Rep NY Candidate: Terrible Thing You Have to Choose Between Medications, Dinner

The first voting centers have opened in US midterm elections. Tens of millions of Americans are expected to cast their ballots on electing regional representatives, including governors, both houses of US Congress, state legislatives, mayor and city councils.
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Radio Sputnik discussed the midterms, migrant caravan, as well as Trump's chances for re-election, with Joe Vitollo, Republican candidate for New York's 20th Congressional District in the U.S. House.

Sputnik: Now, according to recent reports your name did not appear on the absentee ballots. Do you think this was foul play?

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Joe Vitollo: Absolutely! There is no question that there had to be a personal choice for someone to do that. The New York State Board of Elections sends out a template for these boards of elections to follow, and someone intentionally did not put my name on that ballot.

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Sputnik: In debates with your opponent you said you support term limits. What are the main issues with the terms in place now?

Joe Vitollo: The biggest problem with term limits is that the current problem with the terms that exist right now, is that people get into office and they begin to establish a powerbase and they begin to accrue an incredible amount of money by working with lobbyists and collecting money from big corporations and agencies. And then they begin to vote for the corporations and then not voting for the people anymore. Before you know it, all they do is a show up for public events, they smile, they clap hands and kiss babies at home. But when they go to Washington they vote for bills that have little earmarks on them that favor the companies that are funding them. And, in particular, my opponent received over the course of the last ten years a half a million dollars from pharmaceutical companies. And yet when he speaks to the elderly, he says to them: "‘it's a terrible thing you have to choose between medications and dinner'".

In essence, who is he voting for when he goes to Washington, D.C.? The pharmaceutical companies that he received those funds from. And although you can't directly tie him to any specific bills, you know that there are earmarks on bills that quantify him to receive those moneys because they wouldn't be giving that money to him if it wasn't to their benefit. It's not because he is a nice guy.

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Sputnik: Fry to running you were an emergency room nurse. What are your proposals to the current medical system?

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Joe Vitollo: Well, one of the things that need to be fixed is reimbursement to hospitals has been so convoluted by this new medical plan in the Affordable Health Care Act, the "Unaffordable Health Care Act". They can go back five years and relook at the money that was given to hospitals and determine that they overpaid them and hospitals owe them that money.

So, in turn, what that does boil down to less money in the hospital, is that nurses continue to be underpaid and overworked, and still are expected to work extra shifts because of short-staffing and they have to leave their families, these things need to be corrected. I do believe that we need to keep the pre-existing conditions as the only good thing that the Affordable Health Care Act provided.

Sputnik: You also spoke about the approaching migrant caravan from South America and said that they might be funded by groups opposed to President Donald Trump. What do these people want to achieve in your view?

Joe Vitollo: Well, I believe what they want to do is distract, whoever it is that's promoting this, they want to distract attention from the midterm elections and pull it towards the border and try and show that Republicans are inconsiderate, Republicans don't care about migrants. And the bottom line is that America, like any other country, is a country of borders. Without borders, you are not a country at all. We spend billions of dollars defending other people's borders and yet there are those who think we should not defend our own.

We need to make sure that whoever comes in, comes in legally so that they are vetted, so that Americans are protected. We don't know if the whole group of people come in, who's in the middle of that group, and besides that, there are the legal ways to come in, and I'm not against immigrants coming in. I am against illegal immigration.

Sputnik: Joe, is it too early to ask about Presidential Elections and Donald Trump's chances of being reelected?

Joe Vitollo: Oh, I think that he is going to be handily reelected. I think that people are more than pleased with his progress. There are those who are very vocal and they try to make it sound like they are the majority. They are not the majority. It was that silent majority that elected him and it's that silent majority that's going to elect him again. Donald Trump is doing a fantastic job. He has, even though he's been thwarted by an abstractionist group of Democrats (you know) who are very vocal, very loud, but they are not the majority they are the minority. And Maxine Waters and […] of this world are going to eventually fade off into the wilderness because people are going to see that they are the ones, those are the ones that are stopping the progress of America.

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And we need to move forward and get ourselves back on track. With 27 trillion dollars of debt, we need to get that debt under control. And the only way we are going do that is by forwarding, pushing forward our economy and growth and American production and reducing the burden on the taxpayers by shrinking the size of the Federal Government and by making the government run efficiently.

The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

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