No, I'm not a self-made man.

Just like the rest of our nation, I watched last night's debate. While the insults, lies, and spectacle perturbed me as an extreme deviation from what we understand to be Presidential behavior, what dismayed me the most was the complete lack of substance. What I wanted to hear last night was how the issues that face Americans would be remedied. Questions about child care costs were turned into who the military loved more or who was a better golfer. I know the people of the 15th District don't care how good I am at golf, they want to hear what I'm fighting for.

Over 1 in 10 people in the 15th Congressional District suffer from food insecurity. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson calls SNAP, a program that keeps food in the mouths of the poor, "[O]ur nation's most broken and bloated welfare program." Speaker Johnson might be unaware as he only entered Congress in 2017 that his party already drastically cut "welfare" programs in 1996 through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, resulting in nearly half of those receiving SNAP funds no longer receiving them.

The comment that really angered me was when Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia said SNAP was, "[O]ne of the largest government handout programs[.]" Giving people roughly $130 per month to purchase food to live is not a "handout". It offends logic, compassion, and the testimony of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to attack a program that provides food to those who are impoverished, especially at a time when these same politicians are belaboring the cost of groceries.

I am so tired of hearing that helping our fellow man is something to be admonished. There is no one on this planet who finds themselves in a position of success without the help of others. This is my personal testimony, informed by Genesis 2:18;21-24: "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" "So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.' Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." My wife made me who I am. When she met me I was a young man with a troubled childhood, severe depression, and no belief in my future. I know it sounds corny, but she was the wind beneath my wings. She prompted me to achieve things I never thought possible. She took me from a construction worker and a pizza delivery boy to a law student on a full scholarship. Without her help, love, guidance, and faith, I hate to think where I'd be. I continue to need her help. I am a mere mortal, I am flawed, when my battery runs out when my faith falls low, I turn toward my wife, and she restores me to the best version of myself.

When I think of those who disparage the fundamental reality that everyone needs help, when I hear those folks say they are, "self-made", I hear someone who overlooks every person who helped them get where they were. My passion for those who have little comes from my recognition that under different circumstances, I would be the man Kohelet speaks about in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken." Who is to look after the man or woman who doesn't have an Angela in their life? What of the child whose parents are addicted to opioids thrust upon them by unscrupulous corporate greed?

When politicians see it fit to subsidize corporations like Boeing that pay their CEO $32 million, but not the vulnerable just over $100 a month for groceries, there is something incredibly wrong with our political system. My pursuit in this campaign and my life is not acclaim, fame, or power. My goal is simply to turn political discourse away from nonsense and toward the real issues that face our communities. Come January when I am elected to the United States Congress, I will not be thinking about how to make the national news, I will be thinking about the fact that 41% of my district that suffers from food insecurity is not eligible for SNAP.