Transcripts For CSPAN3 Rep. Jim Himes Town Hall 20240713

And most importantly, i want to thank all of you for taking time out of saturday to have this conversation. This is your hour and a half and i will leave the vast bulk of the time for your questions, your comments, your suggestions. I want to open with just a couple of minutes of context and things that i see happening in washington and then i will turn it over entirely to you. The way that we will do that is that there are microphones on either side of the room. And rather than having me picking and choosing within the audience, please just line up behind the microphones if you in fact have a question or a comment. I will ask you to be brief in your questions or observations and i will be brief in my responses because we probably will have lots of people who want to be heard. Other thing i want to say is just so you know, we agreed to allow cspan to record this town hall meeting. I had no doubt whatsoever that we could show the country the kind of thoughtful and respectful civil dialogue we have here in fairfield county. Be aware that you could get famous on cspan, so that youre aware. And as i said before we get into your questions and comments and observations, i just wanted to take a few minutes to give you some context on some things. And i want to start with an optimistic and hopefully somewhat reassuring note because it is no secret that we are in some of the most polarized, angry, political times that most of us can remember. And it is in those circumstances hard to get things done. It is hard for us to have a civic and civil dialogue amongst ourselves given the polarization. So i want to start with a reassuring note which is really twofold. Number one, even in these polarized times, stuff gets done. Stuff that is important to you and to me. Stuff that is important to our state. And i want to give you a couple quick examples just to reassure you. And its not huge stuff. Its not Climate Change. Its not a reform of our educational system, but its important stuff. Just two years or so ago the federal government made a major commitment to addressing what i consider a Real National emergency in this country which is the opioid situation. Theres not a family or community that hasnt been touched by the tragedy of opioid addiction and overdoses. And in connecticut, we actually have an incidence of opioid overdoses that is twice the national average. So it is a very serious issue. It does not discriminate between suburbs, urban areas, young or old, rich or poor. And about two years ago, the federal government made a very substantial commitment in resources to make sure that every police officer, every fire truck had narcan, this miracle antidote that has saved so many lives to make sure our communities have Public Health people who understand the signs, who know how to guide folks who are suffering from addiction into the appropriate areas and weve worked with the centers for Disease Control in a very difficult exercise of getting doctors to think about other mechanisms for pain control that are less risky than opioids. And as a result partly as a result, we have seen what has been an appalling acceleration in the rate of deaths in this country attributed to overdoses begin to level out and obviously we need to do everything we can to make that curve go downward. But that effort has actually had an impact on your communities. Another thing i would highlight for you, and this was interesting because it was so bipartisan. A little over a year ago, Congress Passed and the president signed something called the First Step Act. Some of you will be familiar with this. It was our first reform in a long time of our penal and our judicial system that look to address, in a small way, and thats why its called the First Step Act, some of the things, for example, that grew out of the 1970s three strikes youre out legislation. I was pretty young in the 70s. Back then, i guess it seemed like a good idea to say if you had been convicted of three felonies, you were imprisoned for life. Well, we had a lot of people in federal prison for life who had simply been caught dealing small quantities of narcotics. And that apart from being a tragedy for the community and the individual concerned is staggeringly expensive thing. The First Step Act addressed some of those issues. It addressed some of the sentencing inequities. Its been observed for a long time that the sentencing associated with crack cocaine was much more severe than the sentencing associated with the use of powder cocaine. Crack cocaine happens to be a drug that was more prevalent in communities of color, the africanamerican community, powdered cocaine less so. And so any number of steps that were taking to try to address the racial inequities that continue to plague at every step of the way our judicial system. The thing apart from it being good legislation. It had strong bipartisan support in the senate. It was led by cory booker and rand paul. Two guys who dont Work Together on a lot of stuff. And President Trump signed it. So, again, i cherish that because it was a nice combination. Last thing which is important to us, to everybody, but to us. After way too long. We did get the 9 11 survivors bill passed. This is billions of dollars that go to support those individuals who spent so much time down at the site at 9 11 and their families. Many of these individuals are [ applause ] took too long, but it got done. Thats particularly resonant for this community. Looking forward, i dont want to give you a lot more examples partly because im not sure i can, but i do want to look forward for you and tell you, were obviously going to go through a tough political moment in the next month or two associated with the impeachment process. Well talk about that if you like. I will tell you that looking forward i think there is a pretty good chance that we can get some success in something thats very important to the people in this room which is the spiraling cost of prescription drugs. I dont do a town hall meeting or have a meeting where i dont hear about well, the overarching the unbelievable cost of health care generally, but it is prescription drugs as a part of the Health Care System that is most growing most rapidly in terms of price. The house has a bill. Its known as hr3. Ill get into the details if youre interested. The senate has a bipartisan bill and the president has said over and over again that hes interested in acting in a way that would put downward pressure on prescription prices. Fingers crossed there. A little bit more esoteric, but usmca, which is nafta 2. 