Huffman Holds Telephone Town Hall on Government Shutdown
WASHINGTON—Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) held a Telephone Town Hall yesterday with constituents from California’s 2nd Congressional District. Huffman discussed the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis and what he is doing to reopen our government and avert economic catastrophe. More than 10,000 constituents participated in the call.
“I was glad to speak with Northern Californians about what exactly I’m doing to end the government shutdown,” Congressman Huffman said. “I heard from many Northern Californians worried about how the shutdown will affect them, their businesses, and our economy, and I will continue to do everything I can to reopen our government.”
Huffman took 15 questions, responding to constituents concerned over the shutdown’s effects on the economy, how he is working to end the shutdown, what he is doing about the NSA’s surveillance program, how he is working to create bipartisanship in a hyper partisan Congress, and campaign finance reform.
Constituents may sign up for future Telephone Town Halls HERE.
Audio of the Telephone Town Hall can be streamed HERE.
A transcript of the Telephone Town Hall may be found below:
Jared Huffman: Good evening everyone. This is Congressman Jared Huffman and I am joining you live from my office in the House of Representatives in Washington DC for tonight’s telephone town hall. I really want to thank you for joining me. There are a lot of things that you could do on a Tuesday night, including watching baseball playoffs, but I’m delighted that I have this chance you chat with you tonight about some very important things going on with our Federal government.
One of the main things of course is the crisis that we are in back in Washington involving the government shutdown and the possibility of the first ever default on our nation’s debt - a deadline that is about 48 hours away as we speak. I want to discuss these things with you tonight and the effects on California’s North Coast, and I also want to tell you what I’m doing to try and end the government shutdown and to avoid that default scenario.
You are welcome to ask me about any other topics that you’d like though. This is your opportunity to ask me about what’s happening in Congress, and again I’m very excited to have this conversation with you tonight. For those that have done these telephone town halls before, you know the drill. At any point in our conversation just press *3 on your phone and somebody will assist you. That’s how you get questions in to me so that I can do my best to answer them. We have only an hour together. It’s not a lot of time, but we should be able to cover a lot of ground and I want to get started as quickly as possible, but we are going to allow just a couple more minutes for other people to join us and I want to thank everyone for their patience. We will be jumping into the questions and answers in just a couple of minutes, and again tonight the key to participating is to just press *3 on your phone if you want to ask a question - somebody will jump online with you and we will do our best to get to your question.
I want to set the stage for our discussion by discussing a little bit about the government shutdown. It has been now over two weeks since our U.S. government shut down and the effects are very serious. There are hundreds of thousands of public employees out of work right now on furlough. The shutdown is costing our economy an estimated $300 million a day, just as our fragile economy is recovering - that is the last thing that we need. And this is pain I know that is being felt throughout my district. I know that it’s affecting visitors who are shut out of our National Parks, small businesses who may have been waiting for an SBA loan. We’ve got seniors who rely on nutritional programs and caregivers that are being affected. I’ve even heard from winemakers who are waiting for Federal approvals and are seeing major disruptions in their businesses.
I have an amazing district and for those not familiar with it, the boundaries go along the coast from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way up to the Oregon border, and as you can imagine in the district there is an awful lot of public land. We have all sorts of protected coastal areas, parks, recreation areas, and so on. The tourism, recreation and resource based economy is huge for my Congressional district. The tourism economy alone creates $3.5 billion in annual spending, it supports 42 thousand jobs, and nearly $225 million in local and state tax revenues, and we have visitors from all over the world that come to the public lands in my district. And much of this activity is now grinding to a halt because of the government shutdown, and it’s affecting every part of my district.
In Marin County, Point Reyes National Seashores is closed, all of the economic activity that is generally going on with the visitation there is being impacted, and of course lots of vendors and small businesses in the private sector are impacted – it’s not just visitors that want to go to the park. Nearby, we’ve got the Golden Gate National Recreation Area also closed. This is one of the most popular, highly visited park lands in the country and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in the regional economy from visitors. In addition to the loss of that, you’ve got vendors and commissaries that are being shut down and there are ripple effects that go even further than that. These vendors and commissaries buy their locally sourced food from lots of farmers and dairies in Marin and Sonoma County, and they in turn are seeing their businesses hurt by this government shutdown.
Further up in my district, Mendocino County has a $314 million tourism economy. 74 percent of visitors to Mendocino County come to see the public lands, and much of that activity is now closed.
And further North it’s the same story in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, where Redwood National Park is being forced to turn away visitors. Trinity Country, the last of the counties, the sixth county I am privileged to represent, is seeing similar impacts. Lots of U.S. Forest Service land and Forest Service personnel are being furloughed. What this is doing is having all sorts of impacts, not just on access to that land, but for example, I heard just this last week about a salvaged timber operation that needs to happen in the wake of a major forest fire in Trinity County. But the Forest Service personnel that are needed to oversee that operation are furloughed, and so there is a possibility that this really important salvaged logging operation that is needed for the health of the forest to protect access and infrastructure on Forest Service land, and also create jobs in Trinity County, it may not happen. We may lose the whole season as a result of this if we can’t get the government reopened. I am hearing from small businesses, Chambers of Commerce, and people all over my district, and is a drumbeat of concern about how the government shutdown is affecting them.
