Issues and veterans affairs. He also voiced his opposition to President Trumps policies and encouraged members of his district to increase their civic engagement. This is an hour and 15 minutes. [applause] rep. Cartwright thank you for that. Lets say the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america. And to the republic for which it stands. One nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. I want you to know, i am here because i work for you. [applause] rep. Cartwright im not here to lecture at you. My hope is we all learn something from each other tonight. There are some other people who work for you that i want to introduce to you. They are all people who work in the district, in pennsylvania, in the 17th Congressional District and i want you to get to know who they are in case you need to call upon them for help. Starting with my district director, mr. Bob morgan. [applause] now bob is also an Economic Development specialist. When i first learned about what it is to be a member of congress, i learned there are no more earmarks. We will talk about that in a little bit, but what that means is you need Economic Development specialists to help local municipal officials write for grants to get federal funding for important local projects, so bob is an Economic Development specialist. We also have mr. Bill hanley at the end from pottsville. , who is a senior Economic Development specialist. [applause] rep. Cartwright and may i also introduce to you our other Economic Development specialists. [applause] rep. Cartwright we have all sorts of constituent casework that goes on. One of the most important areas to me is standing up for our military and our nations veterans. This is sabrina maclachlan who sits in her Pottsville Office and she specializes in that. [applause] rep. Cartwright a large number of people in the 17th Congressional District depend on important programs like Social Security and medicare. And like any other big organization, sometimes things go wrong and you need some help from your member of congress. And to help me help you, she i have krista. She sits in our scranton office. Give it up for her. She sits in the same office with jennifer, who specializes in Student Loans and mortgage foreclosures and other Financial Issues that may arise with our constituents. [applause] rep. Cartwright right here, we have our staff assistant and my right arm mr. Brian dowd. ,[applause] here,artwright now over we have a wizard when it comes to the United States customs and immigration service. Any problems with your passports, she is amazing. She sits in her easton office. [applause] as you areight now a member of congress, you know my time is not my own. I look on an online calendar. It is put together by this evil genius down here on the end. [laughter] mrs. Tammy, my scheduler. [applause] rep. Cartwright and the current face of our congressional operation, our Public Relations and Communications Person and also incidentally my campaign manager, is colleen from scranton. [applause] rep. Cartwright well, now you know us. Please avail yourself of our services if ever you need. Reach out to us, and we will talk about that a little bit. I amuys can sit down and going to take about 1015 minutes and run over what we do so you know. What i want to do is move to the next slide. Whoever is doing that. There we go. We talked about sabrina. She works on veterans and military affairs. So anything with the v. A. System. Mistakes happen there, and military records request, military medals request, one of my favorite things to do is to award military Service Decorations on behalf of the president of the United States, whoever it is at the time. [laughter] rep. Cartwright there is no laughing. [laughter] and, but itght actually has been a sincere and deep and profound honor for me to award bronze stars for valor from the battle of the bulge, purple heart from from world war i. These are very touching ceremonies, and it chokes me up every time. Sabrina maclachlan has been wonderful. If you have a Family Member or somebody you are close to you know they did not get their Service Decorations that they are entitled to, please let us know and sabrina will dig into that. Dd214, andis the she will get you those medals. Next slide. Also, v. A. Has a wide range of services for our veterans. Sometimes they mess it up. Sometimes your congressman can help you. That is what sabrina and i do together. In addition to some of the legislation that i do on behalf of you know, you worry about veteran suicides. As many as sandy, how are you . So many combat veterans commit suicide in this country. It is a national embarrassment. We can talk about that later. Lets go to the next slide. Rep. Cartwright one thing that jennifer and bob both work on, the irs, your favorite federal agency. It is kind of timely to talk about the irs, isnt it . The truth is, if you have done to your member of congress to help you with a problem with the irs, there probably isnt a lot we can do. Once in a while, we can bump your case up to the top of the pile. I want you to know that because if you have a problem and the irs thinks you owe them money, time is not your friend. Because they are going to tack on interest and penalties. And if you let that happen, pretty soon the interest and the penalties are way bigger than the original past due amount. So dont let the grass grow under your feet if you have that kind of problem. Call our office, maybe we can help. Ok . See mentioned, ann cis, a big issue in the news these days. There are daytoday issues that arise. You know somebody that went on a cruise. The travel agent failed to tell them they are going to need a passport. They call our office with only a few days to go before the ship sails. We have actually been able to pull some rabbits out of hats. Did you bring your hat, anne . Where is she . Is she outside . There is the lady. She is a magician with passports. Dont give up hope. There may be some hope we can give you. There are all sorts of other immigration and naturalization questions that may come up. She has been working with us for 4. 