A Conversation With Rep. Auchincloss: A Look At 2021, 2022 Goals – Yahoo News

NEWTON, MA Rep. Jake Auchincloss is heading into his second year in Congress representing Massachusetts 4th Congressional District. In a phone interview, Patch asked him some questions about the first half of his two-year term and his priorities for next year.

Here's what Auchincloss had to say about his first year in office, his most difficult moment of 2021, his goals for 2022, and more:

Putting COVID-19 behind us.

One of my day one priorities was working with school districts throughout the force for pooled coronavirus testing. We were helpful in directing federal funding and in working with local officials to get kids back into full in-person learning. Ive been a leader in the house on championing a Marshall plan for vaccinations to the Global South, because we are going to continue to have new variants, we are going to continue to struggle with this pandemic until we vaccinate ideally 70 percent of the world, and the United States should lead on that and Ive been a strong force in the House on that issue.

Putting a strong economy ahead of us.

We have passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill that has directed $9 billion to Massachusetts to make us a more competitive economy. Thats cleaner water, thats better roads and bridges, thats a historic, unprecedented amount of transit funding, thats funding for downtown revitalizations, and weve given $150 million dollars worth of tax cuts to working families in the district. This president in his first year has added six million jobs, its historic. Ive been a part of that in supporting his agenda in the House and weve obviously got challenges with inflation and hiring shortages, but this is the best economy for new college graduates and for the bottom 20 percentile of workers in my lifetime in terms of the upward wage pressure and the demand for their labor. Right now, theres five million missing workers. Theres 11 million open jobs and six million people looking for work, thats five million missing workers. You dont have to be a PhD in economics to know what happens when youve got a huge imbalance of demand over supply for labor. People who are offering their services in the economy are in high demand, so college graduates and low-income workers are facing a stronger wage environment than they have in my lifetime.

Story continues

Protecting the integrity of democracy.

We have passed several rounds of voting rights legislation in the House, and I have been really out front both in refusing to work with and when necessary censuring republican colleagues who have been insurrectionary or who have incited political violence, and also in calling for the abolition of the filibuster so we can pass voting rights legislation in the Senate.

My hardest moment in general in this last year has been my frustration with the anti-vax movement, and the fact that weve politicized science is so damaging to our public health and to our countrys policies. Thats been very challenging for me, coming from a family of scientists and representing a district that cares a lot about the integrity of science and about reason debate, I really feel like Ive got a role to play in just reinforcing empiricism and how we discuss things. Its just been very disheartening to see how much anti-science, anti-vax propaganda is out there.

The priority in 2022 is protecting democracy. That means passing voting rights legislation and pushing back on efforts at the state level, whether its Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, or Arizona, to undermine the integrity of our elections.

Yes.

I really think were all in this together as a state. The focus has got to be on rolling out this booster shot and on ensuring that we can keep our schools and the economy open this winter. We know that its definitely going to be a seasonal bump, we know the Omicron is obviously here and we also know what we have to do. We have got to get booster shots, and on a targeted basis following the best of science and public health guidance, we can persist some common sense measures like mask wearing in crowded indoor public places. Weve got to put this pandemic behind us in 2022 and the way to do that is vaccinating not just here in Massachusetts, not just here in the United States, but vaccinating the world. And we can do it.

Whats best for the states pandemic recovery is for us to vaccinate the Global South. Four percent of the continent of Africa has gotten the complete vaccination regime. We are going to continue to see a full Green alphabets worth of variants for so long as weve got a massive reservoir of unvaccinated hosts. Thats what viruses do, they mutate, and we can put this pandemic onto a course of becoming just another source of the common cold like other coronaviruses are, but to do that, weve got to deny it hosts in which to mutate, because every new variant is a game of Russian roulette.

Its continuing to be a major issue for me. As you said, I co-sponsored a bill with Joe Neguse to close the boyfriend loophole and to fight back against this countrys epidemic of gun violence. Im a strong believer that nobody has a constitutional right to an assault weapon and Im going to support candidates who advocate common sense gun safety policies throughout the country. Im doing that with a leadership pack that I formed so I can support candidates who are in districts that might be tougher than mine on issues of gun violence and gun safety to support them when they are standing up for common sense policy.

If everybody convinced one person who hasnt been vaccinated to get the vaccine, we could put this pandemic in the rearview mirror in a matter of months.

Like I said at the beginning, my priorities are to put the pandemic behind us, a strong economy ahead of us, and to protect the integrity of our democracy, and those remain my three key priorities.

This article originally appeared on the Newton Patch

Visit link:

A Conversation With Rep. Auchincloss: A Look At 2021, 2022 Goals - Yahoo News