0 i actually think is going to get voted on and passed. This is an updating of the nafta freetrade agreement, have better Labor Protections for mexico, better enforcement around environmental issues. Actually higher u. S. Content in automobiles. Theres a lot of good stuff in there, and i think it can get done. My fingers remain crossed, although im not willing to bet the farm on the proposition that the president still says he wants to do a big infrastructure plan. And i dont to tell anyone in the room how important that is to our quality of life and to our Economic Future here in southwestern connecticut. You know where i stand on a lot of issues associated with this president , but the minute he is serious about putting together a substantial package on infrastructure, i will be there to be part of that effort because its probably the single most challenging thing for all of my constituents in southwestern connecticut. Before i turn it over to you, i want to do one last thing. Two days ago, three days ago, i had an Election Security update with the secretary of state for the state of connecticut. This questions comes up a lot. And i just want to report to you for two minutes that denise who sees this from her point of view looking over the shoulders of our registrars and looking at the equipment and systems that we use to vote in the state of connecticut and i who see this from the angle of someone on the intelligence something who sees the efforts that are being made by Foreign Countries to probe our election mechanics, we both feel pretty good that the technical side of going into our electoral apparatus, changing, attacking our we feel pretty good, cautious, but pretty good, that we are well positioned to detect such attempts and to stop such attempts. Its actually pretty hard to do because as you all know, elections are administered at the municipal level so we have a fabulously fragmented system. And theres all sorts of breaks. When you vote here in darien, the results are not automatically the equipment you use is not connected to the internet and actually to get data to the secretary of states office, a human has to enter that data into a system that gets it so there are breaks like that. You never say that its impossible, but the country has made some Real Progress in upgrading equipment. What i do worry about, i have a handout, i think, at your seats. What i do worry about is that in a society in which Free Expression is a value people get to try to manipulate you, and i printed out for you and i will show you for those of you who dont have them i printed out for you some examples of the advertisements that were purchased by the russians in advance of the 2016 election. And the reason i want to show you them is because we will continue to push hard on the technical side of this, but theres really no way to stop, particularly in a polarizing and emotional environment, the ability of russia or china or north korea or iran, to manipulate us based on the information that we see. As you know, we have a vibrant conversation going on right now about twitter and facebook. But i want you to see this because it is really pretty dark stuff. And in particular let me point out the ads on the right there. The burqa ad, we believe burqas should be banned, and that lower right ad, never forget that the black Panthers Group formed to protect black people from the kkk, the government took out the black panthers, the kkk is still here. Russia purchased created and purchased that ad. And you see what theyre doing. Theyre trying to poke at the phishers in our society. And so i wanted you to have this and to see this for no other reason than to suggest to you that we as citizens have work to do to remember that what we see online may actually be an attempt to get each other at each others throats, to manipulate you. We need to be a little bit more critical and a little bit more humble. We all experience this. I love the fact that i represent people from every corner of the political spectrum but we all experience the fact that when you see something online that you agree with, theres this rush of adrenaline and you feel good about it and you see something you dont agree with, and the point i want to make is that we all need to be thoughtful and critical about where we get our information, what it is, and what people might be trying to do. So ill leave that there. We can talk more about it. But i just wanted you to see since i spent an awful lot of time on the Intelligence Committee looking at these things what manipulation by the russians looked like back in 2016. If youre interested, theres a website up there where they have a lot more russian stuff up there. Okay. So that is everything i wanted to just set some context with you. Quick ground rules, any topic is inbounds. I will ask you to be relatively brief, again, we have a lot of people here, so i want to make sure everybody has a chance. I will try to do the same and be brief. And just one final reminder, i cant tell you how thrilled i am when we get a room full of people who have some disagreements. But i would just ask, disagreement is a strength and all of us deserve respect in our opinions. I would ask if people stand up and Say Something you dont agree with, lets show people respect so they can finish and regardless which side of the spectrum youre on and what you believe, lets show each other the respect because our opinions are all valid and they deserve the respect of at least being listened to. Thank you for that. Lets move to the mics. Raise your hand, just so people yeah. Oh, before i get to questions, sorry, i did leave something out too. The other handout is this mic working . Thats really aggravating. What do i do . Test. Maybe i need to hold it a little closer. Before we go to questions, you will also have on your seat a onepager which shows the bills that have passed out of the house of representatives. I should have mentioned this when i was talking about some of the bills that passed into law. You will see a lot of bills that didnt become law. Some of those bills, by the way, passed in a Democratic House and even in the best of times, would not get taken up in a republican senate. Some of those bills should. Hr8 is on there. Its the universal background check legislation that would say if you exercise your Second Amendment rights you will be subject to a background check, supported by 95 of americans. It passed the house. [ applause ] passed the house and lets say waiting for action in the senate. Okay. Hopefully thats going to continue to work. Yes, maam . First, i want to thank you for how hard you work for us and our country. What can congress do to ensure that the impeachment process is open and transparent so all americans know whats going on. Yeah, good question. Where we are in the impeachment process right now, this week, thursday and friday, there will be opened and televised hearings involving three diplomat, all three of these diplomats are professional diplomats, theyre not politically appointed for partisan reasons, who will be interviewed by democrats and republicans on the Intelligence Committee. So that will be there for all to see. All three of these diplomats have been deposed in previously depositions that i participated in. So pursuant to the legislation that was passed or the resolution that was passed last week, these open hearings will be followed by consideration in the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee will decide if articles are ultimately written. The president is afforded the same sort of due process protections in that process that president s have been afforded in past impeachments. Theres only been three of them. What would happen with the Judiciary Committee chooses to put articles on the floor, the president will have the opportunity to interview witnesses in the Judiciary Committee, to respond to those articles, to submit written testimony, and then if the articles were to pass the house floor, there would then be a trial in the senate. Impeachment is really a twostep process. The impeachment in the house, which is akin to an indictment, the house doesnt rule on innocence or guilt. It says we are the the right analogy is indicting the president. There would be a fullblown trial that looks like any other trial in the senate in which the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides. It will look like a trial that you might see in a traditional courtroom. Yes, sir . Good afternoon. Thank you for everything youre doing to hold the administration to account. I think thats very important. Representative jamie raskin s s introduced a bill for congressional elections. And youre probably aware of that. In connecticut theres a