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OTTUMWA, IOWA -- Bettendorf's John Archer won the Republican bid for Iowa's Second Congressional District seat over Dan Dolan in the primary elections last month, and he will now take on Democratic incumbent Dave Loebsack in November.

Archer's primary focus before the primary election was job creation, energy independence and a cut in spending. The former John Deere employee stopped by Ottumwa Monday, and told KTVO that his focused has not really changed.

Congress's action on several bills in the last few weeks, however, have prompted him to push governance reform and take a hard look at the bills being passed in Washington. The Affordable Healthcare Act, he said, is too long a bill that too little people, them being constituents or legislators, understand.

"We have to understand what's in a bill, I think before we vote for it, and I think that can resonate with every voter in the second district," Archer said. "That's part of the problem in the U.S. Congress these days is we pass massive pieces of legislation, but yet we really don't have any idea what's in those pieces of legislation and then we empower unelected bureaucrats to come up with the rules and regulations to implement that bad piece of legislation."

Also passed by Congress last week was the highway and student interest rate bill, which dedicated money to infrastructure reform and froze student loan rates at 3.4%. Archer said the two issues should have been divided into two bills that would have been voted on one at a time.

"Certainly, in Southeast Iowa, the transportation bill, we needed to pass that, absolutely no question," Archer said. "As farm implements become larger, farmers need to transport their goods from one spot to the market, rural Iowa needs some new infrastructure and that's a step in the right direction. But to couple the student loan bill with the transportation bill just because of expediency doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

Archer said he will continue to push a bottom-up type of government, and work on appealing to a larger voting audience than the one that voted in June.