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A couple hundred residents gathered in the gymnasium at St. Charles County Community College Tuesday looking to the government for answers.
However, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill only got to 10 questions submitted by the audience during the hour-long forum. Dozens more were left unanswered. Of the questions addressed, only half had anything to do with the economy.
The “Kitchen Table Talk” was promoted as an opportunity to discuss the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and how it will impact Missouri’s jobs, infrastructure improvements, aid for small businesses and help for schools and neighborhoods.
None of those topics were discussed. Instead, topics included universalized health care, gun control and bank bailouts, as well as the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and legislation on hate crimes and parental rights.
“I know you came because you are angry, because you are frustrated, because of your anxiety, and I know you didn’t get your questions answered,” McCaskill said.
She said she will do her best to respond to all of the questions submitted as quickly as she can, noting that her office gets between 10,000 and 15,000 e-mails and letters per week.
“I was hoping she’d talk about the auto industry,” said Ed Berkholz, a member of the UAW Local. He attended the forum to seek the senator’s support for the auto industry.
“Everyone thinks of the auto industry as just building cars, but doesn’t take into account that it also builds tanks and is important to our nation’s defense,” Berkholz said.
He said he’s also concerned that the retired and laid-off autoworkers and their families will lose their health insurance benefits if the Big 3 fail and the auto unions don’t pay for their benefits any longer.
“Healthcare is the most important issue,” said Mark Talarico, a laid-off Chrysler worker, who supports nationalized health care. “We spend 17 percent of GDP on it each year.”
McCaskill did say she supports President Barack Obama’s plan for universal health care, which would be based on a competitive system and would be more focused on preventative care than in the past.
Kevin Holmes, vice president of the Missouri Association of Letter Carriers, said he attended the meeting to ask for McCaskill’s support of H.R. 22, which would suspend a provision in the 2006 postal reform law that requires the U.S. Postal Service to prefund retirees’ healthcare benefits.
“We need to change the funding formula during the credit crisis,” he said.
According to the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO, Web site, this requirement costs more than $5 billion per year and is threatening the viability of the nation’s postal system.
What she did say
McCaskill said 40 percent of the stimulus was a tax cut for 90 percent of Americans, and most of the remainder was money to create jobs.
McCaskill balked at an audience member’s comment that the federal takeover of banks and corporations looked like socialism. “I don’t know why the word socialism keeps coming up, but we believe in a free market economy and all of us want to keep it that way,” she said.
The federal government didn’t take over anything, she noted, but instead “invested” in them. “The federal government will get the money back by making sure the banks and industry succeed,” she said.
McCaskill was asked about executive compensation and bonuses.
“I don’t like the government saying what anyone can make. It’s not what America is about,” she said. “But if the government gives them money, we have to keep businesses accountable.”
Her idea to keep businesses accountable is if an individual working at a company that received federal assistance gets a bonus for performance, she should defer her bonus until the taxpayers get their money back.
“It creates an incentive for them to pay us back,” McCaskill said.
A man in the audience shouted out, “Why don’t corporate executives get punished?”
McCaskill said the Senate is trying to make them accountable, by prosecuting people who broke the law, and making companies repay any taxpayer money they took.
Another audience member asked, “How do we plan on paying back the trillion dollars?”
McCaskill didn’t give any specific details, but said that the Senate is making progress and that the president is ready and willing to make “tough” decisions in order to cut the budget.
“Even though it feels like we’re printing money at a record pace and our grandchildren will choke on it, economists say government spending is part of economic recovery,” she said.
That is something that concerns Holmes. “If we don’t provide decent, good paying jobs for our kids, we’re doomed,” he said.
