8th District Congressional Candidate Emphasizes The Environment

He wants to present ‘A Green Deal.’

Frederick, Md (KM)  A candidate for Maryland’s  8th Congressional District is emphasizing the environment in his campaign.  Democrat Jamie Raskin says he wants to introduce “A Green Deal for America” if he’s elected. “It’s something on the scale of the New Deal to reinvest in the country, to get the economy moving, all over the place so we have broadly based prosperity,” he says. “But we need to do it in a way that helps us deal with the reality of climate change.”

Raskin also says it continue the progress being made in developing renewable energy.

Raskin, a Maryland State Senator representing Silver SPring and Takoma Park in Montgomery County, has been in the General Assembly since 2007. He is also a Constitutional Law professor at American University in Washington DC.

“A lot of the progress that we have accomplished in Annapolis is threatened by the paralysis and the impasse in Washington,” Raskin  says, explaining why he’s running. “And we really need to find creative and bipartisan ways to break through the logjam. And I’ve had experience and success in doing that.”

Raskin says he has worked across the aisle with Republicans to get legislation passed in Annapolis. “We abolished mandatory minimum sentences in drug cases. And I did that with State Senator Michael Hough from Frederick, and State Senator Justin Reedy from Carroll County.,” he says.

One of the issues State Senator Raskin wants to tackle in Congress is the nation’s aging infrastructure, especially when it comes to transportation. He says one of his goals is widening I-270. “We’re one of the top two or three regions in the country in terms of traffic. And people are wasting a lot of time in traffic. And it’s terrible for the environment to have cars go so slowly. So we really need to ramp up our transportation investment,” says Raskin.

Another issue is students graduating from college with a lot of debt, which limits their abilities to pay for housing or other needs in their lives. “We should really make a national investment in the goal of making college affordable for young people,” he says.

Raskin says that could include the states  putting in more money for institutions of higher learning, and the federal government matching that amount. “So if states can figure out a way not to be reducing investment in higher education but increasing investment in higher education, it would be matched by higher education,” he says.

He says the money could come from changes in the tax laws which allow companies to park their money overseas.

The General Election is scheduled for Tuesday, November 8th. But early voting is underway between now and Thursday, November 3rd.

You can hear the entire interview on WFMD this coming Saturday, October 29th at 7:00 AM on “Frederick’s Focus.”

By Kevin McManus