Directors at the Islamic Center. We serve 5000 muslims in the area. Every0 of whom come here friday. Is a great honor to host [laughter] host is a great honor to our neighbors and guests from our Congressional District to participate in this discussion with a representative in congress. Please make yourself comfortable. Please note that the doors on my for women. Restrooms on my left, there are restrooms for men. Please forgive us for any shortcomings. Please let us know if you need any assistance. To invite our religious director at the Islamic Center to welcome our congresswoman. [applause] peace be with you. Good afternoon, everybody. And as the e mom religiousf the center. This is beautiful. [applause] [laughter] well, i lost my words. I like your tshirt. I am from pittsburgh actually. It is a great city. [applause] i would like to welcome all of you here in our humble facilities. How many of you are here for the first time . Almost everybody. Your dream has come true. [laughter] youe actually invite all of we are going to have our open 12 on day on october saturday. Please come join us. Learn about us and our community , about our religion, and about our mosque. Without further ado, i would like to introduce our representative, katie porter. We are so humbled and honored to have the townhall meeting here. Thank you so much. May god bless all of you and all of your family. Thank you so much. [applause] good afternoon, everybody. I want is a huge thank you to the Islamic Center of irvine for hosting this event. There are a lot of us, which meant a lot of for their community. This is my third or fourth time here. It is one of my very favorite venues to have events. In addition to bringing new people and making new connections in our community, this is also the only event where i do not have to wear uncomfortable shoes. Fan of the Islamic Center of irvine. I just want to say that i hope you will take them up on the offer to come back and visit. I am honored to get to work with the folks here. I do a lot of Community Service and go to a lot of Public Events for homelessness, for the environment. Virtually every event i go to, i see the bright blue tshirts of the Islamic Center of irvine. I am delighted to be here today. Thank you for your hospitality. I want to give a special shout out to the Irvine Police department. [applause] we have a number of former city officials here. Particularly, our current sitting congresswoman. Thank you for being here. [applause] congresswoman. I met councilman. It is a habit. I meant councilwoman. It is a habit. Talk forted to do was a couple minutes. How many of you, this is your first townhall with me . Awesome. If you have not been to one before, i run these so that your voices get hard. I talk for five minutes. Get heard. I talk for five minutes. Your do not get to question, they all get through written form. Even if i did not get to your question, no that you are being heard. I wanted to talk about what we have done in congress and what we need to do. Of what we have done, we need to do more. Those bills are sitting in the senate. We need to pressure the senate, pass those bills to stave what to save lives. [applause] there is nothing partisan about saving lives. Nobody nobody merged to irvine nobody moved to irvine for the nightlife. We need to pass those bills. Houseleagues on the Judiciary Committee are going to be going back to washington a peak early to take up additional gun violence prevention legislation. [applause] and everyone still hear me . Great. Services,f financial i serve on the Financial Services committee. It was my first choice. I serve on the Financial Services committee. It was my first choice. Not a lot of people apparently wanted to go to congress to work on credit default swaps. I did. I am a champion for capitalism. Need is capitalism creates opportunities for every american family. You may have seen my exchange the my penpal, jamie dimon, ceo of j. P. Morgan chase. [applause] chase is a big employer here in the 45th district. They provide loans to people to buy houses and start businesses. That is important work they are doing. But we also need chase to be sure that the work theyre doing making profits they are are being shared with those makg are being shared with those creating that value. So something i never thought i would see happened on monday. The business roundtable, the ceos of the nations largest corporations, came together and announced that corporations have a duty to stakeholders. Not just shareholders. [applause] and that means they can treat customers fairly. Are you listening, wells fargo . That means paying employees a wage where they can make ends meet, take care of their families, and save for retirement. That means being fair to suppliers so Small Businesses are able to also make ends meet, and theres able to be competition in our market. That means taking care of our communities, which i hope will be a fair tax system in which everybody chipped in for the collective good. So this is a huge step forward. I hope my conversation with jamie dimon helped prompt this. Im going to keep pushing because im going to hold them to that promise. We need a capitalist economy that works for the stakeholders, including the shareholders , because longterm, the shareholders when when the stakeholders when. That is what ive been working on there. More specifically i am introducing a bill to mandate introducing a bill to mandate the credit reporting agencies maintain, hold it, reasonable data privacy standards. [applause] because right now, they can gather all that data without your consent, and do absolutely nothing to protect it. That needs to change. Im introducing legislation on that. I am also working on we are having hearings on abusive debt proceedings on the student loan crisis. I founded the College Affordability caucus. We have 1. 