This week 3.5 million Washington state voters begin voting by mail for the August 17th primary. With a new Gallup poll showing the lowest approval ratings in history for Congress (11%), I propose that we send replacements who have actually succeeded in creating jobs and who know from personal experience how to encourage business expansion from the shop floor level and beyond.

Of the candidates challenging Patty Murray for her U.S. Senate seat, I am the only one who has created jobs and expanded my business in a tough economy. I am the only candidate who has built wealth by helping others to prosper as well, the natural result of a free market economy. My wealth doesn't come from speculation, real estate investments nor fame. It comes from employing the same principles of free enterprise and innovation that made America prosperous and free from her earliest founding.

My wife and I started our company, Fastcap in our garage thirteen years ago and have nurtured it into a multi-million dollar international business that employs 83 people. Our entry level employees earn the highest starting pay in Whatcom County at $13 an hour. While our business is dependent on the construction industry, we have never laid off even one employee, nor cut salaries. During the most depressed building and construction bust in our nation's recent history, Fastcap has prospered and expanded, defying the odds by a long shot. This is no accident, but the result of employing a first class business model that can and will work to fix our bloated, unsustainable government that is spiraling toward it's own collapse.

My campaign theme is built upon a wildly successful business model, called Lean. Lean is world class and has proven to cut waste, balance budgets and create jobs both in the business world as well as in local government entities where it has been tried. It is used by premier companies such as Harley-Davidson, Ford Motor (the only American car company that did not need nor accept bailout money) and New Balance (the only sports shoe company that manufactures exclusively in the U.S.). I am convinced that applying the Lean model to government is the surest way to restore our status as the world’s standard bearer for economic liberty and prosperity.

My plan, which I call 10-3 Lean, is specific and shows no preference for any special interest group. It proposes that every government agency cut spending by 10 percent for three years. This doesn't necessarily mean that salaries, benefits or jobs are cut by ten percent, but that every agency must identify ten percent of their spending that is wasteful…spending that produces no results for their stated mission. Every agency, defense included, can find wasteful spending.

The second part of 10-3 Lean is to impose a ten percent, across the board, tax cut for three years. The net effect is nearly thirty percent spending reduction while increasing money in taxpayer pockets by the same.

To see how Lean principles can work in government reform, look no further than an overcrowded detention center in Jacksonville, Florida. Concerned about the safety of the corrections officers, Sheriff John Rutherford was offered a proposal to build a new $32 million, 686 bed addition. Instead, his team implemented a Lean process and managed to add 800 beds for a mere $110,000. The inmates in the metal shop were hired to build bunk beds, so that one bed was added to each two-bed cell. They were built, painted and installed by the inmates. That's lean.

In the medical field, Group Health Cooperative in our state and ThedaCare in Wisconsin use the Lean model to deliver health care services. Both companies enjoy the highest ratings in consumer satisfaction. Lean principles apply in any work environment because they rely on the ideas and ingenuity of the employees closest to the problem.

Many pundits are trying to gauge our chances for taking back the Senate and no doubt, Patty Murray is vulnerable. The 2010 primaries across our country have demonstrated one clear principle: the voters are in no mood for seasoned politicians favored by the beltway.

The righteous indignation felt by voters this year is bi-partisan and informed by a uniquely American spirit that does not tolerate the incompetence of a privileged aristocracy. People want solutions. They demand transparency and more than anything they want to reclaim the American tradition of free enterprise, innovation and economic liberty. I have lived my life employing these principles successfully and I want nothing more than to introduce them to the Senate beginning in 2011. The August primary is an opportunity for voters to do just that.