Rock Island Today

Bill Fawell thinks the path forward is clear for those he believes truly have the country’s best interest at heart.

“The biggest issue facing America is the abuse of America by our over centralized federal government and its impact upon the nation’s finances, debt, jobs, health care and the madness of endless war,” Fawell, who is running in the Republican primary for the chance to face off against U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) in the 17th Congressional District, said in a press release.

“I believe in our United States Constitution; its purpose is to protect we the people from our government by providing the framework of daily government where the people rule over that government," he said in the release. "This defines a State of Liberty. This is not America today, yet this is what Made America Great in the first place.”

Fawell insists his whole platform is based on helping put the country back on what he sees as the right course.

“My entire campaign is devoted to restoring these tenets of our Constitution through systematic decentralization of those federal agencies that write 90 percent of the laws that rule our lives, because this is the very means by which our government has been corrupted,” he added in the release. “Our nation is both morally and fiscally bankrupt because of it, and I intend to be a driving force in our decentralization of government power.”

Fawell said his plan for obliterating corruption calls for ending centralized power and restoring all the infringements he sees made on the Constitution.

“To help restore a State of Liberty as the law of the land is the best service any congressman or woman could provide to the people they represent,” he said. “This is my commitment to you. My campaign slogan is ‘Live the Dream’ and ‘Take America Back.’"

Fawell previously told the Rock Island Today he has named his platform “liberty legislation,” and that he has proposed bills that would mandate that Congress approve all new major legislation and review legislation currently in place and that the Government Accountability Office conduct audits of the Federal Reserve Bank Board and Federal Reserve banks over the next 12 months.

Beyond that, Fawell said his platform will focus on jobs, the economy and further aiding President Donald Trump in "draining the swamp."

He has accused Bustos of being a big part of all that’s gone wrong in Washington, D.C., and of opposing Trump at every turn.

The Galena resident previously opposed Bustos in 2014 as a libertarian write-in candidate.

“I will ask Cheri why it took her five years to open up an office here in Peoria,” he told Rock Island Today. “She did it because she’s feeling the pressure. She knows America has had enough of what she stands for and that Trump won this district in 2016.”