Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate confront inflation with a variety of ideas
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — It's the most important issue on the minds of voters in this primary election: inflation.
In the first of his series of stories with U.S. Senate candidates, KDKA political editor Jon Delano asked each what they would do as senator to combat an issue that's impacting many Pennsylvanians.
Four Democrats are competing for the Democratic nomination to fill the seat of retiring Senate Republican Pat Toomey: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and Jenkintown Borough Council member Alexandria Khalil.
From the gas pump to the grocery store, it's a topic on everyone's mind. So KDKA's Jon Delano asked this question: "What is the one thing you would do as a U.S. Senator that would most impact the cost of living in the daily lives of Pennsylvanians?"
"I think we have to look long and hard at whether it's a one-time stimulus payment to help with offset gas prices or energy costs or things of that nature, suspending the gas tax," Fetterman said.
"Whatever that is, we need to bring down the cost of energy that is artificially inflated during Russia's war of aggression against the Ukraine," he added.
"If I had to pick absolutely only one," Lamb said, "I would say it's our bill to raise the benefits in Social Security so that peoples' Social Security checks would get bigger because this falls the hardest on people on fixed incomes, on seniors."
"We have a plan that would do that, totally paid for by just asking the wealthy to pay into Social Security all year long," Lamb added.
"We need to deal with the hard costs that people have that we can look at lowering – things like the cost of child care, of health care, of prescription drugs even more specifically within that," Kenyatta said.
"Big polluters, oil and gas companies, or others – they are making record profits, but they have not passed that on to the average consumer," Kenyatta added
"With companies making record profits," Khalil says, "they can sit back and provide vouchers to their employees to pay for public transportation."
"Finally, we throw away $40 billion worth of food in the United States. Let's step back and expand food stamps, especially to our seniors and families," she added.
Inflation is not an easy issue to solve, and the candidates usually have several ideas.