Citizens Group [ inaudible question ] it does a better job at nominating consensus candidates. In general elections it avoids the risk of thirdparty spoiler candidates. Would you consider cosponsoring that bill . Yeah. Thank you for the question. There may be some folks in the room who arent superfamiliar with the concept of rank choice voting. Its a voting procedure that has been used in the state of maine now for i guess a couple of years. And the idea is that you dont just say i vote for the republican but not the democrat, you actually rank the candidates. So if you have three candidates, you rank one, two, three. Its also known as an instant runoff election. What happens is, if no candidate in a rank choice election receives a majority, the third place in the example i just gave, the bottom vote earner, results are thrown out but that bottom vote earner, the second place for the people who put that person as their first place, get reallocated to the other candidates. Unless youve had a hot cup of coffee, thats a little complicated to follow. What the affect of that is, if there are three people on the battle, lets say for arguments sake, a republican, a democrat and a green party candidate, in all likelihood, the green party candidate, you know, gets a small percentage of the vote and those votes are wasted and there can be some spoiling in the sense that because theyre wasted, the people who voted for that third party dont get to express their will in the top two. That was a long explanation. Jamie raskin is one of the smartest guys in the congress. I havent read it yet. But i do think its a good idea. I think it will enfranchise more people and it will do something good for the country which is i think it shifts some of the momentum or power, if you will, towards the more moderate position which in my opinion, this is a political statement, would be a good thing. I havent read the bill yet. I do like the idea. I suspect i probably will support it. Yes, maam . Hi. I ask you to please cosponsor or promote hr1384. We need medicare for all. We have about a half a Million People declaring bankruptcy every year and most of these are people with health coverage, but they cant afford health care. Thats absurd. About 35,000 people die because they cant afford health care. Thank you for the question. The question was about medicare for all which is a robust debate happening in the democratic president ial primary right now. If youll allow me to sort of set out the issues. Let me start with dispensing with the idea that medicare for all is a crazy idea. The folks who are attacking medicare for all say its socialist. We use medicare for all in the United States. Medicare is a single payer system. The va is a single payer system. The people who get their health care through those two systems really like them. Its not a radical idea. When you look at the pathologies of our current Health Care System, it would remove an awful lot of the complications. It would probably wind up being a cheaper system because medicare does not need as Insurance Companies do. Lets start there. Its a conversation we should be having. I have two personal concerns with medicare for all. At least two. The two that i struggle most with is under in particular Elizabeth Warrens plan, the way it works financially is by doing two things, really dramatically reducing the payments that go to providers, to hospitals, to doctors, and by substantially raising taxes. Elizabeth warren says that those taxes will be raised on corporations and the wealthiest americans. What i would like to see us do before we start putting downward pressure on how our providers are paid, i would like us to see us focus on the actual system. In other words, not whos paying the bills, how can we create a more effective system. How do you do that . You continue to evolve away from a Health Care Model where everybody gets paid for making People Better when theyre sick or fixing them when theyre broken, to a system that encourages and incentivizes the Health Care Profession to keep people healthy. Every single one of you who pay into medicare are paying for dialysis for tens of millions of americans who have a preventable chronic disease, type two diabetes. This is a devastating thing. Type two diabetes is avoidable through nutritional counseling. If you get yourself to a point in type two diabetes where you need to be dialized, its 60, 70,000 a year for each of those. One thing i want to do before we start that, focus on efficiency and quality in the system. Now i need to Say Something a little bit political. The country doesnt do radical change very well. And im not an expert in the health care industry. But i can tell you im an expert in communicating Health Care Changes to my constituents. And when i was a freshman i did 14 Health Care Town Hall meetings, one in norwalk had 1,200 attendees and there were Police Officers because people were that passionate. And you understand why, health care is deeply personal to all of us, to all of you, in a way that maybe syria isnt. And i would much rather see this be presented to the American People as medicare will be a choice that you have for every american as opposed to the 155 Million People who today have Health Insurance through their employer or through a union plan being told, sorry youre giving up your plan. We have a better idea. I know how the American People would respond to being told that i as a federal official have a better plan for them than the one they have. And i know Elizabeth Warren says nobody loves their health plan. Thats probably true. A lot of people dont love their job either. But if you tell them, im taking away your job, youre going to have a reaction. So where i come out on this is why would we ever go to the American People and say im going to take away something that youre familiar with and replace it with something that the government cooked up as opposed to saying were going to give you this additional option, buy into medicare. If you like it, more people buy in, it outcome petes the industry. The problem with that, it doesnt work with a choice. If you dont remove the layers of administration it doesnt work. It only works if its a single payer. In 1965, it came in in one year, no one screamed that they were losing their private insurance and i dont know of anybody who says i dont like it, it would rather go back to private insurance. Ive had it for some time, the original medicare. I love it. It is trouble free. Theres no bills, theres no networks. You go to any doctor. Thats the choice you have. Now you dont have that choice. You may have the choice of medicare or not. But you dont have a choice of doctors, you dont have a choice of hospitals. Those are the choices that matter. Yeah big thing you raise some very good points. I dont agree that its not possible because in the house version of the Affordable Care act that would have been medicare. Sadly even though at the time, it was not included in the final. I think it can be accomplished. You are right that the complexity and the additional costs inside the private Insurance Business are a problem. But i think it can work. And i need to respond a little bit. In 1965 when medicare was brought about, you werent asking a lot of Senior Citizens to give up their private insurance. In 1965 before medicare, Insurance Companies didnt cover very much Senior Citizens because its our over 65 population that uses the most health care. It was a little easier sell in 65 than it would be today for people who have an option. But i dont want to fight or argue with you because your points are valid and good, but i think the medicare for all proposal needs to