The hearing will come to order. This hearing is entitled congress and the frank bringing congressional mailing standards into the 21st century. I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening statement. Happy halloween everybody. I am dressed as americas most maligned superhero, congressman, to be able to fly across the country in six hours on alaska airlines. We were thinking about titling this hearing frankenstein, have houses ghoulish mailing standards have haunted members for decades, but i suppose we should go with the official on spooky title for the record. Like most of the issues that fall into this commencement date, its very inside baseball. To most people frank is a name or aam hot dog but the reality s for members of congress, congressional frank is actually fundamental to how we can indicate with our constituents and every time we respond to constituent request or send newsletters or send synopsis te upcoming town halls we use frank. So surprised with the rise o
[applause] please welcome our county chair. Hello, iowa. Fellow democrats from across america. All 50 states of america, welcome to polk county. Celebration for our Democratic Party. Together, we will get to meet 17 candidates who are leading a conversation about the future of our party and our country. One of these 17 people will be our next president. They say bad weather brings good luck, and it rained like heck at last years steak fry, and then we won back the congress. I hope the weather we have today is going to win us back the white house next year. Before we get started, please join me in welcoming the elected officials and candidates who are here today. Usually, we read all their names at our events, but obviously this is a little bit eager, so we are not going to go through all hundred of them. Please join me in welcoming them here today. Welcoming join me in five of our newer steak fry leaders. Lindsay paulson and peter crane are our steak fry chairs. Our executive director
For sell hours of coverage several hours of coverage from iowa. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] have five president ial candidates coming to the stage today. Julian castro. Lets have him take it away. [applause] Julian Castro good morning. It is great to be with you in des moines at the iowa state fair. Thank you to the folks who helped organize this. Was proud of this state fair. Im excited because i am here with my family. Our daughter and and son. [applause] Julian Castro this is a real treat for me because as you can imagine, like all the candidates, i dont often get to travel with my family. So it is neat that we get to spend some time together. I think the kids are looking forward to the bumper cars and the sky ride and the bacon you sell on a stick. Thist to talk to you morning about what we are going to become as a nation. Here in we went around this crowd and listened to t
Face. Lets not do that. Feel free to cheer, but dont jeer, because that is not iowa nice. And now, Representative Tulsi Gabbard. [applause] rep. Gabbard thank you so much. Aloha. That is what i call iowa nice. It is so good to be here with all of you. Thank you very much to the Des Moines Register for hosting us and giving us the opportunity to give background about who im and why i, running and why i am am and why i am running for president. Im reminded at every stop that we have about how great our country is. Why . Because i know who makes our country great. It is we, the people. Diversity, the heart, to see the care we as americans have for each other is what gives me hope for our future. Now, we are facing incredibly challenging times. We are facing great divisiveness, and unfortunately we face selfserving politicians and people in positions of power who are seeking to tear us apart and to divide us for their own selfish gain, whether it be for political gain or profits or clicks
[cheers] what you think about the slate of candidates . [applause] we have a good group coming ahead. Are you ready to hear them . [applause] ok, were going to do a little bit of tightening if you can. If you have an empty seat next to you, filled up. If you folks are looking for a chair in the aisle, come and sit in the seat right now. Just come in and still fill the seat. Tighten up your seats. Give a good old north iowa hug and get close and cuddly. That is what i was all about. [laughter] here we go folks. Now we going to give a coveted beacon award. The beacon award would not be possible if it were not for gary sinton and dean gand putting this award together 12 years ago. [applause] every year we have given the beacon award to amazing people from a federal level, statelevel, and national level. Barack obama got a got it Hillary Clinton got it, ted kennedy got it. Then sharon seckman got it last year. A big handout for sharon seckman. Our very own Amanda Raymond got it. We have gi