 |
|
Congressional candidate Tracy Mitrano, far left, listens to
the concerns of voters Monday night at the start of a five-day listening tour
across the 23rd District
|
Posing a question to the more than two-dozen attending the
meeting, she asked, “What has happened to the middle class?”
The group spent the next two and a half hours discussing the
decline of industry in Allegany County and why isn’t Allegany County shovel
ready to take on the challenges of 21st century industry, health care costs and
the cost of higher education.
Mitrano said she is concerned about the lack of upward
mobility for the sons and daughters of the middle class, explaining that as the
daughter of Italian and Irish parents who had only high school educations she
was the first in her family to go to college.
“Through their hard work my parents were able to move from
the working class to the upper middle class and they were able to give me the
opportunities they didn’t have. Today there is no upward mobility in the middle
class,” she said.
“I worry about our young people,” she continued, “What
things are holding the middleclass people back, tax policies, housing costs,
medical costs education debt? What is squeezing the middle class?”
Mitrano defined middle class as individuals earning from
$25,000 to $100,000 per year. The audience replied, demonization of labor unions,
restrictive regulations on small businesses, high interest rates on college
loans, high costs of insurance and, the lack of infrastructure from bad roads
to broad band accessibility.
Mitrano promised, if elected, to work with labor unions,
learn more about the problems facing small businesses work to change
prohibitive rules and regulations and work to create economic development zones
and enterprise zones. She said she would also work to cap interest rates on
college loans and lower the interest rates on Pell grants.
She also informed the group and the one county legislator,
Gary Barnes (R-Wellsville/Andover) who attended, that funds earmarked for
increasing broad band access should be given to counties and not the
communication industry. She noted funds are available in the 2018 Farm Bill for
counties to develop broad band. “What this country did for electricity it needs
to do for broad band,” she declared.
Mitrano told the group that when she went to Congress, she
would work across the aisle to find solutions to the problems holding back the
middle class and rural areas.
She told the audience that she was moved to step up and
enter politics after watching the government’s inability to stop or comprehend
the foreign interference in the 2016 election.
