That's good. Thank you all so much for coming. I'm Bryce Green. I am a DSA member, and I helped to organize
this. Thank you. Yeah. So first of all, I'd like to give a big thanks to all the DSA members and people
who helped make this event happen. If you helped make this event happen in some way by being a co-sponsor,
someone who helped set up a DSA member, could you raise your hand? Well, thank you all so much.
Yes, and of course, we'd like to give a big thanks to First United for being a pillar of the community
and letting their space be used by important community organizations and doing good work. So thank you
to First United, of course. And we'd also like to thank co-sponsors for this event, people who helped
promote and make this happen and give us some good questions. We'd like to thank the Indiana 5051 people
Actually, let's hold the applause, because there's a few. The Monroe County Education Association, Mask
Block Bloomington, the Monroe County Young Dems, the IU Bloomington College Dems, and the IU Bloomington
Young Democratic Socialist of America. Thank you all so much. All right.
The reason that we have this candidate forum is because we believe that fighting fascism starts at home.
And if you're going to be serious about fighting fascism, one way to do that is to ensure that the people
who are representing us in the halls of government genuinely represent the people here. And so DSA got
together these co-sponsors and other people, other people of the community, and we solicited questions
from them because we want them to be able to have a line to the people who are representing us.
And so we have a broad range of viewpoints, a broad range of questions here. But, of course, at the
center is DSA. And if you don't know about DSA, I mean, A, what are you doing? But B, I mean, I'll just
tell you a little bit about us. First and foremost, we're an organization that believes that capitalism
is the problem. That much of the issues that are facing our country, our state, our city, and us as
individuals come from this relentless drive for capital to accumulate,
to consolidate and to exploit. And if you're not addressing that system, then you're really not fighting
for anything, really. You're fighting to maintain an exploitative system. We believe that we need a
Green New Deal to combat climate change and reinvigorate the industrial base in this country. We believe
that healthcare is a human right and that the best way to implement that right is single-payer system,
Medicare for all.
We believe that housing is a human right and that we believe that housing should not be speculative
asset but should be used to house people. We believe that trans rights are human rights and bodily autonomy
for all. We believe in immigrant rights. We believe in abolishing ICE. We believe in ending America's
involvement in the oppression of Palestinians and in the imperial project writ large, including especially
this unprovoked attack on Iran.
And we are in favor of supporting unions, of course. All the workers have the right to organize and
to get better conditions. That's a good platform, I think, right? So over the last six months, our DSA
chapter has experienced a dramatic increase in activity and growth. We have done a lot. Let's see. We
raised $6,000 for Hoosier All Options
at the, what was it called, the Bread and Roses Bash. Another one will be coming soon. We supported
materially Starbucks workers striking in town. We organized volunteer work days at food banks. We organized
a cut the contract anti-ice rally, which yesterday seems to have borne some fruit at the city council.
And we continue to do anti-ice work, anti-flock work in the community.
And of course, we're doing a candidate forum so that the public can be more informed in our fight against
fascism. So we work with a lot of different organizations to put on a lot of different events. But tonight,
we have the candidate forum. And your host for the candidate forum is the host of the Who's Left podcast
and the founder of the Progressive Indiana Network. Did I say that right? Yes. Scott Aaron Rogers. If
you don't know him, you should really get a card and find out more about him.
He's great. And managing our time and, you know, keeping our candidates in check is our co-chair of
DSA Brent. All right. And my final announcement, my final ask is that if you are not, well, how many
of you are DSA members right now? Oh, that's pretty good. That seems like a lot of you aren't.
And so I would definitely encourage you guys to join DSA. Please get involved. Bring your ideas. Bring
your motivations. And we can change the world. So without any further ado, I will hand it off to Scott.
Thank you, Bryce, for the warm introduction. Again, my name is Scott Aaron Rogers. I am the host of
the Who's Left podcast. That's H-O-O-S, Left Like Who's Your Left, and founder of the Progressive Indiana
Network, an independent media collaborative supporting Indiana-focused progressive journalism, analysis,
and commentary. PIN provides a shared platform for writers, podcasters, and creators committed to covering
state and local politics with independence, solidarity, and accountability. The network exists to
build durable progressive media rooted in local communities and attentive to the decisions that shape
daily life across Indiana. You can learn more about us at progressiveindiana.net. But in addition to
that, I am also a DSA member in this chapter. Thank you. And so I am essentially here in that capacity
tonight. And so let's begin. I want to explain our format a little bit here. So we're going to start
with our statehouse candidates here in District 61 in Bloomington.
Candidates will be given four minutes each to introduce themselves to the audience. Then for the next,
I would say about 40 minutes, I, your moderator, will ask questions drawn from participating organizations
as well as from audience submissions. Now, to ensure we get through as many questions as possible, answers
should be kept under 90 seconds per question with the option for a brief 30 second response after the
other candidate speaks. There will be a timekeeper here.
to let you know when you've spoken for 60 seconds to help keep you on track. And we've planned for a
little padding, but we do want to get as many voices heard as possible. Now, I should mention that we
already have some questions that have been submitted by DSA members and by our co-sponsor organizations.
But again, the audience can submit questions via the QR code right there. Very good. So with that,
Let's introduce our candidates here and let us start, I suppose, with the incumbent, Representative
Matt Pierce. Matt, thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. It's great to see such a nice crowd here.
It's really important for people to be involved in our democratic process and get educated about the
candidates. So I'm pleased to be able to participate tonight. I would very much like to continue being
a progressive voice for the values of our Bloomington community.
And I think that those values for our community are first and foremost treating everyone with dignity
and respect, creating an economy that works for everyone, not just a few, being able to afford reasonably
priced housing, accessible and affordable healthcare, supporting our public schools and not diverting
tax dollars away to private schools, academic freedom and free speech on our campuses,
And also, we want to make sure we continue to protect our environment and natural resources. And so
I think those are some of the core values of our community, and I like being a very strong and outspoken
person on behalf of those values. Now, the thing that I never thought I would have to say is that while
we focus on things like economic justice, we also have to focus on preserving our democracy.
because we're under very real threat right now. And I see it both on the national level and at the state
house. And the number one example of that was the attempt to redistrict our congressional seats, an
effort that started all the way back in the summer and lasted until December. And I was pleased to act
as the point person for the effort to combat that. And it seemed like insurmountable odds, but I knew
that if we got people involved and
made people understand what was at stake. We had a chance to perhaps win there. And so I was involved
with participating in many rallies, appeared on many national media, really going after Donald Trump,
calling him out for his attempt to cheat in the elections. And so it was an interesting experience to
be on MSNBC, Now MS Now, and CNN, and these other outlets saying, we do not stand for this in Indiana.
And by getting the people involved and working hard, we were able to push back on that. And we had a
tremendous victory when that effort was defeated. And so I think we can have other victories, too. But
obviously, there's a lot more work to do. And so one of the things that I've been pushing back on is
this kind of paramilitary police state that is attempting to be created throughout the country and the
horrible things we saw happening in Minnesota. And one of the things that I did is I offered an amendment
to unmask ICE, to make it illegal for law enforcement, whether federal or local, to wear masks when
they're doing their law enforcement. We should not be living in a world where people are operating in
disguise with no identification. I also opposed Governor Braun's desire to have his own military police
force be able to enforce laws against civilians, including arrests, searches, and seizures.
And I spoke out very strongly on that, and I tried to alert the public about the potential dangers of
that kind of situation. I've also been opposing voter suppression laws. The Republicans decided they
didn't want to make it easy for students to vote. So they specifically said student IDs no longer count
from state universities. And that's going to cause us to have to work harder
to make sure students who want to participate in the process can. And then just the unprecedented attacks
on higher education. I mean, the complete micromanaging of our universities and really the conversion
of the Commission for Higher Education into some kind of oversight regulatory body, which is really
bad. So I'll just in conclusion say that
The key thing that I do in Indianapolis is I look around and ask myself, who is not in the room now?
Who doesn't have a high-priced lobbyist to represent them? And then I make sure that their voices are
heard, because there are too many people who don't have the time to be at the state house and to defend
themselves in their own interests. And so that's my job, is to do it for them. Thank you. Thank you,
Representative Pierce. Let's hear from the challenger, Lillian Young.
Good evening, Bloomington. I'm Liliana Young. I am Matt's opponent this year. Some of you still don't
know who I am, so let me tell you a little about myself. For about the last year and a half, I have
served on the Bloomington Monroe County Human Rights Commission. Before that, and during that time,
I have also worked as a community organizer and activist in the local LGBTQ community. I'm very proud
to be one of the people responsible for Bloomington's Resolution 2024-26.
the Safe Haven Resolution for Gender Affirming Care, which has also been picked up by other groups around
the state who have been pushing their cities and municipalities into adopting similar resolutions, and
they all quote our work in Bloomington. Very proud to see that we've had a ripple effect here. I am
running for a very simple reason.
Politics has changed over the last 20 years and it's changed dramatically in the last decade. The older
ways of doing things of attempting to compromise with Republicans, it doesn't work anymore. It hasn't
worked in a very long time and this is not a personal attack on any standing Democrat, but I don't believe
that this old longstanding method serves anybody anymore because Republicans have become used to appeals
to their better nature, which they don't have, and they've become used to shrugging off attempts at
compromise. It is the exception and not the rule. On the rare occasion, you can get one of them to actually
come to the table in a good faith conversation. I am considerably more aggressive
and further left than my opponent in just about every conceivable way. I have very little interest in
attempting to compromise with people that I know won't try and listen. Beyond that, my primary legislative
platform that I champion is very much in line with the essay values. I'm looking for things like
fully funding the state Medicaid program, because we've got a quarter of the state that is on that program
in some capacity. I'm looking to use the state's muscle to force lower housing costs. State governments
have a lot of power that doesn't get used for the right reasons, and I don't have an issue with being
a new kind of Democrat that actually uses the power that we run to obtain. I'm looking to
completely dissolve the school voucher program and get public funds back into public schools. If people
want that private education experience, they gotta pay for that. I'm looking to codify basic human rights
into our state constitution. It's a long process, but somebody's gotta get that started. And this includes
bodily autonomy for everyone, women, trans people, everybody in the state.
