OK, hey, welcome everybody. Have a seat if you're just coming in. We have 80% of our candidates here.
We're going to start in in the interest of time. Hopefully, Tim Peck will be joining us shortly. He
confirmed that he's going to be here. Maybe one of the topics of conversation will be traffic and parking
in Bloomington or something like that.
My name is Michael Hamburger. On behalf of our group, Concerned Scientists at IU, I'm really pleased
to welcome everybody to our Candidates Forum on Science, Technology, and the Environment. A special
welcome to our four and hopefully soon five candidates to be here. Our audience here, we have a live
stream audience, maybe both on YouTube and on BCAT.
Thank you, all of you, for joining us. I want to say a word quickly about Concerned Scientists at IU.
For those who don't know about it, we are a nonpartisan campus and community coalition started by IU
faculty, staff, and students in 2017 in response to threats to the scientific
mission of our of our research world We've grown to over a thousand members we Sponsor a whole variety
of community and campus events speakers and activities legislative action Regular weekly news digest
educational programs and I'm going to be pleased in a second to introduce our student group advocates
for science at IU Who's been very active the last couple years if you haven't done so yet?
On your way out, please join our CSIU mailing list and you can hear about upcoming events. I want to
make a few important acknowledgments to our, in addition to Advocates for Science at IU, we have three
community co-sponsors, Citizens' Climate Lobby of South Central Indiana, the Green Sanctuary Task Force
of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington, and the League of Women Voters of Bloomington Monroe County.
And also a big thank you to the library staff and BCAT for setting up this beautiful venue. How about
a little round of applause for all their help setting this up. I believe this is the third candidate
forum that we've sponsored, focusing specifically on science and science policy. And we claim until
proved otherwise that this is the first ever in the country with that kind of specific focus. We've
invited all of the candidates for the ninth congressional district election to join us today.
And five of, no, four of them are here today. Jim Graham, Brad Meyer, Tim Peck hopefully will be joining us, Kyle,
Rourke, and Floyd Taylor. And we did invite our incumbent Representative Erin Houchin. She declined,
but all of the candidates will be invited to submit written answers to questions following the forum,
and she and others will have a chance to respond. I do have an important request for all of us. This
is kind of an old-fashioned exercise in civil discourse, so let's be sure to show how well it can work.
Everybody just be nice to one another, just be nice to the audience, be nice to the candidates, to one
another, and to our student moderators. And I think we have to be cognizant of time, including myself.
We have a short window here because the library, thanks to budget cuts, now closes at 7 p.m. sharp.
So we're gonna get everybody, me, I'm supposed to be out? No, no, no, no. Tell everybody to turn their
phones off. Oh, thank you. I thought that was a sign I should get off.
This is the sign for me to get up. Okay. Yes, turn your silence your damn phones. And an important reminder,
one of the things that we regretted about squeezing it in before seven o'clock is that we won't have
time for that informal conversation. So we are inviting all of you and our candidates to join us afterwards
in the upstairs at Lenny's Brew Pub, just out to the left.
Down the street, the beers are on your own, but a good chance for conversation with our candidates if
they're available. So please join us afterwards. So I think that's it for now. Without further ado,
let me ask our student moderators, Emma Broach and Tyler Morris, to introduce themselves, say a little
bit about Advocates for Science at IU, and get us started with the forum. Emma, take it away.
Hi everybody, my name's Emma Broach and I'm a sophomore at IU. I'm majoring in Journalism and Environmental
and Sustainability Studies and myself and Tyler and Adela and a few other people around here all lead
the student affiliate organization Advocates for Science at IU. We work with CSIU in all of our events,
but we also do some student-centered things. But we're here today to co-sponsor and Tyler and I are
going to be in charge of asking all of the questions and introducing all of
the structure of today. So I wanted to talk about how today is gonna work. First, we're going to allow
all of the candidates to give one-minute introductions about themselves. Then, we're gonna have a general
questions section with questions that we prepared. It's gonna be four questions, and each candidate
gets two minutes to answer each question. These questions were provided to the candidates in advance
so they could kind of think through them ahead of time. But after this general questions section, we're
going to have a lightning round section.