25 years. She has learned all the ropes and she can help. State department, we talked about passport renewals. Immigrant visas, documents from abroad. Things like that. Social security. Talked to you about krista she opened so many case files for people with issues with Social Security. And you know, there is one county i represent in pennsylvania. There are 150,000 people that live there. And fully 38,000 of them receive Social Security checks, either disability or old age benefits. Folks really depend on that. They depend on getting the right amount and getting it on time. Because a big chunk of those people, that is all they have to live on. We know that and are very conscious of that. So if a problem comes up with Social Security, let us know. We may be able to help. Medicare goes hand in hand with Social Security. They make mistakes, too. Sometimes your provider is not getting paid. You dont want your doctor or nurse to be upset, or your therapist, and we can help with that. Economic development, we talked about a little bit. To me, fostering the climate for more and better jobs is probably the most important thing i can do for the 17th Congressional District. I know it. I think about it. I work on it, and i talked about it all the time. And, one of the biggest ways i can directly impact the Economic Situation of this part of the world is by getting federal money into our economy. They say for every federal dollar that comes into our economy, it generates four dollars in economic activity. So we have a couple of fine gentleman here who work at the army depot for example. I work very hard making sure they get contracts and get funded, but also that the workforce gets appropriate races from time to time. That is appropriate, isnt it . Im getting agreement. It is not just that. It is also the federal grants program. And i talked about that, Economic Development grants, assistance to firefighters grants. We just made a check presentation here down in easton this afternoon. Different Grant Programs, and they are not intuitive, so one thing we do is help educate our mayors. I started a mayors conference. Every year, this year, it will be in may at the North HamptonCommunity CollegeMonroe County facility, and the idea is there is an even understanding and awareness of all the federal Grant Programs. We dont write for those grants. The local municipal officials do. What we do is we swap stories at the mayors conference. We make sure there is a more even distribution of the knowledge, of the information about what Grant Programs are available. The more success we can have, with getting federal grants into the district, the better off our economy is going to be. That is just scratching the surface of what we do for Economic Development. I want to leave a lot of time for your questions. Ok, next one. April. And we do all sorts of other black long benefits for example. A lot of people, elderly people, made their living digging coal out of the earth. They have trouble getting their black lung benefits. Sometimes, we help with that. Student loan issues, fannie mae, post office issues, housing and urban development. A lot of stories we could talk about with these programs where we have been able to put some elbow grease into it. And help out locally. At a time when not all that much is happening legislatively in washington, it feels good to be able to work with all of these fine people i introduce you to. And do some good around northeastern pennsylvania and the lehigh valley. Ok. If you come to visit washington, be sure and call us, and call us in plenty of time. If you want a white house tour, they need three months notice so they can run your so security number and all that. We can set up all sorts of fun tours that you may not have thought about. Avail yourself of our offices. We are working for you. Ok, so i want to bob, can we ave you have some questions . {indiscernible] raise your hand if you need one. Rep. Cartwright there is a lot. The first one is, how will you vote on attempts to dismantle Social Security . I will vote no. [cheers and applause] rep. Cartwright excellent. [laughter] that is an easy one. [laughter] rep. Cartwright how can we support Affordable Health care for all and block trumps efforts to cut subsidies to give a tax cut to rich folks . Ok. Well, the first part of that is, Affordable Health care for all,. I do support that. Remember, this is not a political rally. So what i try to do at the town halls is give both sides of the issues and make sure you know where i stand. The republicans in the house are kind of wringing their hands trying to figure out what to do about health care. Te they ran for seven years on a program of appealing the aca. Now they have won the house and senate and the white house. They are trying to work out whether they can do that. The problem is that the republicans in the house, it is not monolithic. 