Transcripts For CSPAN Virginia 7th Congressional District De

CSPAN Virginia 7th Congressional District Debate November 1, 2014

Reports rollcall report indicates republican. The debate took place at randall college. [applause] you, mayor. It is now my pleasure to introduce our candidates. Is both an economics professor and a chair of our economics business department. Wife have two children. Tran drama tra mmell serves as an associate professional professor of sociology. He has been an indispensable resource at the college. Reside nearife virginia. Six of their children are in college. M also delighted [laughter] delighted to be sharing the stage with heather sullivan, in bestie twelves news anchor extraordinaire. 12, ourl thanks to nbc media sponsor, for its generosity and support. I will now ask heather to review the format, ground rules, and a corm. Thank you. Thank you to our audience members. Thank you to our candidates for being here. You have been given the rules and the format for the debate. I will give up quickly cap. Both candidates will each be given two minutes for an Opening Statement and two minutes for a closing statement. There was a coin toss to t xray dr. Trammell will answer the first question. Will answer second. We will reverse the order for each question. The candidates will both be asked the same question. They will each get two minutes to respond to that question. You may also use that two minutes to rebut anything that the other candidate has to say. There are some rules for the audience. We would like to ask you to silence your cell phones. However, we would like to encourage you to tweet during the debate. Rncvite you to use the debate. We would like to ask you to hold your applause until the end. If you do burst out while the candidates are speaking, you would take away their time to speak. We ask that you hold on to that until the end. Dont show that you any signage, nothing visible, nothing audible, either in support or opposition to either candidate. If there are any violations to the rules, you will be asked to leave the auditorium. We are in for a really active and interesting debate this evening. Lets go ahead and get started. Again, dr. Trammell you won the coin toss. We will begin with you. Good luck, gentlemen. Thank you. How great to be here tonight. I love history. The history that got us here is a very interesting history. A few months ago, i was sitting in my office a few buildings away from here. I did not know that i was going to be running for congress. I talked to ago, dave on the phone and he said, i think im going to win this primary. Like many others, i thought, ok. [laughter] ago, people at this college were inundated by the media after a dramatic primary victory. Anyone on campus at the time remembers that that was not. Nuts. T was the amazing thing about history is that it only gets us to this point. What is not written yet is what is to come. Thomas jefferson has a quote that i love. He said, i like history, but i live the dreams of the future much better. Tonight, you will hear from both of us. Alternate visions for the future. We will hear about how were going to take care of that. Haugen to take care of thats very held to take care of seniors. How we are going to take care of veterans. How are going to take care of seniors. This is democracy in action. A high schoolom show me what democracy and actions were. Those were tough questions. Im proud to be here tonight proud to see all of you. Proud to know that youre watching. This is democracy in action. Im excited to be a part of it. Thank you. You for hosting this great debate tonight. Thank you for hiring me 18 years ago to teach the greatest students one could ever imagine. Thank you for coming out tonight. It is an honor to be here. I am running for congress because washington is broken. Obamacare is raising insurance costs and lowering the quality of your health care. 200 50,000 virginians will lose their Health Insurance policies and a smile. In november, right after the election, because of obamacare. 1. 7 trillion in excessive regulation is crushing our economy at present. IlLegal Immigration on our southern border has not only cause a humanitarian crisis, but the border has now become a National Security threat because of isis. The retirement programs that we promise to our seniors will be bankrupt in less than 20 years. If we do get to work to preserve and protect those programs. I taught economics for 18 years, and i have never seen an economy or labor market where college students, 40 of college students, will not get jobs on graduation in the field of their choice that is not good. I believe we need to send an economist to washington dc. Sell these economic problems and restore trust and our vital american institutions, principles, and values. President obama said it very clearly the other day, his policy are on that ticket. Make no mistake about it. You can vote for someone who supports president obamas policies or you can vote for someone who knows from hundreds of years of economic history that topdown, centralized, government planning fails every single time. It has been tried. I want to go to congress to restore the American Free market system. I want to restore our economy. I want to be a check against president obamas failed agenda. I am running because i believe in america. I believe that we can make tomorrow better and brighter than yesterday. I would ask for your vote this coming tuesday. Thank you. Lets begin with our first question. Trammell, should the federal governments best response to the above a crisis do you support a travel ban from west african countries . I think we have responded correctly. We have been trying to use processes that the cdc has put into place braid we have tried to be proactive. Some of our congressional databases here in virginia have suggested that we should have been more proactive. I tend to feel that we can not air on the side of being too proactive. However, i am also hesitant to act out of fear. There has been a noticeable fear factor in how we have been