be more about how we make for a better a healthier system and how it can be sold to the American People and when that happens, ill be much more positive. Thats fine. Add to it. Okay. Thank you. Yes, maam . Thank you so much for being here. My name is jen. My question of course is going to be around guns and you touched on hr8. Its been since february that that passed so its sort of an impossible question. But wondering if you think mcconnell is going to bring it to a vote . I know were going into december. Were going to have holiday break and were going into 2020. And i guess tagged along with that question is, can it just sit there forever . Does it expire and then do we have to go through this again . Yeah. Thank you. The question was hr8 which, again, passed the house. And its the first time gun safety legislation has passed either house of congress in 25 years. Were sort of happy about that. But because people die every single day, were not that happy about that. Its not real until it becomes law. And it is immensely frustrating because some of this stuff that gets passed is much more controversial. An assault weapon ban is much more controversial. This is not controversial. And it is not likely to get brought up in the senate for two reasons. Im not here to plot strategy or be partisan. For two reasons, its not likely to be brought up in the senate. Number one, leader mcconnell has turned the senate into exclusively a judicial appointment machine. So the senate has given over all of its time to improving judges to the point where its 25 judges who have been appointed by this president. And number two, just being political, heres where you have a chance to change the dialogue, hr8 would be a pretty tough vote for a lot of republican senators because it has a lot of support, even in red places, but there is a fringe of activists, folks on that side of the aisle that make it very, very difficult for a republican to vote yes. So the honest but sad answer is, no, i dont believe its going to come up for a vote in the senate and thats going to require us in the next congress to pass it in the house again and hopefully get it through the that time. We will pass it in the house again and hopefully well get better treatment in the next congress. Yes, sir . My question is, basically, donald trump has used perfect. Mic distance turns out to be very important. Donald trump has used his power to not only enrich himself but kind of pressure foreign governments to help in reelection. What are the actual next steps for impeachment and beyond like the public hearing, what is actually going to happen beyond that. So next steps on impeachment and what might that look like. Let me be a little more detailed. Theres some important issues we need to consider. First of all, we havent gone over the facts here and youre going to get to see open hearings this week. Im not going to spend a ton of time on the facts. To my observation, the president very severely abused his power by using 400 million of defensive aid for the ukrainians by holding that in the balance to extort the new ukrainian president not to not be corrupt, but to investigate joe biden and his son and burisma. And, by the way, held up a white house meeting and fired an ambassador because Rudy Giuliani didnt think the ambassador was on board. I think that that rises and i you know, im going to go through the process in the right way. Im not going to sit here and tell you that this is that. But that is certainly an abuse of power article. Theres certainly an argument that the president s orders to his people to not answer a congressional subpoena is not only a constitutional crisis but impeachable obstruction of justice. That could form a second article. And there may be one or two others. I feel very, very strongly about that second one. Its not quite as easy to kind of get angry about as the firing of the ambassador and the holding up of military aid to a country where russians are killing ukrainians. But and i tell my republican colleagues this all the time, you do not want a world where the president feels he can order his people to ignore a congressional subpoena. I do think there needs to be accountable on that score. Let me just seed a thought with you because you need to give it a little bit of thought. There will be pressure to include emoluments. This is an area in which im not superexpert. Its a part of our constitution. Its not phony. There will be pressure to add an emoluments article. I dont know how that will play out. And then there will be pressure, and i hope i dont lose friends in the room for saying this, but there will be pressure to include things that i would say are policy things, family separation. Family separation is a moral abomination. [ applause ] but i dont ever want to let this country or contribute to this place where impeachment becomes the thing you do because you dont like what the president is doing. I want impeachment to remain the thing you do because the president breaks the law, abuses his power, obstructs justice, et cetera. Im priming you for this and trying to make you aware of the things that well all need to think about as citizens. Thank you. Yes, maam. My name is jean sweeney is that theres some feedback, so we had to turn it off. Lets fix this problem. Ill repeat your question, maam. Im from darien, connecticut. Im part of the activists for the equal rights amendment. [ inaudible question ] i have been at your town halls before. I want to bring you up to where we are. We believe we have a threestate strategy, we flip virginia blue, virginia is going to ratify the equal rights amendment in the beginning of next year. We believe we have constitutional lawyers who believe that the moment virginia ratifies, weve got the equal rights amendment and 165 million women in the United States become equal citizens under the constitution. [ applause ] i want to thank your office. You helped us get some additional cosponsors. We have the bill being marked up on next wednesday. What im asking you to do is to help us get a vote on hj79. Were working in parallel lines. We believed we were going to be challenged. I need that vote before the end of the year and my ask to you is to help us get that vote before the end of the year to drop the ratification deadline for the equal rights amendment. Okay. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. You have my commitment to help you with that and im glad i dont know if everybody heard the same thing. One of the outcomes of the Virginia Election will be that in all likelihood, virginia will ratify the equal rights amendment which makes it a part of our constitution. Its exciting that we would be alive at a point in time where we would see our constitution amended. It shows you its a living, breathing document. Its exciting and in a way sad how obvious it is that women should not be discriminated against in any environment that it has taken this long to get it done. Thank you for your advocacy on it. [ applause ] thank you for being here. Im just kind of curious for the next episode of scandal in washington, d. C. You talked about the open hearings which will be thursday and friday, but your committees, i presume, continue to have interviews with people in a closed setting before they go to an open setting. Is it going to go on parallel tracks . There wont be many more closed depositions. Okay. There may be some negotiation to be had with john bolton. I personally would dearly love to have my former colleague Mick Mulvaney in. Hes resisting. The reason thats important is because it is pretty clear mulvaney gave the order to the department of defense to put a hold on the military