Category: ISSUES

Social Justice

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Protecting the rights of all

During my 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Army, I was privileged to serve alongside a diverse collection of individuals whose backgrounds varied according to race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. In Congress, it will be my honor to represent ALL the people of Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. While we can seek legislative solutions to confront prejudice and discrimination and advance social justice, my experience as a military leader and as a pastor convinces me that that is just the beginning. We cannot simply change laws: we must change hearts, and we must change minds.

My faith teaches me that all people are created equal. Our Declaration of Independence asserts the same thing. That being true, each of us is worthy of love and respect. I will work to heal the divisions that exist in our district and in our nation, by leveraging existing networks that are already at work building bridges across those divides. Finally, I will encourage all of us to step back from condemnation, to listen to one another, and to encourage greater dialogue, with a focus on what unites rather than divides us.

ALL citizens—regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation—deserve equal protection in our nation and in our communities.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

I am firmly committed to women’s rights—ensuring equal pay for equal work, eliminating sexual harassment and sexual assault, and protecting access to preventative health care and family planning services, including safe, legal abortion. We must provide women with the economic and social resources that will help them to avoid facing the incredibly difficult decisions that come with unplanned pregnancies. We must improve adoption procedures so that children can be placed into safe homes in a way that respects the privacy of all parties and reduces emotional burdens.

LGBTQ RIGHTS

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law to everyone. I believe existing civil rights laws should protect members of the LGBTQ community. However, if it is necessary to pass legislation to ensure that result, I will be proud to sponsor or co-sponsor and vote in favor of such legislation. I stand with the LGBTQ community in their ongoing struggle to achieve full legal and social equality. Protections for the LGBTQ community should extend to the workplace, housing, the right to marry, the right to adopt a child, and the right to access government programs and services.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Communities of color continue to be disproportionately affected by our criminal justice system. We must take immediate action to reform our system. First, we need to end mandatory minimum sentences and empower judges to make reasonable sentencing decisions. Mandatory minimums have helped to place the United States in the unenviable position of being first in the world in incarcerated citizens per capita. Mandatory minimums have also created unjustifiable sentencing disparities for virtually identical offenses in a way that often disadvantages people of color.

Second, we must adopt federal legislation that increases the availability of body cameras for state and municipal police forces in order to protect both police officers and the people in the communities that they serve.

Third, we must bring an end to privately operated, for-profit prisons. Incarceration should be a sad fact of living in a society where some break our laws and must be separated from society, for the safety and well-being of others. It should not be a profit center. Finally, we must ban the box on employment applications that require people to identify prior convictions for misdemeanors and minor drug convictions.

Common Sense Gun Reform

By admin

Weapons of war have no place in our communities

During my 20-year military career, I saw first-hand the devastation that military rifles and other modern weapons of war can inflict. I support the Second Amendment, but gun violence is a plague that has infected our society. It is a public safety issue that can no longer be kicked down the road. Congress has failed to enact common sense gun reform not because it lacks constitutionally permissible legislative solutions; rather, it lacks courage and leadership. In Congress, I will serve the people of the 10th District, not the NRA.

We can wait no longer. We must address gun violence now. I propose doing so in four distinct ways:

First, we must understand the root causes of such violence, especially as it pertains to mass shootings. The Dickey Amendment—which has historically limited the ability of the Center for Disease Control to research gun violence—was recently repealed. However, Congress has not yet appropriated funding for this purpose. I will work to ensure the CDC is funded to study this issue in depth.
Second, we must identify all gun purchases through universal background checks, eliminating “gun show” loopholes and ensuring mandatory reporting, so that no one with a violent criminal record or serious mental health issue can purchase a firearm.
Third, we must reduce the likelihood and lethality of mass killings by banning bump stocks and high-capacity magazines, restricting the sale of assault weapons, and raising the minimum age for gun purchases to 21 years.
Finally, we must prevent mass killings, not by arming teachers but, rather, by ensuring we have better security at our schools and other public places, thereby protecting the most vulnerable among us.

Guns fulfill an important place in our society, both for personal protection and for hunting or other sporting purposes. However, as the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, a gun-owner and hunter himself, wrote in this poignant majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller:

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited…[It is]…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Modern weapons of war—like those I carried as soldier in uniform and that have been used in nearly every massacre that has shaken our nation—those weapons have no place in our communities. I support common sense gun reform that will in fact protect the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms while also protecting our citizens—especially children in schools—from injury or even death.

Enough is enough. It is time to act.

