Transcript of Straight Talk with Hank on Preserving our Kids Future in Texas

Well, you know, I passed up some good jobs when I graduated from Texas A&M University in '81. That were really good paying jobs, but I would have had to re-locate out of Texas.

And I was born and raised here, in rural Texas. And I wanted to stay close to home. And so I taught high school for 13 years.

And I tried to teach kids to excel in what they do. Teach them something about agriculture whether they got involved in it as a career or as a sideline. It didn't make any difference.

They needed to have a basic knowledge of how things worked and how agriculture related to so many things.

Well I currently have two young sons, Cody and Peyton, their 11 and 13 years old respectively. And they own cattle. And I don't know that they'll be in the cattle business their entire life, or any type of living, but I feel like they'll be involved in the cattle business.

And you know, a guy told me one time, he gave me a little card that had a saying on it. It says, "This land doesn't belong to us - we have it on loan from our grandchildren." And I said, "You know, that I guess typifies more of why I am involved in this than anything else.

Because if we don't preserve and take care and grow on what we have now - We're not going to have anything to leave to the next generation. That's what gotten me so upset with government, with politics.

Now, we have a federal deficit now that every child born today has a $29,000 debt on their head as soon as the doctor spanks them on their butt. What are we saying to the kids of the future? We don't care. We care about today only. And that's not the way I was raised. I was raised in a household where if it wasn't, where the general policy was if it wasn't good for everybody - it wasn't good for anybody. And, if you didn't have the money to buy it - you didn't need it. And that's what we need to get back to.

My reason for running in this race is to make sure that we preserve, and enhance Texas agriculture.

That we preserve and enhance agriculture across this nation. So that my kids, and their generation. And my grandkid's generation, never have to worry about not having anything to eat. Or not being able to fulfill their duties as Americans and help feed the under-priviledged countries of this world.