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