According to their statements in their most recent debate, Lou Barletta and Bob Casey agree that preserving protections in health care laws for those with pre-existing conditions is important. They both think a hike in the federal minimum wage act would be appropriate. And both support some degree of gun control.
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But in the details of those and a variety of other issues, they differed sharply as Barletta, a Republican in his fourth term in the House of Representatives, takes on Casey, the incumbent Democrat seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate.
Their second debate, aired by KDKA in Pittsburgh, rehashed some of the same ground as the first, including Casey’s assertions that Barletta would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions and Barletta’s accusation that Casey doesn’t understand how the national economy functions. But they managed to cover quite a bit of new ground as well.
Casey, son of a former Pennsylvania governor, argued that the federal minimum wage should be raised to $12 an hour with provisions ensuring that localities could take it even further, to $15 an hour. He also would like to see future increases in the minimum wage tied to the rate of inflation.
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Barletta wasn’t willing to go that far for fear of impacting business growth.
“I would agree with a modest increase of the minimum wage,” he said. “However, the best way to raise wages is to grow the economy, which is exactly what we’re doing now. … Competition for employees is what really drives wages up [instead of] government interference with the economy and trying to go back to a stagnant economy that saw people, their hours cut and their wages cut, and layoffs coming.”
The congressman argued that the recent announcement by online retailer Amazon that they’d be raising their company’s minimum salaries to $15 an hour was a sign that federal intervention wasn’t really needed.
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“If we put a $10 an hour tag on what wages should be, maybe Amazon would have only paid those folks $10 an hour instead of $15,” he said. “Let’s let the market determine what the wages are. They did that on their own without government interference.”
Casey said that the robust economy that Barletta cited was more to the credit of the Obama administration rather than anything done since then by the Trump administration.
“We all remember where we were in the last quarter of 2008, where the growth rate if you can even use the word growth, was minus 8.9 percent, almost 9 percent negative,” Casey said. “By the time President Obama left office, it was in the positive by 1.8 percent. So he and Democrats turned around an economy which was decidedly, definitively in the ditch.”
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Barletta, in turn, wanted Casey to make clear how actions taken during Obama’s time in office had led to the sharp increase in economic growth seen since the inauguration of President Trump.
“I didn’t hear what policy it was that created, that waited eight years to create this economy that’s soaring right now,” Barletta said. “I didn’t hear it. I do remember President Obama saying ‘2 percent growth, get used to it. That’s the new norm.’”
On gun control, Barletta said he supported bans on automatic weapons, but he argued that the term “assault weapon” was too nebulous and imprecise to have a meaning in law. Casey, asked how he would define assault weapon, referred the moderator to a bill he had supported years ago.
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Casey sought to explain his statements from this past summer that he would oppose any Supreme Court nominee from Trump by arguing that the use of a pre-screened list compiled by the Heritage Foundation invalidated everyone on the list. Barletta assailed this attitude as a failure to live up to the Senate’s duty to provide “advice and consent” for nominations, and he noted that Casey had previously supported three of the judges on the list in other circumstances.
“What they’re doing is saying only those 25 can be chosen,” Casey protested. “And this is the person who will be the deciding vote on a lot of major issues, including the right to organize for unions. They’re coming for the right to organize. They started down that path with the Janus [vs. AFSCME] case, which invalidated 40 years of labor law. They’re coming for unions, they’re coming for workers, working folks.”
But to Barletta, those responses were just a smokescreen to conceal Casey’s true motivations.
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“Advice and consent, that’s the Senate’s responsibility, that’s your responsibility, to give those folks at least a chance to be in front of you, so that you can [offer] advice and consent,” he said. “To just say, ‘I don’t care who it is, I’m voting no,’ just shows that you have become a leader in this country in resistance [and] obstruction. … The only reason it’s ‘no’ is because of who it came from.”
According to their statements in their most recent debate, Lou Barletta and Bob Casey agree that preserving protections in health care laws for those with pre-existing conditions is important. They both think a hike in the federal minimum wage act would be appropriate. And both support some degree of gun control.
Advertisements
But in the details of those and a variety of other issues, they differed sharply as Barletta, a Republican in his fourth term in the House of Representatives, takes on Casey, the incumbent Democrat seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate.
Their second debate, aired by KDKA in Pittsburgh, rehashed some of the same ground as the first, including Casey’s assertions that Barletta would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions and Barletta’s accusation that Casey doesn’t understand how the national economy functions. But they managed to cover quite a bit of new ground as well.
Advertisements
Casey, son of a former Pennsylvania governor, argued that the federal minimum wage should be raised to $12 an hour with provisions ensuring that localities could take it even further, to $15 an hour. He also would like to see future increases in the minimum wage tied to the rate of inflation.
Barletta wasn’t willing to go that far for fear of impacting business growth.
Advertisements
“I would agree with a modest increase of the minimum wage,” he said. “However, the best way to raise wages is to grow the economy, which is exactly what we’re doing now. … Competition for employees is what really drives wages up [instead of] government interference with the economy and trying to go back to a stagnant economy that saw people, their hours cut and their wages cut, and layoffs coming.”
The congressman argued that the recent announcement by online retailer Amazon that they’d be raising their company’s minimum salaries to $15 an hour was a sign that federal intervention wasn’t really needed.
Advertisements
“If we put a $10 an hour tag on what wages should be, maybe Amazon would have only paid those folks $10 an hour instead of $15,” he said. “Let’s let the market determine what the wages are. They did that on their own without government interference.”
Casey said that the robust economy that Barletta cited was more to the credit of the Obama administration rather than anything done since then by the Trump administration.
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“We all remember where we were in the last quarter of 2008, where the growth rate if you can even use the word growth, was minus 8.9 percent, almost 9 percent negative,” Casey said. “By the time President Obama left office, it was in the positive by 1.8 percent. So he and Democrats turned around an economy which was decidedly, definitively in the ditch.”
Barletta, in turn, wanted Casey to make clear how actions taken during Obama’s time in office had led to the sharp increase in economic growth seen since the inauguration of President Trump.
“I didn’t hear what policy it was that created, that waited eight years to create this economy that’s soaring right now,” Barletta said. “I didn’t hear it. I do remember President Obama saying ‘2 percent growth, get used to it. That’s the new norm.’”
On gun control, Barletta said he supported bans on automatic weapons, but he argued that the term “assault weapon” was too nebulous and imprecise to have a meaning in law. Casey, asked how he would define assault weapon, referred the moderator to a bill he had supported years ago.
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Casey sought to explain his statements from this past summer that he would oppose any Supreme Court nominee from Trump by arguing that the use of a pre-screened list compiled by the Heritage Foundation invalidated everyone on the list. Barletta assailed this attitude as a failure to live up to the Senate’s duty to provide “advice and consent” for nominations, and he noted that Casey had previously supported three of the judges on the list in other circumstances.
“What they’re doing is saying only those 25 can be chosen,” Casey protested. “And this is the person who will be the deciding vote on a lot of major issues, including the right to organize for unions. They’re coming for the right to organize. They started down that path with the Janus [vs. AFSCME] case, which invalidated 40 years of labor law. They’re coming for unions, they’re coming for workers, working folks.”
But to Barletta, those responses were just a smokescreen to conceal Casey’s true motivations.
“Advice and consent, that’s the Senate’s responsibility, that’s your responsibility, to give those folks at least a chance to be in front of you, so that you can [offer] advice and consent,” he said. “To just say, ‘I don’t care who it is, I’m voting no,’ just shows that you have become a leader in this country in resistance [and] obstruction. … The only reason it’s ‘no’ is because of who it came from.”
