Q and a. Now senator chris murphy holds a town hall. This is about one hour and a half. [applause] thank you. Sit down. Sit down. Thank you, everybody. That is very nice. Cold and thatve makes the feel better today. I feel more well with that nice introduction. D which and i say and that covers it. Thank all of the folks who are here, you are doing a fantastic job every single day bringing Educational Opportunities to kids and adults here in stamford. Thank you for opening this up to your representatives. Thank you for being here, i want ofget right to the meat this. I am sure you have loads of questions about what is happening and about what has happened. We are going to talk about it a lot of things. I think we are going to talk about the rule of law. [applause] about theng to talk very simple idea that has been at the root of this country sense the founding that no individual no matter who powerful how powerful and what title stand before their are governed by the same rules. That has certainly been the topic of discussion in this buttry for the last week frankly we have been talking about this for the last 110 days. I want to talk a little bit about that today. Then i want to turn it over to your questions. Thank you for giving me the opportunity for this job. I do not come from a family that has a background in politics. My mother grew up in the housing projects one generation removed from poverty. Now i get to be a senator whether you voted for me or did placed idea that people your faith in me as one of your two voices and the senate it is an honor. To be honest it is a thrill. I am so thankful for you to give me this chance. I am Getting Better at it every day because i am learning from you about what the priorities are about what you care about. Nd how i should prioritize this is an exercise for me to learn and listen. I do these town halls and try to engage proactively in ways as well. I am one of the few members of the senate that does my own twitter, facebook and snapchat. Some of you know that i walked across the state this summer going 130 miles. [applause] another,m one side to others who could not attend a town hall or email or however. I am trying to engage and learned in creative ways as well as traditional waste like this. First, thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this job. We are going to talk today about the rule of law and checks and balances. I first want to admit why we are here. We are at this moment in part because donald trump fairly advertised that he was going to blow up the way that things were done in washington. He advertised this coo model. Dominations in his speech that he alone could fix this. People were drawn to that whether we like it or not. It was the popular vote but a draws a lot of folks. There is this hiring of democracy that is happening in the country. People understood the trade you got an democracy, you got all of his inefficiency, it took a long time or something to become a law from an idea. In exchange for that inefficiency you got the outcome that benefited the whole rather than the elite. Whether it is a dictatorship or democracy, you have policy made much faster but you tended to get results that were good for the ruling elite rather than for everybody else. To get a result, people told me take a second i am not getting that trade any longer, the place looks just as efficient as it has ever been. The results are coming out of washington still seem to be accruing to the top 1 . People started asking me if whether we should be invested in this big great experiment. Trump with his advertisement of only he could fix this seemed to be more attractive than it would have 20 years ago. What we need to recognize is this is not just a moment to take on these enormous challenges but to also remind people about how to engage in this determination, to really talk about how we can make our democracy healthier we are going to talk about immigration and health care. I also want us to be reminded that we should not take for granted that this democracy is inevitable. This is just something you are going to live under for the rest of your life, we need to remind people why we are all invested in this. I will say that there are parts of this that have been beholding, there are checks and balances inside this big endeavor that have worked. The president right out of the gate try to pass an immigration order that is plainly unconstitutional that we are going to stop the old coming into the country based on your religion. That violated the basic embassies premises of the constitution. You cannot do that. Of president is in the midst trying to push through a Health Care Bill that is an absolute humanitarian catastrophe waiting to happen. 24 Million People could lose their insurance and rates could go up. They thought they were going to get this done in february. They thought they were going to be able to tie this thing up and move to the next priority. They havent stopped over and over because of the legislature in interesting ways it is responding because people are rising up and saying if you vote for this monstrosity we are going to vote you out. It has taken a lot longer to get this through the house of representatives and that means it is stuck in the senate right now because republicans editors know there are consequences for voting for something in you made. Balances that are built in a legislature that are also responsible for the people is holding for the time being. There are these other places where the checks and balances are not there. That is what we are going to talk about today. We will clearly talk about what has happened, we cannot have a functioning democracy when a president of the United States can dismiss Law Enforcement individuals and leaders that are carrying out investigations against chief executives. I am sorry but the explanation he offers does not hold water, james comey did not get dismissed because he unfairly treated hillary clinton. He got fired because he was onto something. He wasfired because getting closer and closer to a very damaging story about the trump campaigns