This is going to be four to five questions that are a little bit more yes or no type answers, and the
candidates were not provided these in advance.
And then after that, we're going to have time for a few audience questions. We apologize. We're going
to have to limit that number to probably only three or four questions, depending on our timing. The
candidates will also have about 45 seconds to respond to those. And unfortunately, to anybody who's
joining on the livestream, we will not have time to answer any livestream questions. But yeah, that's
kind of the general structure. And now Tyler can introduce himself and talk about audience questions
and how that's going to work.
So hi, everyone. I'm Tyler Morris. I'm a senior nutrition science student on the pre-med track here
at IU. And as Emma mentioned, I'm one of the co-presidents along with her and a few others, and I'll
be co-moderating today. So just one thing I wanted to mention real quick about the general questions.
Those will be the first four questions. Candidates are gonna have two minutes to answer those. I'm gonna
hold up a little 30-second time sheet to let you know you have 30 seconds left, so just look for me
over there while you're doing that.
And then, we'll have to cut you guys off at two minutes to keep things going. And then, yeah, after
the general questions, as Emma mentioned, we'll go into the lightning round questions. And then,
after that, hopefully, we have time for about three or four audience questions. And Adela over there,
one of our co-presidents, she will collect index cards from you guys if you guys have questions.
And then, yeah, after that, we'll have closing statements from candidates, and that'll be it.
Yeah, if you want an index card and you didn't already grab one, just raise your hand, flag down Adela,
and she can come give you an index card. You can write your question and then have them into her by
the middle of the lightning round. OK, so without further ado, I'm going to allow all the candidates
to introduce themselves. So whoever wants to start first. Go for it. Hi. Is my mic on? No. A little
closer to it, maybe. Hi. OK.
So I'm Jim Graham, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 9th District. I grew up here in Monroe County
and I actually attended a high school science summer institute at IU after my junior year at Edgewood.
I studied engineering at Rose-Hulman and worked for General Motors for some years. I did graduate study
at that university up in West Lafayette and then I taught engineering
at Purdue Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Speed School at the University of Louisville, where
I was a department chair for seven years. As I got close to retirement, I got together with some of
my colleagues and tried to commercialize some of the research that we had been doing for the Department
of Homeland Security and Cybersecurity and started a tech startup company, and I served as CEO for seven
years. As a science person my entire life,
I've always felt that we should use rational analysis for problem solving. That's why I'm so dismayed
by what's happened in this country for the past 25 years. The anti-science misinformation and disinformation
that has flooded the internet, in my opinion, now threatens to slow or even reverse a lot of
the science-based progress made since World War II. I hope we can talk a little bit about that
tonight, why science is not held in the same high regard it was back in the 60s. I look forward to this
discussion today, answering some questions, and I look forward to a lively debate. Hi. I'm Brad Meyer.
Thank you all for being here tonight. I'm an electrical engineer. Most of us are electrical engineers.
So I'm a user of science and certainly appreciate it. And science is under attack. This administration
is purging science like 10,000% from decision making. The proposed science cuts are historic.
NIH is 40%. NASA's 47. NSF is 58%. Thousands of grants have been delayed, frozen, or terminated due
to structural changes that they've made to undercut science.
This is how we're losing science capacity and we're going to lose talent. But the same things are happening
here at IU where they're increasing centralization of decision making, political power is overtaking
university governance, and suppression of free speech is coming through, you know, what they did with
Don Meadow and then the Indiana Daily student. Congress has the authority to stop all of this, but right
now our congresswoman is rubber stamping everything that goes through.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is critical because they defend accuracy, bridge expertise to policy,
and engage the public with evidence. That work matters because facts require defenders. I'm asking for
your vote on May 5th to be that defender in Washington. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Kyle Rourke.
And I'm a former semi-line mechanic, UAW, and Navy officer, and electrical engineer as well, licensed
electrical engineering. I actually took the exam while I was in the Navy. And so when you take the exam,
you're legally responsible to, you know, indicate that on any type of advertisements relative to consulting.
