The area's three Congressional freshmen: Democrats Eric Massa, Dan Maffei, and Republican Chris Lee are coming to Capitol Hill during a time of financial gloom and anxiety.

When these new representatives were campaigning, TARP - the acronym for the financial bailout, technically the Troubled Asset Relief Program - hadn't yet entered the national lexicon and Detroit's dire condition wasn't entirely clear. During their weeklong orientation in November, the new representatives' schedules were scrapped so that they could join caucus meetings about a bailout for the Big Three automakers.

The old hands have been living and breathing this stuff for the past few months. They've negotiated a $700-billion bailout for the financial industry and debated a domestic automaker bailout - Congress failed to pass a package but the Bush administration pushed through $17.4 billion in emergency loans for GM and Chrysler.

The public, meanwhile, grows increasingly anxious about the faltering economy; it hard not to when the nation loses 533,000 jobs in a single month - as it did in November.

But these representatives were elected based, at least to some degree, on their ideas, whether it's fast-tracking alternative-energy investment or a market-based approach to health care.

Two of the three new representatives - Chris Lee didn't return interview requests - say that the economic issues facing the country make now the time to push ahead with some of those plans; the only limit is political will.

People across the country are, once again, experiencing lofty insurance premium hikes. Locally, the two biggest insurers issued rate hikes between 10 and 15 percent for 2009.  

Americans are looking to Congress and the new president to fix the health-care system. But the same public may be leery about a reform plan that carries a substantial starting price tag.

During his campaign, Massa backed HR676, which would create a single-payer health system. He says that the bill, which stalled in the House health subcommittee, is still the best option. A good place to start, though, is to pass an expanded state children's health care program, he says.

"Revolutionizing health care is not going to be put on hold because it will cost too much," Massa says. "Revolutionizing health care will happen because it's going to save money and help build the economy. This is the enabler, it's not the detractor."

Maffei leans toward a system that mixes private and government health insurance plans.

"I know that it's going to have to be a team approach and a team effort," he says.

Lee backed market-based, private health insurance during his campaign. But premium hikes, coupled with the lax regulatory environment that contributed to the financial crash, may make the public wary of that idea.

Maffei made alternative energy research and development - wind and solar power as much as energy-efficient vehicles - a centerpiece of his campaign. Significant investment will create jobs and spur the breakthroughs that are needed in the field, he says. But gasoline prices dropped tremendously in the past month, which means that the public may not be as motivated to find a stable alternative to oil.

"We need to get ourselves off of foreign oil and eventually off of fossil fuels completely," Maffei says. "The spike in gas prices was one of the causes of the economic crash, which then brought gas prices and a lot of other commodities down with it. But it doesn't mean that we should reverse any long-term consideration."

Massa campaigned on a similar notion. Green tech investment is a good way to create jobs and to "build our way out" of a recession, he says.

Both representatives expect that Congress will again have to deal with the plight of the American auto manufacturers. Any further aid can be used as leverage - "a great enabler," Massa says - to get the Big Three automakers to produce fuel-efficient, hybrid, or plug-in electric vehicles and to do it on domestic soil.

The top priority in the Iraq war will be withdrawing troops - Massa and Maffei support doing so on an 18-month timeline. There's public support for that idea and Obama supports troop withdrawal - he favors a 16-month timeline but says that he'll listen to commanders about how to proceed. The Iraqi Parliament has also called for a withdrawal timeline.

Afghanistan will be a trickier issue. Massa and Maffei say that there are military, diplomatic, and political roles for the United States there.

It's not lost on either of the representatives that, as newcomers, their influence will be limited. But they are confident that they'll have some sway.

One reason is numbers. The Rochester-area Congressional delegation is four members - larger than other cities of the same size. And the state delegation makes up a significant chunk of the Democratic caucus.

"Working together, we actually have quite a bit of influence," Maffei says.

On Upstate issues, that will include working with the Republican Lee when there's common ground - the two talked at length during orientation.

It helps that one of the local delegation's members is a veteran lawmaker with lots of clout, House Rules committee chair and Fairport Democrat Louise Slaughter.

As for committee assignments, Massa and Maffei are working with other Upstate Democrats to make sure that the region is represented on the committees most important to it - transportation and infrastructure, financial services, and military and veterans affairs among them. Massa is seeking a seat on the agriculture committee as a top priority, since that's a large industry in his vast district.