This includes the right to marriage equality, not just for gay people, but for interracial couples as
well. These are very basic things that are constantly under attack, and we have to put it into our highest
laws in the state so that nobody has to worry about that anymore. And I think that's it.
Very good. Thank you, Liliana. So I think as we get into our questions with just the two of you, I'm
going to do this snake style, and we're going to start with Liliana and go to Representative Pierce,
and then for the next question, vice versa, if that works for everybody. So for Liliana, I want to ask
you, and this is a question from Bloomington DSA. So a 2025 Gallup poll found only 54% of Americans
have a positive view of capitalism. That's down from 60% in 2021.
DSA believes that capitalism is a driving force of inequity and stagnation around the world. Please
explain your views on capitalism as a system and how you expect to work within it as an elected official,
and you have 90 seconds. My view is simple. Capitalism will kill us all. I don't want to be restrained
to capitalism, but for the near future, we're going to have to work.
to make reforms to it before we can finally get to the socialist paradise Star Trek promised us. This
goes back to things that I mentioned from my primary legislative platform. I also didn't mention we
have to drastically raise wages in the state. I'm shooting for a $20 an hour state minimum wage, which
according to research doesn't even cover two bedroom apartments.
So even that is a compromised position. In theory, in a perfect world, I would be able to lay the foundation
to largely undo the effects of capitalism in Indiana. And if I were elected and if I were re-elected
after that, I swear to every god you can imagine, I would do everything possible to lay that foundation
to try and free us from that chain around our neck.
All right. Thank you. Mr. Pierce, do you need me to repeat the question or you got it? No, I think I
got it. Thank you. So the biggest problem we have is starting back in the 1980s, all the safeguards,
many of the safeguards and a lot of the protections for working class people have just been removed
and taken away. You remember the time when you could work at a job and you could have a pension? In
addition to Social Security, you could actually retire with dignity.
And somehow that turned into a 401k and it's up to you to go find the money and put it into the stock
market and hope you have enough when you come out the other end. And what that's done is it's totally
skewed it. We live in this weird situation where the richest, wealthiest people just keep getting wealthier.
And we ask less and less of them to contribute to society as they get wealthier and wealthier. At the
meantime, you have the people at the lowest rung,
really struggling just to survive, just to get by. And the middle class is shrinking in the middle.
And I've said that this society cannot be sustained with that kind of ongoing trend. And so it's up
to the government to have to step up and make sure that workers have rights. And one of those, for example,
is undermining labor unions. You know, that was done deliberately. When you have a strong labor union,
In your workplace, workers have a stronger voice, and they can collectively bargain. And that results
in better wages and benefits. And so we have to reverse these trends that have occurred over the last
40 years or so that have undermined the workers and undermined equality in our economy. All right.
Thank you, Mr. Pearson. Now, we're going to start the next one with you. Now, this question is from
the Monroe County Education Association.
Do you know how funding mechanisms work for school corporations, including rules put in place last year
requiring sharing of funds with charter schools? And what do you think about tax dollars being given
to private schools due to Indiana's quote unquote school choice laws? I've been fighting this trend
for more than a decade because what you had happen is people came to power
in the Republican Party who really just wanted to privatize our school system. They used to refer to
our public schools as government schools. But they knew that if they came out and they said, well, we
just want to basically abolish the public schools and have a private school system, and we'll just hand
out some money to families and let them go figure out where they're going to get their education, they
knew that people would reject that. So instead, they started out with a very deliberate
incremental system to divert money away from our public schools. And they started out by saying, oh,
we have people in underperforming inner city schools. And because they don't have the wealth, they can't
go to a private school like wealthier people. So it's a matter of civil rights. We must give them a
voucher to allow them the same opportunity as wealthier people. And that was appealing. But that was
just the first step. And they've expanded and expanded it. Now in the state of Indiana, you can be a
billionaire
and you can get a voucher to subsidize your kids' private school education. And we don't have the ability
to support two systems at once. And so I'm doing everything I can to try to claw this back, to get rid
of these vouchers, and the charter schools also undermining it. We benefit as a society when we have
a strong public school system, when we have all of us in there together learning together. Not a stratified
system of wealthy people in one set of schools,
working families and other city schools. That does not work. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Ms. Young, same
question to you. Do you need me to repeat that or you got it? Please repeat. Thank you. So do you know
how funding mechanisms work for school corporations, including rules put in place last year requiring
sharing of funds with charter schools? And what do you think about tax dollars being given to private
schools due to Indiana's school choice laws?
Right, so fundamentally the idea of school choice is a myth to begin with, and I am nowhere near in
favor of sharing public funds with charter or private schools. As I said, I want to repeal and dissolve
that program entirely. I am sick to death of the
attacks on public education and this isn't just an Indiana problem, it's a nationwide problem. I grew
up in Texas and we have a lot of same issues there too so I've seen this my entire life. Fundamentally
I think we do have to treat education as a basic human right among other things and we're gonna have
to codify that into law in some capacity and make sure that our
a public education system is not just restored to what it was before we started getting all of this
funding drained out of it. Arguably, we have to make it even stronger than it was before then. Sorry,
thank you Ms. Young. So this is a question submitted by the audience and back to you on this one. So
disability rights are consistently left out of conversations like this.
In what ways will you commit to the rights of disabled people, especially given the fact that it's been
shown that supporting disabled people improves everyone's living condition? Disabilities, I think, is
a misunderstood thing. Most of the time you think of, for example, somebody in a wheelchair and your
imagination seems to cut off there, but this covers a pretty broad range of
physical and psychological impairments that people suffer. We have to address a increase in funding
and staffing for mental health and medical health services to address a lot of this. And I think we
have a very bad problem on our hands of
We just don't have enough legal protections for people with disabilities of any variety. One thing in
particular, people who suffer from anxiety disorders are treated really badly by workplaces. It's often
viewed as an excuse of, oh, you can't come into work because you're having an anxiety attack. Yeah,
we're going to write you up and dock your pay, and you might be fired tomorrow if you
don't get in here again. But that's as valid a disability as any other kind, and we've got to do a lot
better at protecting people who suffer these problems. Thank you, Ms. Young. Representative Pierce,
do you got that, or do you need a repeat? Yeah, I think that first you have an issue of just accessibility,
and I think that we could be doing better just on that baseline starting point. But what I've seen happening
is in erosion,
of support for the basic programs that are necessary for people to lead independent lives. Because I
think that's the number one thing. No matter what the nature of a disability someone might have, the
challenges they're facing, they want to lead independent, full lives. And a lot of times that requires
assistance, and that means relying upon things like Medicaid and other state programs. And those have
been funded properly.
And so that causes people to fight to have to get the assistance they need. And what's frustrating to
me is at the same time that we've been not funding those programs properly, we've been cutting back
the taxes that corporations and other people pay. The legislature has been slowly starving the government
to the point where it can't meet the basic needs of its people. And that's one of the things we have
to turn around.
Sadly, we have a budget process where the people in charge now, they just decide what is the bottom
line they're willing to spend, and then they drive everything backwards from that. They don't ask themselves,
what do we need to do to make sure we meet the needs of all the people, including those with disabilities
and people who have challenges that need help to lead full independent lives, and then finding a way
to fund those programs. And that's the approach that
I fight for in Indianapolis. Let's talk about what it takes to meet the needs of the people. Let's not
just look at a line on a page and say, this is the dollar amount we're willing to spend. Thank you,
Representative Pierce. So I want to move on to another question submitted by the audience. And unless
things change drastically this November, both of you would have to face the reality of the Republican
supermajority at the State House. Now, beyond policy differences,
How would you navigate these constraints as a legislator and a representative of Bloomington?
And furthermore, what is your theory of change? How will you use your office to disrupt the status quo?
And this one will start with Mr. Pierce. 90 seconds. Well, first of all, I do think we have a tremendous
opportunity this session to break the super majority. So that's the first step. If we can just pick
up four seats,
And we have an excellent opportunity with Amy Oliver running in the district next door. It's a 50-50
district. If we can pick that up, there's some opportunities up in Hamilton County. If we can break
that supermajority, that gives us another important tool. When a horrible piece of legislation comes
to the floor, we can deny a quorum to function. That gives us leverage to try to make something different
happen. And so that's the first key thing, which I think is within reach.
What I've always done is I've made sure, one, is to shine a spotlight on what they're doing, to try
to inform the public and tell them what's happening. One example of that was we had a bill in which
it opened it up. So on certain types of low-quality farmland, you could essentially put a data center
in with no oversight whatsoever from the government. It would be like a by-right use, which was insane.
And I quizzed the person on the floor, and I made them admit what this was going to do.
We got the word out over social media and other places, and the public then understood what was happening.
And they started calling in and saying, like, we don't want this. And within two days, the Senate said,
we are not going to touch that House bill with a 10-foot pole. So there are opportunities, whether you're
offering amendments to bills, you're quizzing the proponents of the bill, you're informing the public,
you can have an opportunity to keep things from happening that way.
Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Ms. Young, do you need me to repeat the question or you got that? Yeah, so unless
things do change, which because of how many Democrats are running this year, we might actually have
a very real change come November. Cross your fingers on that one, everyone. But my plan to combat the
super majority is
partially in line with Matt's. It is continuing to do everything possible to shine a spotlight on the
goings on of Republicans in the state house. This will include things like engaging every social media
platform possible. This will include calling daily press conferences with every press outlet that'll
show up. I'm even very willing
to engage in calling out Republicans in committee or other legislative chambers. I've already done that
just as a private citizen. I've been to Indianapolis and have chewed out Republicans in committees,
told them to their faces the kinds of people that they are and the damage they're doing with
their legislation. And I've seen on their faces that it rattles them. They're not really ever expecting that.
And the great part is, as an elected representative, they can't fire me for doing that. So these are
ideas that I have in mind of how to combat them. Thank you, Ms. Young. And we're going to come back
to you on this one. This is a question submitted by YDSA. That's the Young Democratic Socialists of America.
What actions did you take to support the Palestine protests at Dun Meadow, and how would you support
any new student-led protests during your next term? You got 90 seconds. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't
show up to Dun Meadow, and I'm not gonna take credit for something I didn't do. As far as supporting
Palestinians as a state candidate,
There's not very much that we can do to legislate support for that, but I would be very happy to use
my position there to continue to raise awareness and organize attention on community organizations and
nonprofit organizations working to help our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Thank you. Mr. Peirce.