But regarding that, I've had a,
broad experience at Chrysler, Cummins, Rolls Royce, and at Ford doing design and development work all
the way from a mechanic perspective all the way through design and development, reliability, quality,
releasing, and taking into account the voice of the customer and what requires there. So I have a broad
experience from that. I also taught at Ivy Tech.
for three or so years. So I understand what it takes to take a technology and teach it and have folks
use it out in the real world so they can get a good paying job. My background is, you know, I came here,
got married into the state in 95, my first wife's from Jackson County, and I've been raising my four
children here since then pretty much, since basically I was seven. And deeply worried about this country
relative to disinformation.
And the fact that we don't follow the truth anymore, what facts are and what, you know, you hear a lot
about alternative facts. That's discouraging, that's very disheartening, because facts are facts. There
is no alternative facts. And while I'm one of those evidence-based type folks, I want to follow the
data, where it goes, where it lies. And I support that, you know, from a public policy standpoint and
from a STEM perspective.
When I was in the Navy from an educational standpoint, I did notice that a lot of our folks coming into
the Navy just trying to get STEM-type roles, whether it's to be a mechanic or electrician, they were
really struggling with mathematics. And so we need, from a public policy standpoint, to look at solutions
that provide folks to get into those STEM communities pretty easily because we need STEM professionals
I've read an article just recently. We're falling behind. A lot of folks are retiring, and we need to
backfill those roles. So appreciate your vote. My name is Kyle Rourke. Go to KyleRourke.com, and appreciate
your vote, May 5th. Thank you. I'm Floyd Taylor. And while I'm not a career scientist, I have deep respect
for the scientific method, and I've spent my entire career in technical fields. I worked as a chemistry
lab technician,
manage hazardous waste treatment, and run a wastewater treatment plant, jobs where evidence and procedure
are paramount. I'm a platinum sponsor of the American Association for the Advancement of Science because
I believe in supporting robust independent research. I'm running to bring that same evidence-based approach
to government. And in all seriousness, as we tackle these complex issues, it's good to keep perspective
and remember the immortal words of Socrates who said,
I drink what? Thank you all for introducing yourselves. One other thing I wanted to note before we get
started is that since we have such limited time, each of you only has two minutes to respond to these
questions. So there's not much time for response to the other candidates unless you want to use some
of those two minutes to respond to another candidate. But kind of our goal here was to be educational.
So yeah, take that as you will.
All right, now we can get started with general questions. You guys can go in whatever order you want.
And reminder, it's two minutes answers per question. Number one, over the last two years, a combination
of executive actions, personnel losses, and funding decisions have deeply impacted academic and government
research institutions. What congressional actions would you support to help restore U.S. leadership
in scientific research?
and we might as well just go down the line every time. No? Oh, yeah. Got to be really close to this
mic. The bottom line is we're killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Basic research done at places
like IU has driven the American economy since World War II and made us the envy of the world.
Yes. Test, test, test. Yeah, is there an electrical engineer in the house? Okay, so let's just try this.
I was a university professor for 30 plus years. Can you hear me in the back? Good. All right. The bottom
line is we're killing the goose that laid golden egg. Basic research like the university and that place
up in West Lafayette.
have driven our economy since World War II. And we made us the envy of the world. Now, obviously, the
Trump administration, as Brad pointed out, definitely is hostile to science. In the FY 2026 budget,
he suggested a 57% cut to NSF, 40% cut to NIH. The good news is the Congress didn't do that. They basically
left NSF flat, gave a small,
increase the NIH. But basically those same numbers are back for next year's budget. So we'll have to
see what happens there. In addition, as pointed out, there have been many of the leaders of NSF and
NIH have been forced to resign. Either they've resigned or they've just had so much pressure. Some of
them have actually been fired. As Brad pointed out also, there have been
constitutional sequesters of research money, money that was allocated in the administration. No, you
can't have this unless you do this, unless you do that, okay? So, now let's talk about reality for a
minute. Congress appears to think more of science than the president does. That's good. I think we have
to be realistic how much we can do as a newly elected congressman. The next two years is gonna be a
war. Let me tell you, we're gonna be playing defense.
for everything that's decent and good about this country. And science is no exception. Thank you.