Safe, Effective Public Schools Defending public schools, teachers, and students

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Over ninety percent of our children in grades K–12 attend public school. For that reason alone, it is imperative that all our children—regardless of race, gender, religion, or zip code—have access to a quality public education. We know that too many of our public schools are struggling, just as we know that more money alone is not the answer. However, we must not exacerbate the problem by starving struggling schools of public funds. A quality, free, public education must be maintained as the fundamental right of every child, which it has been for over two hundred years.

For students who pursue a post-secondary education, college is the second biggest investment they will make in their lives, after buying a home. But for some students, even their student loan debt load has eclipsed the price of purchasing a home. The cost of a college education has skyrocketed. It is out of reach altogether for some, and others graduate with student loan debts closing in on $200,000 with nothing to show for it but a piece of paper. If the next generation is to be competitive in a global economy, we must do more to make higher education affordable and release the anchor around their feet that is unnecessary college debt.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the federal government provides only 8% of total funding for education and school-related services at the elementary and secondary levels. This figure includes federal funding for initiatives such as Title I, IDEA, the National School Lunch Program, and Head Start, all of which are valuable programs for reducing socioeconomic inequities. Accordingly, Congress needs to ensure that these programs are fully funded. They must not be allowed to become the targets of ideologically driven budget cuts or policy initiatives.

I will oppose any attempt to defund public education—whether through cuts to the education budget, tuition voucher programs, income tax credits for private school scholarships, income tax deductions for private school tuition, or any other scheme designed to transfer public funds to private education. We must never allow education to become a mere market commodity. It must be maintained as a fundamental right of every child.

HIGHER EDUCATION

As the global marketplace grows more competitive, we must prepare the next generation for success in the workforce. This means expanding opportunities for higher education and job training. There are many career fields that now require training beyond high school, but do not require a 4-year degree. Eligibility for student loan and Pell Grant programs must change to accommodate this new reality.

The average annual cost for tuition, fees, room, and board at a 4-year, public university has soared from what it was a decade ago—$31,000—to over $45,000 today. In that same period, average student loan debt has risen over 60% and now exceeds $34,000 on average per student or parent. Since higher education has become so essential to climbing the American ladder of opportunity, we must do a better job of making it affordable.

Congress should lift restrictions that prohibit student loan recipients from refinancing their loans when interest rates drop. Congress should expand the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF). Congress must repeal current financial regulations that forbid the discharge of student loan debt in bankruptcy proceedings. Furthermore, Congress should pass the Student Loan Repayment Assistance Act, which offers employers the same tax benefits for student loan repayment assistance that they already receive for tuition assistance.

Affordable, High Quality Health Care Improving access for every American

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In Congress, I will support policies to ensure health care coverage for all Americans that is both affordable and accessible. In the long term, this will likely mean moving toward a single-payer health care model. However, we can take immediate steps that build on our existing healthcare infrastructure to ensure improved health care access and affordability in the short-term. To do this, Congress must work to strengthen the ACA, not to sabotage it.

First, Congress needs to reinstate the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and cost-sharing reduction subsidies, both of which have been unwisely discontinued under the current administration. Repealing the individual mandate has encouraged some younger and healthier individuals to stop paying for health insurance. Removing these individuals from our health care insurance risk pools has led to higher premiums for those who are still insured.

Second, the current administration’s elimination of the cost-sharing reduction subsidies—which had been used in order to decrease out-of-pocket costs such as co-payments and deductibles—has unnecessarily raised health care costs for working men and women across the country. Those subsidies should be restored, at least for the short-term.

Third, Congress should add a Medicare buy-in option to all ACA health care exchanges. Private health insurance administrative costs typically account for 15–20% of premiums, while Medicare’s administrative costs are in the neighborhood of only 3–5%. It is time we allow individuals under the age of 65 to purchase Medicare through the ACA’s health care exchanges so that these savings can be passed along to millions of hardworking Americans in the form of lower premiums.

In addition to strengthening the ACA, we urgently need to address the crisis of opioid addiction that is ravaging our families and communities. It is a public health crisis which claims more lives with each passing year. Our federal government, leveraging the Centers for Disease Control, must work with state and local governments to identify better ways to prevent and treat such addictions. Law enforcement at all levels must interdict networks that produce and distribute these deadly drugs. Finally, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies must reduce access to opioids prescribed legally, seeking non-addictive alternatives for pain management.