reporting on this, and how we have been reacting to it. I would urge caution and i would are just to look at the procedures we have in place. Now we are using the consequence for that. Moreover, i would say that we need to use targeted fight bans, and not bring our economy to a halt with draconian measures that are not targeted. We have responded. We have we can respond better. It should be very targeted. Thank you. When it comes to ebola and the goodenges we face, it is to retrace the administrations position. In the first incident, they said ebola will never make it to our borders. And the second place, they said it would never break out of hospitals. In the third place, they gave instance after instance of cdc and thend that leaders on this issue did not contain the threat. Now we are faced with this. Id ever with jack on this. I think we should have quarantined western african nations and the flights coming in. Financial to the markets. A black swan event. It is a low probability event that has catastrophic consequences. That is what ebola is. It is a low probability event that has catastrophic consequences for this entire nation if we do not treat them properly. What do i mean by that . As a conservative, if there is a catastrophic event coming our way, any conservative in your basic intuition would be saying that it is inconvenient at the airport, someone gets a little upset, or there is a quarantine for 21 days. That does not stand in comparison to the catastrophic affects a good affect all of us and your children in the future. I think the basic conservative impulse is to close down and be safe and secure our border and safety at every point we can. This instance, it is not isolated but when it comes to president obama our Safety Security has not been well guarded. The southern border, 50 thousand of,00,000 young orphans cross the border in what we call at humanitarian crisis. At came to pass when iran in the primary, iran against those policies. The president ran for them. They have been an absolute catastrophe for those kids and for our country. I would like to secure our borders and secure ebola as best we can. Thank you. There has been substantial debate about the Affordable Health care act, including several bills passed by the u. S. House of representatives aimed at certain provisions of the law. What if any changes would you like to make to the law in order to increase access and affordability of health care for central virginians . Thank you. I would repeal and replace obamacare immediately. Economist. Market i take free market seriously great obamacare is a federal topdown product. It has a mandate system that is already failing. 250,000 virginians are going to lose her Health Insurance this month after the november election. That is not by consequence. That is by intent. They pushed that decision so that you would not see the consequences of obamacare and have to deal with that before the election day. The employer mandate will be equally troublesome. They pushed that beyond the 2015 election day. Obamacarepremise of was they were going to take care of 45 Million People who are uninsured. That is a good thing. Guess what happened . Only 18 Million People were taken care of at a cost of 80,000 per person. That is your federal government at work. We do not mention the biggest unintended consequence. A disrupted health care for 250 other 250 million other americans. It only provided to 18 million at 80,000 per person. Basic promisehe again. They are important. Obamacare was going to get rid of our emergency room problem. That is an inefficiency. Hospitals are overcharging in ers in passing that on to you. Ismacare has not showed all that problem at all. Er usage is up. Under obamacare, we were process from as you could eat your doctorpatient relationship, you your insurance policy through that is no longer true. We lost that. ,nstance after instance obamacare has not lived up to its promise. Because, i have not even mentioned the Kitchen Table issues. The top two issues for every virginian is obamacare is crushing jobs along with the Regulatory Burden that the federal government has placed on our economy. Thank you. Dr. Trammell. Let me return to the previous session. Two points of clarification. Number one, president obama is not on the ballot in this district. I want to make sure Everybody Knows that. Number two, i did say already that i was in savor of targeted quarantined. I think david and i are in agreement on that point. In terms of the aca, the major goal is to reduce the number of people who are uninsured and could increase the number of people who could have access to some basic care. Actually, we have added 11 Million People, depending on how you estimate that. That was the original purpose. Checked the box office the other thing has to do with cost. We know that Health Care Inflation in the last two years is the lowest it has been in the modern era. Checked the box office. Boxes off. E andrew was a student here. I taught him. I work with him. Thousandsed tens of of dollars, but they only net as small amount. It is a business with a lot of overhead. There is a very small margin. Andrew told me that he essentially and his brother were going without health care is a cannot afford it. They took the plan under the aca, he got care under the plan and said it was good. Made thehim, difference. That is what it was supposed to do. It has helped a million to 11 Million People get insurance. Lets not lose track of what the original intention of aca was. Do we need to fix things . Of course. Smallbusiness exemptions. We need to help Small Businesses who are struggling under that burden. There are aspects of it that were not formulated correctly. We need to fix an iron out the details. We cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater. We cannot turn the hands of time backwards. Inc. You. Dr. Trammell. Undocumented immigrant students, these efforts had been known as the dream act. It would repeal federal policies that discourage states from offering these students post secondary education