Friday to offer our weekly congregational prayers. Its a great honor to host its a great honor to host our neighbors and guests from our Congressional Districts today for this important discussion with our representative in congress. Please make yourself comfortable. This is our main prayer of all our sanctuary. Note that the doors please forgive us for any shortcomings. Let us know if you need assistance. There will be several volunteers wearing badges like me. Id like to invite our director here at the Islamic Center to welcome our congresswoman. I serve as the religious director here at the Islamic Center of irvine. This is beautiful. Ok. Well, i lost my words. You know, i like your tshirt, stronger than hate. I am from pittsburgh, actually. I would like to welcome all of you here in our humble facility. How many of you are here for the first time . Almost everybody. Well, your dream has come true. We actually invite all of you and will have our annual open please, come and join us and learn a little bit about us. And i say, 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, god bless all of you and your family. May you always be a source of love and compassion to everybody. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you, everybody. I want to give huge thanks to the Islamic Center of irvine for hosting this event. This is my third or fourth trip here, this is one of my very favorite venues to have events. And in addition to bringing new people and making new connections in our community, this is also the only event where i dont have to wear uncomfortable shoes. So i am a super fan of the Islamic Center of irvine. I just want to say i hope you will take the offer to come back and visit. I have been really honored to get to work with the folks here. I do a lot of Committee Service and do a lot of Public Events for homelessness, for the environment. To, illy every event i go see the bright blue tshirts of the Islamic Center of irvine as they are out and our community volunteering. So im just delighted to be here today and i thank you for your hospitality. I want to give a special shout out to the Police Department for making sure everyone is safe. Today here today. We have a number of former city officials, particularly our current sitting congresswoman and irvine. Thank you for being here. Congresswoman, i met caps on. Its a habit. Congressman. Aid i say congressman katie porter manytimes the content how for how many of you is this your first town hall with me, tosome if you havent been one before, i run this town hall so that your voices get heard i talk for five minutes and then we will drop. Questions. If we dont get your question, know that we do see all of them and i respond in written form. So you and if i dont get your question today, know that you are being heard. So i want to talk about what we do in congress and what we need to do in congress. ,n terms of what we have done very happy that we have been able to pass important background checks and government prevention bills, but we need to do more. Those bills are sitting in the senate and we need to press of the senate to pass those bills to save lives. [applause] there is nothing partisan about saving lives. Nobody moves to irvine for the nightlife. We moved here for the quality of life and safety. We needed to pass those bills and i am pleased my colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee will go back to washington. Can everyone still hear me . In terms of Financial Services, i serve on the Financial Services committee. I serve on the Financial Services committee, it was my first choice. Wanted toof people get congress to work on credit but what we i did need is capitalism that creates opportunity for every single american family. My exchangeave seen with my now penpal jamie dimon, ceo of j. P. Morgan chase. Chase is a big employer here in the 45th Congressional District and they provide loans to help people and that is important work for but we also need chase to make sure the work theyre doing and the profits they are working our shared with those creating value. The business roundtable, which is the ceo of the nations Largest Corporation came together and announced that corporations have a duty to stakeholders, not just shareholders. That means they treat customers fairly, are you listening to my wells fargo are you listening, wells fargo . That means being fair to suppliers, so that Small Businesses are able to make ends meet. That means taking care of our communities, which i hope will mean a fair tax system in which everybody chips in the collective good. To this a huge step forward and i hope my conversation will help promptness prompt this. I will keep pushing. We need an economy that works for stakeholders including shareholders. Longterm, shareholders win when stakeholders went. Specifically, managers and a bill to mandate the credit reporting agencies maintain reasonable data privacy standards. Right now, they got her all of that data. That needs to change. Also working on hearings on abusive Debt Collection and the student loan crisis. I founded the College Affordability caucus. Plusve 1. 