2 U.S. representatives discuss senior issues

STAFF REPORT

HERMITAGE, Pa. — Two congressional representatives teamed up Friday morning for a meeting with senior citizens to discuss whatever was on their minds.

As it turned out, there was plenty to talk about. U.S. Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper of Erie, D-3rd, and Jason Altmire of McCandless, D-4th, fielded questions on Social Security raises, health care, energy, economic recovery and oversight of the Federal Reserve.

The meeting at Shenango Valley Multi-Service Center on North Buhl Farm Drive was sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons of Pennsylvania and the Mercer County Agency on Aging.

“We’re digging our way out of a very deep hole in this country,” Altmire said to start the meeting off.

“But we’re starting to see some positive signs,” he added, pointing to improved job statistics and the stock market’s being up “eight weeks in a row.”

He said that through the summer and into the fall, Congress will work on energy issues “to get us off foreign oil.”

Altmire and Dahlkemper are both proponents of developing western Pennsylvania’s coal, natural gas and nuclear energy resources, he said. He called the region the “Saudi Arabia of coal.”

He also said he is confident Congress will have health-care reform legislation on the president’s desk by fall. “We will pass it before this year is out,” he said.

Altmire has said before and said again Friday that he favors reform that preserves what works in the system now, including people’s right to keep the insurance they have if they’re happy with it.

Dahlkemkper, who’s spent her first four months in her first political office, also said she’s confident Congress will pass health-care reform.

“We hear all the talk of health-care reform,” said Helen Brown of Erie. “Where is Congress now?”

“We’re in the beginning stages of it,” said Dahlkemper, adding that she chairs a subcommittee on health care for small businesses. Dahlkemper ran a landscaping business in Erie with her husband before defeating Republican Phil English in the November election.

She said she also has met with doctors and hospitals, “and we need to hear from seniors.”

Altmire said the House will unveil its initial draft this week, with the Senate expected to do so in two weeks.

By late July, the bills should be on the floor, and the two houses will reconcile the differences in them, he said.

He said the aim is to increase quality and access and reduce costs, duplication, fraud, waste and medical errors.

In response to a question by Caroline Krochka of Sharon, he and Dahlkemper said that the reform won’t result in government-run health care like Canada has.

Senior citizens will be getting $250 in stimulus money, with checks going out this week, Dahlkemper said.

But there will be no raise in Social Security benefits this year, Altmire said, because those benefits are calculated by law and tied to inflation.

“We are in an economic crisis,” he said, adding that there’s been no inflation.

Michele Zoliner of Hermitage asked how Altmire stands on more transparency for the Federal Reserve.

Altmire said the Fed was formed in the Great Depression to be a fair and neutral regulating entity over which politicians would have no control.

The transparency bill would give politicians more say over what the Fed does, Altmire said, and he is considering it.