Atul – Introduction to U.S. National Politics

SWA#2

Section 1-
Member of congress for Wooster Ohio (The 16th congressional District) is Mr. Anthony Gonzales. This is his first term serving in Congress. Anthony Gonzales defeated Christina Hagan and Michael Grusenmeyer in the republican primary elections with 53.1% votes second only to Christina Hagan who had 40.8% votes. In this category Gonzalez has safe seats since he has over 12% votes compared to his closest rival. Susan Moran Palmer on the other hand won the democratic Primary at 34% votes. Her closest competitors were Grant Goodrich at 28.1% and TJ Mulloy at 15.5%. she does not possess safe seats in this category as the opponents were competitive. Anthony Gonzalez won the general election against Palmer with 56.7% votes thereby making it safe to conclude that he has a safe seat in the legislation.
Mr. Gonzalez serves on the house committees on financial services, science, space and technology. According to the information on the website, he does not appear to be a member of any caucus. With regard to the issues on jobs and the economy, Gonzalez supported the signing of an executive order to boost the use of American projects. One of these projects is with regards to steel in federally funded infrastructure projects. This should in essence boost the economy by increasing employment and allowing more money to flow into the economy with increased wages. He aims to tip the trade balances in the favour of the US and believes that China, the EU and others have taken advantage of the US’s openness to trade. I do not agree with this largely because having a trade deficit is not necessarily a bad thing. It simply means that the country imports more than it exports. He also supports tax cuts, his argument being that small businesses comprise of 60 percent of the new jobs that are created. The problem with this is that small businesses and large businesses would be taxed the same amount. Instead, larger businesses can be taxed higher and foster a more suitable environment for small businesses to thrive. Gonzalez tends to be vague when he discusses his agenda for immigration. He wants to curb illegal immigration but at the same time making the immigration process more selective for legal immigrants. To improve school safety, he believes that school funding should be increased so that the school can fix problems in whichever way they seem fit. Furthermore, he wants to ensure that there is a mental health professional in every school since it is of his belief that mental health is one of the reasons for violence in schools.
Ohio’s second district is located in the North Central portion of the state. It largely consists of Wayne County, but has parts of Cuyahoga, Medina, Portage and some others. It lies on the intersection between two pivot counties which had voted for the Obama administration in 2012 and for Trump in 2016.
Section 2
The state representative for Ohio is Troy Balderson. He was elected to the office on August 7,2018. This was during a special election where he replaced Patrick Tiberi. Before this he served in the Ohio State Senate where he represented district 20 in 2011, and he represented district 94 of the ohio house of representatives from 2009 to 2011.
Balderson serves the Small business committee, under which he is part of two subcommittees – The Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade. And The Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access. He also serves the Committee on science and Technology, under which he serves the Subcommittee on oversight and the Subcommittee on Research and Technology. He does not appear to be a member of any caucus.
Balderson introduced a bill that is aimed to permanently prevent government shutdowns. Furthermore, he also Provided guidance for furloughed workers because of the partial government shutdown that took place. His website does not specify any immediate agenda for other issues as described with Gonzalez.
REFERENCES

Committees and Caucuses 2012Representative Anthony Gonzalez. https://anthonygonzalez.house.gov/about/committees-and-caucuses, accessed February 4, 2019.
Congress N.d.Congressman Troy Balderson. https://balderson.house.gov/issues/congress, accessed February 4, 2019.
Issues Original N.d.Vote for Anthony Gonzalez. https://www.voteanthonygonzalez.com/issues/, accessed February 4, 2019.
Ohio’s 16th Congressional District N.d.Ballotpedia. https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio%27s_16th_Congressional_District, accessed February 4, 2019.
Ohio’s 16th Congressional District Election, 2018 N.d.Ballotpedia. https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio%27s_16th_Congressional_District_election,_2018, accessed February 4, 2019.

SWA#3

LEGISLATION

POLICY REGION

Criminal Justice Reform – (First Step Act signed)

Reformed sentencing laws.

Border Wall as a counter for illegal immigration

Increased troops deployed to southern border

Tariffs on Chinese Goods and new trade deal

USMCA (US, Mexico, Canada Agreement)

Infrastructure Bill

Price transparency for American patients

Domestic Policy

Foreign Policy

Domestic Policy

SWA#3
Atul Sonthalia

At multiple times during the speech, Trump mentioned that it was not legislation of either side but of America as a whole. Most of the policies he signed were conservative policies. This shows that the democratic side did not get many of their policies across even though the house was democratic, since the majority of the senate was republican. Trump does not mention specifically working with the house majority of democrats, he refers to the house and senate as his administration.

In his speech Trump tended to take a lot of credit for policies on himself. He mentions multiple times that most of the “good things” that came in the past two years were his doing. After running a fact check on the speech it was found that he lied about almost all statistics, and the US is not actually growing as fast as he portrayed it to be growing. (It grew almost 2 times faster with the Obama administration). This lead me to consider the speech with some degree of scepticism thereby making it hard to understand his views of exerting his presidency.

The democratic speaker Stacey Adams brings out an issue that was not discussed by the president. Education. She believes that the costs of attaining higher education is still extremely high and is getting higher, she also believes that schools need to be safer and says that the white house responds timidly even when they see first graders practice active shooter drills. Furthermore, she wants gun control laws to be more strict- another issue not discussed by the president. In his speech the president talked about how the middle class is more prosperous than ever under his administration. Adams does not agree to this, she says that people are “striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security”. She also says that under the current administration, far too many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck lives and they do not even have labour unions to protect individual workers. She does not agree with the building of the wall, she believes that America is made stronger because of its immigrants and not because of walls. For healthcare, Abrams wants the government to listen to the majority in 14 states and expand Medicaid.