Mic check. All right. Here we go. Say again. Okay. Thank you. So, as I mentioned,
propose the science cuts 40% NIH, NASA 47, NSF 57, and then the Department of Energy between 15 and
50%. And they're undercutting the basics of funding, but they're also doing things like interference
and competitive grant review, centralized control of funding, and program prioritization based on, there we go.
Bingo. Thank you. Based on political criteria, this is undercutting our ability to do research, and
it's also undercutting the ability for people to speak freely. Now we've gone, we've fallen off the
other side of the horse, as the Hungarians would say. All right. Sorry.
there's a wide variety of organizations or different mechanisms like the CBER and CIDR and EPSCOR and
DARPA and Small Business Administration that all play together in this and basically if they cut the
funding there isn't going to be anywhere to put that and research is hugely important and
The big thing that I'm concerned about is freedom of expression and the ability for people to speak
the truth. I don't know where I am in time because of the interruptions. But, you know, the difference
between a good idea and a dumb idea, it's actually the same. It starts out with one person believing
it. And science is the way we figure out which is a good idea and which is a dumb idea. And we can't
turn away from that.
Yeah, I'll take the opportunity. Thank you so much. So I'm Tim Peck. I'm a physician, an ER doctor in
southern Indiana. I'm so sorry that I was a bit late here, had some travel difficulties. I was chief
resident at the Harvard Program for Emergency Medicine, did some genomic research, published in the
New England Journal of Medicine.
have had a number of health tech companies and invented telemedicine technology. So that's my credentials
in terms of this particular forum. But maybe most importantly, I've spent years by the bedside as an
emergency physician with increasingly skeptical public. What I've learned treating those people is this.
We know how to develop new science and technology. That's not the problem, although it is under great
pressure, and we need to fight to protect it. But the deeper challenge is helping people understand
it, trust it, see how it applies to their farms and their jobs and their food and their health and their
freedoms. And because if people don't trust science, they won't use it, and if they don't use it,
It doesn't matter how good the science and technology is. So I'm running to be a leader to bridge that
gap, to bridge the gap between facts and beliefs, and make sure that all of our work as scientists is
trusted again. In terms of this question, I'll be very brief, but the basics here is that we need to
move back to peer review and from political appointees, and back to evidence away from politics,
and that our academic research and our academic freedoms and our institutional independence should be
tied to federal funding. If we want to give out federal funding, we need to make sure our systems, our
schools, are allowing us to be free to make the decisions we need as academicians. And so through that,
we can restore some trust and leadership. Thank you so much.
Testing, testing, oh, excellent. Okay, so, you know, my first step would be to obviously reinstitute
the funding cuts, you know, for any and all science programs. You know, DOE, CIA, NSA, and the like.
I mean, that's step one. Two, we need to fire
all the appointees, obviously, who don't have a science background. Okay, so let's start with the Secretary
of Navy who has an investment banking background. I bet a million dollars he's never been on a carrier
in his life, but yet he's managing the Department of the, yes, Secretary of the, Department of the Navy,
right? So we need to start with that. Let's put people who have that electrical engineering, math, science
background in those roles. And then secondly,
We don't talk a whole lot about patents and copyrights. I have some friends of mine at the patent office.
They need patent agents like no tomorrow. I mean, it takes probably a year and a half to two years to
get a patent through, and it's getting worse and worse and worse. We need to pay patent agents more
money to keep people, and we also need to fully fund them to encourage
Innovation, right? Because if patents don't flow, innovation doesn't occur. And if innovation doesn't
occur, you don't have a good economy, and companies won't invest and create jobs. And that's what I'm
all about, is creating jobs and opportunities for our people here in the 9th congressional district.
So from a funding perspective, yes, obviously, I would return any and all funding cuts back to the normal
basically Biden levels.
