Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Ross comes home; tells of activties

Keeping the home folks up to date on what's going on in Washington, D.C.

This is what Fourth Congressional District Representative Mike Ross was doing Friday, Aug. 24, at a breakfast meeting in town.

This was Ross's first event in Prescott since he took office, other than the time he spent working on getting the area assistance during the Christmas ice storm.

He said it was important to talk with the home folks, get their ideas and take them back to Washington, as well as saying thanks for all the work area residents put in help him beat former Congressman Jay Dickey.

Ross talked about the projected $5 trillion surplus, reminding those in attendance the projection is over a 10-year period, with the bulk of the funds not even existing except between 2006-2011.

Of this, he said, half of the "surplus" is coming from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Monies, according to Ross, needing to be left alone by the federal government.

There are currently around 40 million people receiving Social Security, but in less than nine years, when the baby boomers begin to retire, this number will swell to 77 million.

Ross filed a bill to help protect these funds.

He said it's amazing how little talk there's been about the national debt  $5.7 trillion.

However, he added, there is considerable talk about how much is being spent on the food stamp program, $2 billion per month, and foreign aid, $1 billion per month.

But, he said, America is spending $1 billion per day just paying interest on the national debt.

Ross recently toured a new elementary school in Monticello, where the superintendent told him it cost the district $5 million to build it.

To put the interest payment on the national debt in perspective, Ross said the U.S. could build 200 new schools a day across the country.

Ross is one of 32 members of a new faction, the Blue Dog Coalition. The Blue Dogs are fiscally conservative Democrats seeking to find common sense solutions to national problems. "We're tired of partisan bickering," he said, "and are trying to bring everyone to the middle.'

During the budget talks, the Blue Dogs put forth their own budget and how best to deal with the proposed surplus. Ross said under this plan, 50 percent of the surplus would have been used to pay down the national debt, with 25 percent to be used as a tax cut. The other 25 percent would have addressed other needs, such as home health care, rural hospitals, education and the national defense.

China, Ross said, should have been a wake-up call for America, but hasn't been.

History shows, he said, there will be another major war, and the U.S. isn't ready.

A married man joining the military qualifies for food stamps.

Ross voted against the original federal budget, which proposed a $1.6 trillion tax cut. He said this would have put the nation back in deficit spending and brought a return to double-digit interest rates.

He compromised, voting for the $1.35 trillion tax cut as it is to be phased in with the arrival of the surplus funds. "It was a fair compromise," he said.

Ross also voted for the president's energy plan, even though environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness.

According to Ross, the governor of Alaska is in favor of the plan, and Congress created the wildlife reserve in the first place. When the Alaskan Wildlife Reserve was created, he said, there was a clause included to allow for oil drilling, but it would take an act of Congress to do.

It did, and the drilling will be done.

The area affected within the reserve, he said, is less than one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.