Mitchell: Rejecting divisive attacks, meeting voters' needs
My goal is to ensure voters’ needs are met with legislation that delivers on those needs. A majority of Pennsylvanians support increased state funding for public schools, cuts to property taxes, affordable healthcare, mental healthcare for children, protection of workers, safe communities, and protection of fundamental rights including abortion rights. Yet, there has been no significant progress. As a mother, Wharton graduate, University of Pennsylvania educated lawyer, business person, and active member of the community, I believe we can achieve all of these things.
As a Senator, I will take on polluters dumping toxic waste in our towns and leaving our water supply undrinkable. Law-abiding businesses should not have to compete with polluters who increase profits by cutting corners. Likewise, affordable healthcare is not the impossibility that big pharma and insurance companies claim it to be. Mental healthcare for children and those dealing with opioid and other addictions is within reach. I will fight for your right to make healthcare decisions, including preserving the right to abortion care, and access to contraception and IVF, so that our daughters do not have to grow up in a state with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers. A private and personal matter, family planning is not a place for politicians. As a parent and business person, I believe we can do a better job of educating our future workforce. Restoration of state funding for public education, something eroded for over a decade, must occur. As PA is the only major gas-producing state without a severance tax, oil and gas companies must pay their fair share and reduce property taxes for working families and seniors.
Our election laws, redistricting, and procedural rules lead to a legislature that is disconnected from day-to-day needs of voters and instead feeds the wants of politicians, and their financial backers like corporations. As a champion for good government, I will take on career politicians and their wealthy funders firsthand, and prioritize improvements to the fairness of the legislative and election processes.
There is common ground between Democratic and Republican legislators and the people they represent. Pennsylvanians are less divided than we are weary of the repeated attempts to divide us. Every day our community works well together. We operate businesses, go to work, attend churches, synagogues, schools, and sporting events, serve our community and share public spaces. We raise our families. As we do all this, we agree on many things, indeed most things.
Division comes when those that seek to hold power divide our community into “us” against “them.” We must reject attacks on our community and most basic rights to escape their polarizing impact on Pennsylvania. By reigniting our faith in fellow Americans, we rededicate ourselves to building a strong Pennsylvania. We must strive to find solutions to divisive issues by narrowing points of difference until we have an agreeable result. Respecting each other, making well-thought-out decisions grounded in math and science, facts not fear, and accepting that perfection is not necessary for a good compromise.
This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Mitchell: Rejecting divisive attacks, meeting voters' needs
