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Audio Feature: This week in news for Rep. John Faso: 20171128

Nov 25, 2017 3:56 am
Here's the week in the news for Rep. John Faso (R-Kinderhook), the District 19 Congressperson for the WGXC listening area. Faso returned to Washington D.C. this week where Fivethirtyeight.com currently reports Faso votes with Donald Trump's positions 86.8 percent of his votes. Click here to download or play an audio version of this report (7:51).

Richard Moody is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media at an appearance in Hudson, Tue., Nov. 21, U.S. Rep. John Faso said his no vote on the recently passed House of Representatives tax reform legislation was not a tough decision because the bill was not right for 19th Congressional District. Faso was speaking at a roundtable discussion about the tax reform bill with the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce. The “[Republican leadership] attempted to persuade me. I did not get a pass from them,” he said. Faso said his vote mostly hinged on the total elimination of itemized deductions for state and local income, property and general sales taxes. He was one of 13 Republicans that voted against the bill. Chamber members talked to the congressman for nearly an hour before the press arrived. Moody reports that the roundtable, "...was sold as an event open to the press that started at 10:30 a.m. and ran until 11:30 a.m. But the event started at 9:30 a.m. to the confusion of the press who arrived to find the whole show was finished." Faso's chief of staff apologized from Washington. "There was confusion about the start of the roundtable and a mistake was made,..." he said. The event was not included on the Kinderhook Republican's public schedule, nor was it posted to the Chamber's online calendar of events. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Matthew Hamilton reports in the Albany Times Union former U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from Saugerties who for years represented parts of the Hudson Valley and Catskills south of the WGXC listening area, died Nov. 22 at the age of 79. Rep. John Faso, a Republican from Kinderhook who represents much of Hinchey's former district, announced the news in a statement saying, that Hinchey was, "a fierce defender of the environment" who "left an important mark on New York State from his years as Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Conservation.... I served with Maurice in the state Assembly and knew him to be an articulate and dedicated proponent of the causes he believed in and the people he served." Hinchey had not publicly spoken in a long time, as a rare brain disorder caused Parkinson's-like symptoms and a loss of speech, his family revealed earlier in the year. Hinchey was in the state Assembly from 1975 until 1992, and then was elected to Congress, serving there until 2013. He was one of the first representatives to oppose the war in Iraq, but will always be best-known for his environmental efforts, including efforts to rid the Hudson River of PCBs. Read the full story in the Albany Times Union.


Rep. John Faso spoke with National Public Radio's Scott Simon last weekend about his vote against the GOP tax plan.