And as bad as all that is, I have to tell you that we are just 48 hours away from it potentially getting a lot worse because that is the deadline, Thursday October 17th, when our country hits its debt ceiling, and without Congressional action we would for the first time in our history default on our debt and that would have unbelievably far reaching affects. Now bear in mind that the debt ceiling, raising the debt ceiling, does not grow our deficits by a single dime. It simply authorizes the Treasury to pay for what Congress has already spent, so this should be a very non-controversial ministerial action. But, it has been highly politicized, and now there is a serious question about whether both Houses of Congress will agree to a simple extension of that debt limit so we can pay our bills.
We are hearing from financial leaders all over the world about the impacts this would have, and it’s going to impact us here in this country and in my district as well. There will be effects on the Stock Market, there could be major effects on interest rates and what that means for mortgages and credit cards and access to business loans and so on.
So, I am doing my very best to demand that Congress do its job. That we hold an up-or-down vote on a bill to simply reopened the government and end this crisis, extend the debt ceiling. I’m meeting regularly with Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. I will tell you the good news is that there is a strong majority I believe in both Houses of Congress that is ready to do the right thing – to do our job, to reopen the government, to pay our bills, and to make sure that we honor our debt. The bad news is, we have some very reckless politics going on, primarily here in the House of Representatives, and it is preventing those votes from happening and taking us further into a national crisis. Of course the news that is especially troubling is the fact that we are running out of time as these deadline come near on the debt ceiling.
So, with that bit of overview we’ve now got a critical mass of folks online and I’m anxious to get to the questions and to answer as many of them as I can in the minutes ahead. So make sure to press *3 again to get your question into the queue - somebody will jump online to help you out. Let’s go to our first question.
Moderator: The first question goes to Vivian from Marin.
Vivian, constituent: You’re a real hero for working with these ornery people. I must say, I don’t want your job. I am so grateful you’re doing it and so effectively. But Jared can we please impeach these people who are not meeting their oath of office, who have sworn to uphold the constitution of this country, and yet they are doing everything they can to destroy this country, and favor the minority and special interest and perhaps overseas interests, who knows.
Jared Huffman: Well Vivian, I appreciate the spirit of your question and your encouragement certainly. I’m as frustrated as anybody by what’s going on here. I believe we were sent here to govern and to help government work for the people. And unfortunately, what we are seeing right now is a philosophy among some of my colleagues that they seem to be almost openly at war with the government. They wanted to shut it down, they want to take us into these continual crises for political reasons and I certainly strongly disagree with that. I think of George Washington, our Founder, our first President, and how he warned in his farewell address that we need to beware of this kind of faction or partisan politics where you have a party or a faction that is at war with its own government. We seem to be coming closer and closer to that. But I also want to say that we have to change the tone, and I hear these impeachment demands from folks on all sides of the political spectrum.
Jared Huffman: (I hear these impeachment demands from folks on all sides of the) political spectrum. In fact, for the last decade or so, people—whether they agree with someone or not—were almost constantly demanding that those they disagree with be impeached. So I’m trying not to use that kind of language, I’m doing my best to respect those that I disagree with, but I’m also going to do my best to hold them accountable and to move the ball forward so that Congress actually does its job. I don’t think we’re in an impeachment scenario, but it certainly is some terrible politics. I think the American people are going to hold the folks that did this accountable.
Moderator: Alright, great. Next question goes to Maryann from Healdsburg
Jared Huffman: Hi Maryann
Maryann, constituent: Hello. It’s nice to talk to you. I have heard that this government shutdown is the first in our nation’s history during wartime. Even under the Civil War the government did not shut down; is this true? And how do our troops feel on the battlefield in Afghanistan fighting on behalf of our country, and our government is shut down?
Jared Huffman: Yeah, that’s a great question, and I can’t confirm whether or not this is the first time it’s ever happened while we have troops in harm’s way, but I’m certainly not aware of any other time; and you’re exactly right, what this says to folks all over the world… Just today, you had a gathering of leaders where China was telling other leaders of industrialized countries that they need to prepare for a post-American world, that American leadership had failed the rest of the world. That is a crazy message for us to allow to be sent, and yet that is really the message that we are sending when we can’t even agree to pay our own debts and keep our own government running. So, whether it is the troops that are putting themselves at risk for us right now around the world, whether it is our financial standing in the world, or any of the other terrible impacts of this government shutdown and the possible default crisis, we really have to step up and solve these problems and make sure this never happens again. Thank you for your question, Maryann.
Moderator: Next question goes to Julian from Novato.
Julian, constituent: Yes, thank you Congressman. I appreciate the opportunity. My question is about the Affordable Care Act. I wonder why some organizations and public offices are being exempted? What are the criteria for the exemption; I thought it being considered the law of the land that everyone would treat it equally.