aid to ukraine. I would like to know the conversations that happened between Mick Mulvaney and the president. Thats going to be naturally very hard because he may not show up and Speaker Pelosi has taken the approach that were not going to go and litigate this for the two to three months it would take because the facts are pretty clear, well just move forward. I would like to hear from Mick Mulvaney. I would like to hear from Rudy Giuliani because he is at the very core of this thing. [ applause ] ive also heard they want to put jim jordan on the committee and i presume they have the power to do that, if they remove somebody, they can replace them. They have done that. My colleague has stepped down in favor of jim jordan and im going to resist the temptation to elaborate on this other than to say, you cannot imagine two humans on opposite ends of the temperament spectrum than adam schiff and jim jordan. So tune in. Thank you. Im from norwalk. One of your stated goals was improving the infrastructure. So my question is, in support, would you support replacing the act that costs the taxpayers billions of dollars every year and does not allow fair market competition, thank you. Thank you for the question. I dont usually get that one on transportation. But good question. For the purposes of folks in the audience who dont know about davis bacon. Its legislation that passed a long time ago that says federal government spending, whether its for the construction of federally paid for Affordable Housing or in most transportation projects the federal government will pay prevailing wage in whatever jurisdiction it is being built. And this has the practical effect of ruling out lower costs bidders on that construction. It has the practical effect of creating some separation between Union Construction and nonUnion Construction because nonUnion Construction tends to be cheaper. You asked i support eliminating davis bacon. No, i dont. Im cognizant of what you point out, rightly so, that that has the effect of somewhat raising prices. Were not bringing people from southern texas to do the work here at half the wage rate our local workers would do it at. It also has the effect of making sure that your workers are as good as they can be. Union workers go through certifications and trainings and apprenticeships that result in high quality work. Youre right, im not going to try to convince you youre wrong about that. If we were to eliminate davis bacon it would lower the cost of the construction of our infrastructure and our Affordable Housing. I think the trade offs are such id rather have high quality local prevailing wage jobs done than, as they used to say, the joke about the three astronauts who were launching up to the moon and one guy says were sitting on top of the work of the lowest bidder. I think when were talking about bridges and that sort of thing i think the assurances of quality and local payment. Thank you for your question, but no, im not going to support doing away with davis bacon. Everybody seems concentrated over here. Oh, we lost the mic . Okay. What are your policies calls towards the environment . Good question. What is your name . Hugh. Im so glad that a young person asked that question. Pretty much everyone else in this room that isnt a young person is going to have to inherit the environmental situation that we leave to you. Im so glad you asked that question. Thats a big question. Let me take just two or three pieces of it. The biggest in my opinion, the biggest challenge we have in leaving you a world that is as good as the one i got to grow up in is that we begin to aggressively address the effects of Climate Change on our planet. We see this every day in the changing weather and the much more violent hurricanes we see. We see it with sea level rising. Were headed towards a cataclysm if that we dont start acting like the adults we are youll have a problem you may not be able to solve. We do that heres where im going to lose the young folks in the audience. But by putting in place a refundable carbon tax so that solar and wind energy are more competitive with burning coal and burning gas. We do it by investing in businesses you may work in someday, like advanced batteries. Im a bag fan of solar and wind, but as you know, the wind doesnt blow all the time and the sun is not out all the time. How do we fix that . We store the power that gets created when the sun is shining. We could create the kinds of batteries that could run the town for a week. Technologically were not there yet. We need to be investing in that. The last thing im going to mention because you can help on this, we all need to do a better job about conserving the energy we do have. So what can you do . You can do what i pester my daughters every single day, which is to turn off the darn lights. We all have a role to play. I really appreciate that question. We could talk about it for a long time. Its one i feel passionately about because youre the one thats going to have to live with the world we either mess up or dont mess up. Thank you, hugh. Relative, thank ypresentativr joining us. I wanted to ask you a question about how do we insure that everyone gets the facts in this country . We have im a life long republican, and i often watch fox news to see whats going on there. But im no longer a republican. I was a reagan republican because i was born in romania. I was grateful that he made the wall come down. But i want to make sure that everyone in this country gets the facts. And the facts are that donald trump is working with people who are connected to the russian mob. Guiliani is being paid half a Million Dollars from those who are getting that money. In theory they work for guiliani, but in fact the people who work for you are actually paying you. How does that work . Manafort worked for free. But he didnt really work for free because he was getting compensated by the russian oligarchs who are a part of the mob. Its a fact. These people were indicted. Theyre obviously criminals. That will be proven. Donald trump is raiding his own charity. Its a fact. He had to 2 million recently. Donald trump is like the fireman who comes to your house when your house is burning and says im not going to put out your fire until you do something for me. Okay . And people who watch fox news are not getting any of these facts. What are we doing to change how the media is being run in this country . Thank you. Great. Great question. Great, great question. Its worth spending time on this. Because this is honestly a really hard issue. Its a hard issue for a couple reasons. I think theres some easy stuff. I completely disagree with Mark Zuckerbergs willingness to allow blatantly false advertising on facebook. And i appreciate twitters stance that theyre not going to take political ads. I think facebook could do that. Its not a meaningful part of facebooks revenue. I think it would be constructive. Im interested in how can we take what we used to do in this country when we could regulate broadcast television because they were using a public bid, the airwaves and we would say we had certain obligations, which is you need today prese present sides. Its a much more complicated thing to do. You dont use the airwaves anymore. You use optical fiber. Its more complicated. But i want us to have a conversation and be smart about how we can say you need to be more even handed in what you present. But it is a hard problem. Its a hard problem for at least two reasons. At the government level, please, i hope nobody wants us to deviate from the First Amendment. What i mean by that is you do not want i do not want, nobody wants the government saying this is a fact, this