Education: Joe Moakley went to South Boston High School and served in the Navy in World War II after enlisting at age 15. After the war he attended the University of Miami in Florida and later graduated from Suffolk University Law School.
Occupation: He currently represents Massachusetts' 9th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives where he serves as the top Democrat on the powerful House Rules Committee.
Question: Given the current economic climate, what are your priorities for the budget surplus and why?
Answer: While some people in Washington view the projected budget surplus as a goody bag full of tax breaks for the richest Americans, I think there are other, more pressing issues facing the country that directly affect the welfare of our citizens.
We need to shore up Social Security and Medicare. Unless we do something quickly, these backbones of our retirement safety net are in danger of falling apart in the next decade or two when the baby boomers retire and there aren't enough workers to support them. We need to enact a prescription drug program, as part of Medicare, that is available to everyone and makes a significant difference in the amount people pay for their medicine. Otherwise, drug costs will continue to skyrocket, putting them even further out of reach of everyday working families, not to mention senior citizens who already spend far too much of their incomes on medicine.
We need to enact targeted tax cuts designed to make it easier to get children a good education and plan for their future. We need to do all we can to ease the high cost of housing before that, too, reaches a crisis.
And, we need to pay down the debt. If we were to pay off the debt today, every man, woman and child in the United States would owe $20,473.12, and now is our chance to make a dent in it, which will result in lower interest rates and lower mortgages for everyone.