Jared Huffman: Yeah, thanks for your question, Julian, because it gives me an opportunity to talk a little bit about the Affordable Care Act. That’s an important part of this conflict that we’re having back in Washington right now. The original justification was offered by the Republicans in the House of Representatives for shutting down the government was they wanted to repeal, delay, or defund the Affordable Care Act—or Obamacare, as they tend to call it. The truth is, most of them have acknowledged, certainly the Senate republicans acknowledge, that holding the government hostage was not going to make that happen. The Affordable Care Act has been rolling out over the last two years and as of October 1st, a big part of it went live: these health exchanges where individuals and small businesses can go online, and in California, you go to CoveredCA.com—that’s the website—and you’ll be able to, for the first time, to shop for affordable, accessible insurance plans that can’t turn you away just because you happen to get sick or you happen to have a preexisting condition. And they’re really well priced; competitively priced.
So, your question was about exemptions, and there are all sorts of rumors out there about Congress and Congressional staff having some special exemption. It’s actually just the opposite. Congress, myself, and my staff, are the only people in the country that are specifically called out in the Affordable Care Act as being required to go in to these public exchanges to get their healthcare. So, far from getting a pass or an exemption, we’re actually mandated to go these exchanges and get our healthcare there. Now, there’s two types of care provided under the exchange, there’s the individual plans and there’s the small business plans, employer-based plans. Members of Congress and our staff will be in the small employer- the SHOP program, they call it- meaning the employer will pay a percentage of the coverage just like has always happened, but that’s it, its’ been blown out of proportion and misrepresented and unfortunately has just fueled this debate about what I think is a very good law that is doing some important things to lower costs and increase accessibility to healthcare. So, thanks for your question, and let’s head to the next one.
Moderator: Don’t forget to press *3 if you have any questions. The next one goes to Michael from Marin.
Jared Huffman: Hi Michael.
Michael, constituent: Hi there, thank you very much for the work you’re doing. I was just wondering if you were finding that there are any Republicans in the House that you can actually work with at this point, perhaps towards them breaking ranks with the tea party-infused majority or minority of the party. I’m not asking for particular names, I know that would be impolitic, rather, whether or not they exist, and if so, what might be the characteristics that they might have; is there any possibility of breaking up this straight republican wall?
Jared Huffman: Right. So the answer is ‘yes,’ there are lots of Republican colleagues that I have talked with and that have even publically come out and said they disagree with their leadership strategy of shutting down the government; they would like to vote on a clean bill to reopen the government, they would like to vote on a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling and not hold it hostage, but they’re not being allowed to have that vote. The disconnect is that so far they’ve been unwilling to take that additional step and sign up with the Democrats on a clean bill to reopen the government, and what we have done to try to give them the opportunity to do that is I’ve joined about 200 of my colleagues in signing what we call a “discharge petition” and it’s a procedural way in which, if we get enough signatures on the floor of the House—and we’ll need about 217 signatures on that—but if we can get that, we can force a vote on the clean government funding bill that advanced out of the United States Senate a few weeks ago with bipartisan action.
So that I think right now is the easy solution right in front of us: to try to encourage these moderate, sensible Republicans—and there are several dozen of them who have expressed desire to do this—try to encourage them break ranks, come on out, and do the right thing. They’re under enormous political pressure within their party and they will almost certainly have political challenges in their next primary, that is the rough-and-tumble of Republican politics right now, but we also need them to realize the bigger picture here and making sure that our government and our economy and our credit rating, among other things, move forward is a lot more important than these partisan political games that have been dominating the process so far.
Moderator: Next question goes to Ron from San Rafael
Jared Huffman: Hi Ron.
Ron, constituent: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. My question is: Are there any compromises that you are willing to make in order to make sure that the debt limit is raised; that we don’t get into this horrible situation where we don’t pay our bills, and all the economic disaster that could happen from that.
Jared Huffman: Well, you know, President Obama has stated that he feels very strongly that the debt limit should not be the subject of negotiation and concession every time it has to be addressed. That, historically, has been something that didn’t happened; under Ronald Reagan, as you may know, the debt limit was raised numerous times, it was never politicized, there were never hostages taken and concessions demanded; it was just something that everybody knew our country had to do, and it happened. It’s only very recently, culminating in the big fight in 2011 over the extension of the debt limit that brought us the budget control act and eventually things like the sequester, where all of this deal making started happening around the debt limit. President Obama is trying to say ‘Enough. We cannot continue that.’ Especially when you have Republicans saying they will only increase the debt limit for a short term.
Bear in mind that the deals we’re hearing about here in the 11th hour are only talking about a few months of extending the debt limit, and so if we continue on this game of short-term debt-limit extensions in demand for permanent policy concessions at every step of the way, I think the President has correctly stated that you just can’t have a functioning government that way. So I support the President in saying that this is just non-negotiable. Now we’ll negotiate about any policy matter on a separate track, there’s no reason that we couldn’t have been talking about ways to improve the Affordable Care Act, ways to reduce the deficit and the debt, all along. That shouldn’t have any connection to the debt limit; but to try to link the two together and then extract demands and concessions, one from the other, is really something that has to stop.
Moderator: Great. Next question is going to go to Cindy from Trinity County.
Jared Huffman: Cindy, welcome.