But also, we have to get back to science as facts, not alternative facts, no misinformation. And obviously,
I'd be an advocate for that. I'm a licensed election engineer. I'm obligated to stick to the facts wherever
it goes. And that would be my policy position and my approach as a US congressional representative.
Thank you.
Over the past two years, we've seen alarming erosion of our scientific infrastructure. I would support
several key congressional actions. First, fully funding the Chips and Science Act to restore our research
capacity. Second, establishing protected research funding streams that can't be diverted for political
purposes. Third, creating a congressional science office similar to the Office of Technology Assessment
to provide lawmakers with nonpartisan scientific analysis. Fourth,
strengthening protections for government scientists from political interference. Fifth, expanding the
grant programs based through NSF, NIH, and DOE with particular focus on early career researchers who
have been disproportionately affected by funding instability. These actions would help restore global
leadership while ensuring science remains independent and robust. Thank you all. Our second question
is about health policy.
Health policy decisions at the state and federal levels have deeply impacted healthcare in our district.
Among them are Medicaid funding cutbacks, changes to vaccine and public health policy, and limitations
on government and academic research labs. With this as context, what congressional actions would you
support to strengthen public health in our country? I'm gonna start with an accusation that Robert Kennedy Jr.
There's a crackpot and a charlatan. Yeah, and Brad can add to that. What an insult to American science
to have a person who doubts basic vaccine science as the leader of our health policy in this country.
As a result, there's been lots of key turnover and key resignations at the National Institute of Health
replacing highly qualified
career world-renowned scientists with marginally qualified hacks who support RFK's crackpot views. Sad.
Again, I'm going to be the guy, I think, that does the reality check every time. It's going to be very
hard to undo the damage in a single Congress. I think that we can personally probably put together
impeachment in cases against other agency heads. I'm not so sure if that'll work for RFK.
Maybe he'll say something that insults Trump and he'll get fired. That's probably our best hope. But
regardless, like in the case of NSF, we have to fight against politicization of funding for health research
and basically get back to the science. Thank you. I try to...
a quota that I don't agree with Dr. Peck more than twice in any of these debates. And we're using one
early, and that is he made an important point, which is we need to help people get trust in medicine,
trust in science back. If we don't have people that trust these results, then we can't make progress
anywhere. On the issue specifically of healthcare, I'm advocating for Medicare for all.
So everybody gets covered, universal health care. And we need to fight for that. And there are things
that we need to do. We need to stabilize hospitals. And we need to make sure that people don't go bankrupt
while we're in the process of transitioning, because that's what's happening right now. But Jim also
mentioned, from the big picture, aside from health care at the ground level, the NIH and
You know, what they're doing there is a travesty, and Congress needs to provide tighter oversight, and
they need to have hearings, and they need to get these people kicked out. They should have done their
job and never have allowed these people into leadership positions. You know, one of the things you're
going to hear a lot of people say, not me, is we can't do much. You know, it's going to be hard, and
we're going to have a razor-thin majority, and you know what?
The Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House and the Senate. And while we're wringing our
hands saying we're not going to be able to do much with a razor-thin majority, they are checking things
off their list on Project 2025. So we've got to fight for this. Thank you. This is about trust, a thousand
percent. And, you know, there's two pieces where trust has been violated well before this current administration.
by our Congress, by our leaders, no matter what party they're in. First of all, it is too expensive
to work in this country. And a lot of that has to do with the money that you pay for health care. And
that has been ignored by our Congress. They haven't been able to work together to solve that. It's also
about shared decision making. As a physician, I do a lot of that with my patients.
just say that vaccines are fine. Vaccines hurt people sometimes. Sometimes. They help a whole lot more
people. But if we don't communicate the ups and the downs, we don't get truthful about things, it's
really hard to talk to people and they don't trust you. And I see that by the bedside and I've seen
that in Congress and I think that's why we've gotten those two reasons or why we've got to the point
that we have the leadership that we do.