5 trillion plus in dollars outstanding student loans. That is a huge problem for our economy. But it does not do any good to solve the Student Loan Debt of yesterday if we do not make the Sticker Price of College Affordable for families tomorrow. Everybody who is working hard in this country should be able to save enough to send their child to at least two years and hopefully four years of a public university. [applause] so we have to really pair those two things. We cannot forgive the Student Loan Debt from yesterday only to saddle the next generation with the exact same problem. There are things we could do to make student loan servicers accountable. Theyre pulling the exact same tricks i saw the mortgage servicers poll. Pull. You call, you get a different answer about what you pay. You call, you asked for help, you get disconnected. As all the same bag of tricks. Were going to be holding them accountable. Making sure our Student Loan Program is solvent. And i mean it rainy day solvent. Because with what the president has been doing, we could well be headed toward a top economic period, if not a recession. So we want to make sure that Student Loan Program is solvent. But it should not be a source of profit on the backs of our young people. Education is an investment. Nobody knows that better than those of us here in Orange County who have again come up come here partly because of the quality of education that our kids get. From kindergarten all with your post secondary. So im working on that. Im also doing a lot of work in terms of Mental Health. We need to defend the Affordable Care act. And to be clear, it is under attack. But it is also important to acknowledge that some of the premises in the Affordable Care act we are still struggling to , make reality. One of those is Mental Health parity. Meaning that Mental Health coverage will be treated the same as physical health problems. Anyone who has looked at their insurance and tried to locate a psychologist or psychiatrist in Network Knows that there are not very many. They are not taking new patients. It is very difficult to get that coverage. So i recently toured and saw what they were doing with pediatric Mental Health, and im proud to report to you that it is truly best in the Nation Services for our children. I will continue to support that going forward. I also have a bill on affordable childcare. Im happy to report that all the bills im talking about our bipartisan. [applause] they want me closer. So if it squeals it is your fault. [laughter] so they have been, all these bills are bipartisan. The Mental Health bill i mentioned, working on affordable childcare. I used to wonder before i got to congress, who thinks that Childcare Costs 5,000 per year . Because it does not. What this bill does, it would allow working families to keep more of the money they earn taxfree to pay for either childcare or senior care. So they can continue to be in the workplace. Parents should make their choices about whether they should stay home or not based on what is right for their family, not on their ability to pay for quality child care. All of these bills i mention are bipartisan. There a lot of these bills passing in the house. There is more to be done. The senate is not moving on this important legislation. Background checks might be the best example. But there is an endless stream of bills that passed including with republican support in the house in some instances. That are dying in the senate. That is a tough problem that we will need to continue to press to try to get the senate moving on these bills. Because the American People deserve solutions to their problems. If congress had a motto, it might be solving yesterdays problems tomorrow, maybe. [laughter] we need to demonstrate through hard work and being forward thinking that we are doing the work the American People need today and for tomorrow. We run for election every two years in the house of representatives. The idea behind this is it would keep us very connected to the people we represent. Back when congress started, people would go to washington, be here year and half and come back to get reelected. I come back and forth all the time. But the idea is that we be connected to our community. So we need to make sure we are actually delivering results for our community. And tackling the longterm challenges. One of those longterm challenges is our budget deficit which has grown tremendously under president trump. And part of this deficit is making sure that we are coming up with a fair system of taxation in which every Large Corporation pays its fair share. [applause] that has been a problem and it is a problem that has unfortunately gotten worse. And the deficit has gotten worse under the president. We need to be working on those issues. Im a leader trying to change the trump tax law that limits state and local Tax Deductions at 10,000. This was a radical change to tax policy. And the president has been pretty clear that he did it to be punitive to certain people. And our tax system should never be used for political partisanship. Our tax system is our collective investment in each other, and in our democracy, and in our economy. [applause] so we need to stand up and reverse those changes. Those are some of the things im working very hard on. Working very hard on. I have been doing a lot of going to tour businesses and talk with people, going to schools working , with our faith community. If you have not visited our District Office in irvine, please do. I have several Staff Members here. Raise your hand if youre a staff number. There are couple more somewhere. Jordan