One of the things addressed in the state of the union was the problem regarding education – mentioned by the democratic response. This aligns directly with the issues regarding education in North Carolina. In North Carolina schools have been accused of being biased against students of colour, and also have issues with their state grading systems for their middle schools. An investment to improve education could help fix the problem. The National Parks in North Carolina are too small for the growing population and there need to be better means to deal with national disasters like hurricane Florence. An overall problem that this can be seen under is climate change. The trump administration did not talk about climate change in the state of the union, but Adams said something should be done to curb the negative effects on her rebuttal speech.

(References- Used the resources provided under State of the Union on moodle)

Atul Sonthalia SWA#1

STATE CHOSEN- NORTH CAROLINA
Governor – Roy Cooper
Secretary of State – Elaine Marshall
Speaker of The House – Timothy. K. Moore
The speaker of the house is from the republican party, while the Governor and the Secretary of state are from the Democratic party. The state is under divided government. In the house of representatives, North Carolina’s legislation is controlled by the republican party. It has a total of 120 members. 55 of these members are democrats and 65 are republicans. The state government is therefore divided in North Carolina. Since the governor is Democratic and most of the party Republican, there is a consistent state of conflict between his authority and the legislation therefore resulting in vetoes and multiple lawsuits thereby slowing down the legislation. The marginal difference between the two parties is just 10 members, furthermore the Governor is from the democratic party therefore it is safe to conclude that the republican party are not very likely to achieve all their legislative goals.
An analysis of the news from the close watchers of the government at North Carolina, more specifically from “The Charolette Observer” indicates that there are multiple issues regarding race discrimination in education institutions. There is a case against the University of North Carolina whereby there are under investigation due to the suspicion that the University is biased against black students. One of the goals of the state legislation could potentially be to curb or eradicate this bias if present. Additionally, there was found to be a glitch in NC Public school systems whereby there are errors in grading. Since there are so many issues regarding education one of the legislation’s main focus should be in improving the education systems and making them more just toward all students irrespective of race, gender, colour etc.
Another one of the legislations goals is the recovery of the state after the destruction caused by the hurricane Florence. The large-scale destruction requires the legislation to shift gears and focus on repairs to the state because repairs to infrastructure and buildings require a great deal of time and resources. Lastly, the Mecklenburg park in the Carolinas is ranked last nationally. The increasing population requires more green space, the local government is required to increase funding toward the development of this park to keep up with the increasing population.
Part 2 –
OHIO
State Senate Representative – Kristina Daley Roegner, Republican
State House Representative – Scott Wiggam
Jobs- the Senate representative Kristina Daley wants government involvement in the creation of jobs. She says that the government can create an attractive climate for businesses by changing the tax climate, regulatory environment, labour laws and workforce development. The state house Representative Scott Wiggam on the other hand wants the government to be uninvolved with the job market. He believes that the American dream is still achievable, and that government interference would only threaten the dream.
Taxation- Scott wants to decrease the tax burden in the economy by attempting to lower taxes. This is aimed toward the goal to attain a better economy and create jobs. He believes that tax cuts would increase the job opportunities and boost the economy. Kristina has a similar agenda with regards to taxation. She believes that money is better off in the pockets of the people who earned it rather than with the bureaucrats.
Both the representatives are pro-life and against abortions. Kristina does not have a specific agenda for gun control, Scott supports the second amendment and says that it is a god given right.
I believe that both the representatives miss a lot of points when making their agenda. For example, it is not sufficient to just cut taxes. The impact of taxation is greater on the lower income individuals than on the higher income individuals. They should support a fair taxation policy whereby citizens are taxed based on their revenue. Just simple tax reductions for everyone is not enough. While it will allow the citizens to have more disposable income, the government will have less income to support the lower sectors of the economy. I do not agree with the pro-life ideology either. I believe that the woman should have a choice in the matter. The individuals involved have to have the resources to be able to raise a child. If they do not it is unfair to themselves and the child to conceive the child. I also do not agree with their policy on the second amendment. This is because it simply does not make sense to give citizens the power to take another life. The purpose of a country is to protect its citizens and not make them threats to each other.

REFERENCES

Hurricane Florence Starts Flooding Parts of the Carolinas N.d.CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/13/us/hurricane-florence-south-east-coast-wxc/index.html, accessed January 25, 2019.

Issues N.d.Kristina Roegner. https://www.kristinaroegner.com/issues/, accessed January 25, 2019.

Mecklenburg, NC Parks Need Millions in Spending, Advocates Say | Charlotte Observer N.d. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article224630420.html, accessed January 25, 2019.

NC Gov. Cooper: Contact Governor Cooper N.d. https://governor.nc.gov/contact/contact-governor-cooper, accessed January 25, 2019.

North Carolina House of Representatives N.d.Ballotpedia. https://ballotpedia.org/North_Carolina_House_of_Representatives, accessed January 25, 2019.

Second Amendment | Scott Wiggam N.d. https://www.scottwiggam.com/services/primary-care-physician, accessed January 25, 2019.

State House Speaker Invites Trump to Give His State of the Union in North Carolina N.d.Newsobserver. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article224775275.html, accessed January 25, 2019.

The Voter’s Self Defense System N.d.Vote Smart. http://votesmart.org, accessed January 25, 2019.

Who Represents Me? – Ballotpedia N.d. https://ballotpedia.org/Who_represents_me%3F#address=1189+Beall+avenue+44691, accessed January 25, 2019.