And Congress has abdicated its role of oversight of the executive branch. And some things we need to
do are codify our vaccine advisory group. Congress can do that. The executive branch just wiped it out
without Congress saying a word. We need to invest in local public health. So federal dollars from, we
think about the NIH and the FDA, et cetera,
That money needs to go down to the local places where people are actually talking to their local neighbors
about the bird flu and how it actually affects them. And then finally, loan repayments of our scientists
and our physicians and health workers to be in rural areas, because if your hospital is gone,
Your only scientists in your community are gone if you live in a community like I do, farming community
like I do. We need to invest in the people who will invest in those communities. Thank you. Okay, so
first step is I would advocate for ACA subsidies to be reinstated. That's reality. I think we can actually do that.
The next step is I would advocate for a universal healthcare policy, like Kentucky or Maryland, where
you keep your private insurance, but at the same time you have a supplemental policy that could help
deal with catastrophic issues. And that primarily would be for folks who are 250% of the poverty line,
which is about $78,000 a year.
And one of my issues with that is we need to have choice, and we do have a doctor's scarcity here. So
if we go down the path of Medicare for all, the question is how are we going to come up with all the
doctors to deal with Medicare for all? So that's the issue. So that's my issue with Medicare for all.
I mean, in a perfect world, yes, I think it would work, but the question is how do we pay for it, how
do we get it through? And then the last thing, prevention.
You know, I've had the privilege of working for a number of different companies, Ford, Rolesworth, and
the like. And they actually give you, if you get a medical exam, you get a echocardiogram, you get a
dental checkup once a year, right? They give you $500. They give you $1,000 off your health care bill.
I am very interested in that because when somebody starts throwing money at me to go get a doctor check,
I'm very interested in that. I don't know about you all, but I am. If somebody says, I'm going to give
you an extra $1,500 off your health care costs, now you have my attention just to go get a dental exam.
So I'm very interested in policies around providing private insurance or health care policies, tax credit.
You get a tax credit off your, you know,
2025 or 26 return. I think that's a very popular program. I actually have that now. And then lastly,
something that's free. It's just standard stuff. Eating healthy, exercise, and getting good sleep. That's
free. We can do that right now without costing anything. All right, thank you.
The current state of national health policy concerns me deeply. We need to strengthen HHS by insulating
it from political interference and restoring evidence-based decision-making. I would support expanding
NIH funding for both basic and applied research, particularly in emerging health threats. We need to
modernize our public health data infrastructure and ensure CDC can conduct research without political
constraints.
I'd also support legislation to address health disparities through targeted research funding
and community-based implementation studies. Additionally, we must strengthen our pandemic preparedness
by establishing permanent funding streams for research on emerging pathogens and vaccine development
platforms. Public research and implementation should be bipartisan priorities, not political footballs.
The third question is kind of two parts. What do you see as the proper role of the federal government
in protecting air and water quality? And how should environmental protections be balanced against compliance
costs in an economic development? And what do you see as the proper role of the legislative and executive
branches in creating and enforcing these environmental regulations? Okay, I'm going to use a few seconds
to rebut something that was said earlier.
about how the Republicans have been able to pass things through the Congress with narrow margins, you
forget the little fact that they have a Republican president who's been signing those. If you think
that Trump or Vance, as the case may be, will sign things passed by a narrow Democratic majority in
the next two years, I have some Swamp Land and Salt Creek that'll sell you, okay? It's just not gonna
happen. So again, we have to be realistic. We'll try.
All five of us here will try to get things changed in the Congress. I just don't want to oversell
expectations. Returning to the question, in the late 1960s, the damage of pollution was so evident,
we can think of Los Angeles smog or burning rivers that it led to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water
Act. Unfortunately, they did such a good job that people today, a lot of people weren't born.
when that was the situation. They don't understand what's happening with the invisible pollution that
comes out of factories and carbon dioxide and so forth. The big polluters have tried very hard to neuter
the EPA for years and they finally got the right administration in place to do that. I would try very,
very hard to restore funding to the EPA and limit political influence.
Again, it's going to be difficult. We'll try. Thank you. Test. Test. OK. All right. We'll go again.
So first of all, Jim stole my lead line. So I'm going to have to check that one off. A river did catch
on fire. And that is, in fact, why we got the Clean Water Act pushed through.