Yeah, I was appalled by what happened in Dunmetto, and I put out a strong statement criticizing President
Whitten and the whole way that was handled. That was completely unconstitutional, and anybody even paying
casual attention knew it. They tried to change the rules in the middle of the night to give themselves
a pretext to essentially arrest people and push them out of Dunmetto, which ever since the Vietnam War
has been known as the free speech location. And so that was outrageous. And then to put the sniper on
top of the Union building, even worse.
And so I got on the record that that was wrong, and I tried to push back. I wanted the university to
know that there are some people that were in elected offices that did not appreciate what they were
doing. Then I got on the phone with the superintendent of state police, and I asked them, what the hell
are you guys doing down here? Why are you here? Why are you taking peaceful protesters and trying to
arrest them? It's like, well, then you learn the story. Well, we were asked to come in by the university.
We have to fight back because it's only kind of gotten worse from there. Now, fortunately, the ACLU
and others got involved in litigation. We've had federal judges basically say what you've done
was unconstitutional. And so people who are declared trespassers have been, you know, had that erased.
People have got reprimanded for various things related to their speech rights. Those have had to be
expunged because of what the federal court said. And so I think in the short term, we have to continue
fighting through the court system to vindicate our rights. And then we really have to, in two years'
time, when we have the opportunity to elect another governor, we need to get a governor in place who's
going to appoint trustees who are going to respect our professors, our faculty, and academic freedom
on campus. And that's essential. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. So I want to come back to you for this one.
And this issue has been very contentious lately, getting a lot of media attention across the board
both sides of the aisle. So this question is from Bloomington DSA. How would you go about staving off
the increase in the amount of data centers that are hogging electricity and water in our state? Yeah,
it's interesting because the governor and the leadership of the legislature, they're really pro data
center and they want to get as many of them in the state as possible.
And I've been saying that you cannot run roughshod over the desires of local units of government, of
people to decide what they want to have happening in their backyard. And so the first thing is, which
I've done in the utilities committee, is I've worked very hard to try to prevent us, one, from having
to pay for the tremendous amount of electric generation necessary to run a data center. And so I had
an amendment that I got passed in the law, which pushes it up, which says that these data centers
are supposed to pay at least 85 percent of the cost of generating this power. Now, it ought to be 100
percent, but at least we got it up there and we need to do more on that. The other thing is we have
to have ironclad regulations about environmental impacts, whether that's water usage or noise pollution,
all these different things. I think that we have to make sure that
The data center people don't think that Indiana is where you come because it doesn't matter what the
people think or what your impacts on the environment are. They have to understand that if you're going
to come here, you're going to pay for your own power, you're going to operate in a way that doesn't
deplete our water supply, and you're going to be good neighbors to the people around you. And I think
that's the key thing. And I think when you do that and you preserve people's local autonomy to decide,
then we can have decisions made that are in the best interests of the people.
Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Ms. Young, 90 seconds to you on data centers. I'm sorry. Could you please repeat
it real quick? Absolutely. So how would you go about staving off the increase in the amount of data
centers in the state that are hogging all this electricity and water? If I had my way, my perfect legislation
would be to completely block them from being built in Indiana to begin with.
They don't bring any benefits. They're not bringing jobs. They're using up all of our resources, and
they're making us all pay two or three times as much in electricity as we otherwise would be.
Barring that, I will, like Matt, I would love to continue to offer amendments to bills, try and increase
the amount of electricity costs that they're paying for their own usage. I would also,
continue to organize and engage the public to show up at the state house as often as possible to speak
out and protest on bills that let the data centers continue to run rampant here in the state. I also,
I apologize, I cannot remember the bill name, but the bill that
was going to allow the state to completely usurp municipal decisions on land use, I would do everything
possible to make sure no bills like that ever get that far ever again. Thank you, Ms. Young. So we're
getting a lot of questions. Good to see it. Love the participation. Thank you all for
your thoughtful questions. We'll go to about seven o'clock here tonight. That's about 15, 20 minutes
from now. So I'm going to come back to you Ms. Young for this one. And this is a question from advocates
for the unhoused and home insecure at IU. Senate Bill 285 was passed this legislative session and will
make it a class C misdemeanor for people to sleep on public land. Bloomington already has a housing
crisis and under capacity in shelters. How do you
plan to respond to this bill at the State House and to this issue in our community. 90 seconds. My first
priority, if possible, is to try and repeal that bill immediately. It's heinous and inhumane in every
way possible. Barring that option, I will continue to try and amend any other bill possible to
lower those penalties or put limits on how those penalties and fines can be implemented. I will also
try and work with our Bloomington government here as a state representative to make sure that they are
doing everything that they can on the ground level here to combat that problem and make sure that our
municipal services, shelters are being funded and staffed properly to at least offer some short-term
relief while we're trying to solve this in the legislature. Thank you, Ms. Young. Mr. Pierce, 90 seconds.
Do you need me to repeat the question? No, I think I've got it. Yeah, that Senate Bill 285 was classic
Republican thought, right? It's really like we're concerned about a problem, so rather than solving
the problem, let's just hide the problem.
Let's just sweep the people off the streets, and they're going to end up in jail. Now, their argument
is this is the pathway to treatment. My argument is we already have sheriffs telling us that they're
tired of the jail being the number one mental health provider in the community. Many people in our jails
are suffering from substance use disorder or mental health challenges, and the jails are not in a position
to deal with those.
We kept beating them up and they've added in all kinds of little different theoretically escape routes
to avoid end up being charged with the misdemeanor. But at the end of the day, none of that's going
to work because the treatment facilities are not there. We need residential treatment facilities. And
so on second reading, that's the point where everyone can vote on an amendment in the House.
To that bill, I offered an amendment.
that said the bill could not become effective until such time as we had three regional residential mental
health and drug treatment facilities that had the capacity and staffing to serve every single unhoused
person in our state.
And I really wanted to push this because I know that there are some members in the Republican side who
are recognizing this is a significant need and a problem. And they've been telling me over and over
again for years now, we're going to get around to doing something about that. So I really wanted to
push them and say, if you're going to have a bill like this, you have to provide the treatment. And
so I'm hopeful that we'll make progress on that in the next session. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Let's come
back to you for this one. And this is a question submitted by the audience.
We're going to stay with housing. Housing in the US is treated primarily as an investment rather than
a necessity. A significant portion of Section 8 funding goes toward the profits of private landlords.
Do you support the construction of government-owned housing, not just for the poorest Americans, but
at a variety of price points in order to increase supply and undercut the private rental market? I think
probably to solve this tremendous problem, which has so many different
causes at multiple levels is you're gonna have to have multiple solutions. So I think you're gonna need
to have some government subsidized housing. I think we should be doing more through the tax code,
tax credits, other subsidies to help people afford down payments. Of course, if we can figure out a
way to get the interest rates lower, that's also helpful. So we just have to work on affordability.
I was very disappointed that
After the Republicans said we recognize that housing affordability is a real issue and we're going to
have a bill on it, I thought that we would have something, we'd have a mix of these types of solutions.
Instead, what we got was a home builder driven bill which essentially sought to deregulate their construction
industry. And the bill in its final form wasn't worth voting for. I mean, it essentially
said you couldn't do certain types of mitigation for water runoff. You couldn't have certain types of
safety requirements for homes. It didn't make any sense. And there was nothing in the bill that ensured
that whatever savings those home builders would get from not having to comply with a lot of planning
and zoning and building code regulations would actually be passed on to the home buyer.
So I thought it had the potential to really just pad the profits of the people building the homes. And
so I voted against that bill. It's a very weak bill. It really is just something that's designed to
have people put a brochure, a line on their campaign brochure saying, I voted for an affordable housing
bill. But it doesn't really accomplish anything. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Ms. Young, do you need me to
repeat the question? All right, very good.
We mentioned that housing is treated primarily as an investment rather than a necessity, and a significant
portion of Section 8 funding goes toward the profits of private landlords. Do you support the construction
of government-owned housing, not just for the poorest Americans, but at a variety of price points in
order to increase supply and undercut the private rental market? Yes. No, fundamentally, we have to
move to decommodify housing on just about every level. I would like to see one bedroom, two bedroom,
three bedroom apartments subsidized by the state. I'd like to see smaller houses, two bedroom houses
maybe also subsidized by the state. That would be more of a short term solution, but it's part of the
way there. In the longer term, I want to see the state
take ownership of as much housing as possible so that we can remove the for-profit incentive that landlords
operate on. This is a fundamental human rights issue, and it has to stop being treated as something
else to exploit. Thank you, Ms. Young. So I want to move to the environment now.
Indiana's air, soil, water qualities are among the lowest in the nation. How will you lift our state
out of the bottom of these rankings and protect our air, water, soil, and natural areas? And Ms. Young,
you've got 90 seconds. I'm very sorry. I only caught part of that. Will you please repeat? Oh, absolutely.
So how will you lift our state out of the bottom of the rankings in terms of air, water, and soil quality?
As I have read the Indiana Department of Environmental Protection has had its teeth removed consistently
and we're gonna have to write some hard legislation that'll give it the teeth it needs back to start
enforcing environmental regulations, make sure that our
Corporations operating in the state are cleaning up their own messes, that they're not passing that
on to the rest of us to have to deal with. Our kids deserve to be growing up in a state that's not poisoning
them every day. I certainly want my daughter to have something better to grow up in, and I think all
the rest of you do as well. This will include things like increasing the staffing and funding.
in this department. But like I said, we have to legislate what it can do to make sure that the governor
can't keep trimming its powers on his own. Thank you, Ms. Young. And I want to ask the same question
to you, Mr. Pierce. Do you need me to repeat that? No, I'm good. So the environmental issues at the
legislature are probably the most frustrating of all.
It almost makes me kind of, it does make me sad because there is just no imperative within the General
Assembly to protect our environment. I mean, they've gutted our wetlands protections and it's
just frustrating. Now they just passed this bill, I think it's 277, which guts IDEM even more. I mean,
right now they told IDEM, you are not allowed to protect the environment in any way that's stricter
than federal law, right? So if Congress,
or the EPA is not willing to protect our environment in a significant way, the state isn't either. In
this bill, they added in this magic word that not only can you not be any stricter than the federal
law, you cannot be any more burdensome than the federal law. And I told them on the House floor, what
you've done is you've handed a weapon to the polluters.
