Faso says he’s willing to compromise on issues

Times Herald-Record (Middletown, NY)

Feb. 25--MIDDLETOWN -- From apples to immigration, Republican Congressman John Faso weighed in Friday morning on a host of issues facing Congress during a Times Herald-Record editorial board meeting.

Faso, R-Kinderhook, sat down with the Record for about an hour, fresh off his second month representing New York's 19th Congressional District, which includes Ulster and Sullivan counties. An attorney and former state assemblyman, Faso talked about issues ranging from Obamacare to the recent push to attend town halls, saying he's willing to compromise to get things done in Congress.

Here are some of the big issues tackled in Friday's meeting.

Town halls

Faso said he won't do a full town hall-style forum with constituents because "it's not convenient for everyone," citing the size of the the district, which encompasses all or part of 11 counties. Republican lawmakers attending town halls across the country recently have faced constituents angry about Republican calls for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

"I've been meeting with dozens of people individually and in small groups. In fact, I can't even begin to count the number of meetings with constituents," Faso said.

On Friday evening, Citizen Action of New York and several other groups planned to host a town hall event at the George Washington Elementary School in Kingston that Faso was not planning on attending. Faso said the recent push for town hall events is part of "an organized national effort."

Instead, he said he's been meeting with hospital officials, insurers, health-insurance brokers, small business owners hurt by Obamacare and supporters of it to try to gather information about how the ACA is affecting them.

Affordable Care Act

Faso supports changing parts of the ACA. He said some insurers have been pulling out of the insurance pools because the program has not attracted enough young, healthy people, who were supposed to help offset the more expensive sick and elderly.

Faso said that moving forward, changes are needed to preserve insurance coverage while making it more affordable.

"The Affordable Care Act was not affordable for many people. It helped many people, it gave them coverage, but many millions of others, especially those with employer-provided coverage, it wasn't as affordable," Faso said.

Medicaid

Republicans have pushed to turn Medicaid, the jointly funded federal-state health insurance program for poor people, into a block grant. That means the money given to states to help pay for the program would become fixed as opposed to a match, though it could give states fewer restrictions on how they could spend the money.

Faso said that if Medicaid is changed into a block-grant program, he wants to see that New York's funding is protected, at least at current rates with annual increases tied to the inflation of medical costs.

"I'm not afraid of a block grant if we have a fair amount of federal funding that is going to support the program at the state level," Faso said.

He said the grants should also reflect the differences in costs between those in nursing or group homes and others who "have much lower Medicaid costs."

"I think that would more fairly compensate the states for the folks that are in a nursing home or group home, because those are the most vulnerable people in our society," Faso said.

Between Nov. 1, 2016 and Jan. 1, more than 115,000 people from Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties signed up for health insurance or renewed their coverage through the state health exchange, with a little more than 80,000 of those people getting coverage through Medicaid, according to the state Department of Health.

Immigration

On the issue of "sanctuary cities," Faso said that if cities look up someone's record and find them to be an undocumented felon, they should turn over that person to authorities.

"I think many of these cities are actually doing just that, even though their elected officials are calling themselves sanctuaries," Faso said.

But Faso said the sanctuary city issue speaks to a larger problem: the country's immigration system. He said the status of undocumented immigrants who are obeying the law, working or have family here should be "normalized," which could include driver's licences, paying taxes and Social Security.

But he said he doesn't support "amnesty" or a "path to citizenship" and doesn't think Americans do either. Nonetheless, Faso said he was worried about families being broken up, raids on businesses and the impact on college students.

"I'm also very concerned about not just for good, hardworking people that are working here, but for the agricultural industry, that this is going to have a chilling impact upon our apple growers, our dairy farmers, our vegetable growers," Faso said.

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