For U.S. Senate: Dean Heller

The most important issue facing Nevadans today is the economy, and it would be hard to find a wider contrast on how to create jobs than the one between the state's junior U.S. senator, Republican Dean Heller, and his Democratic challenger, 14-year Las Vegas Rep. Shelley Berkley.

Rep. Berkley has voted in lockstep with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi in running up the national debt and distorting the market with bailout after Keynesian bailout and imposing the looming ObamaCare mandates that are paralyzing small business investment. Rep. Berkley also voted in 1999 to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept consumer banks from risking depositor capital in high-risk ventures. (She now admits that vote, which played a major role in creating the Great Recession, was "a mistake," though she still rakes in contributions from grateful Wall Street financiers.)

Sen. Heller? He'd restore Glass-Steagall to save the community and small commercial banks that have traditionally funded American small business.

"Every time we do a trillion-dollar stimulus, unemployment goes up," Sen. Heller points out. "The biggest philosophical difference between us is that she thinks the purpose of small business is to finance big government."

The solution to our economic troubles is to create a million more taxpayers, says Sen. Heller. "How do you create a million jobs? You start by saying 'Your taxes are not going up next year,' " thus allowing businesses to again plan for the future. Second, "We need an energy policy," the senator continues. Approving the Keystone XL pipeline - blocked by the current administration in fealty to its supporters on the green extreme - would create 200,000 indirect jobs and significantly more tax revenue, the senator says. "Why send that money to the Middle East?"

"Third: Repeal ObamaCare," says Sen. Heller. The employer insurance mandates in ObamaCare will cost many local Nevada restaurants and small casinos more than their current net income after expenses, the senator says, citing specific examples. Their only solution, other than shutting down, will be to put all their employees on part-time schedules - hardly a happy outcome for Nevada workers.

Because President Obama's proposed budget would have increased the national debt from $16 trillion to $22 trillion, "It didn't get a single vote," says Sen. Heller. In fact, Democrats under Sen. Reid haven't passed a budget in four years - amplifying economic uncertainty, which freezes out investment.

"Why not just solve the problem for the 15 percent who are uninsured?" the senator asks. "Free enterprise will be the answer."

As for Sen. Heller's challenger, many voters worry that Rep. Berkley may be unworthy of higher office because she's currently the subject of a House Ethics investigation into whether she sought to enrich her physician husband when she used her office to lobby for continued funding of a kidney dialysis center. That someone who's been in politics as long as Rep. Berkley would fail to disclose the potential conflict is indeed puzzling. But when the congresswoman says her focus was on seeing that Nevadans got good medical care, we believe her.

No, the reason to reject Rep. Berkley is not her character, but the character of the harmful and counterproductive policies her party has used to drive the Nevada economy into the Dumpster.

Rep. Berkley used to indulge an occasional moderate streak, but her Senate campaign has been full of anti-business, anti-free-market boilerplate straight out of the Democratic National Committee, blaming everything on "Big Banks" (including the ones that fund both her and Mr. Obama so lavishly) and "Big Oil." She's increasingly on the most destructive, reactionary side of every issue, from her support for the environmental lobby in blocking sensible energy development to her party-line rejection of entitlement reforms.

And if she wins election to the Senate, she'll owe it to Sen. Reid.

Though she's been met here with courtesy and support many times, Rep. Berkley declined to meet with the Review-Journal's editorial board this fall. If she can't defend her current positions to a panel of journalists, should we believe she would remain anything but a thrall to her party bosses in Washington?

A former secretary of state and congressman, Sen. Heller knows all of Nevada and her needs. A thoughtful conservative, he's not afraid to embrace reforms, even if they come from across the aisle. And Sen. Heller could help return control of the upper chamber to common-sense, moderate Republicans willing to end Washington gridlock.

The Review-Journal endorses Dean Heller for U.S. Senate.