Call to order. Attention. Call to order advance. Call to order post the colors. Color scattered please join me in the pledge of alligence. Color guard retreat. Color guard dismissed. You may be seated. Thank you very much. Can we give our girl scouts a warm round of applause. applause so these young women are senior girl scouts which means they are in high school, and they represent a few different troops that are working on learning how to interact with the world. To travel, they do a lot of Different Things but to explore the world and to support younger girls, bringing them along. A couple of them i know are working on their girl skoud Leadership Award thats like its the equivalent of the eagle award. So let me just introduce myself. Ill let you know how well move through this town hall but first i want to say thank you. Thank you for coming out. For participating in the process. For being part of this conversation. Whether you came because you have a concern and you disagree or whether you came because you have something to ask and you agree with some of the things weve done. Its a an incredibly important part of the process and we try to have town halls and opportunities to have this dialogue as much as possible. So im curious because i see some new faces. I see some faces that i recognize, how many of you have been to one or more of our town halls or Public Events before . Okay. Great. So that means the rest of you havent. So making sure that were all kind of on the same page here one of the things that is really important to have constructive dialogue and be able to tackle some of the issues that may be challenging to many of us is the give and take. Thats one of the reasons that we use the tickets. Thats the word. The reason were using the tickets is we knew there would be a lot of us and we want to make sure we have a process thats fair. Were going to draw the tickets out to see who has questions because if everybody had questions, we may not have enough time but i can assure you well do this again so those of you who dropped the tickets in outside thats how well choose the order of questions and then well work to make our way around through as many questions as we can in the time, and then i will be happy to stick around a little bit longer after for specific questions. If there is something you dont feel comfortable asking or a story you dont feel comfortable sharing in the broader setting and you want to share it with me or one of our team members, we would be happy to stick around for that. So having said that, i want to take just a moment and have all of the team members that work in the Congressional Office go ahead and raise your hands. If you look around the room you will see several of them. You can approach any of them and ask questions. They will be there to help you out as well chlt. Its very important to me to have a dialogue thats respectful, thoughtful and intentional, and i pledge to do that and have that dialogue with anyone, and in order to keep things going and to get to as many peoples questions as possible, i just ask when you ask a question, youre going to have one of our team members that will hold the microphone and right back there, hell come to you with the mic and we want to make sure we keep it moving to ask the question an ill respond. If you want to have further conversation afterwards we can do that just so we can get to as many people as we possibly can. And for me, thats just what it comes down to. The bottom line, the more we can create that space to agree and or disagree with constructive dialogue, thats helpful for all of us, and i appreciate all of you being here and your participation today. Having said all of that, if you think partway through the process, you have a question, tear your ticket off and richard over here who has the box will bring it around so you can drop the ticket in. So if youve got a question and you want to add a ticket in, raise your hand and richard will come to you and you can drop that in. For those of you who dont know me, since there are many people here who havent been to events before, ill give you a little bit of background about who i am and what were working on and what my priorities are and what things are happening because one of the things that i know for sure is there is a lot going on. And the other thing i know for sure, there is a lot more happening than what we hear about on the National Level and the national media, than what were hearing about in our daytoday life. And a lot of those things that are impacting us here in oklahoma and many things on daytoday basis. The need to serve im just going to throw the lid on the floor i understand whats important to you and vice versa. So i serve on the Armed Services committee and on the science, space and technology committee. On the Armed Services committee im on the readiness subcommittee which has responsibility for all of the issues that help make sure that our nations troops are ready, and that means everything from taking care of tinker as a depot, which supplies a lot of things across the spectrum, to taking care of the housing, which is one of the things that weve been spending a lot of time on. And the reason for me its so important to hear from all of you is because thats how i found out, thats how we on my team found out about what was happening with our base housing. So, how many of you know something about the things happening with base housing . Okay, excellent. So in our very first town hall in january, a woman came to the town hall, weve been going through a lot of questions and we were almost at the very end, and shared with me her and her familys heartbreaking story of what was happening to them in base housing. How repairs were not being made, how they had Ongoing Health issues, and it was just this heartbreaking story and she brought documentation and evidence. It was that person