Beware bait-and-switch economics

The Trump-Zeldin administration is paying for its good economic news with your grandchildren’s money. They just borrowed almost $2 trillion to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and corporations. Who do you think is going to have to pay it back? It is classic bait and switch: talk about improving today’s economy at the expense of tomorrow—then move to cut social security and Medicare benefits to reduce the exploding deficit that results, after election day.

The federal tax legislation that passed last year was anything but a tax cut to most of our residents. Funds came out of the U.S. Treasury and were passed directly to corporations and the most-wealthy Americans. Most Long Islanders will simply pay a higher tax bill next April when they can no longer deduct their property tax and state income tax to the former levels. This is neither fair nor good for the middle class.

Sure some stock prices are up, but millionaires and billionaires are taking most of that cash. The income inequality gap has never been bigger. People fortunate enough to be benefiting from improving 401(k)s are going to have to give back more in taxes than they ever did before because Republicans took away deductions. Spiking health insurance costs more than eat up any benefits from any temporary small increases in take-home pay.

Zeldin-Trump policies and give-backs to the rich also leave the federal budget direly in the red. It’s not a record to justify sending Zeldin back to Congress to continue undermining hard working middle class Long Islanders’ efforts to improve the lives of their families.

Over the last 13 months, I have driven over 31,000 miles through NY-1 listening to the concerns of the people who live, work and struggle to survive here. There are many positive steps that can be taken to make people’s lives better. That is why I’m asking you to vote in November for a change.

I decided to run for office because I was fed up with a political class in Washington that fights for special interests and their donors, but does not work to benefit the middle class. Lee Zeldin is a classic part of it.

We need good people who care about our country and our region to step up and lead, and that is why I walked away from my successful business to run for office. Rather than complain about the government, I decided to take direct action and do something. We need a government that makes sure affordable healthcare is available to everyone as a right, that works to make our schools and public environment safe from gun violence, that protects a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, that protects our environment for now and for future generations, and that has a plan to grow wages in a region that has seen 25 years of wage stagnation.

These are all issues on which Lee Zeldin is way out of touch with our community.

Zeldin voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and his planned replacement would have stuck individuals who had pre-existing conditions without affordable options. Loss of employment, and the healthcare coverage that went with it, used to be, for some Long Islanders, literally the kiss of death. That’s what Zeldin wants to bring back.

I will fight to stabilize the ACA, and will look for bipartisan solutions to accomplish that. We should be fighting to reduce prescription drug costs instead of working with big pharmaceutical companies to protect their profits. Lee Zeldin looks out for corporate America; I am with the middle class.

So how do we improve? Let’s start by investing in infrastructure. Trump promised to do this when he was elected, but he and Zeldin’s Republican Congress never delivered on that promise.

We must improve local highways and our transportation systems. Until we do, we will be at a competitive disadvantage in attracting new employers. If a federal infrastructure program passes, Suffolk County will get its fair share of funds to improve ourselves. And while we are at it, let’s improve cell service infrastructure too. It is hard to make a case for a company to do business here when calls are dropping going from point A to point B. We must be competitive if we want to succeed.

If we really want to be bold, we can look to the manufacture of wind turbines for offshore wind farms in Suffolk County. Our location with deep water ports give us a competitive advantage for this kind of manufacturing, and its high paying union jobs. Zeldin is too busy trashing federal regulations that protect consumers, while giving tax cuts to his rich donors, to support projects that will grow the local economy.

There is a better way than what we have today. I will work tirelessly to deliver a better Suffolk County. I have a vision of a government where the hyper-partisan dialogue is reduced, one that governs for all Americans, not just one party or the other. This is a future we can all be proud of.

Perry Gershon is the Democratic candidate for New York’s First Congressional District. He lives in East Hampton.

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