Cindy, constituent: Thank you for taking my call. I’ve been following this shutdown very closely; I’m a political news junkie. And I’m really disheartened by the tone of these Republican members in Congress, and my question is: economic times up here in Trinity County are really tough and I have a small business and my sales rely on having a functioning economy and so I really don’t want to see this happening in our government. I want government to function, and to take care of the people. I’m angry that Congress—the Republican parts of Congress—keep bringing up this debt ceiling issue and they want to put Medicare and Social Security on the table and I really don’t want to see that happen. I would like to know how to be more involved in a budget deal; is there a way that private citizens can have more input in what goes into these budget negotiations?
Jared Huffman: Well, Cindy, I serve on the Budget Committee and I’m your representative so I’m always interested your feedback and suggestions, and you should feel free—the closest office I have to you in Trinity is my office in Eureka, my Humboldt County office—but we want to hear from you in Trinity County and I want to meet with you when I’m there and hear directly from you and your neighbors about what you think a good responsible federal budget ought to look like. Unfortunately, we were kind of denied the chance to have that debate this year. The Budget Committee passed a budget in the House, the Paul Ryan budget, and I disagreed with it for many of the same reasons that you just mentioned. I didn’t think Medicare benefits should be cut for seniors; I disagree with some of the severe austerity in that budget and the lack of investment in education and research and other forward-looking things. But, the budget passed the house, there was a different budget—one that I liked a lot better—that passed the United States Senate, and then the President put a third budget on the table and by Springtime this year we had, for the first time in many years, all of the pieces in place to move into a budget conference committee and actually get this done and have good deliberative process on the budget for the American people which we haven’t had for years.
Unfortunately, the House Republican majority refused to go to conference; they refused to appoint conferees and said that instead of negotiating a budget, they preferred to let things ride into the Fall, into the point we’re in right now: the government shutdown, the lead-up to this debt situation, a point where they felt they could generate more leverage to get their way in a divided government. And it’s just really a shame. So one of the things I hope we take away from this ugly crisis is that we have to get back to what people in Washington call ‘regular order.’ That means an orderly, deliberative process where, instead of these crises every few months and these hostage scenarios, we need to have hearings and votes and do it in a transparent way so that the American people can be part of that and let’s pass budgets, pass appropriations bills, instead of these crazy, short-term, crisis-management situations which have really become the default for the last several years. So thanks for your question.
Moderator: Next question goes to Jane in Cloverdale.
Jared Huffman: Hello Jane
Jane, constituent: Congressman Huffman, thank you. I am concerned about this debt limit crisis. I am retired and I have supplemental income from a 403B and just recovered from the last thing, when the stock market crashed; when you’re older, you just don’t have that long to live to see these investments recouped. And I don’t know what you can do to convince these people that they are dealing with real people and their lifestyle, and I just don’t think they get it. They’re making some point and I’m very, very worried about this and I just hope they come to their senses.
Jared Huffman: Well thank you for sharing that and I think that’s an important piece of this. We need to take this away from the realm of political point scoring and really bring it back to real peoples’ lives, and you just gave a very good example of how this has real consequences. The last thing in the world we need is some manufactured crisis that causes the market to crash that causes interest rates to go up… Folks are struggling out there. I know. I know what you’re talking about, and if you have to see your retirement, your hard-earned retirement devalued, if folks who are trying to buy a home, and mortgages that get readjusted from time to time see higher interest rates as a result, that is completely unacceptable. So I’m doing everything I can; I’m taking to the House floor, doing the speechmaking part of my job and speaking out in every possible way, but I’m also trying to have real discussions with colleagues across the aisle and I think all of us just really need to do that—really need to talk about the human reality of these political games, because it’s completely unacceptable. And I thank you for sharing your situation and your concerns.
Moderator: Alright, next one goes to Dwayne from Ukiah.
Jared Huffman: Hello Dwayne
Duane, constituent: Hello Congressman, thank you for taking my call. My question is: why do we always seem to have to raise the debt limit if we are controlling our spending as responsible people would; and why are people that want to cut spending considered bad guys?
Jared Huffman: Yeah, well they’re not ‘bad guys,’ Dwayne; let me jump into that part first. I think anyone who wants to make sure we’re living within our means… that’s a principled position and I respect it, and my guess is that we can find a lot of common ground if that’s what the concern is. The reason that we have to raise the debt ceiling from time to time is that our country keeps growing, our economy keeps growing, and therefore when we go through periods where we have to borrow money and service the debt and manage cash flow sometimes we need a higher authorization to do short-term borrowing to manage cash flow. So, I’m not a finance expert, I’m sure there are others who could explain it better but that’s sort of the simple answer as I understand it. Now, with respect to the debt and deficit- you’re absolutely right- I think we’ve got a real problem that we need to continue addressing. We’ve got over 16 trillion dollar debt, we’ve got deficits now that are still hundreds of billions of dollars, but it’s also important to know where we’ve been and where we are.