But today, Indiana has some of the worst rivers in the United States. There's a lot of places you can't
fish and actually eat the fish. But it's always in our peripheral vision. We're always so focused on,
hey, it's the economy, it's the economy that we always, we get so focused over here about jobs that
we forget about, we need a place to live, right? So the role of the government is to ensure
In the simplest instance, the reason that businesses pollute is it's more expensive to do it right and
be responsible. So they move that cost off of their books onto our backs and into our water and into
our air, and that is unacceptable. The government's responsibility is to ensure that they don't do this.
ensure that they have a plan to act responsibly, and ensure that they monitor to make sure that they're
actually following through on their plan. That's the responsibility of the EPA, and that's why they're
being undercut. A quick thing, one of the other things as we're responding cross-doctor shortages, what
they're really saying is we don't have enough doctors to take care of everybody right now.
That is something Congress needs to worry about. Whether it's universal health care or regular insurance,
we don't have enough doctors to care for everybody. That is a real problem that has to be addressed.
It has nothing to do with what our health care system is. We've got a shortage. So our government has
aligned itself with corporations much more than people. And I'm not sure about the others at this table,
but I've sworn off corporate PAC money.
and we need to get money out of politics, or this climate emergency we're in does not change. We have
to shift to clean energy. We have to shift to making sure that our air quality is well, and we need
energy independence. And I wanted to tell you a quick story. Again, I live on a farm in Clark County,
and we had a solar corporate company come to the, excuse me,
How is this? Great. We need money out of politics. And then we had a corporate solar company come to
my area. And we need the transition to clean air, excuse me, to clean energy. And what happened here
is they came in as a bull in a china shop.
And they went into our local community kind of throwing dollar signs around, but not really understanding
what they were doing in terms of talking about people's ways of life, about talking about the farmland
that had been in people's families for generations and generations. And there was no real government
support for what they were doing. And there was this huge county council meeting that had three times
the amount of people that are here at it just spilling out.
And I stood up, and I stood up for solar power and that we need clean energy, but I also stood up for
the people that were there saying that we need a federal government that will prioritize lands that
aren't farmlands to put our solar power, whether that be highway dividers like they do in Asia, whether
that be brownfields or on the top of garages like in the farmers market here.
And so having that relationship to people and understanding the people that we need to gain trust from
while also standing up for science is possible. And that's one example of doing so. We need to translate
that into larger policy in Congress. OK. Well, relative to climate policy, my view is we are in a world
of trouble. There is no way around it.
I'm not going to tap dance around it. I used to work in emissions. I know the chemistry like the back
of my hand. And it's scary out there. It's just scary. Every time you turn around, there's a landslide.
There's an earthquake. There's a tornado, hurricane, you name it. It's all happening. And it's deeply
scary. And we talk about two years, four years. It's happening right now.
So we need a drastic, we need a JFK going to the moon in 10 years. That's what we need for climate change.
Five to 10 years, all fossil fuels, period. That's it. There's no way around it. We have to seriously
look at fuel cells. Fuel cells have been around for a long time. They've been successfully deployed
on NASA's programs, right? They're very efficient.
Obviously, they don't work on all applications, but the emissions is water, right? H2O, beautiful thing.
We need to look at green hydrogen to fuel fuel cells. And that's basically, you probably see all the
wind farms out in the water, they create green hydrogen, right? Or alternating current, right? So we
need to look at that.
as a potential solution, we need to be in a hurry. From a vehicle perspective, we need to be really
pushing electric vehicles. I know a lot of companies push this for a long time, but they're not going
away. Electric vehicles aren't going away. Everybody and their mom knows that we need to get off hydrocarbons
quickly. And we need to start looking at residential incentives, tax incentives.
for people to get off fossil fuels. I think, really, at the end of the day, it all comes back to money.
When you start saving folks money, either in their gas bill, their electric bill, they're going to be
very interested in what you have to say. And they're going to be very interested in signing up to author
your legislation to make those actions happen. So as a legislator, I'd be at the forefront of making
that happen, getting folks to sign up with me.
