Scott Wallace, Democratic candidate for the Pennsylvania First District Congressional seat spoke this morning as part of of the Club's effort to meet all of the candidates running for State and Federal office.
Scott Wallace provided an overview of his background as a Doylestown native, his schooling there, early jobs (including a stint at Burger King) he held before Haverford College and Villanova Law School. With his law degree in hand, he went to Washington where he worked for the U.S. Senate’s Veteran’s Affairs Committees, helping to shape and draft legislation to provide increased care and benefits for veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. He then moved to working for the Senate Judiciary Committee under then chair, PA Senator Arlen Spector.His next stop was working for a non-profit helping to provide legal aid and defense for citizens and to advocate for Justice Department reform.
He then gave us a brief history lesson concerning his grandfather, Henry A. Wallace, who served as FDR’s vice president from 1941-1945.
With the passing of his parents, he and his siblings became managers of a family foundation. He went on to explain that many of the charges leveled at him relative to the foundation were related to actions of another member of the foundation, actions with which Scott did not support and disavowed. He restated his support for a Two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his experiences in Israel and South Africa which he an d his wife have visited many times.
During his years in Washington and running a foundation, Scott is proud to have helped secure compensation for Vietnam Veterans exposed to Agent Orange, Enact the Innocence Protection Ace and Missing Children’s Act, Create college debt forgiveness for people in low paying public service jobs such as prosecutors and public defenders and fight to make the criminal justice system more effective, fairer and less wasteful.
He underlying message is “Today is no ordinary time”. He is concerned by what he believes is a national sense of loss of its historic values, identity and international reputation. Scott advocates a return to respect for the way people treat one another, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and a free and independent press. He laments the Administration’s “Fake News”, “Alternative Facts” and “The Truth is not the truth” rhetoric!
While he maintains he will not run a negative campaign, he did point out that his opponent, Brian Fitzpatrick, has voted 84% of the time in support of the Trump agenda.
Scott also will not accept any corporate or lobbyist monies and will match individual donations to support his run for Congress.
He is concerned that in a race which is anticipated to be one of the most highly contested, the aggregate costs for the candidates could run between $15 and $20 million dollars, which he believe is obscene.
Some of the positions he takes and things he will fight for if elected include:
- Getting corporate money out of politics;
- Working to ultimately reverse the Citizens United decision;
- Revisiting the Trump tax bill which gave up to $2 trillion in tax breaks to large and multi-national corporations (half of which has been used by those corporations for stock buybacks, enriching their remaining shareholders, 40% of whom are not American citizens);
- Fixing ObamaCare to make it more cost-efficient while ensuring that pre-existing conditions remain covered;
- Providing a Medicare for all option;
- Raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour;
- Increasing the tax rate on the most wealthy and highest earners;
- Eliminating the ceiling on wages on which Social Security and Medicare taxes are based to ensure the longer term solvency of both programs;
- Enacting common sense gun control legislation, including background checks on all gun sales (no Internet, gun show or private sale exemptions) and looking into biometric trigger safeties on all future guns sold;
- Protecting of unions; and
- Enforcing strong anti-trust laws.
During a question and answer session, he defended his personal actions (not those of other members with whom is adamantly disagrees) relative to his family foundation’s efforts in Israel, South Africa and other places, which have been criticized by his opponent. Scott also admitted that his campaign has not been as effective a is needs to be to get his message out to the public.
Scott Wallace stated that he is solely committed to doing the right thing for the citizens of the District he hopes to represent.
He ended by simply asking for Club members and their guests to consider his candidacy based on his experience, beliefs, positions on issues which matter to residents of the District and his statements and not those of his opponent or his opponent’s supporters.