Health insurance woes, education, border major worries Giffords says

Arizona is one of the country’s fastest-growing states and its problems need to be addressed soon U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said.

Speaking in Tucson she pointed out how many children in America don’t have health insurance and how Arizona schools rate D’s and F’s.

She also took note of the inability to solve the problem of illegal entrants and the federal government’s failure to help state and local officials deal with it.

In her “State of the District” talk at Tucson’s Double Tree Hotel on Friday, she said “we all know there is a healthcare crisis in our country,” with 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance.

Of those there are 265,000 Arizona children who don’t have health coverage. That means 20 percent “of all our kids…are not covered.” She said 119,000 of them are eligible for Arizona-funded health programs “but aren’t enrolled.”

“The United States is the richest nation in the world. We should be able to insure our children.”

On education she said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gives Arizona a D in academic achievement and an F in post-secondary and workforce readiness.

She said on a national level the No Child Left Behind program was underfunded “which has left schools struggling for the resources” they need.

Southeastern Arizona—Douglas, Benson, Tombstone and Bisbee—is Ground Zero of our national immigration crisis, she said.

Things that will be needed to solve the problem, she said, will be better cooperation between the local and federal government, a way to solve worker shortage here and help for employers to screen out possible illegal immigrants.

She noted that Benson, east of Green Valley, now has about 4,200 residents, “but now over 50,000 homes are slated for construction.”

“Arizona is now the fastest growing state in the nation” with towns like Benson exploding with growth.

She said Arizona needs to “take the lead in such things as smart growth, transportation infrastructure, water conservation and renewable energy.”

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