Jim Himes, the Democratic Incumbent for Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District faced Republican challenger Jayme Stevenson on stage at the Norwalk Community College David Levinson Theater on Oct. 13. The debate was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and broadcast on Connecticut Public Television.
Stevenson, who has also secured the Independent Party’s endorsement, previously served as Darien’s first selectwoman for 12 years.
The candidates were in broad agreement on most issues, with both underlining the relative civility of the debate and Himes repeatedly crediting Stevenson for breaking with the Republican party on divisive issues such as the validity of the 2020 election, abortion access, and gun control.
The debate was wide ranging, but the deepest distinctions between the candidates were to be found in the economic issues discussed here.
Host Khalilah Brown-Dean put forward the question of what the federal government should do to address inflation.
Himes, who won a coin toss to give the night’s first answer, said that the government had already acted to reduce inflation in the face of an unprecedented crisis.
“We went through a pandemic that no one ever imagined,” Himes said. “We lost 1.1 million Americans, 6.5 million people around the globe, and we shut down the global economy two years ago, that had never happened before.”
Himes characterized the Paycheck Protection Program and other stimulus efforts as having restarted the economy after the pandemic, noting, “From an economic standpoint, economic growth has been strong, particularly in 2021. The unemployment rate in this country is at a record low, but Americans are struggling with inflation every single day at the gas pump, at the grocery store, and that’s a result of the fact that our supply lines are badly damaged and we’re not buying oil from Russia or from Iran or from Venezuela.”
Himes acknowledged work remains to deal with the current inflation rate, but cited several measures already taken, such as addressing health care costs, an increase to social security payouts by up to 8% as well as the president’s release of up to a million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Stevenson agreed that unprecedented events were to blame for economic conditions but characterized them as a result of government action rather than a consequence of the pandemic.
“For the first time in my memory, maybe in history, our government closed our economy.” Stevenson said. “We have to make sure that we elect leaders who will never again allow government to shut down our economy and to hurt families and small businesses in the way that they have been hurt.”
She recounted a moment during her tenure as first selectwoman when the state closed all but essential businesses when she was unable to visit a bookshop in Darien while a nearby liquor store and a Walmart in Norwalk were open. According to her, “This was the government picking winners and losers.”
Stevenson’s vision for addressing inflation consists of having the government understand how to prioritize spending “the way our families understand how to prioritize spending.” Secondly, she indicated that the government must “make sure we are helping those that need it the most.”
The efforts that Himes pointed to were too slow acting to provide effective relief, according to Stevenson. She was also critical of using strategic oil reserve releases, calling it government market manipulation with resources which should be held in case of emergencies such as the hurricane which recently devastated parts of Florida. She called the 8% increase in Social Security payments insufficient with inflation currently standing at 8.2%.
Another economically inflected issue was the prospect of lowering the age at which Medicare becomes available.
Stevenson said that she was opposed to measures to lower the age at which citizens can access Medicare benefits, and that she would advocate for incrementally increasing the age. She said that the country cannot afford to pay out more benefits.
Himes argued that lowering the age for Medicare access would have a positive economic impact as adding younger people less likely to need insurance payouts to a risk pool was a key strategy used by insurance companies to lower costs.
In addition to creating a downward pressure on prices, Himes asserted that doing so was also “frankly, moral.” Pointing to those who lost their jobs at age 61 in recent years and stating they would face difficulty re-entering the workforce to acquire health insurance to tide them over. Himes added that his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis had taught him how critical sufficient insurance is.
By way of rebuttal, Stevenson recounted how her father was laid off from a Pennsylvania steel mill two years before he became eligible for a pension. She noted that it forced her mother to enter the workforce, which was a difficult situation.
“We have to pick and choose, and we have to prioritize our spending the way we do in our households every day,” Stevenson said, calling for continued discussion of the issue at the national level.
Brown-Dean continued with health care and asked the candidates what they believe the federal government should do to address rising health care costs.
Himes was quick to point to bills passed by Democrats in previous years to indicate the strides forward he hopes the party will continue to make. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), a $35 a month price cap on insulin for insured Americans. He offered no specifics for future efforts but concluded “I don’t know exactly what the health care system looks like 10 years from now, but we have got to reorient it towards keeping us healthy and therefore keeping us less expensive away from just paying a ton of money when things go wrong.”
Stevenson disputed the success of many of those pieces of legislation. She noted that her daughter at 27 acquired her insurance through the ACA and it cost around $6,000 per year, which she called unaffordable. She also later decried claims made by Democrats prior to the ACA that “you can keep your doctor.”
When it came to specific policies to address health care, Stevenson called for the FDA to rework the food pyramid which she characterized as outdated, and hailed being able to buy insurance across state lines to unleash competition which will make health care more affordable. She also called for a major rethinking of the healthcare system but with an emphasis on “wellness” and personal responsibility.
Brown-Dean put the topic of defraying the cost of higher education forward.
Both candidates agreed that previous years saw an overemphasis on sending students to four-year institutions, and that the costs of tuition had reached prohibitive levels. Both praised Norwalk Community College and the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities system as examples of how to provide effective workforce training which will offer students the chance to become successful without taking on large debts.
Stevenson, however, was critical of the federal loan system for enabling private colleges to raise prices at taxpayer expenses. She also decried student loan forgiveness which she claimed would cause “a bus driver in Bridgeport to pay for a four-year college loan to a lawyer in Greenwich.”
Brown-Dean next asked the candidates what the federal government should do to lower energy costs as winter approaches.
Stevenson called on the government to “ignite the power of the fossil fuel industry here in the United States.” Stevenson said that the country’s petroleum reserves should be tapped to lower the cost of energy, while the government should also pursue investment in hydrogen and nuclear technology to re-establish energy independence.
Himes focused on specific policies designed to alleviate heating costs, such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program which helps lower income Americans pay heating bills.
Neither candidate took a stance against the expansion of fossil fuels or associated infrastructure, though Stevenson was strenuous in advocating for the construction of pipelines to join Connecticut’s grid to fracking fields in Pennsylvania. Both called for an “all of the above” approach to energy production, and Himes depicted IRA provisions requiring new fossil fuel developments for every federally funded renewable project as a positive.
On the topic of infrastructure, bridges were a focus. While Himes welcomed the start of work on Norwalk’s Walk Bridge, Stevenson brought up Bridgeport’s Congress Street Bridge by stating it divided the city for 25 years, cutting the blighted East End off from the revitalization enjoyed by the city’s downtown. She pledged to fix the bridge if elected.
Himes put emphasis on completed work, and the IRA’s infrastructure provisions which he likened to the public works projects of the Eisenhower era. He also evoked the New Deal by comparing the economic benefits of expanded broadband to electrification in the early 20th century.
After the debate, both candidates briefly discussed housing, an issue touching almost every community in Connecticut. Both expressed frustration with the state law 8-30g, which mandates every municipality in Connecticut have 10% affordable housing stock.
Stevenson characterized it as failing to understand that market forces do not always apply in towns like Darien, where she says the quality of education keeps the price of housing high regardless of how many units are available. She felt that efforts to improve schools in cities like Bridgeport should in turn make urban areas more attractive to developers.
Himes agreed that 8-30g had failed to deliver and added that “any law that doesn’t do its job for decades is a bad law,” but said that the federal government can be most helpful by promoting transit-oriented development, including encouraging the construction of affordable housing near train stations in the state’s smaller communities.
