- By Dan Veaner
- Business & Technology
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Arcuri (right) at Lakewatch Inn
Lansing's Lakewatch Inn was filled with local business people Monday who came to share a Saint Patrick's day corned beef and cabbage luncheon and hear U.S. Congressman Michael (D-NY 24th) talk about what the federal government is doing to help local business. The 24th district looks like an enormous smile superimposed on a map of New York, staring in Herkimer, sweeping down through Broome County, and back up through Tompkins County, but excluding Ithaca, and west to Geneva. "The 24th congressional district is bigger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island." Arcuri noted. "We are a very diverse district in terms of what drives the economy."
Quoting from Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations,' Arcuri said that community business can do well if government can keep the peace, go easy on taxes, and have a powerful administration of justice. He briefly addressed each of the three before taking questions, covering the impact of the war on the national and local economy, the importance of becoming a leader in development of alternative energy sources, the impact of free trade on Central New York, and maintaining the vitality of our colleges and universities.
"If you come to Ithaca you obviously have to talk about education," Arcuri said. "It is a place where education is important, which has driven my thinking in terms of the bills that I have supported. It's very important for us to insure that people that want to go to college can go to college. We've increased the Pell Grants, we've made it easier for students to get loans, and reduced the interest rate on student loans. They are not only a source of attracting young people to our district, but also for keeping people working. We probably have more people working at our colleges than any other single industry within our district."
But in the Q&A portion of his talk he was cautious in replying when asked when increases in federal grants for university research. "We are in a time of cutting budgets," he warned. "We need to insure that the United States of America continues to be a leader in the world. Let's face it, whether it's research and development or health care, our universities are the engine, but our gasoline comes from the federal government. If we're not there helping to fund those programs they're just not going to happen."
Back from a recent trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, Arcuri was strong in his support for the United States' Afghanistan initiative, which he said doesn't receive enough credit for its successes. But he condemned the Iraq war. "It's interesting, because we spent significantly less in Afghanistan and I think we're accomplishing much more," he reported. "One of the things that jumps out at you is that when we build a road in Afghanistan it's generally a road where there had only been a dirt path at one point. When you build a road in Iraq it's generally to fix a road that we bombed and destroyed."
"It's not just human expense, the lives that we're losing," Arcuri said. "It's a massive amount of money that we invest there. The point that I want to make is that not only does war cost families, but it is costing our economy significantly because of the billions and billions of dollars that we are spending there."
He complained that domestic programs have to be justified to be funded, but war expenses are off the books. "We spend billions and billions of dollars there when we let our education system fall behind the rest of the world, when our infrastructure is falling behind, and our roads and water system is in desperate need of additional money."
Arcuri stressed that the top priority for the district and the country is to develop alternative energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, as well as to become a leader in producing the next generation of energy sources that other countries will depend on us for. "If we want to become stronger as a country we need to develop alternative energy," he said. "That is critical to our future as a country, both economically and in terms of our military strength."
On taxes, Arcuri said that Congress passed 4.8 billion dollars in tax relief for small business owners in the past year. He noted that he is a supporter of the recently passed rise in the minimum wage, but said that tax breaks, particularly for small business owners should help offset that.He also spoke of the short-term economic stimulus package recently passed by a nonpartisan majority. "I talked to some bankers from Wall Street and asked, 'How important do you think the stimulus package is?' And they said, 'Well it is, but it isn't.' So I said, 'What do you mean it isn't? We just spent a great deal of money.' They said, 'The message that was sent in Congress was a good message, that you were engaged, that you would do something, that you are not going to let the economy fall behind. But as a practical matter the amount of money that you spent isn't going to really make that great a difference in the economy.'"
Arcuri says that reflected the approach he thinks should have been taken, an approach that conjures President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA), established in 1935 to create jobs for victims of the Great Depression by hiring them to build government buildings, roads, and administering arts, drama, and literacy projects.
"We should have spent that money on developing our infrastructure, on road projects," he said. "On making sure that the highway trust fund is funded up to the top so our highway projects get done, and additionally, investing that money into alternative energy. Then we would be doing two things. We'd be spending the money putting people to work and we'd be getting some long-term benefit out of it."
He also noted that the downside of a new, efficient generation of automobiles is that people will buy less gas, pay less gas tax, and the result will be that the money for building and maintaining the transportation infrastructure will not be there. He said supporting rail development could be a partial solution, and that a coalition of New York Congressmen working together will bring more transportation money into the state.
Arcuri told Chamber members that he did not support the Peru Free Trade Agreement, because free trade agreements are damaging to the central New York region. "We here in upstate New York do not benefit from free trade agreements like some of the larger cities do," he said. "We have seen a loss of jobs, we have seen a shutdown of our companies, of our manufacturing industry. I understand the concept of free trade, and the concept of NAFTA. You're supposed to lose some jobs and gain other jobs. But my problem representing upstate New York is we saw the loss of jobs, but we never saw the gain that we were supposed to get."
But he conceded that free trade is here to stay in a global economy. "We have to grapple with it," he said. "We are a global market. It is going to happen. We just have to make sure it happens in a responsible way so we have enough money for retraining people."
Again, his solution was developing a variety of alternative energy types in the region. "We need to continue to help that happen and not get fixated on any one type, whether it's photovoltaic, cellulosic ethanol production, or biomass... we should be focusing on the first set of alternative energy measures," Arcuri said. "That way we'll not only create jobs here, but make ourselves more energy independent. That is, without a doubt, the direction we want to head in."
The event wrapped up when Chamber Board of Directors member John Neuman presented Arcuri with an 'Ithaca is Gorgeous T-shirt,' which Neuman said he hoped Arcuri would wear the next time he is seen on C-Span.
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