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Dear Maryland District 14 Resident,
My name is Henry Kahwaty, and I am running for the Maryland House of Delegates from our district. I would like to introduce myself, discuss the issues facing our State, and ask for your support and vote.
I have lived in Maryland since 1991 and in Olney since 1995. My wife has been both a classroom teacher and a substitute teacher for Montgomery County Public Schools. I have two children; both graduated from Good Counsel High School and now attend the University of Maryland at College Park. I am a member of St. Peter's Church in Olney, play trombone for the Olney Concert Band, and have completed the Marine Corps Marathon five times. I am a certified scuba diver, and my favorite parts of Montgomery County are Brookside Gardens and the trails at Lake Frank.
I am a professional economist. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with undergraduate, Masters, and doctorate degrees in Economics, I began my career as an Economist with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. I worked on broad range of competition issues while I was with DOJ. It was a fantastic place to start my professional career, and I loved every minute of my time there. Since leaving Justice, I have been an economist working in private practice on a broad range of issues, including healthcare policy, antitrust policy, and the analysis of numerous markets.
I have never held an elected public office. I am running for Delegate because I believe that our government needs new ideas and a new approach to the problems we face. The economic and other problems we face, both as state and also as a nation, are immense, and I am running in this election so that I can help tackle these problems.
We all know that we have gone through a deep recession, that tax revenues have declined, and that state and local budgets have been very tight. Our first task is to rebuild Maryland's economy. According to Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, Maryland's unemployment rate doubled from 4% in the first few months of 2008 to 8% in the first few months of 2010. Over 200,000 people in Maryland are unemployed, and the state's labor force has declined by 60,000 workers. Discouraged workers not actively looking for work are excluded from the unemployment figures, and the decline in the labor force makes clear that the pool of people in Maryland that would like a job but do not have one is substantially larger than 200,000 individuals.
The facts are well known about our financial problems as a country. Maryland faces large financial problems of its own, but these problems are less well known. I discuss Maryland's budget and tax problems on the Issues page of this website. Federal and state budget problems are related. Federal money has helped prop up Maryland's government, but Federal deficits are unsustainable, and federal support for Maryland will decline. How will the General Assembly deal with this? The current General Assembly has resorted to numerous, very large tax increases. Income taxes and corporate taxes have been increased, and the sales tax was increased from 5% to 6% (a 20% increase). These tax increases have eroded our tax base. How do we want to deal with our state's taxes and spending going forward? Do we want to add new taxes and raise existing tax rates or do we want to cut taxes and spending? My opponents from the Democratic Party want to raise taxes, including personal income taxes, corporate taxes, alcohol taxes, and gasoline taxes.
I had a discussion with a District 14 resident that convinced me that I needed to run for public office. The subject of the discussion was the federal budget deficit. U.S. government borrowing increased by $1.611 trillion during 2009. This is a huge amount of borrowing, and future years are projected to have similar deficits. A comment made during the discussion was, "Unless this problem is knocking at the door, why should we care about it?" How could our financial problems NOT be knocking at the door? $1.611 trillion dollars is a huge amount of money. The annual deficit is running at 12% of our nation's economy. There have been riots in the streets of Greece over budget cuts. Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Germany, and other countries have recently cut spending due to their own fiscal problems. Stocks have fluctuated wildly due to concerns over sovereign debts, and the European Union recently established a $1 trillion fund to stabilize the euro currency in response to debt problems in Greece, whose population is roughly that of Ohio. If fiscal problems are not knocking at the door now, what will it take? This could also be said of Maryland. Our unfunded state pension liability is about $33 billion. These problems won't go away, and will only get worse if they continue to be ignored. It becomes more difficult to solve Maryland's problems the longer we wait.
To rebuild Maryland's economy, we need to encourage private job creation, and we need to get our fiscal house in order. I support passing laws that eliminate budget gimmicks so that we don't saddle our children and grandchildren with our expenses. State and teacher pensions were underfunded by about $1 billion last year alone. I support increasing the threshold on Maryland's death tax so that small business owners can pass their businesses to their families instead of moving to another state to avoid estate taxes. I support reducing regulatory red tape that encourages business to move jobs out-of-state. Maryland has lived beyond its means for too long. We need to acknowledge our limitations and use the resources we have wisely. One example of outright waste that costs millions of dollars annually is the excessive use of expensive branded drugs as opposed to inexpensive generic drugs in our state's Medicaid program. Maryland's Medicaid program is ranked 49th out of the 50 states in terms of generic drug usage. Only one state ranks lower. This is like throwing away tens of millions of state tax dollars annually. We also need to make Maryland a less costly place for businesses to operate and grow.
Please use this website to learn more about the issues facing our state and my positions on these issues, to volunteer to help with my campaign, and to donate to my campaign so that I can get my message out to more people. You can also order a yard sign or schedule a community session where you, your neighbors, and I can discuss the issues facing our state. There is also a suggestion box. If you have ideas about how we can use our resources more effectively, please let me know. Only by working together can we fix our state government and make Maryland work for all of us.
It is time to tackle the problems of our state and to point our national leaders in a new direction. The task ahead is immense. Working together, we can solve Maryland's financial problems, expand its economy, and create private sector jobs. I ask for your ideas about solving these problems. Maryland's primary election is September 14, and the General Election is November 2. Please review the issues discussed in this website and consider voting for me to represent you and the rest of Legislative District 14 in Annapolis as one of your three Delegates.
Sincerely,
Henry J. Kahwaty, Ph.D.
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