We’ve been through a real tough time and a huge amount of that debt was driven up by some irresponsible decisions under the last administration—under the Bush administration—where we started two very long-term wars and for the first time in our history, we not only needed to raise taxes to pay for the wars, but we actually cut taxes in the middle of those wars. There was also bipartisan action to expand Medicare benefits without paying for it—that was put onto the national credit card. Then of course, the global economy went off the cliff in 2008 and we had to take some emergency actions there even as our revenues started falling dramatically. The finances, through the combination of all of those things, really took a terrible turn and we’re trying our best to dig out of it. The good news is we are reducing the deficit at the fastest level right now than we have in three generations. So we are making tremendous process at bringing our deficits down; we are on a path to having them under control as a percentage of our economy, and our debt is on a path to being under better control. We still have some challenges to manage the debt, but there are all sorts of things we can do to continue to make progress on that. I’ll just quickly mention a few, and then I know we’ve got other questions I’ve got to get to.
The first is the Affordable Care Act and healthcare reform. The independent congressional budget office—the economists that we turn to on a nonpartisan basis to tell us the fiscal implications of things—they’re very clear that the Affordable Care Act will help us reduce the deficit, help us reduce the debt, and that we need to stay the course in order to achieve those savings, and we’re already seeing it, of course, because healthcare costs are rising at the slowest level that they have in decades. So that’s good news. The sequester, which went into effect as Congress again couldn’t reach an agreement and pass a budget, is a bad thing for the deficit, it is projected by the CBO next year if we don’t replace these arbitrary, deep sequester cuts we’re going to lose 600,000 jobs next year, and that’s going to shave off half a percentage point from our GDP, from our economic growth. So that’s going to have ripple effects that are very negative to these fiscal concerns.
Finally, immigration reform is another one where there’s bipartisan support to pass a comprehensive immigration law, like the one that came out of the Senate. The CVO tells us it will make a great improvement in our deficit, and our debt. Hundreds of millions of dollars over the next ten years, and we can’t even get a vote on this bipartisan supported bill. That needs to happen if we’re concerned about reducing the deficit and debt. So those are just three things that I’m going to be pushing on in every way that I can. Especially on that immigration reform piece. There’s strong bipartisan support to do this, so this doesn’t have to be a partisan issue either. I thank you Dwayne for your question and will take the next caller. Let me remind everyone just press, “* 3” on your phone if you want to ask a question somebody will jump online and be right with you.
Moderator: Next question goes to Phil from Petaluma.
Jared Huffman: Good evening Phil.
Constituent, Phil: Hi, Jared. How are you?
Jared Huffman: I’m good. Thanks for joining us.
Constituent, Phil: Good. So, it sounds as if we have a minority that is controlling these important decisions and controlling the House. What’s being done to change the rules, or to somehow stop this? I know we changed the filibuster laws to make it easier to filibuster.
Jared Huffman: Well, only a little bit, though. The Senate really took only a baby step on filibuster reform. But, you ask a great question, Phil, because the rules have actually become worse during this crisis. You know the government started shutting down on October 1st. Well, on October 1st the Republican majority in the House of Representatives took an additional step after moving us to a government shutdown. They then changed the rules of the House so that any bill that passed out of the Senate could only be forced to a vote on the floor of the House by the Majority Leader of the Republican Party, Eric Cantor. This was an unprecedented rule change. They refer to it as “martial law.”
Normally, any member of the House can make a motion that a bill which has already passed the Senate must be taken up by the House. Then that motion would be debated, and there would be a whole democratic process that unfolds from there. They zeroed out that rule, replaced it with martial law, and we are now in our third week of a rule that only allows Eric Cantor to bring Senate bills up for a vote, or even move them so that we can have a debate about whether they should be brought up to a vote. So, the rules have really been manipulated. They’ve been made fundamentally undemocratic, and that’s one of the many, many things that we are vigorously discussing-- I’m being charitable-- we’re fighting about it in the House every single day right now in the heat of this crisis. When we get through this we have to make sure that this kind of game-playing with democratic process and the Congress of the United States never happens again.
Moderator: Alright, now the next question goes to Christopher from West Marin County.
Jared Huffman: Good evening Christopher. Thanks for joining me.
Constituent, Christopher: Hi, thanks for holding a town meeting. First I wish to second the sentiment expressed by the caller who was concerned about her retirement benefits being devastated by the uncertainty of the stock market and wish to encourage you to help raise the bar by ensuring that all American workers have the option of having a defined benefit plan in which their retirement benefits are guaranteed. Second, I’ve got a number of friends who are federal workers, some of whom are furloughed, some who are not, and federal employees will be unfairly financially punished if they are not provided with back pay, and I encourage you to champion ensuring essential employees who have been forced to work these past couple weeks, receive double pay.
Jared Huffman: Thanks very much, Christopher. Let me address the last part of your question first, the back pay. I don’t know that we can secure double pay, but we can certainly make sure that everybody gets back pay as a result of this completely unnecessary, manufactured, political crisis. I’m cosponsoring a bill that actually has passed out of the House of Representatives to do just that. To make sure the folks that have been furloughed or the essential folks that have been asked to work without pay, that everybody is made whole, and nobody loses pay as a result of this. With respect to the pension piece, and financial security, I don’t know that we can create a federally defined benefit program for everybody, but in a sense we sort of have that with Social Security, so one thing I can definitely do is fight to defend Social Security for the next generation.
