By Denise Batista
John Jay’s Republican club invited former congressman turned author, Joseph DioGuardi, to speak. He came to John Jay to inform students on the problems he believes occurs within the government due to the financial scams that are hidden from the public.
DioGuardi plainly presented his main concerns with what he saw as the “unsustainability of our growing debt.” He came not just to present what he saw as problems but also to motivate students to make a difference. The event was funded through the club’s budget. Overall, they had $1,000 to spend for the semester.
He said, “America has the capacity to make more successful people and companies, you should be part of that. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
A crowd of mostly republican students waited for his arrival, excited to learn more about his book Unaccountable Congress: It Doesn’t Add Up.
Danny Oliva, president of the Republican club, was happy to have a political figure to promote financial stability of the US.
Oliva said, “We always want to bring Politicians to John Jay. DioGuardi is not the most conservative republican.”
Oliva urges students to take more responsibilities and use resources that are available. Oliva, along with other members of the club, organized for DioGuardi to speak.
Eli Lubin, a member of republican club was excited to hear him speak and wants John Jay students to become more involved in learning of “His fiscal policies; how the federal government doesn’t show where the money is going, like DioGuardi said, the army and military doesn’t report where the money is going.”
DioGuardi mentioned how we must not let labels of parties like Democratic or Republican dust off the real problems within the government, which are due to deficit spending, “Forget your party- your party is America”.
DioGuardi covered what he saw to be problems with America’s fiscal policy, and how 895 billion went towards defense last year.
America’s defense is growing but government officials have set aside the real issues we are facing which are education. Sally Abdel, a junior ideologically placed with a Democrat’s point of view, thought that instead of spending money on the defense budget, America should be putting more money towards education.
He said, “Education is always what US should invest in even if we don’t have the money; distributing money towards education is number one priority which all states should have.”
DioGuardi’s concerns lie in American tendencies of quantitative easing (spending) rather than producing. “America needs a sense of hungriness,” he said.
DioGuardi raised concerns about our currency. “The dollar might collapse because we don’t have enough productivity,” he said.
“We got to be competitive; Brazil is there. South America is getting there. Look at Germany, they have one tenth of the workforce in the world and ten percent of the manufacturing productivity, they’re a tough country. Productivity. We must remain technologically superior and we have to prevent countries like China from stealing it. They don’t invest in money the way we do but they take it.”
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