240 differentt voices who have all their own ideas. Some of them want to simply repeal the aca and not replace it with anything at all. There are some who want to repeal the aca and replace it with something. Maybe not quite as allencompassing. And therefore, a little less expensive. There are others with all sorts of different views. But the point is they cant agree with each other on what to do. So where it stands right now, they could not even bring up a bill. Now, i want to tell you. My brother, a member of congress here in the lehigh valley, made it clear he was not for the bill they cobbled together, and i think he is kind of in the same neighborhood as me. He wants to see something that works. Obviously, there are a lot of problems with the aca. It has deductibles that are too high on some of the groups. It is too expensive on some groups. It involves some taxes that disparately impact some groups and some industries. I am particularly not happy with a couple of items on that. I wont go into all of them, but the cadillac tax is one of them. The tax on medical devices, i am not sure it is fair and it actually hurts some of the manufacturers right here in the lehigh valley. So i have said i would be willing to look at that. But the question is, how can we support Affordable Health care for all . And i think the answer is and i forgot who said it, but we have moved the needle on this discussion. It used to be no way, no how. Now it is, lets make it work. My hope, i really do hope this, is that members of congress from both sides of the aisle will come together. People like charlie dent and me, and work out something to work out the kinks of the aca and make it work for everybody. And i think the thing that is driving that, that is what the American People want. That is what the people want. That is the way it is supposed to work. [applause] the second part of it is block trumps efforts to give a subsidy to rich folks. And that was a major problem with that bill that did come up. The bill that came up, they rushed it. It is a very complicated subject. And they did not have any hearings. I mean you have to have hearings to find out, for example, from the Health Care Insurance industry. Remember, aca is not government insurance. No matter what you see online, it is not government insurance. It is insurance sold to you by forprofit insurance companies. Nobody bothered to ask them ca was whether the going to work for them, how do they really know they were going to participate . That was a major problem i saw. Anyway, i think that is the , that we need to come together and work on it. That is the approach i want to take. You a question about Health Insurance. Rep. Cartwright we will come back to it. Stack ofwhole questions of people took the trouble to write out. I will get back to you. What is the democratic response to aca repeal . We just talked about that. With only three Health Care Providers left in the lehigh whaty and rising premiums, specifically is your plan to repair, not replace, the aca . That is exactly what i am talking about. I dont have a specific plan. I think it is something we have to wrestle with. We have to have hearings about. We have to be honest about and stop scaring people. Stop making it a political football. I said that over and over. These are peoples lives we are talking about. All right, what can you do to oppose the cuts for the nih and other Research Organizations . The trump budget is scary. How can we help to oppose it . Ok, yes, the trump budget, im glad somebody brought it up. I am going to go back to my friend charlie dent. Charlie dent and i are both on the House Appropriations committee. I was very proud to be nominated and appointed to that Committee Last fall. There are some great bipartisan work done on the House Appropriations committee, and it is a breath of fresh air to be working with bipartisan people like charlie. I do oppose the cuts to the nih and to research. [applause] we saw thisght budget that came out of the white house. And history will prove me will write a wrong, but in my personal opinion, our chief executive and commander in chief never laid eyes on that budget. That budget, in my view, was drafted and compiled in the basement of the heritage foundation. , which is a hardline rightwing organization that wants government out of everything, therefore once to slash everything except military. Mick mulvaney, who i know very well, was of the founders of the one rightwing Freedom Caucus was approved to be the founder. Budget. Of the that budget fully reflects things i know to be ideological priorities of Mick Mulvaney and the Freedom Caucus. And it is dead on arrival because of that. [applause] rep. Cartwright because there is so much public support. There is so much public support for Scientific Research done by the government, health Research Done by the government. We are not going to cure cancer if we cut off funding. People want cancer to be cured. They want all manner of other diseases to be cured. I do. The people in the Congress Know that. If you set aside 30 or 35 members of the Freedom Caucus who would rather cut the budget than take care of these priorities, you are talking about a lot of people that hear from constituents at home and understand we cant be doing these things. It is not Just Research for science and medicine. It is things like low income heating, meals on wheels, headstart. There are a lot of Popular Programs americans like and have depended on for many years. I can tell you, from my own part, and i think this is true across the aisle in the Appropriations Committee, we will be studiously ignoring the president s budget on those things. [applause] how many people are on the Appropriations Committee . Rep. Cartwright about 40. 