The good news in that regard is that, I think, with a few modest changes to the program it can be in great financial shape going forward. I’m talking about things like raising the wage gap, to make sure that it is bringing in the type of wage coverage that it was intended to apply to. So, I will defend Social Security to the end. I think it’s a critically important program. I did, when I was a State legislator, vote kind of along the lines of something I think you were referring to, to give folks in the private sector the ability to buy into defined benefit plans, or hybrid plans. I’m interested in that, I’m just not aware of any specific proposal at the Federal level at this time. So, thanks for your question. Again, everybody, just press, “* 3” if you want to ask a question and somebody will jump on line to help you. Let’s go to the next caller.
Moderator: Alright, next one goes to Bruce from Arcata.
Jared Huffman: Hello, Bruce.
Bruce: Congressman Huffman, I am quite concerned about the increased surveillance by the NSA that has been revealed these past months, and the erosion of our civil liberties and protections under the Fourth Amendment, protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and the objective threat to our civil rights and our protections that this unbridled surveillance by the NSA is demonstrating. I’d like to know what your position is regarding the protection of our Fourth Amendment rights, and changes that you see as being possible in bringing the NSA under federal regulation and control.
Jared Huffman: Thanks for that question, Bruce. It gives me the opportunity, a welcome opportunity, to discuss something where I think we have a bipartisan consensus. It’s an interesting and cross-cutting group of folks in Congress, both Houses, both parties, that I think are concerned, and agree, for sometimes different reasons, but there is agreement that the broad, sweeping authorities that started being put in place after 9/11 went too far. And that we have to move the pendulum back in favor of privacy, and civil liberties. So, what am I doing about it? I voted in favor of the Amash-Conyers Amendment, which was a very high profile amendment to the National Security Authorization bill a couple months ago, that would have made some of the changes that we’re talking about. Basically, it limited the ability of the NSA to conduct surveillance on an ongoing and broad basis, without a specific nexus to someone under investigation. I’m also cosponsoring a whole bunch of other bills in this area: bipartisan bills. Since it would take too much time to kind of run you through every one of them let me just say in terms of general subject matter.
What I want to do is revise this FISA court process, I want FISA court judges to be appointed in a more transparent manner, I’d like to see Senate confirmation, and a process by which we actually get to question these judges, learn about Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment philosophies, instead of having the Supreme Court Chief Justice appoint them all. I want to see more transparency in the FISA court process. I’d like to see an advocate in there who represents civil liberties and privacy concerns. I’d like to see more disclosure of these court’s opinions, because they provide important precedents that get used by other FISA proceedings, and the public often never gets to see these decisions. There are a whole bunch of other related reforms that I’d like to see. Again, the good news here is that there is bipartisan support to do all these things even in this divided Congress we’ll have a change to make many of these changes, possibly as soon as next month when we can get past this government shutdown and fiscal crisis.
Moderator: Alright, next one goes to Jay in San Anselmo.
Jared Huffman: Alright, and Jay, before we jump into your question I’m told we have time for three or four more questions. We are going to wrap this up at 11 o’clock my time, that’s 8 o’clock your time. Jay, thank you very much for joining us.
Constituent, Jay: Yeah, hi. I’m actually a furloughed NASA employee.
Jared Huffman: Wow.
Constituent, Jay: It’s discouraging to watch all the rancor, and of course that’s been touched on. I guess my question is there something you guys can do to develop a common sense of at least some shared purpose. You know, there’s this sense that Congressman used to do things socially together, decades ago we’d read about that. It feels like that’s broken down. It seems to me a step would be at least if you guys did things together, you know, played golf. You know is there some starting point that we can develop a sense of shared mission together.
Jared Huffman: Well, I happen to agree with you Jay, I think that sort of team building and trust building is missing. I do a little bit of it. I will say that among freshmen Members of Congress we’ve got to know each other a little better than others. We’ve gone to some bipartisan activities; we’ve had a chance to get to know each other a bit, but not nearly enough. To give you one example of that, there’s a dinner that they have for new Members of Congress when you first get sworn in. Historically that’s always been this really nice bipartisan gathering that the Speaker presides over. This year for the first time in history Speaker Boehner split it up. He had a Republican dinner and Democratic dinner and we didn’t even get to meet the guy that is supposedly the Speaker of the whole House. So, all I can say is, even some of these basic attempts to work together, to get to know each other and remember that we’re all supposed to be members of the same team in this country, have really broken down and I completely agree with you. I want to thank you for hanging in there. I know 97% of NASA employees are furloughed right now. So the fact that you’re furloughed is something that I find very distressing. I know it must be tough for you and your family and just know that we’re going to try and work through this on my end in every way we can. We’ll make sure that we get you back pay through this terrible situation.
Moderator: Alright, next question goes to Kathleen from Cazadero.
Constituent, Kathleen: Hi, good evening Congressman, thank you so much for taking my call.
Jared Huffman: Hi, Kathleen. Good to talk to you.