So their lawyers can go into court and say, oh, you may not be any stricter than federal law, but the
effect is to be more burdensome. And no one will know what that word means, so it'll be up to the judges
to tell us what it means. And so what I did on the House floor with that bill is I got the fishing guide
for the Department of Natural Resources. If you ever look through that, it has a list of all of the
impaired waterways in the state in which you should not eat fish if you are fishing.
or you should limit your intake. And I read off every county that had an impaired waterway in which
you would put your life in danger if you ate fish that you actually fished out of those. And I said,
like, all of you that live in these counties, why are you gutting this agency? Its job is to protect
these waters and the environment. And again, this is a situation where we have to just make sure the
public understands what's happening and make it an issue in forums like this and when we get into the
voting booth.
All right. So Mr. Paris, I want to come back to you here for this one. This is a question submitted
by the audience. Now, Indiana is facing a critical shortage of health care professionals. Hoosiers are
facing months-long waiting times to see certain specialists. What are your ideas to encourage students
to enter into health care professions? And what are your ideas to entice health care professionals to
stay in Indiana?
Yeah this is really a difficult situation because again on the Medicaid front we have so many people
that are on Medicaid and if you don't fund Medicaid properly then the providers don't get paid properly
then they can't pay their workers properly and then you have people deciding to go work in another state
or some other place or just try a different occupation. So that goes back to your problem I mentioned
before where right now
The legislative leaders of the Republican Party are hell bent in trying to squeeze down Medicaid as
much as possible. And they don't want to admit that to you. They don't want to say, well, I don't care
about you and your health care. I just want to make this budget balanced. Or I just don't like this
program. So instead, they say, we are fighting waste, fraud, and abuse to preserve the program for you.
This is like George Orwell at work. And then just for a little extra sprinkle, all those immigrants
are taking your health care, and they shouldn't be getting it. And we're going to find out who they are.
and take care of them. And it's just ridiculous. What I've been trying to do is get the legislature
to decide that we have an insane health care system. We got these insurance companies stuck in the middle,
pharmacy benefit management. They're sucking all this money out of the system. They don't provide anything
of value to people. We need to get them out of the system. I'm a Medicare for all person. I think we
should have universal health care.
We had a big debate over the last couple years about hospitals. We found out our nonprofit hospitals
had huge billions of dollars of surplus. I voted for legislation that tells people, you better act like
a nonprofit and provide charity care, or we're going to take your tax exemption away. So we got to play
a little bit of hardball there. And we just got to get to a better system, ultimately. We can't just
keep putting Band-Aids on the one we have. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Ms. Young, do you need me to repeat
the question?
So Matt is correct part of the problem is increasing our funding back into the Medicaid program Another
part of the solution to this is repealing seemingly unrelated legislation such as restrictions on abortion
care and trans health care what we've seen in other states when we have
these kinds of laws put in place, that has a negative impact on states where specialists will leave
those states because they're afraid of practicing anything adjacent to that specialty. And that impacts
thousands, tens of thousands of people at a time who can no longer get, for example, OB-GYNs leave states
when you have
abortion bans in place. So now it's not just a matter of you can't get abortion healthcare, you can't
get any OGBYN care unless you travel state lines because the specialists just aren't there. So we have
to make sure that we're not just funding our Medicaid programs properly, but we have to repeal these
restrictive laws that have targeted other healthcare adjacent problems.
And we are also going to, I think, need to try and work to expand what Medicaid can cover in the state.
Now, there's going to be some federal restrictions on that, but to the extent possible, we need to lift
those here in the state, too. All right. Very good. So I want to thank you both for your thoughtful
answers. And I want to thank all the audience for their
incredibly thoughtful questions. And as we're coming up on seven o'clock here, I do want to pivot to
closing statements. And so since I let Mr. Pierce open first, I will let Ms. Young have the first closing
statement. About two minutes, please. Things can't get better if they don't change. And this change
isn't just about voting out Republicans who have been driving the harm that we all have to live with.
It's going to have to require a complete shakeup of the current system that we have. It's not meant
as a personal attack against anybody, but politics has changed and we need to have people in our state
government that understand that change and know how to respond to it accordingly. And that is exactly
what I believe I am capable of doing. That's why I stepped up to run for this office to begin with.
Thank you, Ms. Young. Mr. Pierce, you can take up to two minutes if you'd like. Thank you very much.
I appreciate you for hosting the forum and the opportunity to talk to you about some of my ideas for
the legislature. You know, I know that people are extremely frustrated, frustrated and feeling powerless
and wanting to know how is our country, how is our state going down this path? How is it that we can reclaim
our ability to impact what actually happens in Indianapolis. And I see that and I feel that myself up
close. And I tell you that it's easy to get dispirited and to want to give up. But for me, I just kind
of get a little more anger each day. And I try to focus that anger into positive actions. And I very
much want to be returned to the legislature so I can continue this fight.
I've spent years learning how the legislature works, how the rules work, the personalities involved,
and I want to be able to continue putting that to work for the people of District 61 and do everything
I can to push back on this, to preserve our democracy, to have a fair voting and election system, to
have a government that actually serves the needs of the people
and doesn't continually cater to the wealthiest people in our state with the theory that it will all
trickle down and the rest of us will somehow benefit. I very much want to stay in the fight. And so
I'm asking you as the voters of District 61 to please give me a chance to continue the efforts to make
progress. And I'm hopeful that this election year and this election coming up in November, the people
will send a strong message. And I'll have a little more help up there.
and we'll have a little more power, and we can actually get some done, and we can start getting on offense
instead of having to be on defense all the time. And so I really much would like your support and hope
you all will get out to vote in the upcoming election. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. Thank you,
both of you. We appreciate you being here with us tonight and answering our questions. And let's take
about a 10-minute break, and then we're going to invite our candidates up here for Congressional District 9.
everybody welcome back let's go ahead and welcome our candidates for the ninth congressional district
and we're going to go from left to right here we've got Floyd Taylor Kyle Rourke Dr. Tim Peck and Brad
Meyer now I should note mr. Taylor here is an independent candidate he will not be on your ballot on
May 5th you're still trying to secure ballot access for November is that correct
All right, very good. So once again, I want to reiterate the rules. We've got four minutes each for
our candidates to give an opening statement. And then once we get to our questions, we've got 90 seconds.
And I especially expect maybe a little bit more jostling in this section with the four of you there.
So if somebody is mentioned directly by name, I'll give you 30 seconds for a rebuttal.
if our QR code is still out there. So if you want to ask some questions from the audience, just scan
that and submit your questions there. We do have some already in the hopper from our Bloomington DSA
chapter and our co-sponsors. But for now, let us go ahead and start. And I'm going to go directly from
left to right here. And I'm going to start with Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor, you've got four minutes for
an opening statement. Good evening. I'm the independent candidate in this race.
I want to get right to the point. I have Republicans that are calling me a closet Democrat, and Democrats
that are calling me a closet Republican, and both sides are saying I'm trying to split the vote. And
I just want to state right up front that I'm not trying to split the vote. I want to take it all. I
want all of them. The truth is, I'm not in this campaign to... The truth is,
This campaign isn't a protest. It's a war against the way we do government. And I brought a weapon.
It's called the Congress App. With the Congress App, when a bill comes up for a vote, you get a text
on your phone. You get to read the full bill text, the plain English summary, and the fiscal impact.
And then you vote yes or no.
then my vote is bound to the will of the people of the ninth district. Not just the registered voters,
all the people. And that simple tool changes everything. Lobbyists and PACs can't buy my vote. They
have to persuade you. Money no longer flows to Washington to buy access. It has to flow right here into
your communities to earn your trust.
We can finally tackle the issues that no one dares to touch, not because they're unpopular, but because
they're unpopular with the big donors of the party leadership. Every other campaign starts with a candidate's
platform, their ideas, their goals, their concepts of a plan. My campaign starts with your positions,
your ideas, your goals, and writes the bills to make them law. I'm not asking for your trust. I'm designing for it.
And I'm the only one running on a plan that turns your phone into a weapon against the broken system.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Rourke, four minutes for an opening statement. Good evening, everyone.
First and foremost, I want to send my deepest condolences and prayers for those service members that
have lost their lives in the Middle East in Iran bombing. Secondly, I just want to say,
My name is Kyle Rourke, and I'm running in Indiana's ninth congressional district. I believe that government
should work for the people. I am an electrical engineer, father of four veteran. I am running for Congress
because we have an affordability crisis. I am looking to put more money in people's pockets,
bottom line. I'm also working to provide affordable housing, increase wages,
But I'm also running to advance educational opportunities for our students, either in college, university,
or in tech schools that grant wide accessibility and affordability. And finally, I'm also running for
government accountability. Congress has oversight responsibilities to which they're designed for. And
I'm also running to return decency to Washington, if that's possible.
I also believe in honor, courage, and commitment. And I believe I'm the man to provide that, make that
happen. Okay? Of all of us up here today, I believe I am the only one that can beat Aaron Houchin. I'm
the only one who put himself through college working on the assembly line at Chrysler as a UAW worker.
And I'm the only one who swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution in the United
States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
So I appreciate your vote and your support tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Roark. Dr. Peck, you may
take up to four minutes for an opening statement. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. Thank you to the
DSA. Thank you to all the co-sponsors, to my competitors here tonight. I appreciate it, to the audience.