40 . Rep. Cartwright about 40. Oh, we didnt have enough. [laughter] rep. Cartwright with being on the Appropriations Committee, how was it working with republicans . Are you able to get goals accomplished . Again, i enjoy working with the republicans on the committee. I will tell you, the overall chair of the entire Appropriations Committee is a , is very civil person. A real gentleman. If everybody is throwing around political epithets about each other, he is the last one to do that. He is a practical person. He likes to get the job done. I really look forward i just got on this committee. We are gearing up to do our work. Check back with me later. I will let you know how much i like it. What steps this is small writing here. [laughter] rep. Cartwright what steps are being taken in the house to have President Trump release his tax returns . [applause] rep. Cartwright ok. A bunch of questions here. There is a bill. One of the democrats introduced a bill in the house, and you remember from sesame street, before they cut the budget for public television. [laughter] rep. Cartwright you remember from sesame street how bills work. I am just a bill. A bill gets assigned to a committee, but it is all about who is in charge. Right now, the republicans are in charge of the house. That means they control everything that happens. Everything that happens other than the introduction of bills. They cannot control what the democrats say on the floor of the house. Other than that, they control what bills come up for vote in committee. If it is a bill they do not favor, it does not even come up in committee. There is a bill i believe it went to the oversight and Government Reform Committee about forcing the president to release his tax returns. Remember the end of the story from sesame street . If the house passes it and the Senate Passes it, it goes to the white house for signature by the president. Raise your hand if you think the president is going to sign that bill. [laughter] rep. Cartwright but i will say this. I think there is an outside chance the democrats will win the house in 2018. [applause] rep. Cartwright it is hard to predict. If it did happen, what that would mean, not only would it mean the democrats have control of the committee agendas, they also have control of the Oversight Committee, which has subpoena power. If you are in the minority in the Oversight Committee and do not have subpoena power, you get into the majority, you do. My dear friend representative Elijah Cummings is the ranking democrat on the Oversight Committee. By his request, i continue to serve on that committee. If the democrats win the house back, representative cummings will have the power of subpoena. That committee can subpoena anything and anyone in the u. S. , including the president. Things may get very interesting if that happens. How long will that take . [laughter] rep. Cartwright the election is in november of 2018. The other is, what steps are being taken to preserve and improve medicare, medicaid, and Social Security, and what about having the federal government negotiate drug prices . What is your position . [applause] rep. Cartwright the first question is, preserving medicare. Medicare is so important to me that when i first ran, i called myself a roosevelt democrat. Medicare and Social Security go hand in hand. It was roosevelt who invented Social Security. Medicare came in in the 1960s. You often hear about doomsday dates for those programs, dont you . Social security goes insolvent up in4, medicare is belly 2025, whatever it is. What is that . What does that all mean . First of all, it is not recent. They have always had insolvency dates on those programs. They have always had them, and they just adjust the years closer or further away. For example depending on what , else is happening in the federal government. In, thatacare came actually pushed medicares insolvency date back Something Like 11 years. It is something that the economists wrestle with. Does it mean if the date is 2034 for Social Security, does that mean they are out of money and there is no more money in that bucket . No, it means you cannot pay 100 cents on the dollar for what is owed. That is the date at which they start paying . 99 on the dollar. It doesnt mean kaput, but it means trouble. The question is, what is being done in the house to preserve these programs . If you get a chance when you get home, fire up the computer and plug in Social Security 2100. Social security 2100 is a bill my dear friend john larson from connecticut authored. Im a cosponsor. It raises the cap. If you ever notice, you pay into these programs until you make a certain amount, and if you are lucky enough to make that amount, then you stop paying. That is what the idea is. They raise the cap up. The way the bill works, you have kind of a doughnut hole. You pay into a certain amount and then you stop. Then, once you make over 450 thousand dollars a year, you start paying in again. [indiscernible] rep. Cartwright youre willing to make that sacrifice . Good. [laughter] the benefit of that, the bills get scored by the congressional budget office. Cbo. It is a Nonpartisan Group of accountants that look at bills and see what kind of affect they have. They scored that and said it would extend the life, pushback the date for medicare and Social Security by 75 years. But i think we need to do it sooner rather than later, because you have this disconnect between the outflow and the income. The closer that disconnect gets timewise, the more pain is going to be involved closing the gap. The further apart we can do that, the sooner we can address that, the better. It becomes a more gradual change. So i am in favor of that, i am a cosponsor. Moving along, last month, congress voted on hr 998, the scrub act, cutting regulations that are burdensome. It established a committee to review regulations 15 years or older that are unfunded mandates, obsolete, duplicative, or harmful to growth. You voted against that bill. I did. The question is, why. The answer is that bill i talked about how i was dissatisfied with the lack of hearings about the American Health care act. The problem with this and the way they structured this bill is they established a commission. The commission comes up with a