5 trillion dollars in Student Loans and that is a huge problem for the economy. But does not do any good salt Student Loan Debt of yesterday we dont make the Sticker Price of College Affordable tomorrow. Whos working hard in this country should be able to save enough to send their child to at least two years. We have to really pair those two things. We cannot forget the student because we will have the exact same problem, but there are things we can do to make it accountable. Theyre pulling the exact same traits the Mortgage Services paul. Pull. Its the same bag of checks. Tricks. We will make sure our Student Loan Program is solvent, and i mean a rainy day solvent. With what the president is doing, we could be headed towards a tough economic time, if not a recession. It should not be a source of profit. Andation is an investment nobody knows that better than those of us here in Orange County who have come here in part because of the quality education our kids get. Kindergarten all the way through post secondary. So im working on that. Im also doing work in terms of Mental Health. We need to defend the formal care act, and to be clear, it is under attack. But it is also important student knowledge that some of the promises and the Affordable Care act we are struggling to make a reality. One of those is Mental Health parity. Meeting that Mental Health coverage is treated the same as physical health problems. Anyone who is looking their insurance and try to locate a Psychologist Network knows there are not very many, they are not taking the patients, and it is very difficult to get the coverage. Im proud to report to you that we have truly best in the nation services. So i will be thinking about how to report that going forward. I also have a bill on affordable childcare. All of the bills im talking about our bipartisan. They want me closer, so if it squeals, its your fault. All of these bills are bipartisan. Mental health bill i mentioned, working on formal childcare. Who thinks Childcare Costs 5,000 a year . Because it doesnt. What this bill does is it would allow working families to keep more of the money they earn taxfree to pay for child care or senior care. Making choicesbe about whether to stay home with the career or his children. Not based on inability to afford quality child care for. A lot of these bills are bipartisan and there is more to be done. The senate is not moving on this. Mportant legislation including as robert and support in the house for some instances in the house and the senate in some instances. The American People deserve solutions to their problems. If congress had a motto, it might be Something Like solving yesterdays problems tomorrow, maybe. We needed to demonstrate through hard work and forward thinking that we are doing the work the American People need today . Today. We won run for election every two years in the house of representatives and the idea is that it would keep us very connected. Back when congress started, people would go to washington, be there for a year and half them and come back to get reelected. I come back all the time but the ideas that we are connected to our community. Tackling longterm challenges. One of those longterm challenges is our budget deficit which has grown tremendously under president trump. Is makingis deficit sure we are coming up with a fair system of taxation in which every Large Corporation pays its fair share. That has been a problem and has unfortunately gotten worse. The deficit has gotten worse under the president. We need to be working on those issues. I am a leader on trying to change the trump tax law that limits state and local tax deductions. 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 Part in strip partisanship. Up and try tond reverse those changes. Those are some of the things im working very hard on. Ive been doing a lot of going into businesses and going into schools and working with the faith community. You have not visited our District Office in irvine, please do. I have several step numbers here, please raise your hand Staff Members here, please raise your hand. We have wonderful staff. We have been able to work on veterans issues. These are hard winds to get a we got a win for a constituent to allow them for being able to see the family they are family. We also got a better and 200,000 in denied benefits and they were facing homelessness until they were able to come to us. So if you are having problems with the federal agency, please call. It is my honor and my job to serve you. With that, i will stop and take questions. This is the executive director, what is your title . The outreach director at the center and i will ask her to draw the questions and hand them to me so im not moving away from the microphone so much. So i will read the questions and then answer. I believe the impeachment of donald trump is a realistic, he must be defeated at the ballot box. Any page and effort will merely play into his hands. Any impeachment effort will really play into his hands. The question is where do i stand on the impeachment of donald trump. Ofi came out in favor impeachment donald trump impeaching donald trump because i believe [applause] american that no especially in democratically elected president , can be about the rule of law. He made a video about this and was one of the first people who flipped a seat to come out on this they said that this might be risky and i said im here to do whats right. He needs substantial evidence that he broke the law, obstruction of justice. Its in the Mueller Report and we ought to hold him accountable. The question asked command says he must be defeated at the about , wein november 