Click here to read Haley's whole plan.
Creating More and Better Jobs
1. Keep the state on solid financial footing by continuing to live within our means. Prioritize any new state debt issuance to projects related to job creation and economic development.
2. Overhaul our tax code to reduce barriers to job creation and to set a firm and fair foundation for collecting revenues to pay for essential government services.
3. Oppose unnecessary bureaucratic regulations that make it harder for small businesses to succeed, such as the creation of a state Department of Labor.
4. Maintain strict accountability and controls on all economic development efforts through the Mississippi Development Authority. To prevent wasteful projects, such as Mississippi Beef Processors, that are driven by politics instead of economics, the Land, Water and Timber Resources Board should be eliminated and its duties transferred to the Mississippi Development Authority.
5. Continue to provide increased, stable funding for all levels of education.
6. Implement plans to address the ever-growing problem of worker shortages, especially in the construction, manufacturing, and agriculture sectors, through projects such as the Centers for Excellence in Metal Trades and Construction.
7. Make Mississippi an energy reliable state through a common-sense regulatory environment rather than unnecessary subsidies.
8. Promote Nature, Outdoor and Heritage Tourism through initiatives such as the National Civil Rights Museum and the Blues Trail.
Rebuilding South Mississippi Bigger and Better than Ever
1. Continue to implement the Barbour Administration's comprehensive housing recovery program which has already assisted nearly 16,000 Mississippi families and is financing the construction of 16,000 units of affordable rental housing.
2. Maintain a stable statewide insurance market statewide. Promote Congressional authorization of an all-perils insurance policy and a federal catastrophic disaster reinsurance program. Support the continuing efforts of the wind pool board to reduce property insurance rates.
3. Foster community revitalization efforts to improve infrastructure and to rebuild downtown areas for economic development, job creation and quality of life.
4. Promote transformational economic development projects such as the Port of Gulfport.
5. Assist local governments as they draw down $2.3 billion of Public Assistance funds from FEMA to repair, replace, or restore publicly-owned facilities and buildings.
6. Protect our environment by implementing the $642 million water/sewer program that will allow development in new areas in an environmentally responsible way.
7. Continue to rebuild our natural habitats such as the coastal marsh for shrimp and the reefs for oysters.
8. Rebuild our barrier islands to their pre-1900 footprints and elevations in order to reduce the impact of future hurricanes.
Improving Education
1. Keep funding the MAEP formula at 100% every year to help local school districts while continuing to support stable funding increases for our universities and community colleges.
2. To keep our best teachers, increase the salaries of teachers with more than 25 years of experience.
3. Build on the more than 20% increase in teacher pay in Governor Barbour's first term by approving more teacher pay raises that combine across the board increases with additional pay for performance raises.
4. To help kids at-risk of not succeeding, screen every first grader for dyslexia and other learning disabilities; then fund the programs necessary to help dyslexic and other kids learn to read.
5. To help our new teachers manage classroom discipline, provide a seasoned mentor for new middle school teachers.
6. Support the state superintendent's proposal to redesign high school to make it more relevant to kids who are not on a college path thereby reducing the dropout rate.
7. To help get our kids ready to learn, we need to better utilize the existing early childhood education programs that already serve 80% of our four year olds by providing financial incentives for them to expand and improve their educational content.
A Healthy Mississippi
1. Establish a "Mississippi Health Insurance Exchange" to make it easier for more employers to offer their employees health insurance, to provide employees with more choices, and to make it easier for employees to keep their health insurance when they change jobs.
2. Enroll all eligible children in the State-Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). To pay for this, the federal funding formula must be adjusted to remove the provisions that unfairly shortchange Southern states such as Mississippi.
3. Improve the quality of health care through improved medical technology.
4. Increase the number of physicians in our state by increasing the class size and the number of residents at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
5. Protect Medicaid for those who are truly needy by ensuring that everyone receiving Medicaid is eligible for Medicaid. Governor Barbour will oppose efforts to repeal the most effective anti-fraud program in Medicaid which requires beneficiaries to confirm their eligibility once a year in person.
Safer Communities
1. Increase the size of the Bureau of Narcotics by 50% and graduate at least one new highway patrol training class each year to increase the number of highway patrol officers so state law enforcement will be able to better support local law enforcement.
2. Expand "drug courts" to all twenty-two circuit court districts.
3. Target the worst criminal offenders in our capital city with a multi-agency state task force working in cooperation with local law enforcement. This two-year initiative will be funded by already-obtained federal monies.
4. To combat juvenile crime, use federal TANF funds to establish an Adolescent Offender Program in each county of the state.
5. Continue to help the federal government enforce immigration laws by giving state and local law enforcement new tools; fighting identity theft; deploying volunteers from the Mississippi National Guard to help protect the border; and not allowing illegal immigrants to be eligible for Medicaid, welfare, unemployment benefits, food stamps or to receive a driver's license in Mississippi. Illegal immigrants should be deported, not paroled.
Stronger Families
1. Continue to protect the rights of the unborn.
2. Protect our most vulnerable children through reforms to the state's foster care system and administration of the Department of Human Services.
3. Continue to support strict regulation of the casino industry in our state and oppose the establishment of a state lottery. Seek legislation to "close the window" so it will be against the law for any casino to locate in any county that does not already allow gaming. This prohibition would also apply to Native American casinos.