Altmire talks of policy reforms

STAFF REPORT

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Calling this congressional session important for health-care and energy-policy reforms, U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-4th, urged business leaders to give him input on those issues.

Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce members who attended Altmire’s question-and-answer session Tuesday morning at the Riverplex here at first seemed more eager to talk about a bill that would give unions the right to organize with a majority vote and no anti-union campaigning by employers.

That bill, at least in its current form, is dead, acknowledged Bob McCracken, the chamber’s executive vice president.

Saying he didn’t want a confrontation about an issue that was not going to be debated this year, Altmire, of McCandless, did what he could to steer the crowd back toward the topics of health care and energy.

“I’m going back to Washington today to a historic session,” he said.

County Commissioner Steve Craig told Altmire the bottom line on health care for the county as an employer is costs.

“We keep running into double-digit increases in our health-care costs,” he said, adding that he wonders when there will be some relief.

Altmire said that with the aging baby-boomer generation, health care is becoming a more pressing concern.

He said he is against government-subsidized health care, adding that he would like to see problems in the current system fixed.

He said he’d like to see the quality of health care increased, access to it improved and costs controlled.

Many people like the insurance they have now, he added.

The country’s medical innovation, technology and research far exceed any others, he added, and should be preserved.

Altmire said he is sponsoring a bill that would pool risk for businesses who could lose their coverage if an insurance company decided one employee’s condition was too costly.

He also said reform can’t ignore the 47 million people in the country who don’t have insurance.

He said he would like to see Medicare voluntarily available to people under 65 but added that a public system similar to Medicare is the more likely scenario.

He also said he would like to see the region become involved in alternative-energy research, focusing on nuclear energy, coal and natural gas. “We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal and natural gas,” he said, arguing that those important sources of energy aren’t going to go away overnight.

“Should coal be cleaner? Yes. Should we drill for natural gas? Yes,” he said.

The congressman said he opposes the cap-and-trade proposal, which aims to limit the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere.

Ellwood Group president David Barensfeld said the proposal to issue tickets to businesses that burn fuel and charge for those tickets is an added tax.

He said the proposal won’t work because companies will leave the U.S. or manufacture less, leaving manufacturers in countries that don’t have a limit to continue polluting.

“I’m going to fight against cap and trade,” Altmire continued. He said, though, that if he loses, he at least favors giving the revenue it would generate to consumers to offset skyrocketing utility rates.