A day after her Republican opponent for U.S. Senate spoke in State College, Democratic challenger Katie McGinty was in Centre County, speaking at a government and industry lunch at Penn State’s Ag Progress Days.
But where incumbent Pat Toomey’s remarks were focused on matters of national and international security, McGinty’s attention was on jobs and the economy, with an emphasis on agriculture and education.
‘We know that agriculture is a huge and important engine of this economy,’ said McGinty, who has edged past Toomey in several recent polls. ‘We lead the country, too, in taking those raw products and we have a state of the art food processing industry right here –thousands of good jobs and incredible contributions to our economy. It is those good jobs and the need for good paying jobs which is the reason I jumped into this Senate race.’
McGinty cited her work as Secretary of Environmental Protection under former Gov. Ed Rendell and efforts with others for Pennsylvania farmers to reap the benefits of renewable energy production, which she says helped preserve working farms.
She said as senator, she would work for farmers at the federal level by seeking to open new markets for U.S. products and being ‘a champion for a Farm Bill.’ The Farm Bill — which sets funding for agriculture production, conservation and nutrition programs — is brought to Congress about every five years and will come up again in 2018. Congressmen seeking budget cuts split the bill into multiple parts the last time around.
‘We know when you pull it apart — it doesn’t get passed,’ McGinty said. ‘I will fight for the commodities support, for the conservation and for the nutrition assistance.’
Calling Penn State ‘one of the shining examples we need to invest in,’ and lauding its research endeavors, McGinty touted her plans for college affordability, including fighting for tax credits, and added that job training and skills development programs are needed for those entering the workforce.
Together, she said, investments in universities and job training can result in a powerful manufacturing industry. She noted the prominence of Penn State in engineering, Carnegie Mellon University in robotics and the University of Pittsburgh in the life sciences.
‘You put that technology together with a skilled workforce, look out world, we will compete and win,’ McGinty said. ‘But it’s got to be about schools development and job training and making that, again, a set of skills we honor.’
McGinty also tied the issue of immigration reform to education and agriculture. She said she has heard from Pennsylvania farmers that they want partisan bickering to end and immigration reform to pass.
‘We invest in bringing people from all over the world to our academic institutions. And then what do we do? They get a freshly minted Ph.D. and we send them packing,’ McGinty said. ‘We invested in that talent. We want to keep it working to grow our economy.
‘And second we need to know we have labor to work our farms, to continue to help us produce the world-leading product that we do produce.’
After her remarks at the lunch, McGinty was asked about Toomey and Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump. Toomey has come under some scrutiny for not yet deciding whether he would endorse Trump. On Tuesday, Toomey said he thought too much has been made of it and that voters are making different decisions when they vote for senator and president.
McGinty, though, said Toomey needs to say how he feels about about the man at the top of the GOP ticket.
‘I do think it’s incumbent on Sen. Toomey to come clean with the people of Pennsylvania about his support of Donald Trump,’ McGinty said. ‘He keeps trying to dodge the question but what more do we need to know. Donald Trump is obviously a divisive guy. He’s a guy who has made his money in not the most honorable ways. And he’s a guy who our own former governor [Republican Tom Ridge] has said would be a real and clear threat to our national security. It’s time for Pat Toomey to step up and denounce Donald Trump and come clean with the voters of Pennsylvania.’
