Billy Kennedy's Hands Win Another Battle with Incumbent Virginia Foxx

BOONE -- The audience was stunned tonight when Congresswoman Virginia Foxx tried to imply that Billy Kennedy isn't the working man he says he is. She smirked as she held up her own hands as proof that she works.

The audience in the Watauga County Courthouse gasped. Billy Kennedy lost the tip of his index finger in a workplace carpentry accident almost four years ago. Virginia Foxx apparently didn't know that.

After that opening, Virginia Foxx stuck with her Washington talking points.

She said she would like to see 5 percent across-the-board cuts to the federal budget.

What she didn't pause to explain was how 5 percent cuts to Social Security, Medicare and education -- to name only three programs important to 5th District citizens -- would harshly impact seniors, children and others already suffering from job losses and the stock market crash brought on by failed economic policies supported by Foxx.

Kennedy said, "I will not cut Social Security and Medicare."

Foxx defended the corporate takeover of our American democracy. She praised the Supreme Court decision this year that gave the biggest corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of cash to influence our elections.

Billy Kennedy responded, "I'm all for individual rights. When corporations can show us their birth certificates, then we can give them the same rights as individuals."

Foxx said she supported no federal assistance for education -- zero. Kennedy in response defended the many lower-income students who had benefited from federal loans -- which Foxx has voted against -- and the importance of the Federal School Lunch Program which made learning a possibility for many kids in public school, and which Foxx also voted against.

Foxx suggested that federal unemployment benefits just made workers lazy. Kennedy countered that it takes a cold heart indeed to deny people who are truly hurting for work -- through no fault of their own -- a helping hand until they can find new jobs.

Tonight's encounter was the second face-to-face public exchange that Kennedy and Foxx have had in the past three days, and Kennedy got a second slam dunk.