Democrat Seth Magaziner, who is currently Rhode Island’s state treasurer, framed the rising cost of living as a problem driven by corporate greed.
“I’m talking about cracking down on the big drug companies, the big oil companies that are overcharging people – which the Republicans in Congress won’t do, because that’s where they get their funding from,” Magaziner said.
Republican Allan Fung, the former mayor of Cranston, said the rising cost of living is a problem caused by taxes on the wealthy and increased corporate regulation that Democrats in Washington support.
Fung said, if he were in Congress, he would have opposed President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which included funding for expanding the Internal Revenue Service.
“It also had in there 87,000 new IRS agents that would have been targeting the middle class,” Fung said. “Eighty-seven thousand is ridiculous. It’s larger than the population of Cranston.”
Magaziner disagreed with Fung on which taxpayers will be facing more intense tax scrutiny as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“It specifically says that it would not go after any family making less than $400,000 a year,” Magaziner said. “Do I think that Elon Musk and the billionaire shooting spaceships into outer space should be forced to go through some audits to make sure they’re not hiding their taxes overseas? Yes, of course.”
Magaziner also criticized Fung for campaigning with Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who opposes abortion and supports cutting funding for welfare programs like Social Security.
“Let the record show that once again, he is committed to putting election deniers in charge of the House of Representatives heading into a presidential year,” Magaziner said.
Fung pushed back on Magaziner’s characterizations that he agrees with McCarthy on abortion and social security. Fung indicated he is willing to break with his party on those issues to maintain his principles in Washington.
“You want to lump me into that extreme end and it doesn’t fit the mold,” Fung said to Magaziner.
“I will not support a national abortion ban or criminalize it, period,” Fung said later in the debate.
Pointing to his mother in the front row of the forum’s audience, Fung also promised to maintain funding for Social Security.
“She’s on Social Security, that fixed income, like millions of other mothers and fathers and grandparents across the country,” Fung said. “I will stand up and make sure they do not cut Social Security down in Washington D.C.”
During a lightning round of questions, debate moderators asked the candidates who their political role models were. Fung answered Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts with a reputation for working across the aisle. Magaziner answered Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the former Democratic president who created the New Deal. Independent candidate William Gilbert, who also participated in the debate, provided two answers: John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
Gilbert spent the evening pitching voters on abandoning the nation’s longstanding tradition of voting for candidates from the two dominant political parties.
“We need to stop the hyper-partisanship,” Gilbert said. “We need to be able to go back to the water cooler and the dinner table and talk about some really difficult discussions.”
Gilbert, a resident of Narragansett, proposed abandoning the current system of public school funding in the state. Instead of relying primarily on municipal property taxes, Gilbert said Rhode Island should move toward a statewide funding formula for public schools, a system he said would eliminate the disparities in education spending between rich and poor communities.
Gilbert also proposed drafting federal laws to eliminate qualified immunity, a legal doctrine introduced by the Supreme Court in 1967 that is often used to protect individual police officers from lawsuits, even in cases where they have broken the law.
“I’m for abolishing the made-up doctrine of qualified immunity,” Gilbert said, “but that does not translate that I’m anti-cop. I will gladly support doubling the headcount of our law enforcement in many of our broken cities if they had half of the absolute power they wield today.”
Voters in the district will choose their next congressman in the election ending on Nov. 8. The seat is currently held by U.S. Representative Jim Langevin, who is not running for reelection.
Ben Berke is a staff reporter for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at bberke@thepublicsradio.org. Follow him on Twitter @BenBerke6.