2020 absolutely know what the senate is going to do. We need to move forward on his legislative agenda. I am more than capable of donald trump is being held accountable the same time and is doing hard health care,er on gun violence prevention, projection jugs drugs, and all of the questions we are facing. I urge you to take a look at the Mueller Report. I think it is just a to mike problem two mic problem. Is it on . Ok. Ok. Apologies. Ok [laughter] [applause] i do have a license to supervise children. Considering how much this administration uses their power wea bully pulpit, how do raise our power . The answer is democracy. The constitution gave us a choice. [indiscernible] when we read the constitution article one . Article two, the congressional and legislative branch. What we are seeing is the ,resident trying to do things were seeing it with international affairs. We are refusing to put in place duly enacted laws that congress has passed. Democracy. N here is that is really how we will solve is scary, and it is hard. Democracy is like that, but it is also the greatest political system. We held the president accountable for every single one of them. You have the same amount of power as citizen as i did. So vote, vote your values. Learn about the issues. Call my office. To do every thing you can. To stand up. [indiscernible] [applause] [indiscernible] rep. Porter we need to be proactive as a society. Two parts to that, one is about the terrace. The other is the changing nature of job opportunity in this country. You cannot make effective trade policy by tweet. [laughter] [applause] rep. Porter by definition, mr. Trump is about negotiation. It is about doing business together. Is about coming together for a mutually beneficial deal. Though his tariffs that he announced yesterday, or an effective tax on everything american. For many of our Small Businesses, particular here in Southern California come over you a lot of trade with china and asia, it will be devastating. So these, we need to empower our United States trade representative, who is ready for this, a really quite good from official. Really quite good. To do his job. And the president needs to allow people like the trade representative to negotiate. The real trade issues with china around intellectual property, around the enforcement of an environmental standards, around protection of workers. We should be tackling those in a longterm Strategic Alliance that allows us to continue to grow a bilateral, productive relationship with china. The president does not get to order anythingby is country. It is disrespectful to the Business Owners who are working so hard to build a successful business in our community. With regard to the changing nature of jobs, were going to see a transmission of work, with retail, absolutely. The changing nature of work. Were seeing it with the transition from fossil fuels to we need to be making investment in training the workers of tomorrow. Where doing it 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. An amazing fouryear university in our backyard in uc irvine. So making sure that our educational system is strong and we are finding it is however funding it is how we are 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 thing about what they can get done in two years. The biggest problems facing this country, Affordable Housing in order county. In Orange County. A fair tax system. Prescription drug costs. We do not get those into years in two years and were not going to take care of them in two years. So i think about what i can do today and also what we can do for 20 years from now. That is what we have to think developing the nextgeneration workforce. [applause] rep. Porter how do we do with deal with the hate that is growing and dividing our country . Orange county has one of the highest rates of hate crimes in the country. Which is shameful, given that we have one of the most beautifully diverse and successful populations in the country. We should, we live in a place where we should be salivating celebrating each other everyday. [applause] im so proud of the diversity of our community. There are a lot of solutions on hate crimes. Part of it starts with each one of us. Living the kind of values we believe. Speaking up when we hear hate speech. When we see people engaging in hateful or disrespectful acts. Part of it comes with making sure that our department of justice is enforcing the hate crime laws. That people feel empowered to call our police when hate crime occurs. And making sure we elect leaders who model respect for the diversity that makes this country the most beautiful, powerful, and strongest nation in the world. So theres no easy fix to this one either. Some of what we are seeing in terms of hate, was under the surface, and is now coming out. So we have to look this problem squarely in the eye. And we have to be brave enough to say, i do not want to be treated that way. I believe in respect. I respect you. Please respect me. We have to have those kinds of conversations. And we have a wonderful, among other Orange County organization, we are so blessed to have an amazing Interfaith Community that is doing a lot of important work in this regard. Amazing advocates for immigration, for immigrants, trying to make sure that we are recognizing that we are stronger because we respect each others contributions. I wish i had an easy answer for thi