PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — It’s been a little over one month since Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) was sworn in as a member of the U.S. Congress, and the former state treasurer said he’s enjoying his time so far in Washington, D.C.
“It’s been very exciting. Things move much more quickly than I ever imagined. We’re really scheduled in 20- or 30-minute intervals, but I am so honored and blessed with the opportunity to represent our families and our small businesses in The County,” said Poliquin. “I’m enjoying it greatly, but it’s a lot of work, and we’re moving very, very quickly.
“I’ve been a little bit surprised that my time is no longer my own. As a business owner, I’ve always worked toward getting it right, and if it takes a little bit longer, that’s OK. It’s not that way in Congress because you have to move very, very quickly, so that’s been a bit of an adjustment,” he said. “All the buildings down there are connected by tunnels and it’s no wonder we lose money down there; we lose people down there. Finding from A to B can be a little bit challenging, but that’s just an adjustment. I’ve been impressed with how many smart people there are down there who know a lot about these issues. They don’t always agree with you, but it’s always fun to hang around people who know a lot more about these issues than I do.”
Poliquin was in Aroostook County Saturday where he met with both the Central Aroostook Chamber of Commerce and the Maine Potato Board, toured the Maine Veterans Cemetery in Caribou, and was the featured speaker at a Lincoln Day Dinner, also in Caribou.
“I just love The County. The people are so nice, hardworking and honest. They’re some of the most wonderful people in the world,” he said. “Whenever I come up here it reminds me of my grandmother, Helen Bouchard, who was one of 11 children. They grew up on a family farm in Frenchville. Half of my family is from The County, and I’m so blessed for this opportunity. The folks up here deserve an accountable government, and one that works for them, not against them.”
Poliquin said his three top issues in Washington are “jobs for our families, more jobs for our families, and more jobs still for our families.”
“There are a number of ways we can do this … one of which is advocating for our businesses up here. Another way is to make sure we get our spending and our debt under control, so we can start to lower taxes which helps our families and they can keep more money in their pockets,” he said. “Another part of this is energy costs.
“One of the major components for creating more jobs is making sure we continue to drive down the price of diesel, gasoline, heating oil and natural gas,” said Poliquin. “A lot of the families up here drive pickups, and people drive long distances for work … sometimes 40-50 miles each way, so if you look at a family that’s saving about $20 a week on fill-ups, times 50 weeks, that’s $1,000 a year, which pays for about 2-3 months of groceries for a family of four.
“I pushed very hard for the Keystone Pipeline because that will increase our capacity — our production — of diesel, heating oil and gasoline, by moving more — not only Canadian but North Dakota and Oklahoma oil,” he said. “I also co-sponsored a bill to expedite the permitting to build natural gas pipelines. The whole energy issue is really important to me.”
The freshman congressman said he’s been criticized the last few days for voting against the GOP’s latest effort to fully repeal ObamaCare.
“It is a very hurtful law. I’ve been talking about repealing it, and changing it, and fixing it for five years,” he said. “None of that has changed; however, when the vote came to the floor earlier this past week for a full repeal without a replacement, I stood up and said, ‘We’ve done this 55 times. This would be the 56th vote. We’ve got to do things differently.’ I wasn’t sent down to Washington by The County to grandstand; I was sent down there to do things differently so we can fix the problem. I am eager to vote to repeal ObamaCare as soon as we have a common sense, free market solution.”
The biggest challenge Poliquin has faced so far is “pushing the Senate to pass bills that we’ve already passed in the House.”
“The House of Representatives has 435 members and we are passing bills at lightning speed,” he said. “The Senate only has 100 members, but they go at a much slower pace. We need to get them passed in the House, then get them passed in the Senate, and then present them to the president’s desk. The bigger the majority that you pass these bills, the more strength you have, of course, and the more convincing it becomes when it hits the president’s desk. That’s been a challenge … how do we move things out of the Senate more quickly?”
Poliquin said he’s keeping Aroostook County concerns in mind while in Washington.
“I recently met with representatives from Twin Rivers of Madawaska, and they’re having a situation where their primary products are paper inserts … very fine uncoated printing paper used as pharmaceutical inserts in North America,” he said. “However, there is a movement by the White House to disallow these paper inserts and go completely electronic. The problem we have is if you’re in Van Buren or Limestone or other parts of The County, sometimes you don’t get good Internet connection, and other parts of the district you don’t get Internet connection at all. This broadband is one of our problems, we have ice storms where we lose power, and on top of that, we have a lot of seniors who do not get online, so to take this product away from them — where they can open up these inserts and read the directions to take their medication — is wrong.
“There are 600 American jobs at Twin Rivers and another 400 on the other side of the border, and this is their biggest product. It’s about doing what’s best for the seniors, but it’s also about jobs in The County, too,” said Poliquin. “I’ve already met with the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Health and Human Services about this issue, and we are pushing as hard as we can for our seniors and for those jobs up here.”
Poliquin has also voted to repeal the 30-hour work week, and is the co-sponsor of a bill to eliminate the medical device tax, both of which are part of ObamaCare; and is even looking into an issue pertaining to the long-eared bat.
“The long-eared bat has been really decimated because of a fungus that was brought over here — we think — from folks in Europe. These long-eared bats are all over our woods, not only in our state, but all over the eastern United States and the Midwest, and they live under the bark of dead trees,” he said.
“I’m really concerned that if they’re listed on the Endangered Species List, that will have a big impact on our wood products business up here, so I’m really digging deeply into this. We’re all God’s creatures and we want to protect them as best we can, but we can’t shut down those forests because all of a sudden we can’t supply raw material to the paper mills. We want to protect the little buggers, but we want to protect jobs. Protecting jobs is what it’s all about.”
