Steven Joyce ‘Are you overtaxed and overregulated?’

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Few disagree with Steven Joyce’s opening line as he campaigns, handshake-to-handshake, across the state’s 1st Congressional District.

“Are you overtaxed and overregulated?” he asks as he extends his hand, and follows up any reply with a comment such as, “I sure am.”

A small-business owner who served two terms in the Legislature, Joyce is rooted in what he sees as the core values of his party. If elected, he promises to work at reining in the federal government in its tax-and-spending policies and its regulation of business and other matters.

And Joyce pulls no punches when it comes to delineating himself from his opponent, three-term incumbent Democrat Tom Allen. In interviews, he is quick to say that there is no issue on which he and Allen agree. A big part of Joyce’s campaign is to describe Allen as out of step with the district, as too liberal, and too much an advocate of big government.

“Let’s say goodbye to a man who votes against tax cuts for our families,” Joyce said of Allen in a speech in the spring, “a man who votes against all new government spending on national defense. Let’s say goodbye to one more left-wing extremist.”

As the debate over giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq heated up this fall, Joyce showed no equivocation. Bush has made the case for war, he said, and Congress and others who would question that conclusion should get out of the way.

The lesson of Vietnam, Joyce said, is that failure is sure to result when politicians, and not generals, run a war.

“We need to leave war up to the military and the intelligence services,” he said in an Oct. 12 debate with Allen. “Right now, I’m willing to put more faith in our military than our current congressman.”

Joyce supports increasing the military budget, a move he believes is overdue.

“You need to make the changes that the military has been asking for,” to develop a smaller, more mobile force, he said.

Joyce, 33, grew up in Spain and around the United States, the son of a career Navy officer. His family, which he described as “an independent, conservative military family,” moved every two years.

Joyce remembers that while unpacking at a new home, neighbors would come over and pitch in with help. These experiences were formative, he said, as he learned, “You don’t ask, you just do it. If there’s a problem out there, I don’t look to government.”

He believes that governments closest to problems are most effective.

As an adult, Joyce moved to Maine, attending the University of Southern Maine, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Two years ago, he earned a master’s degree in business administration from New Hampshire College.

Single, he jokes with voters on the campaign trail that he hasn’t had time to marry.

He first went to work for a concrete firm in southern Maine, then started his own business doing pools, patios and driveways, as well as what is known as architectural concrete work, on which designs are stamped.

Elected to the Maine House in 1994 representing Kennebunkport and part of Biddeford, in what he said was traditionally a Democratic district, Joyce was defeated in a re-election bid in 1998. He now owns a home outside the district in Kennebunk.

Like the Bush administration, Joyce believes tax cuts stimulate the economy.

“Every American is overtaxed and that is what is stifling economic growth right up here in the state of Maine,” Joyce said in the Oct. 12 debate with Allen. “Our government is confiscating 49 cents of every dollar an individual earns,” he said in an earlier interview. “To me, that’s immoral.”

As a way of addressing problems with health insurance, Joyce proposes making 100 percent of premiums tax-deductible for self-employed people and creating a tax exemption on personal medical savings accounts.

Reductions also can be achieved through limiting federal mandates on medicine, and on limiting malpractice settlements, he said.

Beginning in late spring, Joyce’s campaign began to focus on the state’s fishing industry, as he joined many fishermen in advocating for less regulation. One morning last month, he joined a fisherman at the Augusta studios of WVOM-FM for a call-in show devoted to the issue.

“It’s hard not to conclude that some of them,” he said of government regulators, “want to turn the Gulf of Maine into some kind of national park.

“You can’t have people who never worked in the private sector” making decisions that affect the livelihoods of those working in the fisheries and logging industry, he said.

On immigration, Joyce also has strong views.

“What we should be doing is putting an immediate moratorium on all immigration on the 15 countries across the world that harbor terrorists,” he said in the Oct. 12 debate. Legal and illegal immigrants have been coming to the United States “without paying into this system, without contributing to the system, and getting huge benefits,” he said.

Joyce’s campaign brochure features a photograph of himself teaching young girls to shoot rifles. On a late-summer campaign stop in Thomaston, the candidate approached a group of men gathered around a pickup truck and asked what they thought of gun control. One man joked, “Use two hands.”

Joyce told the men, and others in the course of campaigning that day, that he believes there are enough laws to cover gun use, and no more are needed. In the Oct. 12 debate, he challenged Allen’s view on gun laws, saying it “really cheapens the whole Revolutionary War, and what this country fought for … protecting ourselves from dictators and overbearing government.”

If elected, Joyce hopes to serve on the House Commerce, Armed Services or Fisheries committees.