is not. That, of course, takes us back to stalin and to tatalitarian regimes. Its hard because truth turns out not to be black and white. Particularly in the political arena. Ill give you an example i used the other day. Medicare is probably best and most wonderful social Insurance Program the United States has produced in 240 years of history. Thats an arguably its a nice thats an arguably true statement. Medicare is mathematically doomed if we dont reform it. Thats a mathematically true statement. You see what im saying . How do we determine the truth of things like that and who do we want making that determination . I would like to put more of the weight of this onto the media companies. But im not particularly comfortable with Mark Zuckerberg and his friends deciding whats true anymore than i am the government. Facts are i dont want to argue with you on this one. I couldnt agree more. Heres the point i want to close on. Youre going to be surprised a democrat is saying this. I feel passionately about this. Were citizens of the greatest democracy in history. We forget weve been reminded lately its not a gift. Its something we as individuals work and fight for every day. And as individuals, we have got to get serious. Thats why i showed you those russian facebook ads. We have got to get serious. Uncomfortably serious about being better consumers of information. Theres a reason 100 years ago this country said when this country had a small government that every american child would be educated in public schools. The reason we said that had an economic reason, but it had a profound democratic civic reason. You cant be a member of a democracy and be an ignoramus with respect to truth and the facts. So my ears are wide open for how we can better do social media and how we ought to help regulate social media stuff. We have got to do a better job. Please, im not a fan of fox news either. I do meet an awful lot of people who only watch one show. Make sure you get ideas that make you uncomfortable. Its your obligation as an american citizen. I dont mean to give a long speech. The answer cant be that the government is going to figure out how to make you a better participant in your democracy. We need to figure out how to be a better participant in our democracy. Thats pretty much where i was at. We allowed trump and the republicans to set the narrative after any kind of information that seems to come out. Jim jordan being an exact example where he wants to set what the narrative wants to be. And because trump is such a showman, we get to see him so often say an idea. Now that were going to have these open hearings, i was wondering if we could have a daily synopsis done by someone who can really explain what actually happened in these open hearings that are lasting eight hours, ten hours, i mean, someones going to have to break this down for us and can we go to like the Democratic National committee, congressional committees website . Really see this, or have a thing going on with cnn, msnbc, fox news, you want to put it on the, this is ten minutes that happened, 15 minutes that happened. Its so much information. I even turn off. I live and breathe this stuff because its driving my crazy. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Well try. Im sure both minority and majority and the house of representatives will do synopsis and that sort of thing. If youll indulge me one second, you got me thinking about this. Im going to take two minutes. Lets dig a little deeper in this country of why were in a world where facts dont seem to matter, where the president s support is unshakable, regardless of behavior. I think its worth unpacking i have two offerings for you of things we could think about and do as a society that might get us to a more thoughtful sievical civical process. One is, our politics i made reference to this with rank choice voting. Our politics emphasizes the extremes. Most congressional districts, theres not a lot of mystery about what happens in the general election in november. This by the way is not one of them. It certainly didnt used to be. It used to be a edared district. It became a purple district. Its purple, too, but a lot of republicans are not comfortable with the president in this place. Most districts are not that way. Most districts, november doesnt matter. What matters is the primary. In a primary system, its the most activist fired up people who participate. My former colleague, joe crowley, lost to alexandria ocasiocortez. The candidates are chosen by our most committed activists on both sides. Which is why you see mitt romney become a different person when he runs for president. Hillary clinton did exactly the same thing. We ask think hard about whether we can recalibrate our system to depower the extremes a little bit and empower the middle. The second thing this could be worthy of a whole other hour. We have a project in this country to kind of rebuild our civic dialogue and the way we talk to each other. And in the service of that, we need to understand why im going to use a stereotype here. Why high school educated white man in youngstown, ohio, gets really excited about donald trump. Donald trump has one huge legislative candidate. I hated it, but thats the tax cut that handed an immense amount of money to corporations and wealthy people and not much at all to that White Working Class guy in youngstown, ohio. Why is that . I thought about this a lot and talked to people who know those areas a lot better than i do. And there are lot of folks out there, you may not see them in darian, connecticut, but theyre hurting badly. Youngstown, ohio. White working class people there used to have 30 an hour jobs at the plant. Union jobs with healthcare and good retirement. Those are gone. Now its 9 an hour at the walgreens. That is crushing, being betrayed by the american green. Im talking like i know what im talking about. I dont have a lot of hardcore trump places in fairfield county. We better get underneath why people really want to grab onto somebody who tells them the system is rigged and its the fault of the immigrant, the fault of george soros, we better understand and address the pain that causes people to hang onto 459 kind of politics. Its not a coincidence that the core message of donald trump and Bernie Sanders are more or less the same. The core message here. I know im going to tick people off here. The core message is the system is rigged against you. Those people arent wrong. It feels that way to them. Anyway. Im preachifying again. We have got to get underneath that program and make more people feel like theyve got a chance and therefore dont need to go to the wild extreme of promises of bringing back the coal mines, et cetera. [ inaudible question ] fair point. Fair point. I guess im not saying its their turn. Got to be careful about what we mean by their. Im saying lets understand it and address the pain. Instead of god help us, calling them deplorable. Lets understand it. And offer a better vision. By the way, i think its a vision that helps everybody. Anyway, we need more of this kind of conversation, because we do need to fix our politics. Yes, sir . What could be done about the more subtle election interference . Like, the facebook ads. Changing ballots. Yeah. Yeah. Great question i think two things daex a bunch of things can be done. Let me offer two to you. Theres a reason why i showed them to you. I want all of you to see what they look like. When you see them in october of 2016, you just think to yourself, wait a second, maybe this makes me feel good or bad or angry. Maybe this is actually the russians or the north koreans trying to manipulate me. We