list of regulations. I dont call the regulations, i call them protections. Yes. Thank you. [applause] rep. Cartwright the commission is to come up with a list of the protections they think are obsolete, duplicative, harmful to wage growth. This Blueribbon Panel comes up with their list of the protections they hate the most. And then it goes to congress for one vote, up or down. It could be hundreds, it could be thousands of protections, all at once with one vote of congress. Sweeping them away on the word of some panel which is a Blueribbon Panel. I do not know what their priorities are, and you did not elect them. That is why i voted no. [applause] rep. Cartwright keep in mind, there are some bad regulations out there that need to go but we need to go over them carefully one at a time. Make sensible decisions. Are you willing to work with all parties fixing health care and saving planned parenthood . The answer is yes. Also, can you tell senator toomey to meet with us . [laughter] [applause] rep. Cartwright all right. What can be done to encourage the Justice Department to uphold the civil rights gains of the last 50 years . If they dont support these, what are our options . I think that is something we all need to work on together, to tell you the truth. What can we do to encourage the Justice Department to stand up for the civil rights laws . We have to raise our voices. If you care about that and you want to be heard, we have to raise our voices. Dont think they dont listen. They do listen. Democracy works. I can write bills until i am blue in the face, but im in the minority in congress. I can and do write letters. For me, it is a core value, standing up for the civil rights gains of 50 years ago. I was at selma for the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday when president obama gave the wonderful, majestic speech. John lewis is a personal dear friend of mine. I deeply care about these things, but i cannot do it by myself. We all have to come together and make it clear to the people in the Justice Department that we will not tolerate them walking away from the standards of american decency. [applause] rep. Cartwright will you join a bipartisan call for an independent investigation into transactions between russia and all members of the Trump Administration . Sure. [laughter] rep. Cartwright no problem. Will you back, support, and help strengthen the Public School system, despite efforts of betsy devos . Yes. [applause] rep. Cartwright yes. I will tell you, i do that because i believe Public Education is how we better ourselves in this economy. If you cut off the ability to better ourselves so that only the people that were born on third base get to go to the best institutions, you are not being fair. That is the political view i hold to. If an Infrastructure Initiative goes forward, how can Congress Protect the american taxpayer from privatization scams . Good question. Make no mistake, im not here to trash donald trump. He is the president. He won the election. Not by majority. Rep. Cartwright he won it by the rules that were laid out. I have to work with them. He said some things i kind of like. The thing that he really said that i like a lot is that he wants to invest 1 trillion in american infrastructure. I didnt read the footnotes, but that did not show up in his budget. [laughter] but that goes back to when i said i dont think the president really read the budget, that is a hopeful thing. That is my hope. I think he really does want to invest in american infrastructure. I dont think he had a choice about how we do it. There was some noise about giving tax credits to big corporations so they can redo the infrastructure with trickledown economics. I will fight that. I think that will be fought on a bipartisan basis out of the Appropriations Committee. Remember what congress does. The essential functions of the u. S. House, to tax and to spend. We spend all our time fighting over how much to tax, how much to spend, who to tax, and what to spend on. That is in a nutshell most of what the hot air and gas in washington is about. The way it has been done ever since the founding of the House Appropriations committee in the 1790s has been to have the appropriators carefully, painstakingly go through the things were going to spend money on, and do it in a transparent way so there are hearings and people are heard and we come to sensible decisions on how the money is spent and what it is spent on. For my own view, it is about making sure if we are going to redo american infrastructure, the roads, bridges, the rail systems, the water sewer system, broadband internet, all of the things that the skidsto grease for American Economy and the American People, we are going to do that. There are people who are going to be doing that work. I want to make sure they get treated right and paid fairly. That is why. [applause] rep. Cartwright that is why it is hopeful to me i dont think the president read that budget. I think he does want to do infrastructure and i think there is going to be significant republican support that we did it the right way, the way we have always done it, through appropriations. Question, who are the democrats grooming for president in 2020 . [laughter] rep. Cartwright not me. [laughter] rep. Cartwright some significant milestones have been achieved with the pen east pipeline. On april 7 they released an eis recognizing but ignoring significant environmental impacts. What will you do to assist landowners who are concerned not only for the environmental impacts, but the risks and threats of Eminent Domain . That is a well stated question. Here is where i am on that. I think pipelines are with us. Pipelines create jobs. Pipelines move the natural gas. We have factories springing