Democrats are in a solid position to reclaim control of the House of Representatives this November, and could also take control of the Senate, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran told a crowd gathered in Falls Church last Saturday morning at Stacy’s Coffee Shop.
Democrats are in a solid position to reclaim control of the House of Representatives this November, and could also take control of the Senate, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran told a crowd gathered in Falls Church last Saturday morning at Stacy’s Coffee Shop.
Moran held three such town meetings in his 8th Congressional District of Virginia on Saturday, departing Stacy’s after an hour and a half for similar events in Reston and Arlington.
Falls Church Mayor Robin Gardner and Vice Mayor Lindy Hockenberry were among those present at the Falls Church event. Moran reminded the crowd that the City of Falls Church receives more federal money per capita than any other jurisdiction in the area.
Moran said that Democrats are in positions to gain 30 seats in the House in November, but need only 15 to gain a majority. Democrats are ahead in the polls and ahead in fundraising in about 30 races, he noted. He said that taking control of the Senate will be more “problematic” for Democrats, but that it is “doable.”
He said the American public is “fed up” with the fact that the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq, facing a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, seeing its stock market slip, record gas prices, and a debt ceiling now set at $9 trillion, all of which will be passed on to their children.
In the face of this, he said, the GOP is focused on same-sex marriage, flag burning, the pledge of allegiance and stopping stem cell research, which promises almost miraculous treatments for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Parkinson’s and cancer, and more tax cuts. “Their priorities are upside down,” he said.
Now, he said, the Bush administration is using the Israeli military as a “proxy” for going after Hezbollah and Hamas and their sponsors in the middle east, but said that a perpetuation of the current situation there cannot be in the best long-term interests of Israel. He assailed efforts by the Bush administration to block any efforts at resolving the crisis through putting an end to the killing.
Global enmity toward the U.S. continues to grow, he said, but the Bush administration “is determined to go through with its current approach to the region.”
“We are hated around the world, and it’s hard to know how that is going to make the world a safer place for us or our children,” he said. By trying to impose its will from the top in the region, the U.S. “is creating radical populations.”
Instead, he said, the U.S. should be “investing at the local level in the engines of civil society and sustainable change.” But, he lamented, “We’ve done just the opposite” in Iraq and other places.
“I don’t blame Israel for needing to defend itself, but the way to achieve that is not as direct as may seem apparent,” he added.
He said the nation “is at a crossroads,” and the next three years will determine what the next 25 or 50 will look like. The U.S. will become a massive military bastion with a massive population living at or below poverty levels, or through investment in education, national health insurance, doubling the minimum wage and an expansion of the middle class, the nation will recover its core health.
