Rep. Claudia Tenney Discusses Second Term, Immigration, and Other Issues

It's now been nearly two months since the tight race for New York's 22nd Congressional District seat was finally resolved. In early February, Republican Claudia Tenney was sworn into the office after coming out ahead of her opponent, incumbent Anthony Brindisi, by just over 100 votes. Tenney sat down with Fox 40 on Thursday morning to discuss some key issues. 

Tenney previously represented NY-22 from 2017 to 2019. She says the partnerships she developed with colleagues across the aisle are even more important now with the democratic party holding the majority in the House of Representatives. 

"When I was in office, my first term, as a member of Congress, we signed a commitment to civility and in that commitment to civility, we pledged to work with each other to put out all bipartisan bills. When I returned to the House in that first couple of weeks in February, my democratic friends who signed the commitment to civility said ‘let’s bring it back, let’s talk about it. We want to work with you,'" says Tenney. 

The congresswoman specifically named representatives Mike Thompson and Juan Vargas from California, as well as Vicente Gonzalez from Texas as being some of those democratic colleagues willing to partner up on bipartisan legislation. 

"People who I had worked with in the past who I probably don’t agree with on most things, but we were able to find common ground and we’re finding common ground again. I’ve already had three bills passed, which is more than I got passed when the republicans were in charge in the first few weeks because you know, I was able to get democrats to work with me on these bills," says Tenney. 

When it comes to current issues, Tenney says she's focused on helping small businesses, especially in the wake of COVID-19. She also recently visited the U.S. border in El Paso to see what the conditions are there. She says action is needed to address the situation of overcrowded child processing centers. 

"These children mostly aren’t coming because they have an asylum claim, they’re being picked off by human traffickers and sold to the highest bidder and dropped at the border," says Tenney, "We don’t have enough room to place these children in and they’re trying to get them placed with Health and Human Services as quickly as possible, but this is really, really tragic and I wish that the Vice President who is now in charge of this would go to the border, listen to the border police."

Turning the conversation to recent attempts in some states to tax digital advertising, Tenney says, as a rule, she is against additional taxation, but she would need to see if there is a good reason for it and she would need to be assured it wouldn't hurt small businesses.