Mccarthy holds office hours in Porterville
Health care system most talked about topic
A crowd of more than 20 Tulare County residents gathered Friday morning in Porterville’s Centennial Plaza multi-purpose room to voice their questions and concerns on not only what’s going on around the world, but also where House Majority Leader Kevin Mccarthy (R-bakersfield) stands on certain issues.
The first Friday of each month Mccarthy’s mobile office is in Porterville. A staff member from Mccarthy’s office hosts each mobile office held throughout California’s 23rd Congressional District.
The hour-long discussion revolved mostly on the topic of the federal and state’s health care systems.
Porterville resident Gordon Heebner said one of the problems is that too many people are getting Medicaid for free.
“I just happened to see an article the other day that said there are 95 million people in the United States that have drawn completely out of the workforce and three fifths of those people are getting Medicaid,” Heebner said, adding, “I am for people that can’t work, those are the ones we help, but we are giving services to people that are perfectly capable of working.”
Porterville resident Sally Prado said California is becoming a state “to just do freebies.”
“And we are not making the money to pay for the freebies,” she added.
Jonna Key, a recovering alcoholic, said she believes anyone being allowed to sign up for free government programs should be drug tested.
Porterville resident Brock Neeley said he believes the government needs to put people before profit.
“If we took one week’s worth of subsidies to the highest-profited corporations in this country, the fossil fuel industry, and stop those payments for one week, we could pay for all of the social programs for a year,” Neeley said. “Unfortunately, corporate America thinks about how much their bottom line is before they think about the people, including their employees.”
With all of the problems going on, Candy Medina said he is waiting for “the revolution.”
“Unfortunately, it will probably be another 50 to 75 years, but it is coming,” Medina said, adding that the main source of all of the problems is the government. “I am amazed at the cash people get for not working, for being illegal, whatever you want to call it, but I am not upset with them, I am upset with our government.”
As far as the Giant Sequoia National Monument, Julie Allen said instead of “mucking about with the boundaries” to instead do some relatively minor editing to the proclamation to clarify that dead and dying trees may be removed for the sake of reducing the fuels in stressed watersheds.
“I am not talking about changing the language of the proclamation greatly, I am talking about clarifying,” Allen said, adding that “would not invalidate the existing management plan and would pave the way for getting some real management in those watersheds done.”
Springville resident Kathryn Black agreed that there is a way of managing the monument without cutting back on its acres. She also believed the monument should not be reduced in acreage as it contributes a lot to the financial stability of many businesses.
“It seems small because they are small businesses, but we get so many foreign people going there specifically to see these things,” Black said. “They contribute financially to the bottom line of many families in our area.”
Another topic of discussion was immigration, specifically about what Mccarthy is doing in terms of sponsoring or pushing bills that will ease the fear that many illegal immigrants live in everyday.
“My main concern is agricultural labor,” said Raul Garcia, a member of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). “It is in the best economic interest not just in the State of California, but the entire United States, that the agricultural industry is strong and healthy.”
Daniel Penaloza, also a member of CHIRLA, said he wants to see more action from Mccarthy regarding immigration issues.
“I want to see what the congressman is willing to do beyond just saying that I am against it,” Penaloza said. “We want to see more movement besides just talking about it.”
Cole Karr, a field representative for Mccarthy, said immigration legislation is an item on