I would like to start off with some food for thought Information:
- Over 50,000 people die every year from lack of healthcare.
- A few thousand people die every year from our failing infrastructure.
- Over 1,500 people die every year from poor nutrition and starvation.
- Less then 10 people die from a terrorist attack.
- The US doesn’t rank in the top 10 in any education discipline (Math, Literacy or Science)
I think the NY18 where I live is pretty endemic of a lot of other Congressional districts around the country. People work long hours and don't have a lot of time for politics, not only local politics but national politics. In the last election we had a choice between a Republican Nan Hayworth and a Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney. People in the district were very upset with Representative Hayworth in the wake of two hurricanes that devastated the area, hurricane Irene and Lee. After the two hurricanes hit the area was devastated including local farmers and everyone turned to Representative Hayworth for help, but received very little. It was unfortunate, and she was very unresponsive. As a result of dissatisfaction with Representative Hayworth's job performance combined with increased Democratic turnout for a Presidential election led to Representative Sean Patrick Maloney being swept into office.
Representative Maloney was not really properly vetted at the time. The primary was moved up in the district and with strong support from former president bill Clinton and the shortened primary season people gave Rep. Maloney a pass as being another Democrat with good backing. And here in lies the problem. Part of the dissatisfaction with Rep Hayworth from Democrats came from her support of legislation rolling back financial reform, her support of CISPA the Cyber Security Bill, her support of Keystone XL Pipeline, and her willingness to sacrifice bringing back hard earned tax dollars back into the community where it could do the most good in favor of more military and defense spending.
Representative Maloney put himself forth as a moderate Democrat who would bring common sense solutions not only to the area but also to Congress. But I think Rep. Maloney, given that he lived in NYC and never really lived in our community, had a real lack of understand of the needs of our community. Like most communities throughout the US ours suffers from budget deficits, infrastructure failures, decreased funding from the state government, cuts in education funding, and increased property and school taxes. With large Big Box retailers like Walmart combined with decreased funding from the state and federal government, more and more communities are finding their hard earned money leaving their communities and not returning in the form of investment. This poses many problems for local communities which are limited in the ways they can raise money, and thus putting a higher burden on individuals within those communities to provide support.
In the wake of those two hurricanes, Rep. Maloney spoke about bringing investment back to our community, which I believe is what people wanted, especially in the wake of Rep. Hayworth who believed the Federal government had no role within or communities, that the Federal governments role was limited to defense, a typical tea party attitude.
Now Rep.Maloney has been in office for six months and has proven to be just another Washington insider catering to special interest groups over the community for which he represents. Unfortunately something I predicted prior to the election. Like Rep. Hayworth, Rep. Maloney is pushing for the same legislative agenda as not only Rep. Hayworth but also the Republican Party. Some of his votes including rolling back financial reform set forth in Dodd/Frank (for which Citigroup threw him a $2,500/plate fundraiser), a vote for the Keystone XL Pipeline, a vote for CISPA the Cyber Security bill, a vote for the NSA Spy Program (voted against the AMASH amendment in the NDAA), and a vote to cut SNAP by $20 billion per year, a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his position against universal background checks for gun purchases. And these are just a few of his votes and positions.
To date he has not had to explain his votes, and when asked he usually gives some type of Washington double talk which sounds reasonable but when thought about isn’t really. The issue really comes down to the fact that most people see 30% of their hard earned income go to the Federal Government in the form of taxes. Those Tax dollars are then suppose to come back to the communities in the form of services, roads, bridges, infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc…
However, as we have seen over the last few months, Congress continues to cut services that help local communities while continuing to pour money into so called defense and security projects. CISPA would have costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for an entirely separate and new Cyber Security program to spy on Americans (gather emails and computer data from individuals/taxpayers within America). I was told by Congressman Maloney’s office this was to protect us from China who we are not at war with, who most of our major corporations do significant business with and who the US is indebted to to the tune of over $3 trillion. So not sure why we need to spend the money on this or what collecting emails from Americans has to do with China, but Rep. Maloney thought this was more important then bringing this money back to our community in some form or another. The same goes with PRISM, the cyber security program run by the NSA. The US spends hundreds of billions of dollars on a program for which Americans receive very little benefit. Also, the Senate in their immigration bill poured over $300 billion into defense spending, including military equipment, a boarder fence and yet even more cyber security. All to protect a boarder with Mexico who we are not at war with and have a free trade agreement with. But I am digressing.
Now with the budget looming Republicans are threatening to shut down the government over spending. Well given the approval of hundreds of billions of dollars for defense and security spending, most of which doesn’t defend or protect our local communities (that is done by our local police force) they want to prevent even more of our hard earned tax dollars from coming back to our communities. And unfortunately Rep. Maloney like other Congress people are of the belief that the budget needs to be cut, and that we need to address federal security concerns at the expense of local communities (something Detroit Mich and Harrisburgh PA are all too familiar with given their recent bankruptcies). But the problem with this philosophy is that our local communities are struggling and a lot of them are failing. This is putting significant strain on local services, infrastructure and education. And at the end of the day what good is a strong national defense and military if our local communities fail?
Our forefathers understood that our national defense was only as strong as our local communities. This is why they developed the national income tax, not just for an army, but to provide support to the other states in the union to ensure their success. The Constitution makes it clear from the start we are all in this together, not struggling as individuals, but succeeding collectively as one nation. If American had all the money in the world, then spending all the money we do on military and security concerns wouldn’t be a problem cause then we could still provide the services the communities need to not only get by but to be successful and thrive. Today, I don’t believe anyone would view their local community as thriving, most are just getting by. As stated above our infrastructure is failing, people are dying cause they don’t have healthcare and our education system is lagging behind. Americans are dying every day from things we can prevent so really how effective is our national security if it refuses to save American lives? Does it make sense to spend hundreds of billions on these defense and security programs that don’t help Americans and our communities? No, we would certainly save more lives and be better off investing that money in our communities especially since we are told we don’t have all the money in the world. Something Rep Maloney and other Congress People have forgotten is that the strength of our nation does not lie in our national defense but in the strength of our local communities.
As a side note I heard Rep. Maloney got into a discussion with President Obama about funding for our local community. As discussed above, how concerned can Rep Maloney be about funding for our communities when he is so willing to spend that money on security measure which provide neither safety or security. We don’t need Gimmicks Rep. Maloney, we need real leadership and real reform, something in six months you have shown to provide neither.