Emma Mustion
October 30, 2026 · Website
ICYMI: Mayor Paige Discusses Her Anti-Corruption, Cost Lowering Agenda on Morning Joe Following Debate with Rob Bresnahan
Paige: “Last night at the debate, [Bresnahan] was saying that he ‘has Pennsylvanians in mind.’ He wouldn’t have voted for the Iran War six times, the tariffs eight times, and voted to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid while giving himself a tax break if that were the case.”
SCRANTON, PA – Scranton Mayor and candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District Paige Cognetti today joined the hosts of MSNOW’s Morning Joe to talk about her record of delivering results for the city of Scranton and all the promises Rob Bresnahan has broken since going down to Washington.
Paige outlined her agenda to lower costs, address the health care crisis that Bresnahan unleashed on NEPA, and hold the corrupt politicians in Washington accountable – just like she did last night on the debate stage in Pittston. On the eve of Halloween, she also discussed just how much more the holiday is costing young families like hers this year – and how she’ll vote to immediately end the cost-spiking Iran War and reckless tariffs as NEPA’s congresswoman.
Mika Brzezinski: “I hear you have daughters. I’m just curious if you’re hearing on the campaign trail from a lot of women about access to health care and life saving health care–what would you be able to do? What would be your Day One focus on costs for health care?”
Paige: “Today I’ve got a couple little girls downstairs getting ready for their Halloween parades, and we’re all complaining about the cost of candy. Sour Patch Kids are up 40%. Hershey’s products are up 25%… You know, and we can laugh in these moments as we’re fighting this fight. But the costs are extreme.
We already have 9,000 people in this five county area in Northeastern Pennsylvania who don’t have access to healthcare. We’re looking at another 20,000 that are going to lose it later today. I’ll be at Moses Taylor Hospital. We are making sure that we keep the doors open as best we can in our hospitals, in Scranton and beyond. But this gutting of Medicaid is making the math not work for hospitals.
“It has only gotten worse, and it’s only going to get worse when these cuts really go into effect. So in Congress in January, we got to put the floor back under Medicaid. The system needs a lot of reform. The ACA was never perfect. We all know that. But we cannot make the reforms that are necessary in health care with millions of Americans off of the insurance rolls.”
Jonathan Lemire: “So, Madam Mayor, you obviously just went through the idea of the cost seem priority for Democrats, were they to take the majority, were you to win in next week’s time. How do you balance that with the call from so many Democrats about accountability, about investigations that should be conducted into the Trump administration, whether the president himself, his family, his cabinet and the like? How do you do both?”
Paige: “Before I was mayor, I was on the Scranton school board and same thing–there was criminal activity happening on the school board. I stood for an appointment, called in the attorney general, who was then [now Governor] Josh Shapiro, and we pushed out that corruption at the Scranton School District. I then worked for the auditor general looking at waste, fraud and abuse across school districts. That’s what I want to do in Congress: get in there, dig in. What are the procurement violations? What are the agencies doing that they shouldn’t be doing? And this, you know, it doesn’t matter which party. The corruption can go either way.
“We need to be able to call it like we see it wherever that corruption happens. We have to go into those oversight processes really focused on how we can make the government work for people.
“The federal government is captured by corporations and billionaires. We all know that the economy is rigged. We need to make sure that we’re doing the oversight in parallel with the things that will meaningfully lower costs: ending the war on Iran, ending the erratic tariffs, and making sure that we’re showing people that we’re serious about working for them.”