Congressional candidate Lisa Scheller on the economy, Israel and the opioid epidemic
WASHINGTON (SBG) – One business owner hopes to flip eastern Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district from blue to red. Lisa Scheller, the chairman and president of a manufacturing company her grandfather started in 1945, joined Jan Jeffcoat on The National Desk to discuss her campaign in the midterm elections.
“I’m running for Congress because I believe in the American dream and I want to defend the American dream for all of us and for small businesses,” said Lisa Scheller to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat. “As a job creator, I know what it takes to create jobs and to grow our economy. And right now we see the opposite going on in spending and actually everything in government overreach and everything that is going on in Washington.”
Scheller says the issues that matter most to Pennsylvanians in the seventh district are jobs and the economy.
“Getting America back to work, getting people back into jobs, getting things flowing again, getting over this COVID pandemic so that we can actually get back to our lives,” said Scheller.
Officials in Scranton, Pennsylvania, renamed the Scranton Expressway to the Joe Biden Expressway in honor of the president. But Scheller says local residents are unhappy with the change.
“What I hear is, why are we naming anything after a president who really had a plan, and has failed at everything that is going on whether it’s Afghanistan, whether it’s Israel, a $3.5 trillion socialist spending spree, our southern border, COVID – the failures just mound up, why are we naming anything after him?” said Scheller.
In September, progressive Democrats pushed for funding for Israel’s Iron Dome to be defunded. As someone of the Jewish faith, Scheller says the relationship between herself and Israel is personal – but her reasoning goes beyond that.
“Israel is a beacon of light for democracy and freedom in the Middle East,” said Scheller.
Scheller claims that instead of coming together with allies such as Israel, the UAE, and Morocco in the Middle East, Democrats instead “want to fund terrorism” through Iran and Palestine.
“The Iron Dome has one purpose and one purpose only: that is to protect life, to protect the lives of Israelis living in Israel, of Palestinians living in Israel, of Arabs living in Israel, anybody who was living in Israel,” said Scheller. “I frankly felt disgusted when the Democrats and Susan Wilde who failed to vote decided to remove the funding for Iron Dome from the bill.”
As the opioid crisis affects the nation, Scheller has a personal connection to the crisis as a former heroin addict.
“I’m in recovery from heroin addiction for more than 39 years, and I was anonymous for most of those 39 years because of the stigma associated with being in recovery,” said Scheller. “As I watched the opioid epidemic unfold in our country. I couldn’t stay on the sidelines any further. I had to put a face on what recovery looks like and help end the stigma.”
Scheller founded a coffee shop that employs addicts in early recovery to end the stigma of recovery and help addicts return to the workforce.
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