We must end partisanship and restore public faith in elected leaders

By admin

Washington, D.C. is broken, and Americans are increasingly frustrated—by what we see as well as by what we don’t see. Congress has become increasingly polarized. Putting partisanship ahead of principle has become the norm. Problem-solving is nearly impossible, and “compromise” has become a dirty word. We must restore public faith in the government’s ability to solve our nation’s problems. That begins by rejecting blind partisanship and reducing the influence of special interest groups. I am running to restore integrity to our political process and public confidence in our elected representatives.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

We must begin by restoring the people’s faith in our electoral process and the campaign finance laws that govern them. In its disastrous ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court declared that our elections are for sale to the highest bidder. When one-quarter of one percent (0.0025) of our citizens provide over two-thirds of the funding for our political campaigns, it is impossible to pretend that everyone has an equal voice. In Congress, I will work to pass campaign finance reform that returns our electoral process to ordinary people and reduces the undue influence of the financial and political elite who currently fund political campaigns in both parties.

GERRYMANDERING

Creating fair districts for voters ensures that the interests of all people are represented in government. However, this commitment has been undermined by “gerrymandering,” which puts the interests of political parties above the people. This must stop. While redistricting is primarily a state issue, I will lend my voice to the call for fair districts in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

EXECUTIVE BRANCH ACCOUNTABILITY

In their wisdom, our Founding Fathers created a government with three equal branches. It was never their intent that governing would be achieved by executive branch fiat. Yet in the last fifteen months—solely by executive order—the U.S. has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Climate Accords, and UNESCO. The President has threatened to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement and NAFTA, alienated moderate Arab allies, and suggested that we may not support our NATO allies. These actions by the President have given people all over the world good reason to question our global leadership; have compromised our trustworthiness as a negotiating partner; and have made the U.S. and the world less safe. And Congress has failed to act in response.

Under the Trump administration, the EPA has rescinded dozens of regulations intended to protect the quality of our air and water. The Department of Education has rolled back protections for victims of on-campus sexual assault, victims of for-profit diploma mill schemes, and transgender students. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has rolled back regulations on predatory “payday lenders” and transformed the agency’s mission from protecting consumers to protecting financial institutions. In all of this, Congress has sat by idly, relinquishing its responsibility to provide checks and balances to the executive branch.

Rather than relying on some future administration to try to undo the damage with executive orders of its own, Congress must act now to pass legislation that restores the protections that have been stripped away by the current administration.

George Scott Campaign Issues Statement Refuting Scott Perry’s Response to TV Ad on Pre-existing Conditions

By admin

HARRISBURG, Sept. 24—The campaign of George Scott, Democratic nominee in the 10th Congressional District, today released the following statement regarding Rep. Scott Perry’s mischaracterization of his votes to allow insurance companies to deny health care coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

The votes speak for themselves. It is undeniable that Mr. Perry voted on two occasions to completely repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act without including any replacement health care coverage language.

Mr. Perry’s claim—”When we attempted to repeal Obamacare, the bill that we asked for and the bill that we got mandated, required that pre-existing conditions be covered”—is disingenuous and a complete deflection from his votes to remove protections for millions of people suffering from pre-existing conditions.

In addition, Mr. Perry voted for so-called “repeal and replacement” legislation that would have allowed insurance companies to deliberately price those with pre-existing conditions out of the market.

We’re talking about people with diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and other conditions, and their Congressman voted to deny them health care coverage. Period.

“Voters want to elect a Congressman who will vote to protect their health care, not re-elect one who votes to make it more expensive and restricted. George Scott is that candidate,” said Jason O’Malley, Campaign Manager for George Scott.

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You can view George Scott’s television ad, entitled “Personal”, here.

On two separate occasions, [H.R. 596 – Roll Call Vote (February 3, 2015) and H.R 45 – Roll Call Vote (May 16, 2013)], Perry voted to completely repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act without including any replacement language.

George Scott announces “WGAL 8 Commitment 2018 Debate: 10th Congressional District”

By admin

Live, televised debate scheduled for Oct. 18

HARRISBURG, Oct. 3—George Scott, Democratic nominee in the 10th Congressional District announced today that he will be debating his opponent, Scott Perry, on Thursday, October 18.

The debate, entitled “WGAL 8 Commitment 2018 Debate: 10^th Congressional District” will be televised live at 7 p.m. on WGAL News 8.

“I applaud WGAL for providing the means to bring the issues of the 10^th Congressional District into the public square,” said George Scott. “The voters deserve to hear directly from the candidates in this race and I welcome this opportunity.”

The moderators will be WGAL 8’s Janelle Stelson and Mike Straub.

WGAL 8 is partnering with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) as event sponsors.

The 10^th Congressional District includes all of Dauphin County and parts of Cumberland and York counties.