Mass. Third District Republicans Continue Attacks on Tsongas

As primary day approaches, both Republicans seeking to face off against Congresswoman Niki Tsongas in this fall’s Massachusetts Third Congressional District race continue to aim their attacks against Tsongas instead of each other.

Tsongas’ 2010 opponent, Jon Golnik of Carlisle, spoke out on H.R. 8, better known as a piece of legislation intended to extend the Bush Era tax cuts.

“Even a slight increase in the unemployment rate is just more evidence that the economic recovery we keep hearing about hasn’t arrived yet,” said Golnik. “Too many people are still out of work and it is only getting worse.  The first lesson we should take from this is that the policies of Representative Niki Tsongas, President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Washington’s have failed.  I have said it before—we cannot tax and spend our way out of this jobs crisis.”

The House defeated an amendment to the bill passed through the Senate that would extend the tax cuts for all but the richest Americans, ultimately passing the original bill on party lines outside of 19 Democrats that voted with Republicans on both measures.

Tsongas, who voted with the Democratic majority, decried the House actions on both votes in a statement from her house website.

“Republicans and Democrats agree that we need to take action to address the deficit, and we all agree that middle class Americans should not see an increase in their taxes at the end of the year,” said Tsongas in the statement. “However, Republicans are holding the middle class tax cut hostage in order to give households with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of $160,000.  Estimates suggest that the Republican plan to expand tax cuts for the top 2% would add $50 billion to the deficit each year. We simply cannot afford to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and get our deficit under control at the same time.”

The other current primary challenger for Tsongas, Westford’s Tom Weaver, had choice words for the incumbent over her non-appearance at a July 28 veterans’ event at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, almost directly across the street from her campaign office.

“It seems that it is ok with Representative Tsongas to trumpet she supports veterans’ issues when she has federal money to throw around.   But when it comes to a fundraising event in her hometown, organized by concerned veterans, she was a no-show, even though she received an invitation from the group months ago,” said Weaver.  “Senator Brown had no problem clearing his schedule to attend and neither did some other local politicians, like State Representatives Dave Nangle (D-Lowell) and Jim Arciero (D-Westford).”

Tsongas met with volunteers in Westford earlier in the day as part of a local door-to-door visit with local voters. No other events were listed on the calendar at Tsongas’ campaign website.

Primary Day is on September 6.