{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://harris.house.gov/media/in-the-news/congressman-andy-harris-tours-northwest-carroll-county", "Congressman Andy Harris Tours Northwest Carroll County", "2017-11-10", "2017", "2017-11", "Republican", "House", "MD", "Andy Harris", "H001052", "harris.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "In the front showroom of The Taney Corp. on Allendale Lane in Taneytown, there is a sweeping, walnut staircase that ascends through a cream-colored aperture in the ceiling. If you stand beneath it and look up, as owner Jeff Glass invited a group of local dignitaries who had assembled around visiting Congressman Andy Harris, R-District 1, you would see the staircase has \u201can elliptical shape, a sort of that egg shape to it,\u201d Glass said. \u201cVery unusual type of stair.\u201d\nHarris visited The Taney Corp. on Friday as part of a tour of businesses in the northwest corner of the county and his district. He would later visit Taneytown-based pump manufacturer Flowserve before heading to the Hampstead area to drop in on Sauder\u2019s Eggs and commercial spice-maker Fuchs North America.\nAt The Taney Corp., Harris spoke with Glass and workers about their business of custom stair building, first purchased by Glass\u2019 father in 1962. They discussed the curving of fine woods and the training of employees with an aptitude for it.\nAnd there was the answering of stair-related historical trivia posed to Harris and his entourage, such as what to call the small ivory buttons installed in the posts at the bottom of the sweeping walnut showcase stair banisters. (Answer: They\u2019re known as \u201cbrag buttons.\u201d)\n\u201cIf you go in a house and there is a wooden button, that signifies there is still a mortgage on the house,\u201d Glass said. \u201cWhen you pay the mortgage, you burn the mortgage, you pull that plug out, you put the ashes in the hole and you put an ivory button in to indicate you\u2019ve paid your mortgage, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s called a brag button.\u201d\nHarris began the day at Taneytown\u2019s Thunderhead Bowl, eating breakfast with business and community leaders, and then spending the better part of an hour answering questions from constituents, delving deep at times into policy.\nOne man in the audience asked about health care, noting that, \u201cI have not heard one good reason why I should pay for somebody else\u2019s health care.\u201d\nIt is a sentiment with which Harris agreed.One man in the audience asked about health care, noting that, \u201cI have not heard one good reason why I should pay for somebody else\u2019s health care.\u201d\n\u201cWe have grown into an income retribution country,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact of the matter is, it actually goes even beyond that because you pay for health care for people who aren\u2019t taking care of themselves.\u201d\nHarris is not a fan, he said, of the\u00a0Medicaid\u00a0expansion that took place under the President Barack Obama-era Affordable Care Act, at least as it was passed by the then-Democrat controlled Congress.\n\u201cWe added 10 million people to Medicaid, and the biggest expansion was what we called able-bodied adults without dependents,\u201d he said, that is, low-income adults without children or disabilities became eligible for health insurance coverage through state-operated \u2014 but federally funded \u2014 Medicaid programs.\n\u201cAll we wanted to do was put a work-training, work-seeking requirement on that. \u2018We\u2019ll help you, but we\u2019re going to help you get out of the need for the help,\u2019 \u201d Harris told the group at breakfast. \u201cThe pushback was tremendous. For the life of me, I can\u2019t understand.\u201d\nHarris believes in helping those that need it, but also helping them to help themselves so they do not need that help forever, he explained to his audience.\nHe also believes in the power of a growing economy to float all boats, to generate jobs for those who need to help so they can help themselves, and to increase wages for those already employed.\nHe listened with great interest at his third stop of the day, Flowserve, as general manager Chris Heacock explained how the company has set up a 4,000-hour machinist apprenticeship program to train young people in the use of fine machining tools \u2014 a necessity, Heacock pointed out, because a whole generation of skilled machinists are now nearing retirement.\nAnd those machinists in a nondescript block-shaped building in Taneytown were busy Friday, as evident in a tour, creating pump and turbine components that are shipped worldwide \u2014 according to Heacock, every molten salt solar plant in the world has pumps manufactured in Taneytown.\nIt\u2019s companies like this, Harris said later in an interview, that can really help the economy grow, and tax reform, such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives, that can help those companies do it.\n\u201cTax reform for a company like this is incredibly important,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not only a tax cut, but an increase in pay over time as businesses invest, become more productive, and pass some of those savings on to their employees.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://harris.house.gov/media/in-the-news/congressman-andy-harris-tours-northwest-carroll-county"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8644461631774902, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}