Interview with Mondaire Jones on NY-17 race covers Israel, abortion

What ought to the U.S. do to repair its immigration system and border safety? What limits on abortion would he assist? Did he vote towards funding for Israel's missile protection programs, as his opponent has charged?

Former Rep. Mondaire Jones, the Democrat difficult Republican Rep. Mike Lawler for his seat, weighed in on these and different points in a Journal News/lohud candidate interview, answering questions from reporters about his positions and his two-year House report whereas parrying jabs the incumbent and his marketing campaign have thrown.

Jones, who represented New York's seventeenth Congressional District for one time period earlier than its strains have been moved in 2022, is making his comeback bid in one of many nation's principally hotly contested districts, one that may assist decide which social gathering controls the carefully divided House subsequent 12 months. The redrawn seventeenth District takes in all of Rockland and Putnam counties and elements of Westchester and Dutchess.

Jones opened the dialogue on the newspaper's White Plains workplace by casting the race as a stark distinction with a lot at stake, one that may resolve “whether there will be a Democratic Congress next January.”

“Which is to say,” he added, “we have the opportunity to decide whether we have a pro-democracy majority in Congress in this country, a pro-choice majority in Congress in this country, a majority committed to lowering costs for Hudson Valley residents rather than political gamesmanship that gets nothing done.”

Lawler, who beat Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney for the seventeenth District seat in 2022 and is looking for a second time period, was interviewed in a separate session with The Journal News/lohud.

A video of the whole interview with Jones is posted on lohud.com. Here are his responses on a number of key points:

Abortion: Restore Roe v. Wade normal nationwide

Jones, who has made defending abortion rights a major marketing campaign theme, was requested at what stage of being pregnant he thought abortion must be prohibited and with what exceptions. He cited his assist for a Democratic invoice often called the Women's Health Protection Act, which might allow abortions nationwide up till fetal viability, the usual used below the 1973 Roe v. Wade determination that the Supreme Court overturned in 2022.

A Democratic-led House handed that invoice in a party-line vote in 2021, with Jones and nearly every other Democrat in support and every Republican voting against it. (It later failed within the Senate, blocked by a GOP filibuster.) The proposal features a exception to permit abortions after the fetus is viable — usually described as 24 weeks of being pregnant — if wanted to guard the girl's life or well being.

“It would restore the minimal protections in Roe v. Wade,” Jones stated of the invoice. “Those are not extreme protections. They still gave states discretion about how to regulate what is, inherently, a deeply personal health care decision for women to make.”

Jones additionally was requested about his warning voters that Lawler would assist a nationwide abortion ban, which Lawler insists he opposes in one of his TV commercials. Jones' response: Lawler cannot be trusted on that query, based mostly on his abortion-related votes since he took workplace. Lawler voted with fellow Republicans to overturn a Pentagon policy that enables service members to be reimbursed for his or her journey bills if they have to go away the states the place they're stationed to get an abortion.

“Mike Lawler always votes against abortion,” Jones stated. “He has done it repeatedly in his freshman term in Congress. Mike Lawler cheered the overturning of Roe v. Wade.”

Immigration: Pass the bipartisan Senate invoice

Asked if he had any criticism of how the Biden administration had dealt with immigration, Jones did: he stated it acted too slowly to safe the border.

“People understand — Democrats, Republicans, independents alike — that we ought to have a secure border,” he stated.

But he additionally praised the administration for supporting a Senate border-security invoice {that a} conservative Republican helped write and that had bipartisan assist till Donald Trump got here out towards it and brought on it to stall. It would rent extra border brokers and extra judges to listen to asylum instances, and would empower the president to shut the border when migration surges.

“I would vote for that bipartisan border security bill on day one,” Jones stated.

Inflation: Dem payments are to not blame

Jones was requested if Democrats helped drive up inflation with the spending in main payments he supported, such because the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act. He has touted advantages of each items of laws, together with an impending cap on seniors' drug prices and a short lived enlargement of the kid tax credit score.

But did additionally they result in increased costs?

“We weathered, as the United States of America, the global storm of inflation better than any other nation in the world,” Jones answered. “The American Rescue Plan Act rescued this economy from collapse at the height of the pandemic. And that is by no means to say that people are not still hurting throughout this country and in the lower Hudson Valley. That's not what this means. Because we still have to do more work.”

He additionally identified that the American Rescue Plan spared his constituents from property-tax will increase by steering a flood of federal help to state and native governments and to high school districts, whose funds have been hit arduous by the pandemic.

As for future steps to decrease costs, Jones stated he helps “standing up to very powerful corporations that have been price-gouging, beyond what inflation would require.”

Israel help: Always supported missile protection funds

Both Lawler and Jones have staked out sturdy positions in assist of Israel in its battle towards Hamas. But Lawler's marketing campaign has accused Jones of voting against funding for Israel's missile defense systems whereas in Congress. It bases that declare on his votes towards an annual invoice that authorizes funding for quite a few army packages, together with help for Israel's Iron Dome and David's Sling packages.

“The NDAA is not even an appropriations bills, and obviously I did not vote against that bill with an intention of voting against aid to Israel,” Jones stated of the National Defense Authorization Act. “The important fact is that I voted for every single appropriations bill funding Israel.”

Jones stated he opposed the NDAA as a result of it was loaded with wasteful, “pork-barrel” funds requests by Congress members that will have funded out of date weapons programs. He known as the invoice “a lobbyist's dream,” inflated past even what the White House had requested.

“I have a record of consistently supporting for the Iron Dome missile defense program,” Jones added. “I myself have visited an Iron Dome facility on the border of Gaza in November of 2021.”

Voting data again him up. When the House took up a $1 billion funding invoice for the Iron Dome program in September 2021, Jones and most members from each events supported the proposal, which passed in 420-9 vote.

Chris McKenna covers authorities and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at [email protected].

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Related posts:

Interview with Mondaire Jones on NY-17 race covers Israel, abortion | Politics

Abortion: Restore Roe v. Wade normal nationwide

Immigration: Pass the bipartisan Senate invoice

Inflation: Dem payments are to not blame

Israel help: Always supported missile protection funds

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