TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Fighting terrorism, taking care of constituents, and cutting a budget deal to keep the government running.
Those are all key issues Congresswoman Martha McSally is looking back on as the year ends.
As a retired Air Force Colonel and A-10 pilot Martha Mc Sally has become a prominent voice on how to fight the threat of ISIS.
"We should be going after ISIS centers of gravity over in Iraq and Syria. And we should have been using all that air power brings to the fight to put them on their heels, to stop their momentum. The fact that it looks like they've been taking on America's air power and winning for the last year and a half actually adds to their recruiting and their propaganda because people want to join a winning team."
Mc Sally says using air power against the oil operations that help pay for ISIS will weaken ISIS with less risk of civilian casualties that could make people turn radical and join extremist movements.
The A-10 has been active in the fight, and McSally has been active in the budget battles to keep both the A-10 and EC-130 flying. They are critical to keeping Davis-Monthan Air Force Base an active force in Southern Arizona's economy.
McSally helped pump up another economic force by passing a law to help former military staff the newly expanded Mariposa port of entry from Mexico. It has extra lanes to handle the millions of dollars in commerce coming in from Mexico but it's short of inspectors to staff the lanes.
"This is a win-win to put these two together to make these two departments work with each other to fast track our veterans who already have good background checks so they can work at our ports of entry."
When it comes to budgets McSally does not like everything she sees in the latest budget deal but she does not side with some members of Congress who are ready to block a budget and shut down the government over single issues.
"It's our job to go to Washington DC and to work through those with each other and figure out how we can actually get stuff through the House and the Senate and signed by the President or over ride his veto if he disagrees in order to keep the government open, to keep our troops paid, to keep those who are wearing the uniform and on Border Patrol and at our ports of entry, our Federal workers. If they actually can make sure they have certainty to provide for their families and not hijack that process for political bickering with each other."
Members of Congress handle large national and international issues but offer personal one on one help to constituents too.
McSally's office says it handled almost 17 hundred cases this year and closed almost 13 hundred, many involved getting constituents money the government owed them. The largest single case involved more than 82 thousand dollars from the Social Security administration
