Together, exercising your constitutional rights. One of the goals of my office has been to set a new standard for accountability and openness in our community. That is why we have done 17, yes, 17 town halls in person across our Community Just this year. Three of them have been in manteca, at least three. And we are trying to make sure we are listening to every single voice in our community, whether you voted for me, didnt, didnt vote, i am still your representative and it is my job to make sure i am listening to your concerns, suggestions, comments about how i can do my job, making sure my First Priority is to be grounded in the needs and realities of our community. A little about my story. I ran for office because i love the Central Valley. My family settled here in manteca. My great, great grandfather came on a wagon train in 1850, 2000 miles in search of gold and he stopped 50 miles short. He settled here to become a peach farmer in manteca. Off main street there is a eucalyptus tree he planted. My literal roots are here, and that is the story of so many folks, coming here because we have the best water, best soil, best climate in the entire world. My story is one where the community invested in may. I grew up in turlock, went to the public schools, got a scholarship from the Modesto Rotary Club and the American Legion to go off to college. I worked in business, i was teaching in Modesto CommunityCollege Teaching kids how to write a Business Plan and start a company, and i realized that so many of the challenges i cared about in our community, whether it was lowering the cost of health care, bringing jobs to the valley, the problems were not going to be solved by more entrepreneurs are just more teachers. We had to have a set of political leaders that could Work Together and get stuff done. I was not seeing that, so i decided to see what we could do to fix it. And we have made a couple priorities in our first nine months, 10 months of being in office. All of them, really led by listening to our community at events like this and making sure those being responsive to interests. I will talk about a couple of those. One of the first priorities i made was going to our veterans and talking to veterans about , the needs they had. And they said that there was a huge challenge of Vietnam Veterans affected by agent orange, a terrible chemical we used that was causing cancer, a lot of diabetes. And it has been 50 years, but we have a lot veterans who are still living with these conditions, who are paying out of pocket because they were not being covered by disability benefits under the veterans administration. Folks were paying tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, outofpocket for this. I thought that was unconscionable. We took a bill that had been on the back burner for 50 years in congress. We made it a top priority. We brought together democrats and republicans, and just a couple months ago that bill passed the house, it passed the senate and it was signed into trump,y president meaning every single vietnam veteran affected by agent orange in this country now has their disability benefits fully covered. That is what we were able to make happen. [applause] and there is a lot of other stuff we are working on. I will highlight a couple others. Water and health care, which i think are two of the biggest existential threats we have in the valley. And when i sit looking in manteca, i see the challenges a population that is growing quickly. Manteca is really growing and we need to make sure we have the local jobs here, so people who are doing that drive over the ultima pass can have opportunities to stay, and be employed. One of the best mechanisms for that, in a community where one out of every three jobs is directly or indirectly tied to agriculture, is making sure we are preserving the lifeblood of the valley, which is our water. We have a boom and bust cycle with water. We have years where we will have too much, and we will have floods, and then we will have way too little the next year, and we will have a drought. And that is something that we need to be able to do a better job of managing. We need to be able to build the reservoirs, the groundwater recharge, the water recycling facilities, to make sure we are prepared for the next drought around the corner. It is the best way to preserve and grow the jobs we have in the valley, which continue to feed the world. We are fighting for a couple projects this year that i think we will be able to get funding for. Out near tracy, the reservoir to the north, the san luis reservoir, which we are working to expand, and the Canyon Reservoir that is out near patterson. We have been able to secure 14 million in funding just for those projects in we are working to get it across the finish line in a budget package by the end of the year, just going for going to our community to build Water Infrastructure programs for the future. Another program we are working on is the lack of access to health care in the valley. This is one of the personal reasons why i ran for office. My own brother was born 10 weeks premature, he was less than two pounds when he was born. I could not even hold him when i met him because he was behind the glass in the icu. And we have done a good job of making sure that folks have health care coverage, but we have done a terrible job of making sure they can afford prescription drugs, and that they can actually have a doctor that they can go and see. We have half the doctors per capita in the valley that the bay area has and other areas have across the country. That is a problem. We have 12 residents that graduated in my Congressional District just this year. 12 residents, 12 new positions, only one of them stayed. 