Young talks politics, volunteering

Despite it not being an election year, Rep. Todd Young, R-9th District, visited College Republicans at IU on Monday night in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs to support student campaign volunteers and discuss his new role on two House Ways and Means subcommittees.

“When I first ran for office in 2010, people looked a bit askance at this Bloomington Republican,” Young said. “But once we got toward the end, we were able to crank out thousands of phone calls. That was in large measure because of the efforts of many people here.”

When an audience member mentioned he was attending law school, Young wouldn’t accept any excuses.

“Maybe we can squeeze a few phone calls out of you,” Young said to laughs in the crowd.

Currently on the final stop of a two-week congressional recess, Young typically speaks with the College Republicans once a semester.

“He gives us the insight of everything that’s going on in Washington and where the Republican Party is going,” College Republicans Chairman Daniel Cheesman said. “He’s a big name and always gets people to come down.”

Young, who received his law degree from IU and currently lives in Bloomington, touched on efforts by House Republicans to lower the U.S. corporate tax rates and work with the Affordable Care Act.

“It’s going to be around for a while, and our goal on the Ways and Means Committee is to explore ways to improve the law — maybe with an eye to replace it with something that better controls costs,” Young said. “Unfortunately it’s not financed in a sustainable way.”

After working with House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan on the 2012 GOP-proposed budget, Young and his colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee are currently working to reform U.S. tax code.

“We’re reforming tax code for the first time in a quarter century, and though I dismissively and jokingly called this a boring thing, it’s actually very exciting,” Young said. “The federal government takes a lot of your money, and you’ll discover how mind-numbingly complex our tax code is. It can also get expensive. Our objective within the Ways and Means Committee is to simplify this whole process.”

After answering questions about his path to Congress and other Republican ideals, he mentioned the importance of remaining a bipartisan resource for the Bloomington community, a traditionally left-leaning town compared to the rest of Indiana.

“It’s important to know that, though this is a political gathering for political people, we’ve made a point to make a strong effort on our official side, not our campaign efforts, to make people feel represented,” Young said. “We are not running an ideological office, we are running an open office where people can feel like they’re represented.”