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Eric’s great-grandparents emigrated from Norway, moving their family to the plains of South Dakota and a logging town in northern Wisconsin before finally settling in Stoughton. His grandfather started his real estate business during the height of the Great Depression. After serving in the military, Eric’s father took over the business in 1955, and continued to build on the opportunities he’d been given.

Eric was born and raised in Madison, attending East High School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a classic entrepreneur – he founded and managed his first business in his twenties, and went on to start and build many others. He then expanded to buying troubled community banks and turning them around. Eric has made a career out of rolling up his sleeves, getting businesses back on the right track, and building for the future.

While in his thirties, Eric also started The Hovde Foundation alongside his brother, Steve. They have built ten “Hovde Homes” to date, providing shelter, care, and love to vulnerable children and families right here in Wisconsin and all across the world. The foundation supports a variety of additional local charities, including food banks, literacy initiatives, the Clean Lakes Alliance, and works to end sex trafficking in partnership with Thorn.

Eric and his wife Sharon have also been long-time partners in the fight to cure Multiple Sclerosis (MS) – a chronic autoimmune disease that Eric himself was diagnosed with at age 27. He knows first-hand how a chronic illness can turn your life upside down and affect an entire family, and is proud to support clinical research efforts and outreach programs through the foundation in order to help others going through the same struggle.

Eric Hovde lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Eric and his wife, Sharon, have two grown daughters and three grandchildren.

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Issues

Cost of Living

Source: Campaign Site

Debt and Inflation
Tackling Record Inflation and Preventing a Debt Crisis
High levels of government debt pose significant dangers to a country’s economic stability and long-term prospects. Since the end of the 2020 fiscal year, President Biden and Senator Baldwin have added over $7.3 trillion of debt, more than the first 228 years of our nation’s history combined.

Our total public debt is a staggering $34 trillion, and counting…

Such debt hinders economic growth, creates financial vulnerabilities, and limits our ability to respond to future crises. There are two paths out of this predicament, but both cause significant harm to a country’s citizens: defaulting or inflating away the debt.

Defaulting on debt involves a government’s inability or refusal to meet its debt obligations. This has catastrophic consequences particularly in the case of the United States. If the U.S. were to default it would collapse most financial institutions in the U.S. and globally. It would put the U.S. economy and the globe into a depression that would take over a decade to resolve. Unemployment would skyrocket and social instability would rise dramatically. It would also destroy investor confidence, trigger capital flight, and the U.S. would immediately lose its reserve currency status. To say the least, this is not an option that the U.S. can pursue like many third world countries have done in the past.

The inflationary approach involves rapidly increasing the money supply to devalue the debt. While this might seem like a convenient solution, it has extremely detrimental effects on the broader population. It devalues people’s savings and is particularly harmful to the elderly who rely on savings because they are no longer employed. Inflation also erodes the purchasing power of individuals and businesses, leading to higher costs of living. This harms everyone in a society but is particularly hard on middle- and working-class families and again, the elderly. Further it starts to have a corrosive impact on economic growth as people have to shift all their income to basic necessities collapsing other industries that do not provide essential goods and services. This ultimately leads to economic stagflation where an economy is no longer growing, but prices continue to increase. This is a painful remedy that lowers the standard of living for all but a very few.

The U.S. has already started down the path of trying to inflate away the debt. The Biden administration has spent trillions even after we were coming out of the COVID lockdowns in 2021 and 2022.

The Federal Reserve, due to the lockdowns of our economy in 2020 and 2021, increased the money supply by 40% during this period. As a result, inflation spiked to the highest levels in 40 years.
People feel it at the gas pump, grocery stores, car prices, home prices, and in everyday services. In response to the rising inflation, the Federal Reserve increased interest rates rapidly which compounds the debt problem the U.S. is facing because as rates adjust higher, the government will be forced to pay higher interest costs on its debt. It is now projected that total interest costs will be close to $1 trillion for this year. The interest cost on our debt will now start squeezing out more productive uses of capital from the U.S. government budget and overall economy making it harder to achieve normal historical growth rates over the mid to long term.