up in eastern pennsylvania in connection with the generation of electricity. In a perfect world, we would not have to do anything. The money would just flow to us automatically, but it doesnt work that way. We have to think about jobs and the economy. As far as pipelines, there are jobs involved in laying pipelines. These are highpaying, family sustaining jobs. There are voices who are in favor of doing away with pipelines and gas drilling. I understand those voices. They come from people i care about. But i am not there. I see natural gas as a bridge fuel. We need to get Sustainable Energy. We need to get wind and solar powering this nation. But we cannot do it right away. There is going to be too much suffering if we were to outlaw that right away. I speak to you as somebody who is sticking up for the environment is one of my top priorities. What i am looking at is the tradeoff. Either you do it with coal or natural gas. I know that is not going to please everybody. It is not going to please everybody what i tell you about the laying of pipelines. Every time a pipeline goes through, ferc has the power of Eminent Domain. They get to decide the route and whose lands they go over. It can go over your private property, and all they have to give you is reasonable compensation, fair market compensation for your land. That is the law. That is the law the way it works. What we get a lot in our office, folks that call up and say, why is this pipeline coming over my land instead of farmer jones . That is a legitimate question. The point i have been taking is ferc needs to be transparent about how they pick their routes. I think that is fair. I do not think it is overly burdensome on ferc or the Pipeline Companies to explain that. Otherwise, people are going to go away thinking, nobody told me why the pipeline has to come through my property. My greatgrandfather homesteaded this land. This has been in the family for generations. Farmer jones, down the road he made a political contribution to his state senator, and so he is tied in. That is why it is not in his backyard, but i have it. That may be untrue, but people will think the way people think when you do not have transparency. I think the very least we are entitled to is an honest explanation of why the routes were picked and why that is the best route. If we were to make a stronger effort to be more progressive about alternative energy, we wouldnt have to worry about Eminent Domain and pipelines. [applause] rep. Cartwright i want to repeat that. The question was, if we had stronger advocacy for renewable, Sustainable Energy, we would not have to worry about Eminent Domain for pipelines and things like that. That is absolutely true. I want you to know that i am absolutely in favor of every kind of tax advantage we can get to Sustainable Energy, solar and wind. It was a major victory. Even in a republicandominated house, we can score victories by taking advantage of the dysfunction among the republicans in the house. For example, about two and a quarter years ago, it was december. We had to keep the government funded. Paul ryan did not have the votes to fund the government because the Freedom Caucus were revolting. He had to come to the democrats to get votes. One of the things we insisted on was the fiveyear investment tax credit for solar and wind which had not happened until that moment. That is a small victory, but that is the kind of thing we can scratch out the current environment. If democrats win back the senate, the house and white house, you can expect to see a very aggressive, progressive approach on Renewable Energy, and i will be leading the charge. [applause] rep. Cartwright thank you for that question. Question, what can or should the dnc do to improve representation in congress . And what, if anything, can congress do about the terrible gerrymandering . [applause] rep. Cartwright there are efforts afoot about fair districts. I think it makes sense. Congress does not control that. It is the individual state. If you follow it, california pushed through a fair district bill and it passed and the governor signed it. They have districts that are recognizable geometric shapes. [laughter] rep. Cartwright did you ever see a map of my district . [laughter] rep. Cartwright that is a shape that does not occur in nature. [laughter] rep. Cartwright the question was, who drew that . In pennsylvania, here is how it happens. It is an ordinary bill. It happens every 10 years. We do a census every 10 years. That is why they do it, to find to figure out members of congress represent equal numbers of people throughout the country. In fact, we expect because in proportion to other states, pennsylvania is losing population, and we will probably lose a member of congress after the next decennial census. They do that census before they draw the congressional map. The way they draw the map is it begins with a bill in the state house, and then he goes to the state senate, and then it goes to the governor. The current map was drawn by the republican state house, the republican state senate, and was signed into law by republican governor. That is why we have a state with a majority democratic registration, we have 13 republicans and five democrats in our congressional delegation. What can we do about it . Again, raise our voices. The problem is, the democrats, once they get back in charge of the process, they are going to say now it is our turn. You are going to be calling them up. The question is, what can the dnc do . They cannot do anything. Dnc is not in control, it is harrisburg driven. I cant read this one. This question is, where do you specifically stand on the toxic use of biosolids or sludge . I am for all sensible protections not regulations that is another thing