need to show what they look like and think about the effect they have on us. The other thing we can do is easier, which is at a minimum, we should require facebook and twitter and snapchat and all these social media things, which i dont understand, we should require who buys that ad to see who they are. Right . For example, lets take the russians out of it. The russians shouldnt be playing in our elections in any way, shape or form. Think about how much better it would be if you saw an ad and at the end of the ad someone had to say this was purchased by americas pharmaceutical industries or americas gun industries or by i had a question about prevailing wage. This was purchased by a union. We would know who it was who was trying to Say Something to us. That would be a good first step. Thank you. Hi, thank you for your service to our state, by the way. Id like to make a comment and i have a question about the Affordable Care act. I know right before you were elected the first time, you had a lot of concerns about the ability to sue doctors when healthcare was withheld from people because of their insurance. I understand why you had to push for the Affordable Care act, even though it had a lot of flaws. One of the biggest flaws i see in the Affordable Care act is that we rely on people with Third Party Insurance to pay for the Affordable Care act, rely on doctors, rely on hospitals. Doctors and hospitals at this point are losing money, doctors more than hospitals, losing money when they see medicare and medicaid patients. They do it out of a sense of social obligation to care for these people and its supplemented by people with Third Party Insurance. The hospitals have money that comes to them from the federal government that helps offset the money that they would lose for medicaid and medicare people. And they have residents that are working for below minimum wage to make it more affordable for people. And i know that in my case, i spent 16 years in training at either paying to be there or being paid below minimum wage to be there when i get into private practice, i cant really afford to continue to lose money on people. You cant have losing money on everybody be the way you practice your business or youre never going to get anybody other than either very dumb people or people with very wealthy parents becoming doctors. It will change healthcare to be something we do not accept as americans. I would like to know what can we do about having something that is funded by the government that would allow people to have the limitations imposed upon you if you have the type of Health Insurance that medicare, medicaid and the va offers, and not have the doctors have to send up all of these tests that americans expect whether if the doctors dont send those tests out are probably not going to show anything, but one in 1,000 do. The doctors still have to send them out because otherwise theyre sued and can lose their practice. What are they doing to address that incongruancy. Im a physician. You asked about partly liability, defensive medicine being practiced in order to stave off the huge waste of money. Yeah. My sister is a high risk ob gyn doctor. I dont think they get more risky than that. I understand. In the narrow area of liability reform, i think there is work we can do that would move to the forefront evidence based medicine. And part of the Affordable Care act was pointing us in that direction with the creation of something called the ipab, which was a group of medical professionals that would make determinations on what the science shows is indicated. That has benefits. It would have shut down a lot of arguments that doctors and providers have with Insurance Companies because it would have been determined by the ipab. The Affordable Care act didnt do this but im intrigued by if you can put evidence based medicine to the forefront, it feels to me like that ought to be maybe not a safe harbor, but a good defense. As you know better than me, humans are not we dont respond perfectly predictably to treatment, to things and there will always be cases that go badly. It seems to me that there ought to be a defense a medical provider could do and say i followed the guidelines and that ought to be something of a defense in the case of a liability lawsuit. I dont want to i want to be careful about things like caps, people often propose caps on damages. I do want people to retain the right in the case of negligence, gross negligence, to be able to, you know, if they lose a child because a doctor was negligence to be able to seek redredress that. But i do think theres work we can do with respect to provider liability. What about a panel to go over the cases before it actually is permitted to become a case . Most of the cases are frivolous. 95 of the cases that go to court are won by a physician. Obviously a lot of those shouldnt be there. Yeah. Yeah. There are other areas of law where you have expert panels who greenlight litigation. Im blanking on what they are. Thats not an unprecedented idea. Its not one im particularly opposed to. I know. I know. It was not the Affordable Care act, it did really good things in terms of eliminating the ability of people with preexisting conditions to getkiget coverage. It didnt do anything on cost control and liability expenses are part of that. Your idea of a panel that would gre greenlight legislation the way today there is some regulation on litigation is that plaintiffs attorneys are generally compensated through a percentage of an award thats given. Its typically 30 . A plaintiff attorney looks at a case and they have an incentive not to bring a frivolous case because they wont get paid. Based on your statistic, that doesnt do enough. Anyway. When we have that conversation, id like to hear more ideas on how better to control those costs. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, thank you for taking time to speak with us. I wanted to expand a little bit on the First Amendment and the role of the press and the facts in our society today. You mentioned earlier that we can do things, for example, like both sides laws to hopefully get people more information, more reasonable debate. I want to question, like, the usefulness of some of those laws. There are some cases where Climate Change is an undeniable fact. Vaccines are safe, thats an undeniable fact. There are some things that shouldnt have more than one side. You can see fox news and breitbart and all these creepy now crazy news outlets spewing out misinformation half of the country will only believe. How can we defend our First Amendment rights and make sure we get a wealth of viewpoints out there . Great question. Great question. I dont have the cut and dry answer. Remember, the previous question i said this is hard. It is hard. Were a much more Diverse Society than we were in when i was a kid. Not just diverse in terms of who we are in americans, but diverse in how we get media. So, you know, now of course, television in its 500 chann hu0 is one of the many channels. Youre absolutely right. There is a logic in a political context if you have a Republican Point of view and a democratic point of view to saying you ought to hear both points of view. On the issue of Climate Change, why would we say on something thats accepted by the Scientific Community that 2 of folks who dont believe in it, youre absolutely right. Thats a complexity. Im not sure its an unsolvable complexity. A system doesnt need to be perfect for it to make the Current Situation better. So your point is very well taken. Its a much more complicated thing to do. There are more points of view, and more media through which are delivered. I would separate