is my d. C. Staff. We have been able to work on veterans issues. We recently had our first win on behalf of constituent who is the heard by the muslim travel ban. Those are hard winds to get it but we got a win for constituent, to allow them to be able to see their family members. [applause] and we were able to help a veteran get over 200,000 in denied veteran benefits. That veteran was facing homelessness, until they were able to come to us and we were able to help them. If youre having problems of the federal agency, please call. Because it is my honor and my job to serve you. So with that, im going to stop and take some questions. [applause] is the outreach director here at the Islamic Center of irvine. Im going to ask her to draw the questions and hand them to me so im not moving away from the microphone so much. Ok, lets try it. She will draw the questions, i will read the questions and answer them. [laughter] when i have children do this, they are really into it. Ok. All right. I believe the impeachment of donald trump is a big mistake. He must be defeated at the ballot box in november, 2020. Any impeachment efforts will merely play into his hands. Where you stand on the impeachment of donald trump . The question summarizing is where do i stand on the impeachment of donald trump . Ok. So i came out in favor of impeaching donald trump. [applause] i believe that no american, especially not a democratically elected president can be above the rule of law. [applause] i made a video about this. I was one of the first people who flipped a seat to come out on this. People said well, this might be risky. You might not get reelected. I said im here to do what is right. There is substantial evidence that he broke the law. Obstruction of justice. It is in the mueller report. I think we ought to hold him accountable. The question asked is he must be defeated at the ballot box in 2020. So absolutely, we all know what the senate is going to do. We need to move forward on our legislative agenda. I guarantee you, im going into meetings forthose you prepared. Im more than capable of making sure that donald trump is being held accountable at the same time that im able to deliver the work that we are doing in our community. So i encourage you to look at the mueller report. Learn more. This is terrible. I think it is just the two mic problem. Ok. [laughter] [applause] considering how much this administration uses their power as a bully pulpit to attack their own citizens, how do we drain in this abuse of power . The answer is democracy. The constitution gave us the tools. [indiscernible] trying to take power away from the people. When you read the constitution [inaudible] the shortest one by far is the executive branch. That was by design. What we are seeing is the president trying to do things with congresses ability and we are seeing with spending, international affairs. [indiscernible] the solution here is to get engaged, make your voice heard, to vote, and that is how we are going to solve this problem. It is difficult and scary and hard. Democracy is like that. [indiscernible] we will hold the president accountable, every single one of us. You have the same power as a citizen as i do. Vote your values. Get other people engaged. Call my office. Do everything you can to stand up [indiscernible] [applause] [indiscernible] very difficult to source the production of my company outside of china. Millions of people will be unemployed. We need to be proactive as a society. Two parts to that, one of them tariffs. You cannot make effective trade policy by tweet. [laughter] [applause] by definition, mr. Trump is about negotiation. It is about doing business together. Is about coming together for a mutually beneficial deal. So his tariffs that he announced yesterday is an effective tax on every single american. Many Small Businesses, particularly here in california, where you do a lot of trade with china and asia, will be devastating. We need to empower out United States trade representative who a reallydy for this quite good crop official. Really quite good. To do his job. The president needs to allow the people like the trade representative to negotiate. There are real issues with china around intellectual property, around the enforcement of environmental standards, but we should be tackling this in a strategic alliance. The president does not get to hear by order anyone to do anything in this country. [applause] the fact that we even see that is incredibly disrespectful to the Business Owners who are working so hard to build a successful business in our community. With regard to the enchanting neighborhood of jobs, we are going to see a transformation with retail, absolutely. We are seeing with other industries with the transition from fossil fuel to clean energy. The solution is to recognize that it is a longterm problem. We need to be making investments and training the longterm workers of tomorrow. We are doing that here in irvine with a strong Public School system a strong Stem Education , program, excellent Affordable Community colleges with a terrific transfer and success rate. And our amazing fouryear university in our backyard in uc irvine. So making sure that our educational system is strong and we are funding it it is however going to produce the workforce that is ready to take on the jobs of tomorrow. But we are going to need to stand ready to help people who need to make that transition. So being ready to do that and able to do that is something we need to be thinking about. One of my frustrations is that the twoyear nature being in congress, causes some people to only think about what they can get done in two years. The biggest problems facing this , affordable housing, a fair tax system,