Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series profiling the two candidates running for Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District – incumbent Glenn Thompson (R) and challenger Kerith Strano Taylor (D). The second half of this series, profiling Strano Taylor, will appear tomorrow.
Glenn Thompson may be running for his fourth term representing the people of Pennsylvania in the United States Congress, but he didn’t start his career with elected office in mind.
The Centre County native began his career in nonprofit health care and rehabilitative services, starting with a part time job working the night shift at a Bellefonte nursing home as a Penn State undergrad.
“I hadn’t really been around healthcare much before that, and I found working with the sick, ill and disabled very hard but rewarding,” Thompson says. “I actually changed my major because of that.”
The experience played a large role Thompson’s life, leading to a career in rehabilitative services and, indirectly, to Congress. While working as health care professional, Thompson became very interested in the effects of the political system on the healthcare industry.
Thompson says he saw the adverse effects of excessive regulation, which caused problems that were ultimately passed on to the patient. He says “arbitrary regulations that were leftover from the 1980s” didn’t recognize certain procedures and treatments, which motivated him to try to influence public policy.
He volunteered with his state professional association to advocate for change in Harrisburg. He eventually became president of his national professional organization.
Thompson says this experience, along with his time as a member of his community school board, helped shape his conservative views.
“I served on the school board when we had a Democratic governor bankrupting Pennsylvania, gutting public education funding to school districts,” Thompson says. “If that’s what the Democratic Party did in terms of overspending in other areas so you can’t invest in where you need to, that really influenced my politics.”
Those experiences led Thompson to run two unsuccessful campaigns for a seat as a state representative in 1998 and 2000. He was later elected to Congress in 2008. Thompson has served three terms in the 5th Congressional District which encompasses all or part of 16 counties, including the Centre region.
Thompson says he has maintained a focus on healthcare in Congress, drawing on his years as a healthcare professional. He has fought against what he calls the unnecessary government control of individual healthcare that came out of the 2010 healthcare system reform as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Other major focuses of his time in office include public education, drawing from his time with his school board, and job creation.
“My number one issue is always jobs,” Thompson says. “Nothing corrects more social ills than a good paying job to feed a family.”
To this end, he recently co-wrote the Workforce Opportunity and Innovation Act, signed into law in July 2014, which increases federal funding for career and technical education for the unemployed and underemployed.
Thompson says the WOIA bill provides local control to county offices to train jobseekers for positions available in each county. The bill also stipulates that local workforce investment boards, which help implement the program, should be comprised mostly of business owners and job creators.
He also helped create the 2014 farm bill, which Thompson says supports farmers through increased access to startup capital, training and reformed subsidies. It also funds agriculture research at land grant universities such as Penn State.
Thompson says he’s also made a point to focus on reforming public education to undo some parts of No Child Left Behind, “which is leaving most children behind.” He’s tried unsuccessfully three times to champion the All Children Are Equal Act, which would adjust the formula for distributing federal funds to schools districts. He says the proposed formula would help offset the educational impacts of poverty in suburban and rural areas, which he says the current formula ignores by focusing funds on schools with larger student bodies.
“The ACE Act is a great bill that’s gotten bipartisan support,” Thompson says. “We’ve gotten closer to passing it each time.”
Thompson says another one of his major concerns is national energy security, which can be dramatically impacted by the energy industry in Pennsylvania. Though he says he supports research into wind, solar and other energy sources, Thompson also stresses the growing importance of natural gas to the nation.
He says Penn State helped developed directional drilling, which expanded the possibilities of hydraulic fracturing natural gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale. Though some criticize the process as environmentally unsafe, Thompson says the hydraulic fracturing and the natural gas industry are helping provide jobs to Pennsylvania and energy security to the nation – an effort he is proud to support.
“Hydro fracking does not do environmental damage,” Thompson says, arguing that claims of its environmental impact are distorted and exaggerated. “We have the resources to be energy secure in this county. I want us to turn off the valve to the Middle East.”
Thompson also identifies continuing to ensure that veterans have access to quick and affordable medical care and reforming the social security system as key issues he’d like to tackle if elected to another term.
The concerns surrounding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorist organization (also known as ISIS) also weigh heavily on Thompson’s mind. He believes that President Barack Obama must come back to Congress and retroactively seek support for the airstrikes taken against ISIS members, which Thompson says he would support.
However, Thompson also says the use of air power alone can create a power vacuum. “You need boots on the ground to hold an area once you clear it of this terrorist scourge,” he says.
He is aware of the American public’s reluctance to enter another protracted conflict in the Middle East, and says he wants to avoid starting “a full blown holy war.” He says the best way to prevent this is to continue airstrikes while working closely with Arab military forces, giving them the training and equipment they need to contend with the ISIS threat.
Thompson says his commitment to education, jobs and agriculture – combined with active participation as a frequent speaker on the House of Representatives floor – makes him the candidate that can best serve the fifth congressional district of Pennsylvania.
“Every bill I do is bipartisan,” Thompson says. “I want to bring diverse opinions together so we can solve the problems facing our nation.”
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