Constituent, Kathleen: Good to talk to you, too. My biggest concern is with respect to the debt ceiling, yes that can be resolved, but we’re being held hostage as a result of Obamacare. I want to ask on more of a State-level because, the way I hear it, the way I’m trying to understand it, the more and more days that go by it’s costing the American people millions, perhaps billions of dollars. How is that going to get recovered, number one. Number two, for someone who has lived in the State of California for a very, very long time and have gone through many, many governors that haven’t necessarily done a great job. But, the one currently in office, is doing something that is actually putting us back in the black again. How is that going to affect California? Is it going to bring us back to square one? Where, as Californians were going to see unemployment go up? More taxes in a situation where we’re barely making it? Currently I’m at three jobs right now and trying to go to school for a new skill. I’m just tired. I hope you can answer some of those questions.
Jared Huffman: Well, excellent question. You hear these statistics, like the fact that the government shutdown is costing our economy $300 million a day. What that doesn’t tell you is all the different ways in which it’s rippling out to state government, and to local government. When these shutdowns occur there are additional costs and lost revenues at every level of the system, and not all of those are going to be repaid. We may be able to pass a bill that provides back pay to federal workers, but I don’t think that anyone believes that we’re going to be able to make whole all of the different public and private entities hurt by this unnecessary crisis. So, that’s just another reason why it has to stop and we have to avoid ever letting it happen again. It gets a lot worse if we go into default because at that point aid to states is one of the many federal obligations that could be delayed, held up, reduced. You’re talking about money that many states still cannot afford. It’s great that California is in the middle of a comeback with you. I agree with you that Jerry Brown has presided over an amazing turn around for our state. What’s happening now at the federal level is the last thing that California wants to see as we’re starting to bring our economy and government back after a terribly tough time in our state, so thanks for the question and the concern, and just know that those are among the many reasons I’m fighting back here to end this crisis and to try and make sure it never happens again.
Moderator: Next question goes to Frank from Fairfax.
Jared Huffman: Good evening, Frank.
Constituent, Frank: Yes, hello, Jared. You know the Republican party claims that they’re the small business party, and my wife and I own a small business in Sonoma County. Our Sonoma County winery, “mom and pop” winery, has just won two gold medals at the Sonoma County harvest fair.
Jared Huffman: That’s good product placement Frank. I would have been disappointed if you didn’t do that.
Constituent, Frank: About that. Here’s the bad news, Jared. We’re trying to bottle our 2011 Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon and we can’t get our labels through the TTB. We must receive tax and trade approval of our labels. We can’t have our labels printed, so our printer’s on hold, then we can’t get the cab bottled and out bottler’s on hold, so there’s a ripple effect to this government shutdown that the Republican Party has put on us. It’s hurting everyone, not just our little winery, but the people who print our labels, the small group that comes in and bottles our wine for us. Why can’t the Republican Party realize they’re hurting small businesses?
Jared Huffman: Amen, Frank. What a great example. Some people may think that if you furlough some federal employees, it’s such a big government that maybe no one will really notice, maybe we’ll save some money and it’ll be fine. Believe it or not, I have Republican colleagues that say stuff like that even to this day. They euphemistically refer to the government shut down as a “slim-down.” You do have people that simply don’t get the fact that there are all of these implications for the private sector. You’re a winemaker whose business depends on these approvals year in and year out for you to get your product bottled and distributed and sold. I’m hearing from small businesses all over my district and they’re in exactly the same situation. So many small businesses depend on regulators of various kinds. I’ve got colleagues further up the coast in the Northwest where the King Crab fishing fleet, the folks who go out on the dangerous catch reality TV show, they’re being kept in port because the National Marine Fisheries service that get to tell them how many crab they can catch and keep are furloughed. So they can’t get the approvals to go out and fish and they are in jeopardy if we don’t get this thing turned around really quickly of losing their entire season. So this is happening in all sorts of industries and sectors. This is private sector jobs, this is private sector economy, and we just have to keep telling these stories, and I appreciate you telling yours. I’m going to include that in the many anecdotes that I use when I talk about this terrible shutdown, and I appreciate you calling in. Thanks Frank.
Moderator: Next question goes to Barbara from Sebastopol.
Jared Huffman: Good evening Barbara.
Constituent, Barbara: Yes, and hi Congressman. What actually can we do? You were just talking about all these stories about the small businesses being affected by this stupid shutdown. Actually, it seems like there needs to be a movement for the people who are being governed by these Republicans in the House, they should be contacting them on a local level. Look what’s happening to my business, why are you supporting this? I don’t know what I specifically can do. Every time a petition comes through from MoveOn or anything else in my progressive world I sign it and send it on. But, what else can we do? Can we contact Boehner?
Jared Huffman: Sure. I think that would be perfectly appropriate. You know your business associations small and large are a really important voice in this debate, and the good news is whether the small business associations across this country, chambers of commerce, the U.S. chamber of commerce, I may not always agree with some of these groups on different issues. But they have been terrific in the past few weeks in pressuring the Tea Party folks and the House Republican caucus to stop these games and to reopen the government and think about the economic damage they’re doing. They’re really important voices on this debt ceiling issue that we’re 48 hours away from facing. So, your story is needed and you can certainly share it with me and my staff and we’ll do our best to get it out there, but I think that maybe contacting the Republicans who are supporting this government shutdown is the most direct way to let them know to stop playing this game that it’s hurting people.