interaction with the russian government. We do not know at the end of that story is but we do know that director comey was going to the highest levels of the Justice Department and asking or more resources to pursue that investigation. It is hard for me to think that is a coincidence that one week later he was fired. We are going to have the Deputy Director who wrote that memo next week and a closeddoor hearing to ask questions, we will get a little closer to the truth with that meeting. Direct threat to the rule of law, i hope as my republican friends go home this weekend they are going to choose to rise to the occasion. As i said on social media there are moments for you have to choose between the republic and your party. My advice to my republican friends is that you will never regret choosing the republic if that choice comes to you. [applause] you know what i think the path forward is, i ultimately believe that the investigation is fairly compromised, we need an independent prosecutor. [applause] so, lets give the weekend for republicans to think or this and make the decision and join with us in this call. If they choose not to then democrats and likeminded individuals are going to have to consider all of the tools at our disposal to push this forward. [applause] recognizing the gravity of the moment. Let me talk about the other threat to the rule of law and the checks and balances that happened today. Should be in the news more than it is. That is the topic of four and affairs and international relations, we talk a lot about americas role in the world. Very quietly congress over the past 10 or 15 years has abdicated their responsibility of Foreign Policy. To someten antithetical of their conduct in Foreign Policy because i did not believe there was authorization, legal authorization for this administration to take military action against isis. I did not think it was wrong for the government to take military action i thought they simply needed to get authorization from congress to do that. My worry is today it is much harder to declare war against an enemy that was 30 or 40, even 50 years ago. There are shadowy enemies that we face today, it is not an army marching against each other that we signed a treaty with at the end of hostility. It is something that harder to define with victory that is much harder to get your head wrapped around with his uncivil. Thisrate this principal. If we allow the president to take military strikes against charlotte alassad, we will never authorized for as a congress you will lose your voice and making those decisions. What is happening today should be very worrying to you. The president has essentially ceded his responsibility to the military. Forcesa slow creep up that was close to zero one year ago to a number that now looks close to 1008 in mission that is very hard to find. It is all about local groups taking iraq. The intervention of the settlement of accounts that will happen after isis is out of rock raqqa. Look acase syria will lot more like iraq. Then this will become a much more worthy debate to see if we should be there. I worry about checks and balances falling apart with our country getting into another major intervention in the middle east without a full debate in congress. We can talk about the situation in north korea as well. That presents real challenges for this rule of law. I am happy that checks and balances held in part, i think this massive uprising of activists all across the country creating thist is molasses around the trunk agenda. It does not mean that there will be a hard fit to push its way through. It is slowing its everything down, making the allies in Congress Stop and think if they want to endorse this hateful rhetoric. To raise my voice. My first obligation is a representative of the, i think there were some important wins we got for connecticut in the last appropriation bill. I am also trying to raise my voice on a National Level and be a part of what i think is a defining moment for this country. I am perpetually a Glass Half Full guide, you cannot beat and this job and not try to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am stealing a little bit of this from a colleague of mine who talks about these words from the declaration of independence. That is essentially our north star as a country. It is a totally flawed phrase from the beginning that all men are created equal. It was a radical idea at the time. This idea of equality. You can kind of read our entire history that we are trying to get a little bit closer to that reality to that reality of full equality, full opportunity and experience. Yet you can also read the history as one of two steps forward than one step backwards. When you make enormous amounts of congress there is this natural tendency for americans to dig a trench. We cannot forget how much progress we have made, the election of the first African American resident. The ability to think about health care as a human right rather than a privilege. We have talked about universal health care then there was the and that meant of a law that kept it closer than ever. They able to marry whoever love rather than their Sexual Orientation read our ability to bring in waves of immigrants from south america and the tradition of those who came from before. All of this in such a short amount of time, there has this trench onion to put a this. I would argue that the definition of this country is not about two steps forward and two steps back but our ability to note a ladder out of that trench. It will get moving on the road to that north star, that is what which it is a moment in we decide if we are still on that journey or not read i believe we will make the decision that we are and this Resistance Movement that has been built up over the last 110 days across the country is a collective effort to build that latter out of that trench. If that is the case then count me part of that resistance. Thank you very much. [applause] lets have you asked some questions. Hello, to the overflow room. People can line up and we will take as many as we can. Roads are awfully jammed today, i will