My name is Dr. Tim Peck. I am an emergency physician down in rural southern Indiana. My father was a
a Vietnam veteran who came home and dedicated his life to building the first homeless shelter for veterans
of the United States. And that's how I grew up. I became a chief resident as a physician in emergency
medicine at Harvard Med School and left to live in a nursing home for three months. And there, I learned
everything I could about that world in order to bring them a new care model, which was telemedicine,
before telemedicine was a reality.
that turned into a very large physician practice in which we treated hundreds of thousands of patients
across the country. And we saved Medicare and taxpayers $100 million. And what that did was lead me
to DC. And there I became a leader of a bipartisan coalition that got Congress to pass multiple bills
and make telemedicine a reality right before the pandemic saving
the lives of millions of people. So now I live on a farm with my wife and my son and treating my rural
neighbors. So I wanted to quickly tell you about what I've been thinking about, which is Alex Preti,
and what it means to have border control and ICE on our streets, and that for ICE to act constitutionally,
it does not need to sow unnecessary terror
It needs to be dedicated to the honor of the Constitution, the nation, its people, and definitely not
its parties, not its leaders' whims or late night tweets, and not its billionaires putting its money
into their pockets or politicians' pockets. And so reflecting on Alex's death, it reminds me of the
people I see in the emergency department who just want to be safe. They just want to feel seen. They
just want to get home to the people they love,
Just like Alex did right before he had pepper spray in his face, five men on his back, one with his
own gun in their hand, and right before 11 bullets were put into his body. Alex's death shows us that
what's happening in America is not working today. We need a new way forward. Isn't it exhausting to
live this way? Does anyone actually like being this way?
Is this the America that you all dreamed of? We have to stop putting our energy into hate and otherness
and redirect it into patience and curiosity and community. And if our leaders aren't willing to do that,
then let's do that ourselves. Because after we hold power to account, and we will, the next step will
be the hard work of bringing people together, of lifting up the safety glass of social media,
taking down the cage of 24 hour news networks and making a democracy that works for all of
us. The opportunity of this election is not about politics. The opportunity of this election is about
humanity and remembering that all people deserve dignity no matter who they are and where they are from.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Peck. Mr. Meyer, you've got up to four minutes for an opening statement.
Thank you. I'd like to thank everybody for being here today. This is a great turnout. And I would like
to thank the DSA for hosting this. So I'm Brad Meyer. I'm running for the US House of Representatives
because this system that we live in truly is rigged. And I did want to rebut. I also swore an oath to
the Constitution to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And that's part of why I left
my job, to run for office.
I also put myself through school. My wife and I got married when we turned 18 and went to school, college
together. I spent 25 years in industry and this is really not about me, it's about you, right? So my
time in industry, I saw ethical leadership where owners of the company cared about their employees and
treated them fairly and with dignity. I also saw leaders
that definitely did not, and their only purpose in life was to squeeze every penny out of everything
and every person that worked for them. And that selfish approach is the official policy of the government
today. It's been that way for a long time, but it is now the official policy and where we're going.
Instead of expanding opportunity for all of us, they are hoarding
opportunity and wealth and power for themselves while the rest of us struggle. Our priorities and our
values are not being reflected in what our government does. For example, the government found money
to add tens of billions of dollars to ICE funding, and they found enough money to give $40 billion,
$70 billion for ICE, $40 billion for tax cuts,
That's actually the amount of money we need for a child care program in the United States. If we just
flip those, we've got the money. They've already identified it. But they're not going to apply to our
values. To change this, we're going to have to get into power. And there are three ways that people
are talking about being able to do that. One of them is that we can
There's voters over here and they are conservative and we will slide over and snuggle up next to them
and we will try to talk like them and we'll try to get their votes. And we tried that in the last election
and it didn't work. And it's not gonna work this election either. The second strategy that's being discussed
is that we need to be more middle of the road, more reasonable. And that's not gonna work either. The
fact is that
The middle of the road isn't a policy. It's just a place to get run over. I say that we have given too
much ground now, as it is, and we need to stand up for our democratic principles and what we believe
in and start fighting for what we need as a country. People want leadership that delivers. They want
things that are going to improve their lives. The path forward isn't chasing politicians
and other people's ideas. The path forward is to find the people that have been underserved and cut
out of our society and show them that we have better ideas and better solutions and attract them to
our side. That's how we're going to win. If we want them to show up at the ballot box, we have to show
up for them first with policies that make a difference. I'm fighting for universal nonprofit single
payer health care.
Because no one should go broke just trying to stay alive. I'm fighting for economic policies that will
put more money in people's pockets so that they can earn and have independence in their economics. If
you're working 40 hours a week, you should be able to afford a house and food. And right now, that's
not the case. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
All right, so I want to go ahead and get into our questions tonight. And I'm going to remind you folks
that we're going to have 90 seconds each for your answers. And then if somebody is mentioned by name,
I'll give you 30 seconds for rebuttal. I'm going to start over here with Mr. Taylor on the first question.
Then I will start the second question with Mr. Rourke, the third question with Dr. Peck, and so on and
so forth. So for you, Mr. Taylor.
This question comes from Bloomington DSA. After seeing the recent success and popularity of socialist
candidates like Zoran Mondani in New York and Senator Bernie Sanders, both locally and nationally, would
you work with and advocate for some socialist positions and policies while in office? And you've got
90 seconds. Well, I will advocate for whatever the people want me to advocate for. I use the Congress
app. They tell me what to do.
I do it. I don't need a personal position of my own. If they want socialists in office, they get socialists
in office. If they want socialist policies, they get socialist policies. Other than that, it's pretty
much up to the people how it goes. That's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Rourke,
90 seconds for you, sir. Excellent. Thank you.
So first step is ACA subsidies. I would advocate strongly to re-institute ACA subsidies. Obviously,
they expired. We're seeing across the board in the ninth congressional district on average 25% to 30%
increase in premiums. So I would advocate strongly to re-institute those. Also, a billionaire tax. Our
billionaire friends have been living large on the
tax code for 25 years now, and they've been profiting from it. There's major inequalities between the
middle class, the millionaire class, and the billionaire class, and then obviously I would advocate
for those policies. And then secondly, I just wanted to make one point clear. I swore an oath to preserve
and protect, to defend the Constitution of the United States. My oath is clearly different than Bradley's.
I was in the military, he was not, just to make a point.
Well, before I get to you, Dr. Peck, I'm gonna give 30 seconds to Mr. Meyer to rebut that. I was not
a uniformed officer in the Navy. I was a civilian employee in the Navy. I worked on systems that protected
ships from missile attack. Same oath. Thank you. All right, Dr. Peck, back to you for 90 seconds, and
I will reiterate, the question is whether you would advocate and support
some socialist positions and policies while in office. Housing subsidies are an enormous part. So we're
sitting here in Bloomington where there's been recent national attention to the housing shortage that
we have, but that's everywhere throughout Indiana 9. A 30-year-old nurse who graduated 10 years ago
from school can't afford a home where there
Mother and father could afford a home and their grandparents could afford a home. That's backwards.
And so we need to do something to level the playing field and supporting people to get into housing.
Certainly first time housing is something that I'm advocating for. Union rights, worker rights, being
able to restore collective bargaining across the entire country is another piece.
We talked about it, the billionaire tax just makes sense. Billionaires do not pay their fair share of
taxes. The tax loopholes can be closed. And we would be able to solve a lot of the issues that we have
in this country if only we had more revenue from the people who take revenue from us. So thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Peck.
And finally, Mr. Meyer, 90 seconds on what, if any, socialist policies you would advocate for while
in Congress. So again, I'm advocating for universal, non-profit, single-payer health care. I want to
be very clear about that. And if you need to understand what the difference in the candidates are, ask
them about single-payer. That is the difference, I believe. I have struggled, frankly. I've gotten some
questions in the past about,
What should we do about daycare? And the thing that I struggled with, frankly, is that how do we pay
for it? And I was going through the numbers, and like I said, the Republicans have found the money.
They just applied it to things that were important to them instead of important to us. And we just need
to reappropriate that money. I am a strong advocate for unions.
I have been behind closed doors with management. I know why unions are important. Unions represent about
a 25 to 30 percent increase in earnings. And these right to work are really right to work for less laws,
and they are trying to push all of earnings down. It suppresses earnings for union and non-union workers.
And there are a lot of housing policies that were
in the 50s and 60s and early 70s that help to keep housing prices fair and level. And they need to be
restored. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Meyer. And since you mentioned it, I actually want to go ahead and
dig into health care a little bit. You mentioned you support single payer universal health care or Medicare
for all, if you want to call it that. And I'm going to come to Mr. Work and ask what your positions
are on single payer health care. Is that something you would support? 90 seconds.
So my position is I'm in favor of private health care, but with the ability for universal health care
as a supplement for those low income families of 250% above the poverty line, which on average is about
78,000. Kentucky and Maryland have a similar policy, and it works very effective because it supplements
the existing private health care policy. So that's my position. And then also,
With that plan, with the private health care and the limited universal policy, you have the best of
both worlds. You have the ability of choice, because I think that's one of the difficulties with universal
health care is choice. You want to be able to go to the doctor and keep your doctor. You don't want
to go to a doctor you're not used to going to. So that's my plan. Thank you, Mr. Rourke. Dr. Peck, your
position on single payer universal health care. Apparently, everyone deserves health care. It's a human right.
I'm part of the AMA, which says right on their front page, it's a human right. It's not a constitutional
right right now. And that's the struggle that we have in this country, which means that there's real
work that needs to get done to get there. Single payer Medicare for all is one way of doing that. That
way is not a reality that we can get done in the next two years.
or even the next four years or maybe further than that. So what's the hard work that has to happen and
the hard work that I've done and will continue to do with all of your support? We need costs to be down
from where they are right now. We cannot pay for our healthcare as it is. Medicaid does not cover the
cost of care. Medicare does not cover the full cost of care. I live in a healthcare desert.
rural Clark County where my local hospital is closed. I have to drive past it to get to my hospital
where I work. The 911 system is in shambles and that's because 20 to 30% of the people who walk through
that door do not have insurance. We need a public option tomorrow and we need to be able to pay it and
I'm sure we'll talk more about how we can take costs out of the system and I'd love to tell you about
it in our next question.
Thank you Dr. Peck. Mr. Meyer you know you brought up this position so I want to come back to you. You
know we see where you stand on single payer health care but you've got 90 seconds to elaborate.
Thank you. So the first thing that we have to do and I mean right now is to stabilize hospital and provider
pay. We're seeing hospitals close. We're seeing services be cut back. Something has to be done immediately in
days and weeks, not weeks and months. This is a health care crisis, and it has to be addressed.
Medium term, we need universal, non-profit, single payer health care. The UK implemented their system
in six years, and the first three years they were fighting the Germans, so they really did it in three
years. We implemented Medicare in one year using three by five index cards.
