League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Orange, Riverside County, CA November 2, 2004 Election
	Kevin Akin Answers Questions Candidate for United States Representative; District 44

Read the answers from all candidates.

Questions & Answers

1. What can be done to ensure that California gets its fair share of federal resources?

Elect competent and intelligent members of congress who will not allow themselves to be bought by any lobbyist with the money.

Abolish the Electoral College, and elect the President by popular vote. Instead of being a neglected backwater in the presidential campaign, California would then be courted as the most populous state. Federal programs would more likely be based here then than in a smaller state now needed to put together an Electoral College victory.

Change the nature of Federal programs so that they benefit working people, not just the corporate wealthy. California has more working people than any other state.

2. What are your foreign policy priorities for the United States?

First, ending this dirty war to occupy Iraq. This war was not for "freedom," but for oil, and power, and money. The justifications for the war were all lies, as has now been thoroughly exposed. We cannot fix things by staying, all we can do by staying is kill a lot of people. The Iraqi people hate us now, even those who hated Saddam Hussein. The longer we stay the more they will hate us. Second, end all of the numerous secret and not-so-secret programs for meddling in other countries' affairs to benefit the corporate wealthy. Peace builds prosperity, and prosperity builds peace. Third, set an example by decisively ending all U.S. support for terrorists. This has not yet been done. For example, Cuban exiles who plotted to blow up civilian airlines have been given refuge here, and are even warm public allies of the President and his brother. Osama bin Laden is not the only terrorist who got his start with U.S. government money and training, and he will not be the last one to turn against us. Fourth, negotiate economic and trade treaties with other countries that protect the environment and workers in each country.

3. What are your priorities for the federal budget?

End corporate welfare, improve the condition of working people and the poor, greatly increase the share of tax revenue from the rich and lower the share taken from working people. We need a balanced budget, but not balanced on the backs of workers. Social programs need expansion, but they need proper funding, and that must come from making the wealthy pay their share. For example, due to the cap on social security taxes, someone making 1.2 million dollars a year pays about one-tenth the percentage of social security tax as someone making $120,000, or $20,000. Taxes should be steeply graduated so that those most favored in our economy pay much more than the workers who make their money for them.

By instituting a single-payer national health care plan, we could save enough money now wasted on non-medical parts of the medical system (mainly on insurance companies that think up reasons to deny us care) that we could provide decent care to everyone in the country, without increasing the money that goes into the whole system. The present waste is that bad.

Rich people have plenty of representatives in Congress. Don't you think working people deserve at least one? Send a worker to Washington!