11 of them took jobs outside. So that is the current state of affairs. And i dont blame somebody for having 500,000 in medicine 500,000 dollars in medical school debt, and deciding to do surgery somewhere else. That is their economic challenge. We need to be able to connect folks to opportunities here so they stay in the valley. And so a couple weeks ago, i introduced a bill, again with republicans and democratic support, that will create a Loan Repayment Program for all physicians working in nonprofits in california. That program, if we can get it across the line, which i think we are going to be able to, the California Medical Association believes that that will lead to 10,000 positions staying and working in our area. That is what we are talking about. That is a huge win in an area where we dont have enough physicians of any type. Those of the projects we are working on. I could continue to go on and on, but again the best part of , these is not when you are listening to me, i hear myself enough already, it is making sure that we are giving it up to the Community Memory and hearing your comments, your suggestions, your priorities for how i can continue to serve you. So thank you for coming. Andso grateful, and that excited to open it up to questions and hear how i can continue to work for you. Thank you. [applause] i know we have melissa on one side, we have katie on the other. Raise your hand. Ask whatever question you want, or we can start cold calling. Whatever is important to you. I will ask you some questions. [inaudible] is coming back next year, what are you going to do . Representative harder the question is, we seem to have missed the power outage at this time, but what is going on . I am so frustrated by the situation we have with power right now. Pg e has done a terrible job. I admit it is a tough situation for them, where you either turn off the power or you could see a situation where you are worried you will have more fires, more things like we had in paradise, not that far from here. But we should not be in this position to begin with. Gmdi would contrast what he g e has done, and some of our irrigation districts. Turlock irrigation district one of the reasons we have been insulated from these problems is because we have we dont have the same problems in our irrigation districts. We should learn about that. We need top to bottom reform at pg e and make sure that this is clear that this is an , unacceptable level of service, when you have one million customers across the state of california at risk of losing power for potentially days on end, and while this was not as bad as it could be we know the , next potential blackout is around the corner. So what we are trying to do is work both at a state level, which manages a lot of the oversight at pg e, as well as at the federal level. Good ideas are making sure that we are not charging ratepayers during the black outs, that we are establishing fundamental e. Orms at pg the infrastructure, a lot of it was designed in the 1970s, so basically fixing that. This year, they gave their executives multimillion dollar bonuses. I wrote a letter and i said, this is not acceptable, you should not be paying yourselves with bonuses like you are on top of the world when you are at risk at not delivering services to areas like manteca. [applause] thank you. Other questions, do not be shy. Thank you. Im deborah from tracy and my question is this. Int you did for veterans what you just passed through the legislation that is on the president s desk, but i am concerned about the legislation that has not been passed, such as infrastructure. Our roads, even in the valley, it is atrocious. I used to commute to redwood city. I know what the altamont is like. Im concerned about the usmca , that would help farmers. That would help most of the middle of the country. Why isnt that being passed . Rep. Harder it is a great question. You have two different things, but overall i think your question was right on, why is not enough being done in washington . I could not agree more. That is one of my big frustrations. And i would not blame one party or the other, but i will note that there have been 200 bills that have passed the house, that are sitting on the senates desk right now, that they have not even taken up. If you vote it down, that is one thing, but it is another did not even take any action. It is very frustrating to me because i voted for 200 bills that have passed, that got out of one chamber but are being held up because of politics in the other. Now some of the things, i will go into specifics, like you mentioned Something Like infrastructure. It is a huge challenge. We have decaying infrastructure in the valley that is costing us more money than it would cost to fix it. People are paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket every single year just to fix their car because the potholes are so bad. The worst bridge in california is the 73 bridge in modesto and it has a score of 2 according to the american civil corps of engineers. Two out of 100. I do not recommend driving over it with a truck. That is the situation we have today. So they should not be a partisan issue, this has got to be something where we come together. President trump campaigned on a trillion dollar infrastructure plan. I think that is a fantastic idea. I absolutely support it. It needs to be put into action. The plane he put into action actually pushes 80 of the cost down to our cities and counties, which i do not think is the answer. There must be an opportunity where people can come together. And the holdup has been making sure that folks who have taken pledges to never raise taxes are actually doing the job that they are forced to, because this is something we are paying for one way or another. We have got to make sure we are actuallyhing fixing the infrastructure that is on our streets today. And your second question is about the usmca. For people not familiar, we have a series of trade disputes and , this is basically nafta to 2. 