DOUGLASS (Mont.) — Christian Nascimento does not disagree with the renewable energy or the prescription drug price reduction goals of the “Inflation Reduction Act” President Joe Biden signed Tuesday night, he just thinks Congress is taking a patchwork approach that should be better planned out.
Nascimento, the Republican running against Democratic incumbent Madeleine Dean for Pennsylvania’s 4th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, does believe there should be an ID required to vote and does not believe in “no excuse mail-in voting,” but he also opposes nationalizing elections, and recognizes that Pennsylvania’s voting laws, like them, are not, are the law until “we get a legislature and governor who changes them.”
A former Methacton School Board member and president, Nascimento said he does believe that teaching critical race theory has no place in elementary school classrooms. But he also understands that CRT is actually a graduate-school-level education framework and said “we should not whitewash our history, or run away from the nation’s tragedies and we should be up-front about slavery and discrimination.”
Nascimento aired these and other positions at a town hall at the Magnolia Children’s Academy on Grosser Road Tuesday evening.
Addressing the news of the day, Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, Nascimento says he believes in developing renewable energy but said the bill attempts to do so without having the necessary infrastructure in place to support the switch to, as an example, electric cars.
“We need to invest in renewable energy, but we also need to develop our own national energy supplies, so we’re not dependent on Putin or the Saudis,” he said.
Calling the new law “a watered down Build Back Better” bill on which Biden campaigned, Nascimento said it likely will not reduce inflation. He also said the lowering of prescription drug prices “is a good thing in the short term, especially for seniors,” but he said price controls may stifle the development of new drugs, which often happens at bio-medical start-up companies which already face a lot of hurdles.
He would know, he said, he helped start one that ultimately failed.
“The bill doesn’t really solve any problems and it doesn’t really make sense unless you’re trying to pass something before the mid-terms,” Nascimento said.
“I was born and raised in Montgomery County,” Nascimento told the roughly 25 people in the classroom at the school.
Answering an audience question about gun violence and his views on the Second Amendment, Nascimento pivoted to talking about enforcing laws that are already on the books, taking particular aim at Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for what Nascimento described as his “non-prosecution of crimes.”
“We don’t want to ruin someone’s life for a minor mistake, but this experiment of not prosecuting crimes is a failure,” said Nascimento. “If there are no consequences for crime, why would a criminal change their behavior?”
On the subject of education, Nascimento said the “public education system is the foundation of this country. The public education system lifts people up,” and, noted that it is the system that taught his Italian-born father how to speak English.
Suggesting that the $57 billion U.S. Dept. of Education could use more focus, he said perhaps instead of hiring 87,000 more employees at the Internal Revenue Service, the nation should be focused on hiring 87,000 more teachers. However, he said, those teachers who belong to a teachers union are “a special interest group” and should not be making policy.
“Public education failed our children during COVID,” he said and pointed to the Souderton School District as one which did things right. It “stayed open during COVID and did it successfully.” He criticized “politicians who weaponized COVID,” one of the results of which was “a year of learning loss. Being in front of a screen all day is not good for kids.”
Nascimento is also “a big proponent of school choice,” he said. “The money should follow the child, but not to the point that it damages the public school system.”
Nascimento also spoke against the extreme partisanship now gripping the nation’s political discourse. “We’re at a tipping point in this country. Everything is so partisan, we are so pushed into our corners,” he said.
The nation’s discourse, due in part to social media, “has gotten very coarse. You don’t need the news media to” sensationalize violent events, and “all you need is the phone in your pocket to broadcast something,” he said. As a result, “the nation has become de-sensitized to violence.”
“Compromise is where we come through,” he said quoting President Ronald Reagan: “Someone who is 80 percent my friend is not 20 percent my enemy.”
He urged people to get involved in the election process. “The worst thing in the world for me to hear is that people don’t have faith in an election.” And that’s one reason he wants to go to Washington, Nascimento said. “Congress is too reactive, he said. “In congress, you have show horses and work horses and I am going there to build consensus and work.”
