Recent high increases in home energy costs are "outrageous," Rep. John Mannion (D-Geddes) told the audience at his town hall meeting Tuesday evening in Auburn.
The hour-long session at Cayuga Community College covered hot-button topics such as the Iran war, immigration enforcement and election security, but several audience questions focused on rising monthly bills for natural gas and electricity.
Mannion criticized the increases approved by the state Public Service Commission for utilities such as National Grid and New York State Electric and Gas.
"The rates that were accepted were way too high, so that put us off on a bad footing," Mannion said. "I pushed back on that. We can talk about writing letters, but I did write a letter saying there should be reconsideration of that."
Congress has no direct role in setting utility rates. Mannion said that because utilities are monopolies, they need to be more accountable for the increases they request.
Mannion added that natural gas prices have risen the most, driven mainly by simple supply and demand. Winter has been unusually harsh across the entire East Coast, driving up the use of natural gas for heating and therefore the cost of the gas.
He said he supported creating a federal program to help middle-income Americans pay their energy bills, similar to a federal program for low-income people.
Mannion said the nation needs to become innovative in its approach to creating more energy at affordable prices, as estimates show the need for energy will rise significantly in the next decade. He criticized the Trump administration for attempting to cancel solar and wind power projects in order to favor the oil and gas industries.
Mannion also took questions on election security, saying our elections are working and don't need to be changed.
"I cannot say this emphatically enough," he said. "The elections in the state of New York and the United States of America are fair, they're valid, they're triple-checked, they're done in a bipartisan way."
Mannion is opposed to the SAVE Act, which would require anyone registering to vote to bring documents, such as a birth certificate, to prove they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote and to bring legal ID in order to vote. President Trump claims, falsely, that voting by non-citizens swings elections to Democrats.
Mannion said the push to require proof of citizenship to vote could strip the right to vote from many legal voters.
"That's the concern, because you've been stripped of those voter rolls," he said. "Maybe because your name changed, maybe because it changed twice, maybe because you were adopted, maybe because you changed addresses."
Polls show very strong support among Americans for requiring voters to show a valid ID to vote, which some states already do.
Mannion spoke on other topics as well. He said the Trump administration’s immigration plans aren’t working, saying that farmers in his district say the lack of seasonal workers is hurting their ability to grow food. He said that President Trump said they would go after the worst of the worst illegal immigrants, but that hasn’t been true.
On the war in Iran, Mannion called it "an unpopular war." He said that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, but Congress must be the one to declare war, not the President. He said there’s little support for the war among America’s allies, and there appears to be no clear objective for the campaign.
