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West Virginia still facing challenges

Congressman McKinley’s op-ed in the News and Sentinel on Jan. 12, “Trump Is Good for West Virginia,” reads like it was written by someone who hasn’t set foot in West Virginia in quite some time.

He relies on tortured national statistics (“2 million jobs created”) and data (“nearly 1.4 million Americans were able to get off food stamps”) to take a victory lap and declare that all is well in West Virginia. He asserts that thirteen states have seen declines in unemployment rates, and that West Virginia’s decline in unemployment was the biggest of all.

There are no sources for these assertions, so it’s not clear where he’s getting his information, but one thing is clear: he didn’t get his rosy outlook by visiting his district and talking to his constituents. If he were visiting the district and listening to the people, he would likely have a very different understanding of the reality here.

West Virginia has the most potential of any state in the country. We are poised to become the biggest comeback story in the history of the United States, but we need to focus on people, not things. I don’t need to spew a bunch of negative statistics to express how difficult life is for many West Virginians right now; all you have to do is look around to see the struggle. But I’ll share a couple of very important measures that indicate the depth of our challenges: the Centers for Disease Control reports that our drug addiction death rates in West Virginia are three times the national average. And those unemployment rates that the Congressman is so proud of? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, West Virginia’s unemployment rate worsened rapidly between May (4.5 percent) and November (5.3 percent). To the extent that there are businesses in a position to hire people, finding employees that can pass a drug test is a struggle. Small communities are dying (medium and larger communities are also fighting for survival, for that matter), and people are leaving in such large numbers that we are likely to lose a Congressional seat after the 2020 census.

So, things are challenging and we have a Congressman who can’t (or won’t) see it. How can someone who doesn’t see our problems fix them? He can’t. And we see that in his voting record. He consistently votes to make life even easier for the haves (companies, their owners, and the wealthy), while ignoring the have nots (workers, seniors, and kids). He votes to take your tax dollars — your investments in your community — and to give them to the people who already have everything they need. He claims that your investment dollars will filter through layers of the economy and find their way to you, but they never do. I often wonder if he would say the best way to get from A to B would be to give a tax break to Z. He is not fighting for you or your freedom to stay in West Virginia.

If we want to address our problems in West Virginia, let’s look at them honestly and boldly. We want to be free to stay here, but we can’t do that if we don’t work together and use our resources to solve our problems directly. You can’t live free in a free country without team effort, but Representative McKinley thinks pumping money into the pockets of team owners in hopes they’ll hire some players to build a roster someday is the solution. It’s time to send someone to Washington who wants to focus on the players for a change.

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Kendra Fershee is running for the Democratic nomination for West Virginia’s First Congressional District. She is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at West Virginia University College of Law, and lives in Morgantown.

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