A Democratic candidate looking to unseat a federal lawmaker came out swinging outside a polling station in Williamsport.

Rachel Wallace told the Sun-Gazette how U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Dallas, has demonstrated an unresponsiveness that she would counter if elected in November.

“Moving back home and paying attention I felt the bar was very low,” Wallace said for her reasons for entering the race.

Recently, Gov. Josh Shapiro lauded Wallace and told people gathered during a campaign stop for candidates at Lycoming College that she would be more responsive than Meuser.

“Meuser does not live in the district,” Wallace said, adding how “he’s never held a town hall.”

Meuser’s office contacts were asked by the Sun-Gazette for the Congressman’s response. The campaign manager said Meuser would be willing to have an interview.

“I was meeting people in Williamsport and Lebanon County who are at his office protesting every week and he is not there,” Wallace said.

“Most people are reasonable,” Wallace said. “They just want to have a voice and believe they are being represented.”

Wallace stated that many people she’s spoken with in her travels feel like members of Congress are “in it for themselves.”

“I understand where they are coming from,” she said, citing how Meuser has “doubled his wealth since he got into office, with a stock portfolio that has out-performed those of billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

“So, it is fair to me that people feel like all politicians are just in it for themselves, they are not doing anything for the community,” she said, supporting a ban on stock trading by members of Congress or their spouses.

“People need to feel confident that their representative bottom line is for the district bottom line and not their own stock portfolio.”

Critical of the passage of the “Big Ugly Bill,” which she called the legislation passed last summer, she claims it has and will continue to kick an estimated 30,000 people in the 9th Congressional district off of their prior health care coverage – between the Affordable Care Act subsidy cuts and the Medicaid cuts.

“That is not going to happen all at once but it will happen,” she warned, adding there are potential impacts such as hospitals that can close or limit their services locally.

“If you have hospitals close or limit their options, it is going to have ripple effects on the economy here,” Wallace said.

Health care is my number one issue.

“We need to lower health care costs,” she said, adding how she believes that could be done in a bipartisan way.

“I think we can do that by holding insurance companies accountable,” she said, favoring banning prior authorization, a system whereby insurance companies can deny payment for coverage promised when the customer purchased the policy.

“I’d like to cap the money from the premiums that insurance companies can use toward executive salaries,” she said. “I’d like to take a real hard look at some of the consolidation that we see where all of a sudden you sell health insurance, you provide health care and you are also a pharmacy – as part of the business model . . . there is a reason why everything is so expensive and it is just because it consolidated everything at every point in the health care process and upped the price.”

After speaking with representatives of Williamsport bureaus of Fire and Police, Wallace discussed her plans on funding issues, specifying her concern for fire companies, not touching on police, and firefighters’ struggling to pay for apparatus that has tripled in cost.

Wallace would support a once-in-a-generation funding bill for public safety needs such as fire truck purchases.

“We have seen a consolidation of the fire truck manufacturing companies with a truck that used to cost $500,000 now over $1 million,” she said, warning how paid and volunteer companies can’t support that kind of expense by holding out a boot to cars passing by, or a carnival or bingo.

She believes that kind of funding would be a bipartisan issue.

“You’re volunteering but you’re also a professional fundraiser,” she said. “It is a mess.”