LOWELL SUN: Candidate Gifford: Congress needs to rebuild trust

Candidate Gifford: Congress needs to rebuild trust

By Alana Melanson

The Lowell Sun

February 2, 2018

 

LOWELL — As U.S. ambassador to Denmark during the Obama administration, 3rd District congressional candidate Rufus Gifford said he had to work diligently to try to bridge a gap in trust between people and government.

“If this is a problem in Denmark, it’s a plague in the United States,” he said Thursday morning during an editorial board meeting with The Sun.

Gifford said that “chasm of trust” has existed a long time, but has only grown under President Donald Trump.

“Without a doubt, if we’re not looking ourselves in the mirror, and not acknowledging the fact that we have not done a good enough job communicating with certain voters around the country, then I don’t think anyone’s been paying attention the last several years,” he said. “So we’ve got to do everything we can to build that trust back.”

He said it was Trump’s election to the country’s highest office that compelled him to run for Congress.

“I woke up on Nov. 9 and realized I needed to step up my level of service,” said Gifford, who moved to Concord to live in the district.

Gifford said he has great respect for outgoing U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas and her late husband, Paul Tsongas. One of the reasons he said he’s in politics today was because he heard Paul Tsongas speak at his New Hampshire high school and he was inspired by Tsongas’ authenticity and sincerity.

Massachusetts has a history of electing political candidates who are able to work across the aisle and get things done for constituents without compromising their values, Gifford said, and he aims to be part of that tradition.

One of the ways he said he plans to reach across the aisle is to encourage green sector job growth. Most wind turbine components are imported from Europe, but Gifford believes they should be manufactured here.

“I feel like you can absolutely work with Republicans on this,” he said. “I think the largest state for wind energy right now is Texas — hardly a liberal bastion — so we can do this.”

One item he said he could not compromise his values on is Trump’s offer to trade the lives of 800,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients in exchange for billions of dollars to fund a Mexican border wall, something he views as an outmoded tool.

“The wall, to me, is a politically-charged campaign promise that’s a waste of money and doesn’t make any practical sense,” Gifford said.

He said immigration reform is needed, but with a rules-based system. Law and order is important, Gifford said, but so are values.

“Are we a country that sends ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers into people’s homes and tears them from their families kicking and screaming?” he said. “I do not think that’s who we are.”

The U.S. is a country of immigrants, he said, all having come here for a better life.

In terms of sanctuary cities, Gifford said he finds it “astonishingly sad” and “un-American” that a Republican administration would send in federal agents to override the authority of the local government. He also feels similarly about states like Massachusetts that have legalized marijuana, and said federal prosecutors’ time would be better spent going after opioids than legal pot dispensaries.

On tax reform, he said he agrees companies need incentives to stay in the U.S., but believes the corporate tax rate should be a bit higher than 21 percent. Gifford slammed congressional Republicans for the “clearly cynical” party-line vote they took, knowing they didn’t need Democrats to pass it. He said it’s clear blue states suffer and red states gain, and policy like this only serves to further divide the American public.

Gifford acknowledged Republicans could say the same about how Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act. He said the law isn’t perfect, but did serve to insure tens of millions of previously uninsured people.

Gifford said he believes health care is a right, not a privilege, and eventually moving to a single-payer health care system is an aspirational goal. But because Americans fundamentally don’t trust the government to do this kind of work, he said he feels it wouldn’t be viable to start at the federal level.

It would be more practical to start at the state level, in a place where there is political will and expertise to make it happen, Gifford said.

“Romneycare (Mass Health) was a precursor to Obamacare, love it or hate it, and I think we can get it done in a state like Massachusetts and lead from there,” he said.

http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_31639375/candidate-gifford-congress-needs-rebuild-trust