what you said you said First Amendment. I think we should give thought to what we can do to make sure that people are exposed to more than one point of view. I think thats worth having a conversation. I will engage in it all day long. First amendment issues, thats a different issue for me. We need to guard the right that we have under the First Amendment. We dont ever want the government saying this is true, this is not. That point of view is valid, that point of view is not. All of our rights, if you say what i say, you got to be comfortable with someone who is a member of the nazi party going to that microphone. And so our rights are hard. But, anyway, the point im trying to make is that trying to diversify the views we get and somehow inclining us towards truth rather than fiction is a worthy effort. I would try to separate that from questions of the First Amendment and freedom of expression. Thank you. Youre batting cleanup, sir. I am. Save the best for last, i dont know. Im a registered republican currently. Unlike probably many in this crowd, im a life long member of the nra. Even though i dont necessarily agree with a number of the positions of the nra. First and foremost, though, im an american patriot. I value our Economic System of capitalism. I value liberty and justice for all. I value the rule of law. I value our military. I value duty honor and country. Im here today because i stand with Lieutenant Colonel vindman. I stand with john mccain. But i also stand with our former president S Jimmy Carter and jfk. Jfk, you know, he that predated my time. But as a child, i remember his very poignant words, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. And today, i think its imperative, given the polarization you spoke to, that the majority of the people speak up, stand up, and speak out. I do not subscribe to the politics of division and hate. We as a country are compassionate, we are principled. We each need to defend the rights inscribed to us in the bill of rights. One thing in particular that concerns me, the current administration, as Michael Bloomberg said, he knows a conwhcon when he sees it. Even though im a registered republican currently, i value what the romanian gentleman said. Donald trump is a con, a fraud, a charlton. We as americans need to stand up and say thats not okay. Thats not okay. Regardless of whether youre democrat or republican. Im not a socialist, im not fan of an tifa but im not an altright neo nazi fascist. Were living in very dangerous times. Were seeing the rise of fascism around the world. And donald trump is stoking that fire in my personal view. Im here today with the home of the High School Blue wave to announce that im going to be selling the never trumper hat. On nevertrumper. Com. Hopefully i can sell a few of them. Who knows. Specifically getting to my comment for you in particular. Youre full on Norman Rockwell until the pitch. I want to address your comment about the gentleman in youngstown, ohio. Ill tell you that im originally from georgia. A lot of my family werelate to that guy in youngstown, ohio. I will tell you that fear is a powerful motivator in american politics. As a member of the nra, i get inundated with propaganda stoking fear in this country. I think its time that we take a look, especially Intelligence Committees take a look, at who is really funding the nra. Is the russian government funding the nra, just like theyre funding these fake facebook ads . I dont know the answer to that. What i do know is there was a delegation that went over to russia. And that concerns me. It really, really concerns me. I know the nra as an organization that fights for the protection of the Second Amendment. We all know thats gone quite afar. They were sportsmen and hunters. Thats not what the nra is today. Its more of a propaganda machine, very well may be a russian propaganda machine. Id appreciate you guys looking into it. I would appreciate every member of the house and senate leading by example and remembering that first and foremost, you are all americans. Youre not necessarily these far right republicans or far left democrats. Lets fight for the American People and the nation as a whole, thank you. Thank you for your comments. I cant add to that. So ill just close by saying its tough and scary times right now. Thank you for so eloquently saying that. I just done three of these town hall meetings. I do three, four, five, six a year. This is probably the most polarized time ive done them. Ten years ago, the Affordable Care act generated real energy in the town hall meetings. Whats interesting is those towns are all pretty mixed towns. Darian is a republican place. Its a pretty mixed group of towns. Without exception, three times one and a half hour conversations i was nothing but proud of the manners, of the civility of the dignity with which we conducted this conversation in this very polarized time. Thank you. Thank you for being that way. [ applause ] this week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight, its the National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri and their annual symposium. This years theme was peace efforts in the aftermath of the conflict. Tonight, a military historian discusses the broad scope of u. S. Navy operations in european waters from 1918 to 1921. He profiled several u. S. Navy commanders. You can see that tonight at 8 00 eastern here on cspan 3. We are showcasing whats available on cspan 2. Tonight we feature biographies and memoirs. Jack goldsmith recalls the life of his step father who was an associate of jimmy hoffa. Thats followed by robert wilson. Elizabeth cohen talks about american urban policy after world war ii. Watch book tv tonight on cspan 2. The impeachment inquiry hearings continue next week when House Judicial Committee chairman jerry nadler focuses on the constitution and the history of impeachment. Watch our live coverage wednesday december 4th at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. He extended an invitation for the president and his counsel to appear before the committee. Read the letter to the president on our website, cspan. Org impeachment. Follow the impeachment inquiry live on cspan 3, online at cspan. Org, or listen live on the free cspan radio app. The chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spoke about chinas economy and its political influences globally at an event hosted by the center for strategic and international studies. Thank you very much. Were delighted to have you here today. Im the president of css. When we have events with outside groups like this, we start with a safety announcement. So i just want you to know wherever louie is, hes responsible for your safety. If something says were going to have to evacuate, im not worried about the chairman. Were going to take care of him. We know how to do that. For everybody else, these doors right behind me, theyll take us down to the first floor. Take two lefthand turns, go to a righthand turn, go across to national geographic. Well meet there and ill pay for everybodys ticket. We want you to know how to be prepared. Delighted to have you here, but im even more pleased that we could welcome the chairman to be with us today. Hes the force guy ive ever met who is by profession a forester. He went to undergraduate as a forester but quick found the calling and entered into politics, became a lawyer and entered into politics. I was talking with his wife, vicky, 34 elections theyve been through together. I mean, i tell you thats for good or for worse, you know, for better or for poorer. Thats what it means to be married for 51 years and to go through 34 elections. And to have triumphed