Election Guide News, voter information MARK WAITE / PVT U.S. Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., poses with D.J. and Ronnie Sproul at Nye County Republican Party Headquarters Thursday. Advertisement

U.S. Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., asked a young boy at Nye County Republican Party headquarters Thursday, "you think we ought to raise taxes?"

The boy shook his head.

Heller advocated a role of less regulation in defending his vote against the $700 billion bailout package earlier this month amid intense political pressure.

"I voted against it twice. I was the only member of our delegation to vote against it. I thought it was the wrong solution at the wrong time," Heller said. "I don't think government is the solution. As a wise man once said, government is the problem."

Heller decried a plan by the federal government to spend $250 billion to purchase a partial interest in nine large banks to spur lending.

"Capitalism has run this country for the last couple hundred years and it's going to continue to be the engine that drives this country for the next couple hundred years," he said.

Heller had a 13 percentage point lead over his main opponent, Democrat Jill Derby, in the race for Congressional District 2 in a Las Vegas Review-Journal poll published Monday. Republicans outnumber Democrats in the vast district, but Democrats are now in the majority in Washoe County.

Heller said he voted against the bailout package for three reasons: it didn't punish the corporate officials responsible; it didn't help ordinary citizens and it said nothing about changing regulations in the future.

"Wall Street ought to be paying for these problems, not the average taxpayers," Heller said in speaking to Republican party faithful.

Heller said when politicians are inside the Beltway, they're in a bubble. He recalled getting calls from the White House, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, every special interest group, urging him to support the bailout bill.

"You truly had to be independent because I didn't know how that was going to play back home," Heller said. "My individual vote on this matched fairly well with the independent attitude back home."

The House was debating the bailout bill the first time after the stock market plunged 777 points, normally a lucky number in Nevada, Heller said. The second time it came up for a vote, when it eventually passed, the market had just gained 250 points, and he recalled a proponent of the bailout bill predicted the market would rise more if the bill passed.

"The market dropped 400 points immediately after our vote," Heller said. He said every time President Bush proposed another program, the stock market dropped some more.

"I became very leery of this administration and the direction we wanted to go and I think the stock exchange is bearing out that we made a bad decision," the freshman congressman said.

Heller said he hoped McCain would vote against the bill, sending a message he really is a Maverick politician. It was tough voting against the leadership in his own party, he said.

While Heller conceded "Republicans are blaming Democrats and Democrats are blaming Republicans" for the current economic mess, Heller placed the blame on greed and corruption. He also traced the roots of the crisis to the Community Investment Act passed during the Carter administration; the subprime mortgage crisis preceded the stock market slide.

"We put people into homes they couldn't afford," Heller said. But he added, "the problem got bigger when we deregulated these markets with the Republicans."

"It worked after the Depression for 50, 60 years, maybe these regulations ought to be readdressed," Heller said. "Some of those regulations protect private investors."

The government removed regulations that encouraged the leveraging of bad mortgages by financial institutions and removed the distinction between investment banks and commercial banks, Heller, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, said.

Heller said after he was first elected in 2006 the big issue among callers was the war in Iraq and the troop surge. Then callers were concerned about a plan in the Senate to grant amnesty to 15 million people living in the country illegally, he said. After that it was the high gas prices and corresponding food prices. In the last six weeks, the main topic of conversation has been the economy and the stock market, Heller said.

Congressional District 2 is the fourth largest in area in the country, he said, measuring 105,000 square miles. It takes 15 hours to drive from one end of the district to another, Heller said, noting he puts 50,000 miles on his car every year traveling to every small town.

Heller said what is needed in Washington D.C. now is "independent voices" and not "the mob mentality."

Instead, the government should do what former President Reagan did back in the 1980s, Heller said, when 3,000 banks failed, at a rate of four to five per week.

Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman William Isaac had authority to provide notes to financial institutions to take bad debt off the books, Heller said.

"That program cost $1.8 billion but it was all paid for by the financial institutions, not by the taxpayers," he said.