benefits and provide legal permanent status. Do you support these efforts . I do. I met students going to Virginia Tech and other schools in our state. They are in medical school. Soontobe doctor i met is a straight a student. I met an engineer in the same program. These are people who are going to contribute to our prosperity here. I support the dream act. I support comprehensive Immigration Reform. This is the only congress in history that has utterly failed at Immigration Reform. Think about it. My family immigrated here in 1671 the port of alexandria. Immigration is in part what the greatness of this country is built on. We have never felt like this before. You have to ask yourself the question, is the problem of immigration, or is the problem a donothing congress . Is, donothing congress . We need to pass comprehensive immigration form reform. Security, visas, pathways to citizenship, everything to together. We have done it before. We can do it again. We know that the shelflife on Immigration Reform is usually 10 years to 20 years. The world changes. It will not stay the same. We have never felt so utterly as we did this time. The next congress has got to get it right. Thank you. Act, ially, the dream have posed in my primary. To be clear, when jack mentions a comprehensive Immigration Reform, that sounds nice. A lot of Central Planning from washington dc sounds nice. The house bill and the senate million illegals coming across our border under the pathway to citizenship. Just to be clear, it is illegal. No one in the room is against immigration. We are a country of immigrants. We need to get at what a truly compassionate policy is. I oppose the dream act. I say we should not do it. President obama and the congress were in favor of it. As a result, president obama pursued what is called he overrode the congress and the will of the people. Policy thatplace a resulted in 50,000 to 100,000 orphans crossing the border. I love every single person. I taught Third World Economic Development for 18 years. It is nothing against the people coming across the border. Lets ask ourselves what true compassion looks like. If you want to help these cannot take 7 billion people into this country. The reason the rest of the world was to come here is because we have the role of law. That is why Everyone Wants to come here. We have the rule of law. We have private property rights. We have a free market system. Because we have those three things, we are the envy of the world and are the greatest nation on earth. That is why Everyone Wants to come here. As an economist, i understand what made us great. You dont want to ruin the pieces of the institution that we put into place and made us great. Compassion, ite is not for a few thousand people. Lets get countries moving again. That is true compassion for hundreds of millions of people. Thank you. Our next question. Do you support increasing the federal minimum wage . Why or why not . I do not support raising the minimum wage. I am an economist. If you just take the basic case study, seattle. They are raising the minimum age to 15 an hour. Upon announcement, what did restaurants do. They started firing waiters and waitresses immediately. ,conomic science is a science and it is the science of the unseen. What you look at is the minimum wage increases the wages for people who keep their jobs. That is the good part of a what is the bad part . The part you dont see is that people that got fired. Businesses are in business. Everybody knows in business, 90 of restaurants go under. That is a basic fact. Native and a double the wage rate to 15 per hour. What you think will happen . They cant make profits. They will have to lay people off. There are already laying people off. The Regulatory Burden that the government has been put on them. The epa, energy costs. , etc. The last thing you want to do is to raise the price of labor. The best way to help these is the way it happened in economic history. The wage rate is the same thing as your productivity. If you want to increase the wage rate for real, instead of artificially, increase the productivity. They are competing in a Global Economy right now. We are not doing well. , our kids aretion scoring at the bottom of science and mathematics in industrialized world. At the bottom. If you want to increase wages for america by the way, the bottom 80 time. We need an economist to go to the easy to fix it. Thank you. Dr. Trammell. I think immigration should be added to these lists of the institutions that have made this country great. In terms of minimum wage and these people, i was one of those people. Made two dollars an hour baling hay and putting it into a barn for my neighbor. At that time, the minimum wage was increased to Something Like two dollars and . 12 an hour 2. 12 an hour. We had a meeting with the barn owner. His hand and ended up paying us two dollars and . 12 an hour for the rest of the summer. 2. 12 an hour for the rest of the summer. Enough money use to buy my own car. When we talk about the minimum wage, i can bring up my seven no seven nobelst economist who say the going to 10. 10 an hour would have a good effect. I would rather say that i support the minimum wage. I have looked at the evidence myself. I see the evidence that it raises people up into the middle class who become consumers, buy cars, go to college. That is the way to prosperity in this country. Thank you. Dr. Trammell. Mandatory expenditures, including Social Security, medicare, and medicaid are consuming a growing share of the federal budget. Totaled nearly 60 of all federal spending. How do you propose managing the federal budget while meeting the promises that were made to generations of americans . I never flipflop on Social Security or some of the other programs that are so vital to our veterans. Weave made the promise that are not going to make us. I dont want to react to a climate of fear. Instead, what i would like to see us do is to return to some very basic concepts about as individuals, we follow them al

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