Project Red, White & Blue
Congressional District 2 candidates sound off on job creation, immigration
Web Producer: Rikki Mitchell
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - KGUN 9 On your Side begins a week long preview of next week's primary in Project Red, White & Blue.
We begin Monday with the newly created Congressional District 2 race. You'll hear from the two democratic candidates and the two republican candidates on issues like job creation and immigration.
District 8 Congressman Ron Barber and Legislative 29 state representative Matt Heinz are competing for the democrat seat.
Retired United States Air Force colonel Martha McSally and political newcomer Mark Koskiniemi are competing for the republican seat.
On job creation:
Congressman Ron Barber
"Well I've been in Congress for a little more than two months and I'm pleased to say that one of the bills I was able to vote on will actually bring jobs to Arizona. In fact the country. It was a bill that was long overdue and it has to do with transportation infrastructure and housing and urban development which is important in terms of low income housing and all the rest. We voted for that bill. It was a bi-partisan vote, I'm pleased to say. Now thousands of jobs all over the country will be created as a result of that."
Matt Heinz
"Well I think we need to focus on bringing skilled positions to Arizona and growing them from within. To do that we need to focus on the industries that can come here, grow here and stay here. That's solar, alternative time of new energy industries and I've actually sponsored bills to help with that in the legislature which recently we've passed."
Mark Koskiniemi
"My platform is based on job, economy and border security. What we need to do in the area of jobs what we need to do is reform the tax codes so businesses are able to confidently invest in new innovations and creating new jobs. And for consumers to have some certainty about what's going to be happening in the future, right now they don't. Right now they're holding on to their money, I'm not sure what's going to be happening. It's hard for businesses to go forward because they aren't getting the demand for consumers as well."
Martha McSally
"The economy is the number one issue for the people of Southern Arizona and our nation. We've got to take the uncertainty out of the economy. Put people back to work to good paying jobs. We've got people graduating from college moving back into their homes, they're under employed, they're unemployed. We've got businesses that are not hiring. They're not spending their capital. We've got to get back to taking that uncertainty out so that small businesses that are the engine of growth in American can start hiring and putting people back to work again."
On immigration and President Obama's executive order allowing illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, apply for work permits:
Congressman Rob Barber
"I think the president's executive order allowing young people who came here when they were children through no fault of their own are here, they came with their parents. They may not even have known that they were in this country until they got older. Those young people want to go to work and they should be given an opportunity to."
Matt Heinz
"I appreciate the President's policy and attempts to deal with that matter, unfortunately, I think taking it in a peace meal fashion, taking any piece of the immigration puzzle out and trying to address it in isolation is going to end up in failure. What we really need is comprehensive reform that focuses on solving the entire problem, getting a guest labor work force into this country, working on border security, making legal immigration work better adjusting quotas and naturalization reform."
Mark Koskiniemi
"Instead of the estimate that they had of 800,000 people that they had of being potentially eligible, it's as high as 1.2 to 1.7 million. So once again we see the Obama Administration underestimating what it's going to cost or how many people it's going to affect by a factor of 2. They've called it their own little Dream Act and to me it stands for don't really expect any body is moving."
Martha McSally
"I was down on the border the other day and talking to them again about securing the border. We need to focus on securing the border. We reform our legal immigration system and we need and we gotta enforce the laws we have on the books."






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