6th District Congressional Candidate Bill Hedge Promises to Build Consensus

Democratic Congressional Candidate Bill Hedge promised to be a consensus builder if elected in contrast to what he said was the divisive politics which was currently part of Washington. “John Wooden once said that great things were possible if nobody cares who gets the credit,” he said. He said that the current problem in Washington was that there were too many people who would rather obstruct constructive legislation rather than let someone else get the credit. Hedge served as a long-time teacher and principal at Central High School in St. Joseph as well as a professor at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville. He currently serves as the pastor of St. Francis Baptist Temple in St. Joseph and said that his Christian faith guided what he believed in. “I will not be bought; I have been purchased by a Jewish carpenter,” he told the Sheridan Express. One example was the passage of the 2012 Farm Bill in the Senate, which he said would give a lot more relief to farmers who got crop damage due to the drought. It is now in the House. “This affects everyone from the farmers to people who buy foods at the supermarket,” he said. As an example of the kind of approach he would favor, he pointed to the Affordable Healthcare Act, which was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. “We’re the richest country in the world and we can’t afford to give our people healthcare?” he asked. He said that he realized that the bill was not perfect, but that Congress should focus on fixing it instead of trying to get rid of it. He said that as a retired teacher and professor, the government should make education funding its top priority as opposed to Congressional plans to phase out most federal education funding over the next 10 years. He said that it didn’t make sense that teachers helped students become the entrepreneurs of tomorrow but that the government was not willing to provide for the country’s long-term future. “All the other professions in this country are taught by teachers,” said Hedge. And yet he said that there were too many in Washington that simply paid lip service to teachers and who refused to fund schools what they needed in order to function effectively. Others, he said, wanted to simply get rid of all the teachers. “How silly is that,” he asked. Instead, he said that they would rather fund undeclared wars abroad. Hedge said that Obama was moving in the right direction, in a policy in which countries like Afghanistan would be able to stand on their own two feet. He said that the FBI and the CIA were doing a good job protecting the country against threats and that our country had the ability to monitor threats with technology so that wars of occupation would be unnecessary and the government would be able to move resources to education and other domestic programs. Regarding small business, Hedge said that they were the backbone of the US economy, yet too many politicians were seeking to export more jobs overseas. “This is one of those issues where we have to do what is best for the American people,” he said. “We need to bring these jobs back into this country where they belong.” He said that in order for the country to move forward, people had to put aside their own interests for the common good. “I have values and morals to stand on and this is who I am,” he concluded. As his father told him growing up, “Once you get an education, no one will be able to take it away.”