Surely we can do this in three years. And that is the plan that has been put forward. It is achievable.
It is the only thing that is holding us back is all this talk about we can't do it and wringing our
hands and saying it's just too complicated. Every other country has already done it. There are answers
and solutions. We have to stop worrying about can we, can't we, shall we, shall we. These half measures
are never going to work.
We put a half measure in place with the ACA and then they spent a decade undercutting and undermining
and trying 100 times in the House and 60 times in the Senate to kill it. You want to put a half measure
in place. It's not going to work. The long term answer is a constitutional amendment that gives it a
guarantee and you can see that on my website. Thank you Mr. Meyer. Mr. Taylor 90 seconds and your position
on Medicare for all.
Well, I've actually written legislation, draft legislation, you can read it on my website. It gives
everybody healthcare by default. There is no more uninsured people. There's both the government funded
healthcare and there's private funded healthcare. You can have insurance, you can not have insurance,
but there are no more uninsured people. You don't get denied coverage, you don't get
denied anything, and most everything is covered, and it costs less. I mean, it costs less than the ACA,
and it is easy to do. I mean, the legislation was simple. I wrote it, it's there, it works. The financial
breakdown's on my website. You can go to read the bill today, and it's a solution to the problem.
Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
So I want to come to Dr. Peck to begin this next segment. And this is a question from Bloomington DSA,
and it is about Israel. And this is a very sticky subject for many folks. So given that the US was an
active participant and enabler of Israel's genocide in Gaza, many Americans, DSA especially, are in
favor of ending all
military, political, and economic support to Israel in response to its flagrant violations of international
law. However, most congressional Democrats in Washington are wildly out of step with the American public
and the international consensus and pledge unconditional support to Israel.
What are your views on Israel? Have they shifted during the genocide of the Palestinians? How do you
plan to fight back against the establishment and work toward ending our participation in genocide and
apartheid? And can you even agree with the statements that I just mentioned that Israel is committing
genocide and is an apartheid state? That's a lot, but you got 90 seconds. Thank you. We're laughing,
but this is not a laughing matter.
People are dying. Innocent people have died and will continue to die because we're giving weapons to
an ally that is not using them responsibly. We need to hold them accountable. We have the purse strings.
We have the weapons ourselves. And we need Israel as a partner, but we don't need a partner
that indiscriminately sends bombs into children's bedrooms.
And so we have the power to say we're not giving you weapons unless you use those weapons responsibly.
And that includes around as well with what we've just seen. Words matter to many people. And genocide,
I know, is a word that matters to many people in this room as DSA members and as Americans. And I do
believe that the definition of genocide
of some people's definition of genocide has been met by Israel's actions. And I do believe that we'll
see an international court that we are in play right now with Israel tell us if this truly is genocide
or not, and we'll go with what they say if this is a... If it's a fair trial, which I'm sure it will
be. And so, yes, I'm willing to say the word genocide.
And thank you for this question, because it's extremely important. Thank you, Dr. Peck. Mr. Meyer,
90 seconds. So the videos and the pictures of what's happening in Palestine is just gut wrenching.
And we, the United States, our position needs to be that there needs to be a long-term, durable peace.
And the only way that I believe that is possible is with a two-state solution.
And we need to be advocating and pushing for a two-state solution. And we need to be working to bring
our ally Israel to the table on that. And we need to be very thoughtful about what support we're giving
to Israel. And Biden actually tried to pull back a little bit of support, and even a very small pullback
of support, to try to bring our allies
to get their attention was wildly unpopular, in some cases because people felt that it was too weak,
and in other people that anything except 100 percent support for Israel is not acceptable. We have to
act in our interest and in alignment with our values, and we really need to be applying pressure to
Israel. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Meyer. Mr. Taylor, can we get 90 seconds on your thoughts on Israel and whether it committed
a genocide and is an apartheid state? Well, this is one of the things that I would put up for the Congress
app. And I would do something like this. Everybody in this room who believes that it's an apartheid
state and we should end our relationship with it, raise your hand. OK.
The Congress app says that I think it's an apartheid state and we should end our relationship with it.
That's it. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. And finally, Mr. Rourke to you. Yeah. You know, I believe that,
you know, I'm a supporter of Israel, but I'm also a supporter of having a peace agreement. I want peace
in the region. I want us to work with Israel.
develop peace. And I want to be able to provide support for that peace agreement. And if armaments are
needed to do that, I'm willing to do that. But we need to continue to work through peace. Israel's been
our ally in that region for some time now, right? And for whatever reason, they keep having, you know,
we keep struggling with this, right?
I just want to reaffirm my support for Israel and the relationship we have with him. And I do agree
with the two-state solution. I think that's the best path forward. And that's my position. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Rourke. I'm going to call a quick audible right here and just ask for a show of hands.
The United States is currently not a party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal
Court, the organization that could hold Israel accountable. So, show of hands.
agree with maintaining that position of keeping the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court?
All right, that looks like four notes. All right, thank you. So this next one is to Mr. Meyer to begin
with, and the question is from Mask Block Bloomington. Public health guidance has often prioritized
political convenience over accuracy.
How would you use congressional oversight to respond when federal agencies or officials disseminate
misleading or politically motivated public health guidance? So this is exactly why I said in the long
run, we have to have a constitutional amendment on public health, that it is a constitutional right.
Because we have more leverage. If it's a constitutional right and they are undercutting
the information and the systems and the services, then that is more actionable. And we have seen in
this government, in particular, that they can lie and undercut, and then every once in a while, they
bump up against the Constitution. And that is the only thing that is going to protect us for our health
care. Otherwise, they're going to undercut and undermine and destroy anything and any progress we make,
and they are going to misinform
Thank you, Mr. Meyer. Mr. Taylor, how would you respond to federal agencies that disseminate misleading
or politically motivated public health guidance? Well, I've spent some time working in the government,
and I would treat it like I would treat anybody else who gave false information in a government job.
You're fired. That's it. End of story. Terminate therapy. That's all.
OK, well, I guess, and if I may follow up since we didn't use a whole heck of a lot of time there, these
folks are largely appointed by the president. How can you as Congress hold them accountable when you
don't necessarily have the power to fire folks like, say, RFK Junior? Well, maybe Congress should have
the power to fire folks like RFK Junior.
we could publicly cite him and tell everybody that he is spinning yarns, so to speak. But I'm, for the
firing squad aspect of it, I'd rather get them out of there. All right, thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Roark,
I want to come to you on what the Congress should be doing about government agencies spreading misleading
false, politically motivated medical information. Yeah, so obviously you want to have congressional
oversight, right? So you want to have congressional oversight with RFK Junior and staff, but at the
same time you also have to have subject matter experts, virologists and such there to support what they're
saying, trust but verify. And if you're from a great state of Indiana, you need to have folks from the
state government who are in
or SMEs, subject matter experts in the medical field who can back up what they're saying relative to
the data they're providing. Unfortunately, that's where we're at in society. We're getting a lot of
misinformation from HHS, and we need to trust but verify on every turn from now on, unfortunately. And
from a congressional perspective, we also need to vet appointments to that department a little bit more
closely, right?
but we also need to vet the undersecretary and all the respective appointments and making sure that
they're not misinformation type folks, right? That we have doctors who verify on data that is accurate
and it can be trusted. Okay? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rourke. Dr. Peck, I suspect this one's in your
wheelhouse. Yes. The government does not belong in my exam room.
And that comes to women's rights, that comes to trans rights, that comes to anybody's rights. And the
way that we've done public health for so long is that the academic societies that I'm a member of put
together guidelines. And then the government has these in-betweens of people who are physicians and
scientists and public health experts that are hired by the government to make up national guidelines
to follow, of which
When I don't know what to do, I go onto the national guidelines and I look at them. Now when I look
at them, I go, I'm not doing that. And so what I do do is go back to the academic societies that have
put these guidelines together. And that's what we're doing as a physician community right now. And that
should be the way, actually, when you think about it, for all of our medical decisions. Medical decisions
are between a physician
for a provider between their patient, especially when a woman is in the situation of making an impossible
choice, and their family and their faith. The government has no role in that. Thank you, Dr. Peck. So
I'm going to start this next one. I think we're back to Mr. Taylor here. So this question comes from
the Monroe County Education Association.
has experienced a shortage of qualified teachers, especially in the STEM fields for many years now.
This situation has been especially difficult for rural districts and for districts in less affluent
areas. What can you do from Washington that would improve this situation? Well, I actually wrote a bill
to improve. It's an education reform bill. I call it Make America Smart Again.
It funds teachers, rural classrooms, rural education. It funds, makes sure that everybody has the same
funding, gets the same education, gets quality education, and gets it on the government's dime. I mean,
nobody should have to fight for education. And that's just the bottom line. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Rourke, what can Washington do to stem this tide of teachers, especially STEM teachers, flowing
out of Indiana, or just getting folks in here in the first place? Pay them more. It's that simple.
I mean, the reality is you've got folks, chemists, engineers, electrical engineers, mathematics, right?
Most of the math folks, they go into actuarial sciences, not most, but some.
You got engineers. You got chemists. They all make well over $100,000 a year. You're not going to get
some of those folks into the classroom to ask them to take a $60,000 pay cut or $50,000 pay cut. This
is not going to happen. But they're some of the brightest people I know. So what we have to do is simply
pay them more. Maybe they get a designation, right? They have their degree. We need to pay them more.
But we need to improve the licensing process a little.
We need to improve the licensing process as well because there's a lot of barriers to entries there
as well. You gotta take the praxis. There's a lot of barriers to entries there as well. So we need to
look at improving those processes, make them more efficient, making it easier. But at the same time,
we need to also look at loan forgiveness, right? Folks who go to Purdue or Rose-Hulman, they get an
engineering degree. Most of them have debt.
So we've got to look at loan forgiveness. Hey, you come work in this school system for five or 10 years,
we'll pay off your loan. So that's another attractive feature. Instead of pay compensation, it's just
another benefit to help get rid of that debt. So those are my solutions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rourke.
Dr. Peck, what do we do about the teacher shortage, and can we do anything about it from Washington?