that the trump budget did. It cut the epa by 1 3. In addition to wiping away masses of protections all at once, they want to do away with 1 3 of the people who were supposed to enforce the protections. Im against the toxic use of the biosolids in violation of epa regulation. [indiscernible] rep. Cartwright pardon me . [indiscernible] rep. Cartwright i couldnt hear you. Can you specifically say how you are against the . Against it . How would you prevent it . I mean, if you dont eat organic food, you are eating food grown in toxic waste. You are consuming that. This is not a good thing, it needs to be scraped out. Why are people allowing it to go by . Why are people getting away with this . People are being poisoned, children are being poisoned every single day they consume food. And no one is screaming really loud that has the power to. Rep. Cartwright i appreciate that. Please. Rep. Cartwright would you stay after . I want to put you in touch with my legislative staff. I introduced you to my district staff. I have an equal number of people on my legislative staff that i want to put you in contact with. I appreciate it. Ok, why did we drop 26,171 bombs on iraq and syria in 2016 . Ok, that was a decision of the department of defense. The only thing i can really say that is relevant on that is that that came out of the white house, came out of the executive branch. Whoever is in the white house, whether you like them or hate them, in my view, they have been overreaching on the use of military force. Not to say specifically that this or that is a mistake, but generally they need to check in with congress about it. If you have been following it, there is something called the authorization for the use of military force. The executive branch and the department of defense have been operating off of the authorization the aumf that was enacted in 2002 and 2003. Everything they have done since then, they have done some kind of legal limbo dance under those very old bills that gave the president authority. I am absolutely in favor of redoing the authorization for the use of military force, because [applause] rep. Cartwright because congress is supposed to be involved in these decisions and right now, it is not. What is stopping congress from carrying out their functions . Rep. Cartwright again, it is impossible to refer generally to congress. You have to talk about which house and who is in charge of which house. Where i work, it is the republicancontrolled house of representatives. Every single bill that comes out of there is what the republicans want. What the Republican House leadership wants. If they wanted to curtail the use of military force by the white house, they could bring it up. I wish they would. What is stopping them . Nothing. [indiscernible] that doesnt happen often in washington. An example is the Supreme Court judge that was just nominated, i felt the democrats couldve done a better job of negotiating something in the favor of the democrats when they knew for a fact that judge was going to be nominated. Yet they let that opportunity pass by to make a point. Rep. Cartwright ok, so if you did not hear, the question was about democratic activism and pushing back against things happening in the congress and by the president. Yeah, those are political decisions. For example, the nomination and confirmation of judge gorsuch was mentioned. Boo. That waswright actually unfortunate, because they had to abandon the filibuster rule in the senate. The comfort there is they only abandoned the filibuster rule for that case. It is still in place for ordinary legislation. This is important because for tactical purposes, it means that if something is a core democratic value and the senators who are democratic know that, they can refuse to let something come up. They can filibuster it. And they do. There are a lot of bills that have passed through the Republican House since i have been there that have died in the senate, even though the republicans control the senate. When they abandoned the filibuster rule to get judge gorsuch through, i was disappointed because it means a dismantling of the kind of bipartisan spirit that you are used to in the u. S. Senate. That is a long discussion, what you brought up, but thank you for the question. How are you going to prevent this president from bankrupting our country with travel costs for his family and himself . [cheering and applause] rep. Cartwright i am open to your ideas on that. [laughter] we have been asking every single day about it. We are americans. Every single day. [indiscernible] rep. Cartwright did everybody here that . That is the correct answer that we have to raise our voices together if that is the way we feel about it. And dont stop. [indiscernible] rep. Cartwright the Renewable Energy job sector occupies three times the number of jobs in the coal industry. What can be done to bring more of those jobs to your district . It is something that i think about a lot. I was in washington one morning, and i saw across the street a panel van, and it said, solar innovations, pine grove, pennsylvania. They were installing solar panels. And pine grove is in my district. [laughter] rep. Cartwright so i got all excited. [laughter] rep. Cartwright i went across the street and there were a , couple of guys lifting heavy stuff into this house. And i said, solar innovations, pine grove . And they said, get lost, buddy. [laughter] rep. Cartwright i wrote down the phone number on the side of the truck and called up, and indeed there is a Wonderful Company that employs upwards of 300 people. They started with greenhouses, but they graduated to a highefficiency glass and they use it for highend buildings, and i think they built a house out in seattle for one of these software