showing up and sharing her story with me and with us that allowed me to go back an immediately take it to the chairman of the readiness subcommittee an say weve got to address this. And we did. On both sides and in the senate and the house, and we were able to end this years guess authorization bill which were still working to get across the finish line, were going to get there, i know we will, able to put in some important protections for our Service Members and their families so that they know what their rights are. A tenants bill of rights, protests from having to sign unfair agreements that prevented them from bringing it to peoples attention, that would require them to take part in a binding mediation and not have the option to lift it up and some other things, so we put protections in. Now, were not done but i think this serves as a be example of why it is important for us to have this dialogue, and the other piece is that, on daytoday basis we have all of the Staff Members who raised their hands, they are here in Oklahoma City and across the district and they are here to serve and to help, because that ability for us to understand whats happening is important. And that means we help veterans if they are having challenges dealing with their system through the v. A. About a quarter of the cases that were working on are for veterans, individuals having challenges with social security, and many other things where we interact with the federal government. Thats how we can serve also on daytoday basis, and how your stories and your ability to tell us whats happening with the programs and everything, that we assume are working or we know, we may know they arent, it helps us to figure out how to change it. So Armed Services, and science, space and technology. Armed services we passed a Defense Authorization bill out of the house and out of the senate and im one of three freshmen that was named to the Conference Committee and were currently working to get the final bill through conference and weve been going back and forth. I am dedicated and determined as i know many of my colleagues on both side of the aisle are to make sure we get this through because its critical to ensure we authorize the programs that ensure our nations security which is something thats just absolutely not a partisan matter. Its about all of us. And part of the things that were also able to include in that legislation was the largest pay raise for our troops in 10 years, and some provisions that address the widows tax and some other things that are really important as well as modernizing some of our systems and other things. Now, there are some disagreements. Thats going to happen. Because i think were humans, unless well, there is a canine, a service canine in the room. I dont know about any of yall but i dont know anyone that i have ever agreed with on every issue out there. Has anybody here ever agreed with everybody else one hundred percent of the time . So part of the work we have to do and the reason i enjoy the committee assignments, i get to work in a bipartisan way and i know it seems like there is not a lot of that happening at the National Level but i assure you there is a lot of that happening and as the chairwoman of the space, aeronautics subcommittee thats a lot of the work that we do. We work on science, space and technology, oklahomas number two employment sector is aerospace, so not just aeronautics but aerospace, so there is a lot happening that were working on. A lot of Different Things and as were working on reauthorization and different programs that help more people go into stem fields and working on 21st century jobs thats really important. Outside of those committee assignments, were also really focused in my office, and ive been focused on a few different areas, im going to touch on a couple of them and then open it up to questions. One is healthcare and protecting our access to quality, affordable care. That means one of the big issues that weve been tackling, and then ill continue to tackle because there is a lot of work to do is Prescription Drug pricing. We know that Prescription Drug pricing impacts so many of us. I hear from a lot of you day in and day out about what in athat means in your lives and ive heard from far people from oklahoma about having to choose between life saving drugs that they need or keeping the lights on. To me these are not all or Nothing Solutions. All or Nothing Solutions usually means that its really nothing in the end because its not we dont live in lives that are all or nothing. So i believe in a thoughtful, stair step approach to fixing some of the things, protecting what we have with medicare, and social security, which is not a healthcare thing but im just going to talk about that. In a moment. But also, then, fixing some of the things that are broken. And the cost of Prescription Drugs is one of those things. Ive introduced a bill that will cap the cost of outofpocket costs for seniors at 2,000 per year, medicare under Medicare Part d. Its currently 5,100 per year. So that would be a big step in the right direction. There is a lot more that we need to do but thats one of the things, and were going to keep working on it. There is a Prescription Drug bill thats working its way through so were continuing to work on those, and other things. The other piece is, in healthcare, is Mental Health. I know weve probably seen a lot of the things that have been happening in our country, with addiction and Mental Health. Those two things often go together and its one of the things thats incredibly important for all of us. This impacts communities across the board. So i have introduced a bipartisan bill and had a companion bill in the senate which means we introduce one in the house and the senators introduce a very similar bill to help our Law Enforcement communities better learn to understand and get the