Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Carney holds town meeting

Answers questions on the war in Iraq, veterans, government spending and other issues

By TOM KANE

CARBONDALE, PA - Newly elected Congressman Chris Carney called himself a “blue dog Democrat.” He says that he is among 33 conservative Democratic members of the House of Representatives in the new Congress (called blue dogs) who have banded together to support a “more centrist” position on economic issues than that held by their party’s leadership.

“I’m in favor of controlled spending,” he said.

Carney has another aim and that is to hold town meetings in all 14 counties in the 10th Congressional District to ascertain voters concerns. The Carbondale meeting on August 22 was the seventh.

Carney announced that his staff is made up of Republicans and Democrats, which proves that he is not partisan. One of his priorities is protecting veterans’ rights.

“His voting records for veterans’ rights has been stellar,” said Vietnam veteran Frank Paris of Jermyn, PA. “What we want you to do now is to introduce a bill in Congress that would make the funding of the Veterans Administration a line item number,” Paris told the congressman.

Carney promised that he would introduce that legislation this October when Congress reconvenes.

A line item number in the federal budget makes that item’s funding mandatory. Otherwise, the funding is discretionary, meaning that it may be funded or not, according to the choice of Congress. Congress approves many programs that must be funded separately by a later action.

Many questions were posed during the evening session. One question was whether he supported bringing the troops home.

“We are waiting for General Petraeus’ report in September on the effectiveness of the recent surge,” Carney said. “Evidence is that the report will not be good. Something has to change. There has to be a sane withdrawal strategy, not a quick one.”

Carney said that the war was costing $15 million an hour and that the second largest military force was a private army. “The military has done an excellent job in Iraq,” he said. “The problem is the ineffective Iraqi government.” Carney described a recent TV news program showing the Iraqi prime minister holding the hands of the Iranian prime minister, who is a staunch opponent of U.S. troops in Iraq.

On the issue of whether to speak about the Iraq War with Iran and Syria or not, he highlighted the fact that the United States talked to Soviet Russia on a regular basis during the Cold War.

Another resident asked him why he voted to fund the organization that was previously called The School of the Americas, a paramilitary training camp whose graduates were guilty of numerous atrocities in a number of countries. “That organization has undergone extensive reforms and is no longer the evil force that it once was,” Carney said. “We need to have as many anti-terrorist groups properly trained as we can during this war on terrorism.”

Answering a question on another topic, he said that the concentration of wealth among one percent of the county’s population was bad for the country.

During a barrage of emotional questions and disjointed comments from one voter, the voter asked him not to support the North American Free Trade Agreement. He never had the chance to answer as the session ended.