0. Out nafta california produces 80 of the worlds almonds, a lot of them produced around here. We have less than 1 of the worlds consumers. There is only so much almond milk we can drink. We need to be able to sell our product, not just almonds, but dairy and everything else, all across the world. The first solution is our partners in mexico and canada, which usmca would address. We are working hard to get this to yes. And i feel like i was hoping to get this to a vote by the end of august, that did not happen. I am hoping to do it before the canadian elections by october , 31. That could slip and now we are hoping for maybe the end of the year. It is very frustrating for me to see that folks are not actually getting something done on this because it would be getting solving some issues with it, it would lead to a boom in the valley. What usmca does for this region is, it opens up the canadian dairy market. We have lost 90 dairy farms in san joaquin an Stanislaus County over the last 10 years. A lot of dairy farms are in trouble. And just when we are getting back on track, we started trade wars with canada, japan, with china and other countries. The best way to do it is make sure we are getting an agreement across the finish line and that , is one of our big priorities. Thank you. [applause] do not be too shy. We will start cold calling the students. [laughter] not a good idea . [laughter] can you hear me . Yeah . I have enjoyed talking to you personally. You havent addressed all those things, you did with this lady right here. There is one that kind of really i think i want to find out about this one, it is the impeachment issue. I want you to talk about the impeachment issue, with the democrats bringing this up. I will tell you honestly, im up to here with the impeachment stuff, alright . Rep. Harder thank you for your question. Thank you for your service and everything you did. It is frustrating for me. I did not run for office to be in this situation. This was not my goal. And i think that it is a circus out there in washington, but it is a circus that we have to hold accountable. As many of you know, i have been very cautious to go in on this, but i think after what we saw on the ukraine transcript, and by the way, i recommend to all of you to go out and read it, but what i saw and what i read was a president putting his personal political vendettas ahead of our national security. And i think that is blatant corruption and i think it requires an inquiry. And that is exactly what is happening. And i think the same standard that we are holding here, i hope would be my same standard if we have a democratic president at another time that is doing the same thing, asking for political dirt on a domestic opponent with china or with the u. K. Or some other ally across the country, or some other person. So that is why i think it is important. That said, my focus in this district has not changed. The Top Priorities i have are making sure that we are securing our Water Infrastructure, bringing more doctors to the valley, we are fixing our transit and transportation infrastructure for the 86,000 people that drive over the Altamont Pass every day, and ultimately we bring more jobs to the valley. So that is my commitment to you. I have a constitutional obligation to do my job and make sure we are making that happen but my first focus is to make , sure we are responsive to those in the community and the valley, and reminding people that california ultimately is franciscoabout san and los angeles, which i think my job really comes down to. Thank you. [applause] so you are going to vote for impeachment . And is your stance on fullterm abortion still the same . Rep. Harder yeah, so i have never supported fullterm abortions. I dont support it. I think that this is a misnomer that folks try to make into a political attack. Im prochoice, but i do not think it is the governments opportunity to get in between a woman, her body and her doctor. [applause] on the inquiry, i think i have been pretty clear that the step we are at now is to make sure that there is a full, impartial investigation. And i think that all of us, regardless of your political affiliation, regardless of who you voted for, i think you should want the same thing. And we should make sure that all the facts are on the table and , that folks are testifying in open committee hearings, saying what they heard. I think that is the least we can expect of our nation, because ultimately this comes down to believing that we have a legitimate, democratic process, that we have real accountability between our branches, and that we are not allowing foreign interference in our elections. I think that is the step we are at now. [applause] and i think it should be pushed by all of us to make sure the inquiry actually takes place. [applause] im glad that you made reference to concerns about foreign interference in our elections. There is ample circumstantial evidence that there was outofdistrict interference with the last election here in the 10th district. And for those of you who say , circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence, the simple definition is if it walks , like a duck, moves like a duck, it is probably a duck. Between statistical anomalies and statistical impossibilities, when you look at the voter turnout, even former speaker of the house paul ryan made the comment that for an official to win the ballot box vote, to win the absentee boat, and then lose the entire election on special provisional ballots is almost an impossibility. Are you committed to ensuring the integrity of the election process, and i am much less concerned about foreign entities trying to influence elections than we have people coming possibly from outside this district and committing voter fraud. And there has been a number of examples shown of how that may well have happened. Again, i am glad you are concerned about the integrity of the elections, and i am concerned about the elections here in the 10th district. Rep. Harder thank you for your question, and thank you for your concern. I think we all should share the same value, which is you should have faith in the democratic processes that are in place, to make sure the boat you cast is equally weighted across all the voters in the district, and that you ultimately have faith in the end result. And it is very frustrating to see that faith breaking down. And i think that this is something that, again, should not have anything to with party affiliation. We should want a legitimate process. So i think we had this in the last election. I think here is what i will say about that, which is after President Trump got elected in 2016, he alleged voter fraud and he did something about it. He actually created a