MAINE, USA — There were sharp differences but also some agreement as Political Brew analysts Ray Richardson and Ethan Strimling tackled a wide range of issues this week.
They disagreed on a demand from Republicans in the Maine Legislature for the University of Maine System to follow the lead of the state's community colleges and drop the COVID vaccine mandate.
Ray Richardson, the Republican, said the mandate should be rescinded.
“On August 1, 20212, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the difference between being vaccinated an unvaccinated is the length of time a person is sick,” Richardson said.
He argued the vaccine mandate no longer serves a valid purpose on the campuses and that instead there should be much more testing when people start to feel ill.
Democrat Ethan Strimling said the vaccine mandates are sensible and ought to continue.
“The University of Maine System knows what’s best for their students and should be allowed to do what’s best for their students," Strimling argued. "I commend the UMS for sticking with their policies.”
There was general agreement between the two on proposals in the Legislature to dramatically increase fines for distracted driving, aimed primarily at drivers using cell phones. Both said the proposal to raise fines to $600 for the first offense and $1,000 for the second would pose a severe hardship on low-income people.
Strimling and Richardson both said they oppose a plan being developed in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Angus King and others that could raise the age for Social Security benefits to 70. Richardson said raising the age might be acceptable if it applied to people now in their 20s, giving them far longer to prepare. But Strimling said many Mainers work jobs that take a toll on them physically and cannot wait until 70 to retire.
Both said the way to address the potential insolvency of Social Security is to include some version of means testing, so wealthy people don’t get it, and to raise or eliminate the earnings cap that currently means many higher income earners only pay Social Security tax on part of their incomes.
On national issues, they disagreed on the question raised by the FBI and Department of Energy suggesting the COVID virus originated in a Chinese lab and somehow escaped from there.
We need to be very careful, there are a lot of unanswered questions and right now zero evidence this is true,” said Strimling, who added that it still appears more likely the virus originated in animals and then spread to humans, as other viruses have done.
Richardson, however, disagreed.
“We know people who worked in that lab were getting sick in November of 2019," he said. "So I think its most likely it leaked out, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Both agreed that the confusing messages from the Biden administration don’t help.
"I think part of the reason people like me have trouble with government is they should shouldn’t have talked about it until they had one answer,” Richardson said.
Both agreed the investigation needs to continue, and that it's essential to to determine where and how the virus originated.
RIchardson and Strimling also agreed with proposals from Rep. Chellie Pingree and Sen. Susan Collins that would allow asylum seekers to work much more quickly than they can now, possibly within 30 days of arrival.
Richardson said the current situation, where asylum seekers may be waiting a year or more to get work permits, is “absurd."
“These folks are exactly what we need in our economy,” Strimling said. “And the only reason they don’t work is because the federal government says they can’t.”