Moderator: Alright, so the last question for tonight goes to Brooke from Ukiah.
Constituent, Brooke: Hi, Jared.
Jared Huffman: Good evening Brooke.
Constituent, Brook: I ran against you in the primary, I don’t know if you remember me.
Jared Huffman: Of course, how are you?
Constituent, Brooke: Great. I’ve been trying to figure out what these issues are and more importantly how to solve them and my current thought is that Lawrence Lessig has the answer. Are you familiar with him?
Jared Huffman: Yeah.
Constituent, Brooke: Okay, essentially what he’s saying is that the founders wanted the Congress to report directly to the people and now they’re reporting to the funders of the primary election.
Jared Huffman: Yeah, so he has some great ideas about campaign finance reform.
Constituent, Brooke: Exactly.
Jared Huffman: Yeah, and I agree that that is a very important issue. It does have some relation to the dysfunction we’re seeing in Congress right now because one of the reasons I mentioned is the fact that there’s a strong majority in the House of Representatives that would support a clean bill to restore the government, to extend the debt ceiling. But the Republicans who say they want to cast that vote are not sticking their necks out, are not breaking ranks and working across the isles to get it done. The reason is because they’re afraid of getting a primary challenge in the next election. The reason they’re afraid of that are these groups like Heritage Action, and Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks, these Super PACs. As you know, and as probably most people on this call know, through some Supreme Court rulings and the extreme funding by a few very wealthy individuals. We have seen more political spending than ever before in our history. Much of it is driving an extreme agenda. The Tea Party agenda is backed with an awful lot of money right now and it’s having a chilling effect on moderate Republicans who could be working very collaboratively with Democrats on some of these basic governance issues. I’m with you. I’m actually cosponsoring a bill that reflects one of Lawrence Lessig’s ideas about using very, very small contributions in a public finance system to try to reduce the influence of big contributions. I’ll keep doing everything I can. Truthfully, we have our work cut out for us on this because we have some terrible Supreme Court rulings and we’re either going to need, to really fix the system we’re going to need either a new Supreme Court, or a Constitutional amendment, and of course, I’m cosponsoring the Constitutional amendment, both of them, to do that as well. Thanks for the question, and let’s see I think we have time for probably one more. Paul, do we have time for one more?
Moderator: Yeah, Let’s go with Edita from Novato.
Jared Huffman: Good evening Edita.
Constituent, Edita: Good evening, and thank you for taking my call Congressman. I’m very concerned about our political situation and how the government isn’t doing their best to support the people of the U.S. I have lived overseas, as a matter of fact, in Iran just before the revolution took place and I saw what happened to the people. People in America need to understand what freedom means, and I think people need to get more involved in what happens to the government and carefully consider who they’re electing to Congress. Obviously, we’ve made mistakes with some of the people. What do you think Congressman?
Jared Huffman: Well, I agree that we need people to get involved, and informed, and engaged. We need to make voting easier. Frankly, in a perfect world I would like to see everyone pre-registered to vote, so by the time they turn 18 there’s nothing more they need to do. Just show up at the poles. We pre-register young people for the draft, for military service, so it doesn’t make any sense to me that we wouldn’t start with the assumption that everybody’s going to be a voting member of our democracy. There’re all sorts of other ways we need to make it easier to vote. We need to have online registration in all 50 states. We have it in California now, finally, and it’s making a big difference.
We need to make sure we address these issues along voting lines, and we need to promote more responsible coverage by the media. This is one of the things that I think turns people off and turns people away from being involved in politics. We have this 24 hour news cycle where keeping people alarmed and sensationalizing, and stoking conflict seems to be the business model for a lot of these folks and it’s had a real deleterious effect on the kind of political tone and discourse we have in this country. I don’t have a simple solution to this last piece; our ways of getting information in this country are evolving. I think it’s something that all of us have some responsibility to try to be a part of, try and verify the information you get on the internet. I can’t tell you how many times I get crazy stuff from the internet that a simple search to Snopes.com or one of the independent fact checkers shows you it’s just not true. Whether it’s about President Obama being a Muslim, or not being a citizen, or about Congress being exempted from the Affordable Care Act, which we talked about at the beginning of this town hall, there’s just so much bad information out there being used to stoke conflict and kind of drag down our political discourse. There’s no silver bullet. All of us, I think, have the responsibility to inform ourselves and urge your friends and neighbors to get real information and to have a real constructive political discourse. It is an absolutely essential challenge for our democracy for our government to work better. I say that as somebody who’s back in Washington tonight in the middle of a very distressing manufactured political crisis with some very serious effects on our people and on our economy. It’s what we’ve been talking about all night.
It’s probably a good question to close on. I want to thank everybody that participated. We had thousands of people from my district on the phone tonight. We obviously couldn’t get to everyone’s question, but I will answer them. If you have a question we didn’t get to, I promise you this, if you send them into my office by email we will get you an answer and we will have more of these town halls, both telephonically, and through social media, and of course, I want to keep having town halls and public forums and meetings in every part of my district when we can get this crisis resolved back here in Washington and I can get back to the beautiful North Coast. Thanks everyone again for joining me here tonight. I hope to talk to you soon.
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