ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

Constituents got the chance to hear from candidates running for the Big First District seat, and many questions were asked during a special candidate forum at First Hays State University Monday.

One of the first questions for the candidates asked what they felt the state’s biggest issue was and how it could be solved.

“I think the number one issue our country faces right now is we’ve drifted from the basic, fundamental founding values, which I would say are faith, family, hard work, and personal responsibility,” candidate Tracey Mann said. “It’s an honor we were all alive to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, so I would say those are big things for me. We’ve also got a $40 trillion debt, and there are also a lot of people who don’t believe in the goodness of the past of the U.S. or the future of this great country. We have a lot of work to do to help support agriculture and put the U.S. first when it comes to policy.”

“The number one issue in this state is affordability, and that’s really, really all-encompassing,” Reinhold said. “It includes healthcare costs – we have a healthcare system that is full of bloating and profit, and we need every U.S. citizen to be able to have access to healthcare that’s affordable so they can stay healthy. Affordability also includes housing, oil prices, groceries, college, etc. To tackle these issues, I really believe we need to raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and bolster programs like reforming healthcare. We also need to make higher education affordable – I’m for free community college and technical schools. I’m also for increasing the minimum wage, I think it’s imperative for us to do that because I find it unbelievable how there are people working full time and still not earning a legitimate living wage. From that, I think we’ll get back to those traditional values of faith and family and overall well-being.”

“I’m actually going to read from a press release from Mr. Mann’s office from March 11, 2024 – ‘President Biden is spending money and buying votes. His new budget is more of the same – it’s wasteful government spending to fund the partisan wishlist the taxpayers will have to pay for. We can’t afford it. We’re $34 trillion in debt, and President Biden is risking the future of our children and our grandchildren,” candidate Steven Jacob read. “Mr. Mann was absolutely right, and then we got a new president who does the same thing he says he’s fighting against. That’s putting party over politics, and I’m against that. You have to have principles that sometimes go against the values of the party.”

Affordability was brought up again with a later question regarding how to address recently increased costs.

“I’m not sure we can do a lot about the affordability of groceries and services and all of that until we take care of spending and the deficit,” Jacob said. “If you print more money, the money becomes less valuable, and that’s pretty accurate throughout history. It won’t be pretty, but do we want to things work for future generations? We always want the next generations to succeed more than we did, and we are making it harder and harder because we’re leaving them with more debt and leaving them having to work harder for ultimately less. We’re leaving them with a dying planet. Things can feel kind of hopeless when you put all of that together, and we need to show them the way. We also need to be united in taking care of the deficit, and hopefully we can do that for the good of the country.”

“I remember with the last administration, there was record inflation to the tune of almost 20 percent, and when President Trump came in, one of the fundamental questions was what could we do about that?” Mann said. “One of the best answers for that is passing the working families’ tax cuts because if that bill doesn’t pass, every Kansan gets a tax hike. That would reduce the burden for every Kansas family by an average of $2,200 every year. Lowering taxes will put more money in people’s pockets and make things more affordable. In addition to that, implement the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. The housing bill that was recently passed, that will also be helpful to driving down costs. Trump R/X, which is the idea of most favored nation for prescription drugs, is way past due. Those are just a handful of things that have been worked on.”

“Inflation is an extremely complex issue, and I’m not an economist. But like every other issue, I will enlist good subject matter experts who would guide me, and I would need an economist to give me full answers and really analyze what to do,” Reinhold said. “Inflation was compounded by the tariffs, and Congress has the responsibility for enacting tariffs. This Congress has allowed the Executive Branch to do whatever they want with tariffs, which has caused an unstable whiplash effect, which creates more uncertainty, which drove prices higher. Tariffs are a big reason not just for inflation, but also for the increased cost of living. With the aforementioned working families’ tax cuts, there probably will be some who benefit from that, like senior citizens and maybe some tipped employees, but for most employees, the tax cuts they got didn’t offset the increases in expenses due to inflation and tariffs and everything else that happened. What wasn’t highlighted was all the tax cuts for the wealthy that came out of the Big Beautiful Bill.”