19th District candidates face off in Kingston
U.S. Rep. John Faso and his three challengers answered questions without once uttering the word ‘Trump.’
U.S. Rep. John Faso and his three election challengers in New York’s 19th Congressional District spent an hour answering questions Thursday morning without once uttering the word “Trump.”
Faso, R-Kinderhook, Democrat Antonio Delgado, Green Party candidate Steve Greenfield and independent Diane Neal spoke at the monthly breakfast meeting of the Ulster County Regional Chamber of Commerce, which drew about 300 people to the Best Western Plus hotel in Kingston.
Faso, who’s seeking his second term in the House, tried to tie Delgado to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Delgado responded by saying Faso is allied with House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Greenfield and Neal said the attacks by Faso and Delgado against each other were proof that partisanship has resulted in failed policies.
Health care was a key issue on which the majorparty candidates differed.
“The health care legislation that ... passed the House ... I supported that legislation,” Faso said. “It protected people with preexisting conditions and it changed the changed the paradigm so that we would provide subsidies to people who can’t afford it to secure private insurance.”
The legislation, which largely would have undone the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, fell short of approval in the Senate.
Faso also chided supporters of a single-payer system for promoting a program he contends would be too expensive for the federal budget.
Greenfield, a former New Paltz school board member, responded that a single-payer system would be paid for with money already coming out of taxpayers’ pockets.
“Fifteen to 20 percent of your property taxes today goes to paying for health insurance for public employees,” he said. “So whatever you’re paying every year, 15 to 20 percent of it is going to be eliminated overnight.”
Neal, a TV actress who lives in Hurley, also voiced support for a single-payer system and said Faso’s supporters should be interested in how it works.
“Because of ... the partisan schism, people have missed the obvious — that single-payer is actually a very fiscally conservative idea,” Neal said. “One of the things that we need to do [is] remove people that profit off of illness and people’s death and things like that out of the decisionmaking process. It’s just logical — if you profit off it, you don’t need to do it.”
Delgado, a Rhinebeck resident, said Faso has not protected insurance policy holders. The Democrat, though, said he is not willing to support a singlepayer system. “It is sad to think that we’re the only developed country in the world without some form of universal health care,” the Democrat said. “The notion that our current congressman felt the need to take health care away from folks here increased those costs ... a vote that, in fact, rolled back guaranteed protections.”
Delgado also chided Faso for supporting the interests of the oil industry at a time when other energy producers are increasing employment opportunities.
“Mr. Faso talks a lot about being on [a] bipartisan commission, but it’s important to note that the League of Conservation Voters has given [him] a voting score of about 34 percent,” Delgado said. “It’s also important to note that he’s voted to repeal the stream protection rule [and] voted for a farm bill that guts provisions in the Clean Water Act.”
Faso said he has voted against bills that would hurt the environment and understands the impact of climate change. He pointed to New York’s efforts to change fossil fuel use as an example of what can be improved.
“We have greatly reduced CO2 emissions in New York state for instance by 25 percent over the last 20 years because we’ve substituted natural gas for coal,” he said. “Natural gas is a much better source of power for electric generation than coal, and that’s what’s happening.”
Greenfield told both major-party candidates that he comes closer than either of them to the impacts of climate change every time he responds to a call as a volunteer firefighter.
“I’m a firefighter. I was just out there dealing with floods last week . ... I’m the guy that’s up there at Sam’s Point in Cragsmoor fighting these wildfires,” he said. “You all know the devastation that we’re facing, and you also know the unbelievable amount of jobs that
could be created by putting an aggressive timetable on this ... Green New Deal.”
Neal said people who question whether climate change is real need only look at the migration of
people from areas of the planet suffering through droughts.
“Antonio’s right on this point — investing in fossil fuels is kind of like [saying], ‘Let’s just open a bunch of Blockbusters.’ It doesn’t make any sense [because] everyone is streaming video now,” she said.
“If you’re on the right and
you care about things like national security, yeah we get climate refugees,” Neal said. “We’ve got all kinds of starvation, drought, things like that ... moving mass migrations of people that cause conflict. That’s how the conflict in Syria started. That’s how you get doctors willing to spend 14 days in a tiny raft watching their
family members die just to hopefully make it to a Greek isle.”
The 19th Congressional District comprises all of Ulster, Greene and Columbia counties; most of Dutchess County; and some or all of seven other counties.
Voters will elect the district’s House of Representatives member on Nov. 6.