I am the chairman of the board of directors here at the Islamic Center. For those of you who are curious, we serve about 5000 muslims in the area, 2000 come every friday to offer the weekly congregational prayers. Host. A great honor to [laughter] honor to hostat our neighbors and guests from our Congressional District for rur discussion with ou representative in congress. Please make yourselves comfortable. The doors on my right have restrooms for women and on the left restrooms for men. This is the first time we have had an event like this. Forgive us for any shortcomings. There will be several volunteers with badges like me. I would like to invite our religious director at the Islamic Center to welcome our congresswoman. [applause] peace be with you. Good afternoon, everybody. At the as the imam here Islamic Center of irvine. This is beautiful. Well, i lost my words. Strongertshirts than hate. From pittsburgh actually, so yeah, it is a great city. [applause] look all ofike to you here in the humble facility, how many of you are here for the first time . Almost everybody. True. Your dream has come [laughter] we actually invite all of you. We are going to have the annual y on october 12, saturday. Please join us, learn a little bit about us, 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, god bless all of you. Source of love and compassion to everybody. Thank you so much. [applause] good afternoon, everybody. I want to say a huge thank you to the Islamic Center of irvine for hosting this summit area there are a lot of us. This is my third or fourth trip. Its one of my very favorite venues to have events. In addition to making new connections in our community, this is also the only event where i dont have to wear uncomfortable shoes. [applause] so im a big fan of the Islamic Center of irvine and i hope that you will take up the offer to come back and visit. Ive been 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, the environment, virtually every event i go to, i see the bright blue tshirts of the Islamic Center of irvine, out in the community volunteering. So 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, including our current sitting congresswoman. [applause] i meantter councilwoman. Its a habit. I said congressman more i have said congressman katie porter more times than i can count. So i want to talk for a a couple of minutes. For how many of you, is this your first town hall . Great. I run these town halls so your voices can be heard and theres an equal chance to be heard. I talk for five minutes then we will draw questions out of the center. If we dont get to your question, know that i go through all of them, and they all get to me in a written form and we try to respond to people when we can. Even if i dont get to your question today, please know you are being heard. I want to talk about what we have done in congress and what we need to do. In terms of what we have done, we have been able to pass background check bills and gun violence prevention bills, but we need to do more. Those bills are sitting in the senate and we need to pressure the senate to pass bills to save lives. [applause] rep. Porter there is nothing partisan about saving lives. Nobody moved to irvine for the nightlife. We moved here for the quality of life and the safety. We need to pass this bill. And i am pleased that my colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee going back to washington a week are early to take up additional gun violence prevention legislation. [applause] rep. Porter can everyone still hear me . In terms of Financial Services, 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. But i did. Because im a real champion for capitalism. But what we need is capitalism that creates opportunity, for every single american family. So you may have seen my exchange with my now penpal jamie dimon, the ceo of j. P. Morgan chase heard [applause] rep. Porter 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. We also need chase to be sure that the work theyre doing on the profit there making 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] rep. Porter that means they can treat customers fairly. Are you listening wells fargo . That means pay employees a wage where they can make ends meet and where they can save for their family and say 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 chips into 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 paired because longterm, the shareholders when when the stakeholders when paired that is what ive been working on there. More specifically i am introducing a bill to mandate the credit reporting agencies maintain, hold it, reasonable data privacy standards. [applause] rep. Porter 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. Im also working on were having hearings on abusive debt proceedings, on the student loan crisis. I founded the College Affordability caucus. Outstanding student loans. We have 1. 5 trillion in 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] rep. Porter 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 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 rainy day solvent. Because with what the president has been doing, we could well be headed toward a tough 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 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 promises in the of formal 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 choc and had a chance to see what they were doing with the attic Mental Health. And am happy to report that it is among the best of what they are doing in the nation for childrens Mental Health services. I also have a bill on affordable childcare. Im happy to report that all the bills im talking about a bipartisan. [applause] they want me closer. So if it squeals it is your fault. [laughter] rep. Porter 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. People should be parents should make their choices out whether to stay home. [applause] rep. Porter or stay with their career or their children, based on what is right for their families. Not based on the inability to afford quality childcare. 