take as many as i can in the next hour. Lets get right to it. We will go there to there. Then upstairs. We will sort of do that. Quick questions and i will give quick answers. I am a Founding Member of greenwich village, thank you for all that you do in so many areas specifically i am going to address the independent commission issue. With the call made comey firing, the Washington Post ran a piece that talked about democrats stopping this scandal. Theyve reduce the efficacy of this using tactics such as asking them to yield for a question. He said the filibuster withholding. In light of the threat of the foundationalto the underpinnings, will you agree to use these measures until such time that your republican counterparts agree to a special prosecutor to investigate trump and russia ties. [applause] thank you for the question. Article, soead that i cannot opine on that. Wehink you heard me say that absolutely are going to have to use every tool at our disposal colleaguese to our in the house. I do not think we understand what a cataclysmic moment this is whether publican party, we are asking them to step outside of their party and to directly challenge this president , to call for the appointment of this independent counsel. I understand that they may not be able to make that decision on a dime, to figure out the gravity of this. I am going to give them a little bit us is, we do not have the luxury of time. The trail will grow cold, the message that is being sent to the fbi is a chilling message of truth. This will get solidified. I want to give my republican colleagues some time to understand what they need to do here. That time cannot be limitless and then we will ultimately have to use whatever power we have the you tease out some of have we have they limits of efficacy. Askingme, you talk about questions of the majority leader, we do not control both houses but we have it procedural tool at our disposal that ultimately are not just positive in the end but we should look at using everything we have read. Conservatives have done a phenomenal job of controlling and shaping the messaging to the public, now they are already attacking the democrats as a party of no new ideas. Obama, canached to you provide us a little bit of confidence that the democrats have a strategy or the progressives have a strategy, have fresh ideas, fresh messengers that have some people in the pipeline that are going to be attractive to the general public instead of the whole partisan antimessaging that has been going on. Thank you for all your fantastic work here around the area an, i am not here to deliver a sermon on the state of the democratic already. I will take the premise of your question and try to answer it. I think we have to understand that people have watched this economy technically recover. They cannot believe it has recovered for them. We have to be a party of Economic Growth but not just for the 1 . We have to be this for everybody not just millionaires and billionaires. Then we need to be a party of inclusion that includes everybody. We have to be a party of Economic Growth or everybody and a party of inclusion and a party that includes everybody. Then we have to be a party that is not scared of big ideas. The fact of the matter is bernie talking about free college and that was unrealistic to so what, if that is unrealistic that everybody should be able to afford to go to college. [applause] i think we have to be consistent about our messaging and make sure it is based in those stairs and we cannot be afraid of putting really big revolutionary ideas that may not be realistic tomorrow but tell the country where we wanted to go. So i think right now we are at a crisis moment in which this Republican Congress is try to jam down our throat some legislative ideas that would be cataclysmic or it a lot of our effort is around opposing that agenda, ultimately we have to be much better at translating who we are and not being afraid of those big ideas. I am here representing the medicare for all coalition. Function, why we created this group is to attain the passage of a bill those already in the house which is hr776, i want to repeat that for everybody. Hr776 it is worth reading. This bill will provide real Quality Health care to every child, woman and man in the United States. It will not only do that but it will provide a savings of 600 billion per year. Not over 10 years, 600 billion per year with a increase of savings in the future. It will also Save Companies thousands of dollars for employees and make our companies more competitive overseas and help us balance those payments. We have several request for you. We would like to ask if you would commit to introducing this all to the senate as alternative to the renesola was passed in the house. If you will become its champion in the senate, if you will meet with us and work with us so we can find out ways to support you and support a National March two passed medicare for all. [applause] i would be happy to talk more about the bill, i am not familiar with it or it here is my approach to this issue about where we go once we hopefully defeat this terrible and draconian attempt to repeal the Affordable Care act. I do not we are in the public option. That is the ability for anyone to choose whether they want to be on a private plan or on a medicare plan. Originally conceived this is going to be its own medicare like plan. You can shortcircuit that and give people direct axis two medicare and allow them to buy at amedicare or get prices lower income. I think that is the fastest way to get a system in which you want in which everybody is on a medicare on it. Toe individuals that choice be on medicare or if they want to stay on their private actor health airplane. Bill, look at the house the reason i have been supportive of a public option is because i think from a political standpoint it makes more sense to give people the option to get into that system if they want. I do think that the bulk of our attention needs to be on defeating the proposal that is before the house and the senate. [applause] you republicans are saying that