Can you just give me the full question again? Yeah, absolutely. So Indiana has experienced a shortage
of qualified teachers, particularly in the STEM fields for many years now.
And this situation is especially difficult for rural districts and for districts in less affluent areas.
What policies would you propose to improve this situation? And I do live in a rural district. New Washington
High School struggles to get people in there to teach. Some of the local high schools around us are
looking to close. It's a real problem that affects my family and people around me. Government money.
comes from the Department of Education. It's been cut, but it is there. And just as many in this room
might be familiar with the PRO Act, which is something that essentially says if you have government
money coming into infrastructure, that money should only go to companies that meet the standard and quality
of payment to their employees, of conditions to their employees that a union would meet. It doesn't
mean you have to be a union shop, but you have to be as good as a union shop. We could do the same thing
with the money from the Department of Education. We're not giving you the money until you as a district,
as a state, get your payment rates up and start to pay people what they're actually worth. In the very
short amount of time I have, I think that as well,
Schooling for teachers should be next to free, if not free, and we can fund that. Thank you. Thank you,
Dr. Peck. Mr. Meyer, 90 seconds. Do you need me to repeat the question? No, I think I got it. So the
question included the caveat, what would you do from the federal position? And the vast majority of
policy, like 90% to 95% of policy, actually comes from the state.
There's a lot of things that can be and should be done from the state. And paying the teachers more
is something that's going to have to be addressed at the state level. And the way we currently fund
that is not going to be popular. That's a state problem that has to be addressed. Teaching is a very
difficult job. About 50% of people that start out in teaching leave, I think, within the first five years.
So there's a lot of retention problems that also need to be addressed through the state. But one of
the issues that we have when you talk about what can the federal government do, the role of the federal
government constitutionally is limited. And the Department of Education, one of their primary
responsibilities that they are able to support is by giving good information about what's really happening
in school effectiveness.
So when local politicians want to privatize the state schools and it's not working well, the only way
they can do that is by gutting the Department of Education so you won't have an independent review of
what's really going on in your school systems. And then you have to go to them, and of course, they're
going to tell you it's working. So the gutting of the Department of Education is a serious problem,
and it needs to be refunded. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Meyer.
A couple of you mentioned student loans sort of in passing during your last answer, and I want to follow
up and stay on this education question in that regard. During former President Biden's administration,
he attempted to forgive vast amounts of student loans, ran into some problems with the Supreme Court.
I think many of us as socialists don't even believe that such a thing as student loans should exist,
and we should have universally funded
higher education as well. So I want to start with Mr. Rourke and get you to elaborate a little bit on
your stance on how we should be paying for higher education as a society. I tend to believe I got a
student loan when I'm with the college. Low interest student loan. It helped me through college. I still
believe student loans
I think it really needs, with how things changed the last 30 to 40 years, I think student loans need
to be pared back relative to what field you're going into, right? AHAI has changed the landscape quite
a bit. And so folks who actually want to go into school for, let's say, for example, a music degree
versus folks who want to go into school for electrical engineering. So obviously, those outcomes they're
going to pay are
grossly different in terms of incomes. So they need to be commensurate with the plausibility of outcomes
relative to employment, right? So it's well known if you go into and you get a computer science degree
versus an engineering degree, you're going to make a lot more money coming out of college, right? So
therefore, you should have a higher likelihood or those loan terms should be much better if
you have, if you're pursuing a degree, has a lower income, maybe you need to reconsider that loan because
it's not gonna pay off, right? It's not gonna pay back. So that's kinda my position. But in critical
need areas, I will say this, in critical need areas, so obviously we talked about doctor shortage, we
also talked about skill trades, we need to really consider free education for those fields that are
critical in need. All right, thank you, Mr. Work.
Dr. Peck, student loans, what are we doing? I think Biden and the Democrats made a mistake on how they
went about it by trying to use the executive branch and executive powers. Congress sets the rates for
student loans. Congress sets the rates for student loans. We could set a zero percent rate or prime
rate or under prime rate. It's a very easy fix to make these loans more affordable.
Now, can we go further than that? There's a lot of resistance on the right to do so. But what could
we do today is set rates that actually make sense and aren't usury. I myself have experienced this.
I paid $540,000 for all of my education that I've done. That's ridiculous. And I'm still paying it back.
And the reason I'm paying it back is because of the interest rate, because
I am always behind because of that interest rate. And I know there are so many other people in this
room that struggle with getting their finances, getting paid the money that you need to pay your loans,
not to mention all of your other costs beyond what I experience. But it's an easy fix if we have Congress
just lower that rate. So thank you. Thank you, Dr. Peck.
Mr. Meyer, how should we be paying for higher education as a society? So let's start with what is in
the best interest of our society. Education is a great benefit. And there's been an attack on education.
Since 1970, the cost of education, a college education, has gone up in today's dollars by a factor of
10. This is not an accidental thing. This is an intentional attempt
to restore what we had in the quote unquote good old days when education was for the wealthy. And we've
got to get past that. We've got to look past how do we tinker around the edges and how do we minimize
the interest rate and say what do we want as a society? What is in the best interest of society? We
need to start funding education like we fund roads and bridges and water treatment plants. It is a core
of our future and our infrastructure. And one of the struggles that people have is that when you get
into college, a lot of people get into, some people get into college, they go for a year, they struggle,
they end up with debt, and then they carry that debt, and they get out, and then they have the debt,
and they don't have the benefit of the education, right? So the first year of college education for
qualified people should be free, okay? And then we need to restore
You know, at the state level, the state has cut from about 75% to 80% of the funding that used to be
for the universities. It's now down to like 30%. This is why we have to have loans, because the states
and the government's not paying for education like they used to. Thank you, Mr. Meyer. Mr. Taylor, I
believe that you are the last one on the student loan question. Well, when I got a student loan,
It was like an $800 student loan for books. I paid on it for five years. That is unacceptable.
Beyond that, I've written an education reform bill. It doesn't address higher education, but I'm going
to pull the Congress app trick and say, how many people here believe that I should write a bill that
makes higher education free?
Looks like we got a majority. I think I can write a bill that will make higher education free for all
people who want it. I'll write it tomorrow. All right. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. So I believe we start
this next section with Dr. Peck. And this question comes from Bloomington DSA. So a recent Marist poll
showed that 65% of Americans believe that ICE has gone too far. And there have been recent calls to
abolish ICE.
Do you believe immigration and customs enforcement can be reformed, or must it be abolished? What are
your thoughts? You've got 90 seconds. I think it can be reformed, and it's going to need a lot of reform.
The first piece is to restore funding to Homeland Security, to ICE, to pre-Trump levels. That's easy.
just infused so much cash into ICE, and what are they gonna do with it? They have to spend it. We had
a government shutdown and they didn't care because they have so much cash and they're so flush. So we
need to go back to that. Second is fire, Kristi Noem, and I don't know if anyone else is looking at
their phone, it looks like she might be getting fired. She already got fired. She already got fired.
She already got fired. Raise your fist for that.
And then thirdly is to make ICE work like any other police force that we have in this country, which
means body cameras, which means no masks, which means just the basic pieces of law enforcement, such
as training that puts you out on the street in a responsible way, but even more so, making it so that
you can have
that you need a warrant to actually arrest and detain citizens, residents, and otherwise. So,
thank you. Thank you, Dr. Peck. Mr. Meyer, I suspect most of us are going to agree that it's going to
take more than deposing Ms. Noem to reform that organization. What do you think we should do with ICE?
So, expressions of outrage for good and pretty are justified.
But the hard work that we have to do in Congress is to actually fix the problem instead of tinkering
around the edges. And the core problem is that we have a logjam in what we're going to do about immigration.
And I have a detailed description of what I think needs to be done with immigration. I think we need
to reframe it around economics. And we need to dramatically increase legal immigration into the United
States. This is the reason that we have the illegal immigration, because
We make it so doggone hard to get the workers into the country that we need. And it dehumanizes them,
and it's disrespectful to them, and it depresses wages for all of us. We have to fix the root problem.
And the root problem is that we don't have a good immigration policy that even serves our own interests.
The other problem is that we have an administration that
that wants to use brutality to force a change. And if we get rid of ICE, if we waved a magic wand, sorry,
waved a magic wand and ICE was gone tomorrow, they'd move that work to the FBI. We have to get... Their
policy, the only way they'll be able to... They're gonna switch people
Kind of both. Ice used to be a nice, friendly little unit of people wearing windbreakers and carrying
badges and not the stormtroopers we see today. And there's no reason we can't return to that. But ice
should be a subset of INS.
There's no reason for ICE to be out on the street unless they get a complaint from IIS or they have
to be out. That's it. Reform them completely, but I don't think you'll ever be able to get rid of them.
All right. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Wharf, finally to you on the ICE question, what should we do with
this organization? So I do not agree that we need to abolish ICE. I think that would be the wrong move.
We do have to remember ICE was developed post 9-11, okay? They do a lot of good work to get a lot of
scared people out of this country. However, I do agree they're out of control, right? They're acting
like a paramilitary organization. They're not doing the right things, right? Take the mask off,
body cams, judicial signs, search warrants, and then we also need to look at recruiting standards. What
folks are going into that organization, you know, what background checks have been done,
had they been thoroughly done. One positive step is they got rid of Christie. That's a good move. It's
about time. But I'll kind of echo what Tim just said. I don't think that's going to change their posture,
the way they do things. So going forward, as a congressional rep, we need to hold hearings.
to basically make sure that everybody coming in to DHS is held accountable and they're thoroughly vetted.
And we need to understand how they operate, right? Change the way they do things in terms of investigative
tactics, techniques, and procedures, and making sure they're doing the right thing by the American people.
All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wark. This next question, we're gonna start with Mr. Meyer.
And, you know, we've seen this authoritarian regime and authoritarianism thrives on always having an
enemy, having an other. And immigrants, that community has certainly been one of the targets of the
administration's ire. The trans community has been another target. What will you do to prevent further
harm to our trans neighbors and to protect your constituents from attacks like those in Kansas?
where they've recently invalidated every gender-affirming driver's license that has been issued over
the last several years and made them invalid, effective immediately, or, for example, threats to medical
care. How are you going to protect some of our most vulnerable Americans? 90 seconds. So I try scrupulously
not to agree with Dr. Peck, but I'm going to have to do it here.
