, all it does is create more people who need them.

While we're talking about why should we keep politicians in office with BAD ideas, I want to ask why we should keep politicians in office with NO ideas. Right now we have a representative in congress that apparently believes listening tours equal leadership.

Well, they don't. Leaders take a stand, and that is something we have yet to see in the first half a year she's been in office. Of course, this should come as no surprise as we didn't see her taking any stands during her election campaign either. My opponent has said time and time again that she will fight for medicare and social security, but she has never told us HOW. I have a plan. It's been publicly posted on my website since last year. Where is HER plan? She ran for office repeatedly claiming that jobs were her number one priority (well, actually her "number one priority" shifted quite a bit depending on who her audience was, but, regarless...) I HAVE to ask. Where are the jobs, Ms. Bustos? I see the furloughs at The Arsenal, and I see layoffs throughout the district. I see more and more people needing public aid but I don't see her taking a stand or offering a solution on anything. There are any number of issues on which she has not only refused to take a stand, but also refused to even state her opinion. One example is the issues of gun rights. She won't tell us where she stands on that. My stance is clear.

You can find it on my website. You know where else you can find it? In The Constitution. Right alongside my stances on freedom of religion and equal treatment of all Americans.

Folks, our district deserves REAL leadership. We deserve someone who is willing to take a stand. Not too long ago millions of people across the nation declared that they were prepared to Stand With Rand for the cause of liberty. Well I'm asking you today, WILL YOU STAND WITH ME???

If you WILL stand with me then we will overcome the odds, door by door, neighbor by neighbor, brick by brick, and history will tell of when we, the good people of the 17th District, chose to stop the encroachment on our liberty and took our country back!

Thank you all for coming. May God bless you, and may God continue bless The United States of America