Representative Pat Murphy, congressional candidate for Iowa’s first district visited University of Northern Iowa’s campus Wednesday afternoon.
Former Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, Murphy was the ranking democrat for the Appropriations Committee for 10 years.
The forum began with a short speech from Murphy, followed panelist questions.
Questions were opened to all in attendance.
Katie Evans, senior political science major, questioned what Murphy might do at the federal level to represent teachers unions.
With midterm elections coming up, candidates who visit campuses around the state have a chance to meet with students and answer important questions students might have that will help make voting decisions.
“I think that it’s really good for candidates to come to campus so students can experience first hand what there issues are that their most passionate about and how they can help us as students and the University as a whole,” Evans said.
Murphy said he voted for open-scope bargaining and the government needs to do more for collective bargaining, especially for teacher’s unions.
“I thought it was a very good response,” Evans said. “I think that in a forum like this, in depth responses aren’t the best or recommended since there is a time limit. I was pretty satisfied with how he answered.”
Murphy spoke about the rising costs of education and what might be done to help students and universities.
“When I was Speaker of the House, tuition from 2002 to 2006 went up 90% at the regent run universities during those four years,” Murphy said. “Primarily because the State didn’t well fund higher education, which caused, needless to say, a lot of tuition increases and a lot of fee increases.”
Murphy said he believes the way to address the costs of higher education is to fix interest rates so they can’t be raised and making sure education is well-funded by State Legislature, funding PELL grants and creating more economic incentives for students.
Murphy said that Iowa was not as affected by the recession that recently gripped the United States because Iowa is largely an energy-producing state.
About 25% of Iowa’s energy comes from renewable resources such as wind turbines, Murphy said.
While praising Iowa’s efforts to cut down on carbon emissions and work with renewable energy sources, Murphy was also critical of Iowa’s ‘lack of growth.’
“Iowa was the slowest growing state in the nation for the last 100 years between 1900 and 2000… The only state that didn’t grow at 100% was the state of Iowa,” Murphy said. “We grew from 2.2 million to 2.9 million.” Murphy ended the forum with a request for citizens to vote.
“Whether you’re voting for me or not, please vote on November 4… When you think about what people have done in this country… and the sacrifices people have made for us to have this opportunity, you should take that opportunity to vote.”