The government shouldn't be in a doctor's office. They shouldn't be in the decision-making process.
The decisions with trans, the patients, the families, the doctor, they're all involved in that. And
I need to stay out of it. And I guess the bottom line is that everybody has a God-given right to mind
their own damn business. And I think we need to do more of that.
We need to understand, I guess, it isn't necessary that everybody in the United States understand the
trans community, but they need to respect their right to live their life the way everybody else does,
right? They make their choices and we need to respect and understand that. It's not about trying to
force people to live like us or think like us, it's about
freedom for everybody to make their own decisions about how they want to lead their life. And we need
to support that in Congress. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Meyer. Mr. Taylor, now, if the folks in your
Congress app don't necessarily understand the trans community and aren't quite evolved there yet and
they want to bring out the pitchforks, how are you still going to protect their rights? Well, I have
relatives on the
Should we say the alternative lifestyles? Communities. I don't believe they should be persecuted. How
I can protect them is just to not persecute them. I think we need to do a lot more of just not persecuting
people. It would be really helpful. I remember back in the day when
Your funny Uncle Bob didn't come over because his roommate wasn't liked by the family. But, you know,
we don't need to go back to those days. Those days are over and they're over for a reason. And yeah,
I don't know what to do.
I don't have a good answer for it, but just no bigotry would be nice. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Rourke
from Washington, what can you do to protect our trans friends and neighbors? So just a point of clarity,
are we talking for trans under 18 or over 18? Well, maybe you can elaborate. OK.
So I believe from a traditional perspective, if you're under 18, I don't believe that there should be
gender affirming care under 18. I believe once you're over the 18 of years of age, then if you want
to transition, you're more welcome to do that. And at that particular point in time, I'd be more than
happy to understand that individual's issue and try to support them in any way I could.
But if you're under 18 and you're in high school and you have a trans issue relative to transition,
I would want them to wait till at least they're 18 years old and they're leading their life before I
can support in terms of their transition. But in terms of a public policy, as a human, I would just
want to sit down and try to understand what's going on with them and support them any way I could. Whether
it's a health care issue,
an employment issue, I would do whatever I can to help them. Because that's just kind of the person
I am. And that's the leader I will be. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Rourke. Dr. Peck, this is
a human rights question, but in many ways, it's also a medical question. How are you going to protect
trans rights in Washington? I respect so much. And we've been together at so many different things.
I respect you so much. Thank you for serving. Thank you for stepping up and running.
to really disagree with something that you just said there. And the fact is you are inserting yourself,
and I'm sorry to make an example of what you said, but it's a perfect example of the government trying
to insert itself into a medical decision. It don't need you to say 18 or not. I have the guidelines
that I would look up right here. I printed them out before this because you knew you were getting this
question. And it's so detailed.
The government cannot write a bill that tells us what to do as clinicians in terms of our counseling
with the patient. It just can't happen because this is going to change tomorrow when the evidence gets
better and then we'll learn other evidence and other evidence. Government shouldn't be writing these
bills and in fact they should be writing these bills to say the government cannot insert its opinion
into our health care decisions.
Thank you, Dr. Peck. Mr. Rourke, I'm going to give you 30 seconds since Dr. Peck did mention you by
name here. Sure, sure. I mean, Tim, I appreciate you. I like you. You're very respectful. But I just
kind of have to disagree. If you're under 18 years old and you want to transition, I think
that's irresponsible. Because there's so much change going on with children at those ages. And to suggest
that they want to get a transition before
16 or 17 before they fully grown. I think that's irresponsible and that flies in this in the face of
medical history and psychology, right? I've heard many cases where Folks have transitioned at 16 17
years old five years later next, you know, they want to transition back So there's situations in medical
history where that's actually happened so we have to be very careful about who are letting transition
that's why I
I always ask the question, let's wait until at least 18 before they make that call. All right,
thank you. All right, thank you, Mr. Work. So, boy, this thing is really flying, and there are so many
other things I really hope we can get a chance to talk to tonight, but we do only have time for one
more question, and then we will do closing remarks. So I want to stay on this topic of bodily autonomy
and whether we support adding a right to abortion to the Constitution.
And that, I believe, we start this question with Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor, 90 seconds. Adding it to the
Constitution, I don't know. It's a health care thing. It's not a government thing. The government shouldn't
be involved in it at all.
It's a medical decision, and I would leave the medical decisions to medical professionals. I'm not one.
I'm not a woman. I'm not a doctor, and I'm not a god. So I'm pretty much unqualified to answer that
question. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Mr. Rort, should we enshrine a person's right to their own body
in the Constitution of the United States? So, you know, I'm a supporter of Roe, reinstating Roe.
With that, obviously, we have to get that work done, right? You need 67 votes, right? Two-thirds of
the vote in the Senate and in the House, so it's going to be a tall order. But I believe with those
votes, I think you could do it, and I would support that endeavor. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Roe. Dr. Peck?
I've treated a lot of women who've been raped. I've treated girls who've been raped this week. And when
giving my counsel, I never once thought about what the government had to say until recently. And I still
don't accept what they have to say. Again, the government does not belong in my exam room.
In Kentucky, you have to sign a death certificate when you have a miscarriage. There are 67 votes we
need to change this whole thing, but there are issues like that that occur that we can make laws tomorrow
if we don't have the 67 votes, if we educate the public to say how terrible that is to do to a woman
and their family. And so we can make strides today
while we get those 67 votes to make the change that we need. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Packwell. Mr.
Meyer. So I think that the assertion that we need 67 votes is overly optimistic. If you look at what
the Supreme Court did, they explicitly said that this has to go back to the states. They've explicitly
worded it in a way
that they have tried to intentionally deal out the federal government to keep it at the state level,
to keep it fractured, to keep us broken. The only way that we will be able to overcome this and end
it is a constitutional amendment. I have a draft, which is actually very long, of a constitutional amendment
for universal health care, and it should be included in that.
Yes, we need a constitutional amendment, or we're going to be fighting over this forever. Roe v. Wade,
I think, should be restored, but the way they did it, it's going to be very hard. Thank you. Thank you,
Mr. Meyer.
I do believe we have to be wrapping up, but I want to give everybody an opportunity to make closing
statements. And I will give you up to 90 seconds. And because we started with Mr. Taylor, I'm going
to start closing statements with Mr. Rourke. Mr. Rourke, 90 seconds to you, sir. Well, good evening,
everyone. Thanks, DSA, for giving me an opportunity to speak here this evening. I appreciate the time.
I just wanted to say, you know, I'm a former UAW assembly line worker, put myself through college with
little or no help. I went in the Navy, spent 11 years in the Navy. And the reason why I say those things
is I believe I bring to the race crossover appeal, right? Those independent and those disenfranchised
Republicans who we desperately need to win. Because remember, this is about winning. If we keep doing
what we've always done,
We're going to lose. It's that simple. And I really believe we kind of have to change things a little.
I know my colleagues disagree with my approach a little, but that's kind of the reality. We need 25%
to 30% of the independents and Republicans to either not vote or vote for us. And I truly believe that's
the path forward. And I just wanted to say, I appreciate your time, appreciate the opportunity to have
this debate tonight.
Please look me up on HTTPS colon backslash backslash Kyle Roark dot com and also please remember the
vote on May 5th. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Roark. Dr. Peck closing statements from you. Thank you everybody.
Thank you Scott. This has been great. We have seven more on the books six more on the books and we'll
probably have more put on there and there'll be a lot more discussion. I really encourage everybody to
Tune in if you can't be there for it to get the full breadth of what all of these candidates have to
say about the issues. I hope I earned your trust tonight. That's what's most important to me. And I
hope that that trust turns into a vote. I hope that you saw that tonight I not only am progressive,
not only am someone who wants to make progress,
But I'm a realist in that these ideas that we are fighting for have solutions for today. And sometimes
those solutions are smaller because we need to run and hit and do what we can during this next two-year
cycle so that we can make the bigger changes. And if we get to the point where we can make the bigger
changes, great. I think my colleague, Brad, to my left,
You know, has said things like we need to make education free. We need to pass constitutional amendments.
But today's solution, I hope in the next six sessions that we'll get more down to talking about what
we do today. And I hope that I gave you a flavor of that as well. Thank you all for your trust. And
please vote May 5th, but also in November.
We need a big turnout from Democrats. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Peck. Mr. Meyer, closing statements
from you. You've got 90 seconds. So I'd like to thank everybody again for being here. The first thing
that I did publicly was a couple of universal health care forums, because that was important. It wasn't
meet and greets, and it wasn't fundraising. And then the next thing I did was an ICE protest at Camp
Atterbury last August that had about 550 people there, because
I am more activist, and we need to stand up and speak out. I've been listening a lot to the app, and
there's a couple things that came to mind. I don't have any strong feelings, frankly, about the legalization
of cannabis. And I decided that I would leave it up to the people of the district. And it's popular,
and I'm for legalization of cannabis. But we do need to be careful that
You know, it was popular opinion in California that actually destroyed their education system or undercut
their education system, and it was popular opinion in Germany that led to the Nazis. So we need to have
leaders that have responsibility and some sense of what they want to do. I know we need crossover, but,
you know, I am a practical problem-solving person. This is what I'm about, is solving problems.
And I know that there is short term, but if we don't start with where we want, sorry that's yours, where
we want to be, we're never going to get there. We have to state, we have to screw our courage to the
sticking place and say this is where we're going and this session we're going to try to get this piece
of it. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Meyer. Mr. Taylor, final word goes to you tonight sir.
I want to thank all of you for having me here. It will be me and one of these three against Aaron on
your November election. I will not be in the primary. I need 4,500 signatures to get on the ballot.
My petitions are back there. You can visit my website at floyd2026.com. I've got a demo of the Congress app.
Thanks for having me. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Thanks again to all of our candidates tonight. Thank all
of you for being here, and thank you for your questions. Thanks to First United for the facility, and
thanks to the entire DSA team. You guys have done a great job putting this thing together two weeks
in a row. So hats off to everybody here in this room, from Bryce, Rebecca.
Our sound and audio and video team here are doing phenomenal work, so thank you guys so much. Again,
thanks everybody tonight. Be safe getting home.