Immigration

The Biden Administration and Senator Baldwin have fueled the worst border crisis in our nation’s history. Their refusal to secure our southern border and enforce our immigration laws has put the security of our nation at great risk, allowed the unabated flow of drugs from Mexico and China, and created a humanitarian crisis for migrants.

With the mass influx of migrants across our border, many of our institutions – hospitals, hotels, schools, and community centers – are experiencing increased stress. In fact, some hospitals are turning away patients and are on the verge of collapse due to the increased strain. From a security standpoint, the number of undocumented individuals traveling from all over the world whose backgrounds and intentions are unknown raises concerns for our country, our citizens, and our way of life.

President Biden’s and Senator Baldwin’s border policy has also empowered the cartels, subsequently increasing the flow of drugs, including highly fatal drugs like fentanyl. Drug use and overdose deaths have increased dramatically as a result.

By the time many migrants reach the U.S. – Mexico border, many of them have been separated from their families and exploited by smugglers and human traffickers. This has created an enormous humanitarian crisis.

We have always been a nation of immigrants, but the American Dream should be pursued legally through the appropriate channels. The Biden-Baldwin open border policy is fueling a crisis on our southern border and many people have lost their lives because of it. Our laws need to be enforced and our borders strengthened if we want to keep our streets safe and protect the lives of U.S. citizens and migrants.

Foreign Policy

The Biden Administration and Senator Baldwin have fueled the worst border crisis in our nation’s history. Their refusal to secure our southern border and enforce our immigration laws has put the security of our nation at great risk, allowed the unabated flow of drugs from Mexico and China, and created a humanitarian crisis for migrants.

The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was a shameful betrayal and an embarrassment. We abandoned our military base, withdrew our troops, and left behind $7 billion of weapons, military vehicles, and communications equipment that went straight into the hands of the Taliban. More importantly, we lost 13 American service members, deserted hundreds of US citizens, and thousands of allies who had risked their lives for our country and our troops.

Our retreat emboldened foreign adversaries to become more aggressive – and our allies have paid the price. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stretched on for two years and cost hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives. The war’s devastation of life and infrastructure will set the country back decades. The Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel in October resulted in more than 1,000 Israeli deaths. Despite Iran’s long history of financing terrorism, my opponent Senator Baldwin was one of the staunchest supporters of the Iran deal which sent billions of dollars and plane loads of cash to Iran. In East Asia, China continues to build an arsenal of warships and is upping their aggression towards Taiwan. Our involvement across the globe in multiple conflicts stretches thin our ability to protect our allies and emboldens our enemies.

By appeasing dictators and funding evil regimes, Senator Baldwin and President Biden have put American troops at risk and endangered nations all over the world. We must lead through deterrence, prioritizing our national security and the security of our allies by sending a clear message of strength to the world, to put an end to these wars and stop future ones from occurring.

Healthcare

Our healthcare system is deeply flawed and in need of reform. Over the last decade, quality of care has decreased, and insurance premiums have doubled, in some cases tripled. This is largely a result of the failures of Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Initially promised to be a groundbreaking reform aimed at providing affordable care for all, the ACA has failed to live up to its expectation. Instead of a decrease in healthcare costs, Americans have experienced a sharp increase in insurance premiums, placing a burden on middle- and working-class families, many of whom are already struggling with rising costs.

Perverse incentives have made the insurance industry less competitive, less transparent, of lower quality, and more expensive. Before the ACA, health insurers were incentivized to manage costs because the difference between health insurance premiums and the claims paid to healthcare providers was their profit. After the ACA, insurance companies’ profits were capped and calculated as a percentage of healthcare spending; therefore, the only way to increase profits was to increase overall healthcare spending.

Many people, including those with preexisting conditions like myself, saw their drug prices skyrocket. Sadly, many are still forced to decide every month between the drugs they need to survive and basic necessities.

Democrats’ failed promises have cost Americans immensely. The promise of expanded healthcare options has resulted in fewer choices and limited coverage. Americans spend the most of any developed country on healthcare, despite the quality of care decreasing over time.

DC politicians have spent years talking about this issue, and yet they have done nothing about it. After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in the 1990s, I understand how the failures of our healthcare system affect my fellow Wisconsinites every day. I have lived it. It’s time to reform our healthcare so that it works for all Americans.