zillionaires. They sold glass for High Efficiency Energy homes in russia. They also power their entire operation with their own solar array, which provides 115 of all of the electricity they use in their processes at the factory. It is there. It is happening. I look for it. It is true that the number of jobs of people actually digging coal is Something Like 75,000 versus in the neighborhood of a halfmillion people working in solar and Renewable Energy. The other thing we have in our district is wind. We have a bunch of wind farms. It is funny because that is also an area where you get local landowners complaining about the placement of wind generators, but i am all in. The cost will continue to come down. You dont pollute the atmosphere, you dont pump carbon into the atmosphere. You dont have to go exploring for the sun. You know where it is. The wind is there, too. One thing i like about Sustainable Energy is who are the people who will benefit most when Renewable Energy is prevalent . The poor people. The poor people, because we all pretty much use the same minimum amount of energy, and if of yourspending 1 3 income on the energy needs you have, imagine having 1 3 of your income back, or close to it. It is important to me. Would you support a singlepayer plan . I assume we are talking about health care. The answer is if it came up for a vote, i would vote yes. [applause] rep. Cartwright but i am not going to pull the wool over your eyes and suggest it will come up for a vote anytime soon. It will not come up for a vote during a republican held congress. Even if the democrats come back in charge, remember the democrats were in charge when the aca came up and there was this massive fistfight over what was going to happen to the forprofit Health Insurance companies, and they made ads scaring people that they would never be able to see their favorite doctors ever again. Make no mistake, you are talking about putting an entire industry out of business. It isnt that you are annoying them with protections and regulations. You are threatening them with extinction. They will fight with everything they have. They have done it before, they won, so they will be encouraged to do it again. I think there is a wide gulf separating us here from singlepayer. The reason i like it is medicare works on a 3 administrative fee, not 20 , not 18 , 3 . [applause] rep. Cartwright the other thing was that was brought up is what about medicare negotiating drug prices . They are not allowed to. Why arent they allowed to . Him because the pharmaceutical industry has the power to not let that happen. I would be all in favor of allowing that negotiation to happen, but you are talking about an entire industry that has a lot of money and a lot to lose. So they are going to fight that tooth and nail all the way through. Dont expect to see that go through anytime soon, either. What is the Health Care Plan for congress . Can we all get in it . [laughter] rep. Cartwright i am on obamacare. I dont know. Does everybody have the same thing . Rep. Cartwright i chose this for myself and for my family because i dont want to be a hypocrite. [applause] is kind ofight expensive not to be a hypocrite because i have to pay for a plan that covers me at home in scranton and down in washington, d. C. About it, any mistake i am darn grateful to have this job. And i am so proud to represent all of you. [applause] i am going tot take one more question from the floor. Does somebody have a burning question that needs to be answered before we leave . You won the lottery. Thank you. I am very disturbed about the defunding of meals on wheels, which is so incredibly ,mportant, not just for dignity but so important. I just want to know what you it is soause desperately needed. Rep. Cartwright thank you for the question. They want to defund that. It is awfully important to keep that going. And i agree with that. I was astonished that that showed up in the president s budget to cut meals on wheels. Did you see this on television . Mick mulvaney was answering questions about this with a dry thatnd a cheery expression meals on wheels isnt working. Rememberid that . He said that . It wouldnt be working if people were starving to death. Then it wouldnt be working. That people can eat and live and take advantage of the program, the program works. Thank you for raising that question. I am fully in support of it, and i can tell you that is a very Popular Program that i fully expect the House Appropriations committee on both sides of the aisle to stick up for. Thank you. Rep. Cartwright everybody, thanks for coming. Thank you. [applause] [indiscernible] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] announcer congress is still in recess for the easter passover holidays, but the house returns tuesday for work on federal spending, which expires at the end of the month. They will also begin the process to raise the debt ceiling which limits government barring. Follow the house live here on cspan. The Senate Returns monday to hold a vote on President Trumps choice to head the agricultural department. They will also attempt to advance a Deputy Attorney general nomination. Watch the senate live on cspan2. 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Americansp my fellow , a new optimism is sweeping our country as we return power from washington and give it back to the American People where it belongs. For too long, American Workers were forgotten by their government, and i mean totally forgotten. Their interests were pushed aside for local projects and their wealth was taken from their communities and shipped across the world all across the seas. My administration has offered a new vision. The wellbeing of the american citizen and worker will be placed second to