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 republican support in the house in some instances. That are dying in the senate. So that is a tough problem. We are right to have to continue to press. And to try to get the senate moving on these bells. Because the American People deserve solutions to their problems. If congress had a motto, it might be solving yesterdays problems tomorrow, maybe. [laughter] rep. Porter we need to demonstrate your 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 and the house of representatives. The idea behind this is it would keep us very connected to the people we represent. Back when congress started, we go to washington, be there for one and half years 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 are 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] rep. Porter 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 inductions. 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] rep. Porter so we need to stand up and reverse those changes. Those are some of the things im working very hard on. I have been doing a lot of going to tour businesses and talk with people, working with our faith community. If you have not visited our District Office in irvine, please do. And i have several staff memories who raise your hand if youre a staff number. Jordan is my d. C. Staff, a wonderful staff. We have been able to work on veterans issues. We recently had our first win on behalf of constituent who is being hurt by the muslim travel ban. Those are hard wins to get it but we got a win for constituent, to allow them to be able to see their family members. [applause] rep. Porter and we are 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 with 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] rep. Porter this is the executive director outreach director here. Im going to ask her to draw the questions and hand them to me so im not moving away from the microphone. Rep. Porter ok, lets try it i will read the questions and answer them. [laughter] rep. Porter when i have children do this, they are really into it. All right. I believe the impeachment of donald trump is a big mistake. He must defeated at the ballot box in november, 2020. Any impeachment effort will merely play into his hands. Where do you stand on the impeachment of donald trump . The question summarizing is where do i stand on the impeachment of donald trump . Ok. Im in favor of impeaching donald trump. [applause] rep. Porter i believe that no american, especially not a democratically elected president can be above the rule of law. [applause] rep. Porter 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. So he theres 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. Move forward on our legislative agenda. I more than capable of making sure that donald trump is being held accountable. At the same time that im able to deliver the work on prescript in drugs and a formal care and a Affordable Housing and as she is in our community. So take a look at the mueller report. Ok. Is it working . Rep. Porter i think it is just a two mic problem. Ok. [applause] i do have those to supervise children. Considering how much this administrator uses their power as a bully pulpit to attack their own citizens, how do we rein in this abuse of power . The answer is democracy. The constitution gave us the tools. [indiscernible] when you read the constitution one of the questions article one, article two, article three the shortest by far is [indiscernible] what we are seeing is the president trying to do things. Seeing International Affairs pushing us into wars that congress has not authorized. Solution is to get engaged and to vote. Difficult and it is scary and it is hard. Democracy is like that. One of the greatest political systems in society. We hold the president accountable. You have the same amount of power as i do. Vote. Get other people engaged. Learn about the issues. Call my office. Do everything you can to stand up. [indiscernible] [applause] rep. Porter the death of retail. Yesterday, a Small Business owner. [indiscernible] important, noost one is talking about retail, millions of people unemployed,. [indiscernible] rep. Porter we need to be proactive as a society. Two parts to that, one is about the tariffs. The other is the changing nature of job opportunity in this country. You cannot make effective trade policy by tweets. [laughter] [applause] rep. Porter by definition, mr. Trump, its about negotiation. It is about doing business together. Its about coming together for a mutually beneficial deal. His tariffs that he announced yesterday, 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 bimetal standards, around protection of workers. We should be tackling those a longterm strategic alliance. Lets grow a relationship with china. That president does not get to order anybody to do anything in this country. [applause] rep. Porter it is incredibly 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 transformation in the kind of work and the work we are seeing. With retail, absolutely. We are seeing it with other transitions to trip fossil fuels. 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 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 am