For immediate release
Contact: Cary Stemle (502-523-3763; cstemle@gmail.com)
CORYDON, INDIANA — Drawing a stark contrast with her opponent, 9th District Congressional candidate Shelli Yoder laid out a strong vision for the district during a debate tonight at Corydon Central High School in Harrison County.
Just as she did during last week’s debate in Franklin, Yoder hammered on her campaign theme that the election presents a clear choice: Her vision, which puts middle class and working families first, or her opponent’s, as laid out in the Ryan-Young budget, which boils down to gutting the middle class to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.
“I’ll be a Congresswoman who fights for the family room, not the board room,” Yoder said during the debate.
Yoder praised the O’Bannon family, whose publishing company sponsored the debate, and noted that former Gov. Frank O’Bannon, his widow Judy, and their friend Lee Hamilton, the longtime 9th District Congressman, were the sort of fair and balanced leaders who are sorely lacking from today’s hyper-partisan politics.
Her opponent shows no such willingness to cooperate. For example, Yoder said, he has voted 33 times to repeal the health-care reform legislation that is already helping real Hoosiers.
“I’ll work across the aisle to find common ground and common solutions to the problems facing our country,” Yoder said. “My opponent has not worked across the aisle. Of the 19 bills that he has introduced in Congress, not a single bill has a Democratic co-sponsor. Time and again he has voted to slash funding that is so important to our middle class and working families, so he can pay for tax breaks for the wealthy. His priorities are wrong, and he should be fired.”
Young stood by his support of the Paul Ryan budget, which will cost 5 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and wreck the fragile economic recovery. The Ryan budget also slashes Pell grants and job training, turns Medicare into a voucher program and would privatize Social Security.
“The Ryan budget would decimate the middle class while helping the top 2%,” Yoder said. “If there’s no middle class, we have no economy. I advocate a fair and balanced approach to deficit reduction and entitlement reform. First, we must let the Bush tax cuts expire for those who earn $250,000 or more while preserving middle class tax cuts. And there are plenty of places we can cut spending without putting the entire burden on the middle class.
“People in the 9th District don’t feel like Todd Young is on their side. I will be a fighter in Congress for real people. I will never lose touch with my constituents.”
Yoder will conduct a district-wide tour for the remaining seven days of the campaign.
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