Boyda a friend to Iola, deserves to be re-elected

Come Nov. 4, Second District voters will be asked to choose between re-electing Rep. Nancy Boyda and giving State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins the job of representing the district in Congress.
Iolans have good reasons for trusting Boyda for another two years. She was instrumental in helping the city win a $477,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant to help with bringing the city’s wastewater treatment plant up to snuff and also made the difference in a $48,000 grant for the Iola Public Library.
Many will feel that her effective assistance deserves support at the polls. Considering that she is a first-term member of Congress, her success in winning those appropriations demonstrates that she has been working hard for those she represents.
But wouldn’t Jenkins do the same? That’s an open question. She is running to be a member of John McCain’s team. McCain rarely makes a campaign speech without pledging to do away with congressional earmarks.
Perhaps she has been persuaded.
Those who are aghast at the huge increase in the national debt, can take some comfort in knowing that Boyda will continue to vote against making the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthy permanent, looks forward to ending the war in Iraq, which is costing about $11 billion a month, sees no reason to exempt multi-million-dollar estates from taxation and wants money-saving health care reform.
Both Boyda and Jenkins are fiscal conservatives. The difference between them on this set of issues is that Jenkins is toeing the official Republican ideological line, which aligns her with the trickle-down, favor-the-rich philosophy, while Boyda identifies more with the working class. Jenkins, for example, is philosophically opposed to a federal minimum wage: “I’m a free-market gal,” she explained in last week’s debate, “let the market decide.”
It is illuminating that McCain has consistently voted against increases in the minimum wage.
Jenkins has also pledged to vote against any tax increase; a pledge that would keep her from supporting legislation to make Social Security solvent or deal with any additional federal needs without borrowing the money to do it.

THOSE WHO will vote for Barack Obama for president to bring a new political culture to Washington should vote for Boyda.
He will need a strong majority in Congress to accomplish the reforms he will propose, if elected; reforms which include effective regulation of the financial institutions whose reckless loans have brought Wall Street to its knees and contributed mightily to a downturn in the economy, which will affect every American family.
Jenkins has been an effective state treasurer who deserves credit for boosting economic education in the public schools and has been a champion of a state program to encourage families to set aside funds in a tax-advantaged savings program to pay for college for their children.
But she is running for Congress on what amounts to iron-clad promises to keep right on doing what the Bush administration and the conservative Republicans in Congress have been doing these past eight years.
Those who think it’s time for new ideas and a new direction will vote for Nancy Boyda.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.