training they need to recognize and deescalate when they encounter somebody with a mental thats experiencing a Mental Health crisis. The reason that we tackled this in this way, as a starting point, is because police are usually the first ones that are called out when somebody is having a Mental Health crisis and they are not routinely provided the training so this means individuals who have Mental Illness are exponentially more likely to be shot and killed by police. So when i say these solutions are not all or nothing, we have to look at all of the different pieces and continued increased access to Mental Health. We had a whole town hall on that. I wont spend a whole lot of time on that. The last piece ill talk about is education. Thats one of the things that i hear more than just about anything else. Weve talked a lot about it in the state. K through 12 education, and thats critical. A lot about funding comes through the state but there are also federal programs that are really important including funding for some of our schools that are near bases, or other places where they dont get as much in taxes, because schools that are on land year bases, they dont get as much so that federal funding helps to balance it out and it quite frankly keeps some of our schools open saechbing the students of our families who are serving and others that live in that area, so thats really important. On the Higher Education front, there are a couple of things that weve done. Ive introduced a few pieces of legislation. We also had a town hall on this, to address the cost of Higher Education in a thoughtful, methodical an Sustainable Way. Its not all or nothing. I dont think we need to give college away for free to everybody in or wholesale erase peoples debts but what we do need to do in my opinion is create pathways. Create pathways for people to get the job and skills training they need to be productive members of our communities to let them build a family, to do what they see fit. We have a fantastic career tech system here in oklahoma. I have worked on some bills and introduced legislation that would support our career tech system with some of my colleagues, making sure that federal funding for student loans, which they are much more costeffective, can be used for career tech systems as well as legislation that would limit the cost of interests on student loans, to make it more attainable, and to have student Loan Interest delayed so that it doesnt start accruing until weve got our students that are coming out. Because weve got a lot of people coming without tens of thousands of dollars in interest in addition to their loans before they get out. For me the bottom line is, we have to do things that are thoughtful an im troubled by this idea that there is only one pathway to a successful, productive cop struck active life and career. It doesnt mean, this whole idea that we all have to go to a Fouryear College or youre not successful, thats not life. We have amazing jobs and careers that are waiting. Ive talked to businesses across the district, that say, we need fill in the blank, a lot of these skill sets, but we dont have enough people to fill them. They can be filled with community college, with career techs, with some Higher Education, so there is a lot of different pathways and these are the things that were really focused on, on a day in and day out basis and will continue to be an i just want to give you a little bit of that foundation, and then, of course, were going to talk about really quickly some of the things that i think many of you here are probably hearing a lot about, and i will tell you that bottom line, when i make decisions, for any bill, or any piece of legislation, i do so based on the bill that comes in front of us. So even if i have cosponsored a piece of legislation and somebody comes along and it get changed to such a point that it wasnt what it started as, i would vote against that bill, because i am im deeply troubled by the idea that we cant get along as communities. That somehow our political affiliation should take precedence over our relationships in our communities, and i ran for this office and am proud and honored to serve everyone in this district. Every Single Person regardless of background, regardless of political affiliation. Our office is here to help, and sometimes that means were going to disagree. And thats okay, too. We want to hear from you. And when were looking at everything that comes in front of us, my top priority is upholding my oath to protect and defend the constitution, to ensure that im being thoughtful and were taking each thing as it comes. And thats a commitment that ill make to each an every one of you as we move forward with all of the questions that are facing us. The reason i spent so much time talking about the other things that are happening and the other things that weve been working on, is because i think a lot of that gets drowned out. And i know that we have a lot more in common, we have a lot more that connects us than divides us. Sometimes its really difficult to see that. So i look forward to hearing from you and what you are concerned about, and what youre thinking about throughout this and were going to go ahead and just jump into the questions and, richard will bring the box over and im going to just, just draw start withdrawing a tint out and well start from there. Well pull that out. If you find it, ill just leave it sitting here. We do have some more water in the back if you oh, did you find it, oh, okay. 276. 276. Yes, maam. So hes going to come to you with the microphone, and, so three connecticut female athletes filed suit on the ground grounds that they lost Scholarship Opportunities because biological males were in the girls competition. Should biological males be permitted to compete on girls sports teams . Im not familiar with that particular issue or that parti