Nearing next month’s critical elections, we asked the candidates for United States Representative, Eighth Congressional District, about some of the issues that are most on constituents’ minds, and about the claims they’ve been making about one another in their campaigns.
Both Democrat Darcy Burner and incumbent Congressman Dave Reichert, a Republican, were queried about the economy, health care and the cost and quality of public education: “If elected (or re-elected) what would you do to address these issues and ease citizens’ worries that our standard of living is getting worse and worse?”
We asked Reichert how he’d respond to Burner’s accusations that he has been ineffective in representing the district. And we asked Burner how she’d respond to Reichert’s accusations that she lacks the experience needed to do the job.
DARCY BURNER
Burner said the economy is the No. 1 concern she’s hearing about, “with the Dow being in a freefall … people watching retirement and college savings disappearing and layoffs looming.”
Her three-pronged plan to restore the economy and people’s faith in it included the following:
1) “We have to stimulate the economy and give permanent middle-class tax cuts.” She said she’d double the standard deductions, double child tax credits and make sales tax deductions permanent.
2) “We have to make investments to help grow the economy.” Investments in roads and transportation, schools and education, new technologies and new green industries would provide jobs in the short and the long term, she said.
3) “We need real fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. We’ve seen our rainy day fund being shipped to Iraq instead of investing in schools, roads and technology,” Burner stated. She supports a pay-as-you-go plan to make officials live within their means, just as average households must.
With regard to health care, Burner said it’s imperative to give every American access to health insurance. Even those who have health insurance “are struggling to pay the premiums and being nickled and dimed,” such as having “a co-pay to see the doctor, then another co-pay for a prescription and yet another to go to a lab.”
“We have to bring down overall costs,” she said. “Insurance companies’ profits and overhead are half of what is spent in the health care system and that’s incredibly broken.”
Another problem, said Burner, is that many don’t cover preventive care, causing people to wait until they’re very sick before they seek treatment.
“Covering care to keep people healthy is more economical. Other countries spend half of what we do with better outcomes and fewer problems,” she said.
On education, Burner spoke as the daughter of a public school teacher and said her son has just begun kindergarten in a public school. To ensure the best education for every child in the state, she said “we have to have resources … keep students, parents, teachers, schools and administrators accountable.”
Most of all, Burner noted, she would like to see that “good teachers get paid more and bad teachers don’t get paid to teach our kids.”
Responding to her opponent’s claim that she lacks experience, Burner said, “The real question is he’s got to be effective doing the job — that’s what people are looking for.” She said her background in the private sector (as a manager at Microsoft) and knowledge of economics have given her the set of skills to be effective in Congress.
“He has demonstrated he can not do the job,” Burner said, “ranking 401st out of 439 members of Congress, below people who can’t vote in Congress. You’d get more effective representation in American Samoa or Guam. It’s a changeable thing.”
Burner also believes Reichert is “not really hearing what the middle class needs or wants.” In addition to his views on the economy, “one hundred percent of the time, he’s voted with the president on our Iraq plan — he has no plan for ending the war in Iraq,” she said.
Finally, said Burner, during a debate on Oct. 8, Reichert “refused to answer the question about women’s choice. He’s gone so far as to say pharmacists shouldn’t fill prescriptions for birth control. We’re not talking about abortion — we’re talking about birth control. He’s way too extreme for this district.”
DAVE REICHERT
On the economy, Reichert said, “People should recognize government is a place where we should be looking for people to be gathering facts — on how we got here. How we got here will lead us to the solution.”
Mentioning his experience in the Sheriff’s Office, he emphasized the need to “gather facts, opposed to a $700 billion bailout with no strings attached.”
On Burner’s plan for fixing the economy, Reichert said that Burner is “using sleight-of-hand in her plan to give $4,000 to middle-income families. She’s only one member of 435 in the House of Representatives. … You must have agreement, support on the floor for the House, then the Senate. It has to come back with a vote. She’s not giving anybody a tax cut. When you talk about the economic crisis, the first thing is to have an investigation into the Legislative process and come up with the root causes.”
He said the system needs “reform and transparency … a system that holds people accountable. In a free country, burglars are arrested, taken to jail, held accountable. In a free market, we must still have rules and regulations. Someone who takes your credit card needs to be held accountable. I think we were going along so well, people got so comfortable, people became lax in their practices.”
Some consumers were not honest about their income when applying for mortgages, he said, “but there are people who were targets of predatory systems.”
Reichert added that he would invest in new energies … “to provide jobs and be environmentally friendly and conscious, but also one of the things to kick-start our economy.”
Regarding health care, he said, “We have to have a safety net for those who can’t afford it. The government needs to do this.”
Some have suggested a universal health care plan like those in Canada or Great Britain, but, said Reichert, “people from Canada are coming here because they don’t have choice of doctors. Insurance companies have too much say in the medical care people receive.”
Lack of health care and lack of education are intertwined in causing many of the problems in our society, Reichert stated. Again referencing his career in law enforcement, he described a “very clear cycle” of families struggling and having to make choices like, “Do I buy food tonight or do I send my child to the doctor?”
“The cycle is financial strife, a low-paying job, which often leads to alcohol, drug abuse, domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse, kids running away,” he said.
Reichert added that he personally lived this nightmare, hiding in closets with his siblings, muffled under pillows to drown out the sounds of their parents fighting.
“All people have high potential — we need to make sure kids are educated in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” he said.
He supports increases of Pell Grants, scholarships and early childhood education programs and pointed out that he is endorsed by NEA (National Education Association) and WEA (Washington Education Association), which is “unusual for a Republican.”
“In both education and health care, it’s all about prevention — putting people first, preparing them for the global economy,” said Reichert.
Responding to Burner’s claims that he is “ineffective,” he said, “She has been distorting my record — it’s the only way she can win this race.”
During discussions of the economy, Reichert said he was in the midst of working on “The PRICE of Homeland Security Act” that would ensure that vital intelligence analysis at the Washington State Joint Analytical Center is not cut, and which passed on Sept. 29.
Reichert said that since he’s been elected to Congress in 2004, he has passed eight bills, nine amendments and two resolutions, with five of those bills and six amendments being passed as a member of the minority party.
Among key accomplishments which point to his effectiveness, Reichert said he was the sixth freshman Congressman in history to be a subcommittee chair, leading the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology just nine months after taking office.
“If that’s not effective, what is?,” Reichert asked.