And because I'm all about saving people money. But we need to be responsible. Obviously, there's some
Department of Defense and national security exceptions that we have to adhere to as well. So there's
a balanced approach. But we need a JFK style, five to 10 years, no fossil fuels. Thank you. The federal
government must play a central role in protecting Aaron Waller.
water quality, because pollution costs the state and local boundaries. Clean air and water are fundamental
not rights, not optional luxuries. I support strong environmental standards based on scientific evidence,
not political considerations. That said, we can balance environmental protections with economic development
through smart policies like providing technical assistance to help small businesses comply with regulations,
creating market-based solutions that incentivize innovation, investing in green technologies that create
jobs, and ensuring regulations are clear, consistent, and based on sound science. The legislative branch
should establish clear environmental goals and provide adequate funding for implementation, while the
executive branch should develop and enforce specific regulations based on scientific expertise.
Both branches must work together to protect our environment while supporting sustainable economic growth.
Among the most controversial environmental decisions of the current Trump administration is the abandonment
of the 2009 endangerment finding, which establishes the role of greenhouse gases in climate change and
requires the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions. What do you see as the impact of this action, and what do
you see as the ideal role of the federal government to address the challenge of climate change? Well,
I said earlier that neutering the EPA
And in particular, the endangerment finding has been a goal for the big oil and gas company and the
big polluters for years. Clearly, I understand that climate change is real and a threat to our world.
And if elected, I will fight hard to restore the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. I think we had made
some good steps in the right direction. We had incentives for electric vehicles,
We had incentives for using more renewables and that's kind of all been put on hold and in some cases
being rolled back. I would fight for the best of my abilities to fully fund the EPA and to isolate its
mission from political influence. And I would certainly advocate the rejoining of the Paris Accords
to climate change when we get a more rational administration in place in this country.
Climate change is real. We have a responsibility to address it. And we had some mechanisms, and we tried
to provide leadership, and every four years, we had a switch, and we backed out, and we've undercut
our credibility in the world in leadership on this issue. That doesn't mean that we can't reengage,
and it doesn't mean we shouldn't reengage. One of the things that...
that happened recently is they just repealed some of the legislation or some of the rules that made
coal-fired power plants less attractive to run, and they're firing up coal-fired power plants. This
is how far we've gotten. Coal-based energy is more expensive and pollutes, and they're advocating for
it instead of cleaner, cheaper fuels.
This is an ideological battle. This is not an economic battle at this point. And we have to understand
that, and we have to change that. One thing that we need to do is realize that we have subsidized over
the years. Every time we've had a change in our energy, we have, as a government, fostered that through
government action. And we did that with fossil fuels.
And now we're transitioning to something new. And those fossil fuel-based incentives need to be moved
over to green energy. And this is where we need to go. And we need to move there energetically, to use
a phrase, and aggressively. Climate change is an emergency. We need action now. And we have an addiction
to fossil fuels that we need to rid ourselves from.
Again, there's way too much corporate money in everything that our government is doing, and we align
ourselves with corporations instead of people, we lose trust. We lose on the issues, and the Democratic
Party has not done a great job of getting that out of its party, and I think it can start right here
in Indiana 9 by making that commitment.
in that process of changing over of our energy, in that process of changing over in behaviors of how
we have to act as a society, we can do that in such a way where we prioritize people or corporations.
And if we just say, okay, we're going to keep the wealth gap the way it is, we're going to keep the
power in the hands of those who are rulers in corporate world,
then we're just going to have other companies putting in solar and hydroelectric and small nuclear or
whatever it might be with the same wealth gap. This actually is a moment in time that is an opportunity
for us to dovetail our desire to bring power back to people and our desire to clean up this environment.
We need to do so by making sure that whatever government money goes to this goes to workers as much
as it goes to corporations.
And that is the basics of making sure that people get power back in their hands. OK, I want to veer
off topic just for a second. If anybody challenges you on climate change, I want you to point them to
our good friends, the actuary scientists who works for all the insurance companies. They're very good
at numbers, and all you have to do is tell them, well, why
aren't they insuring a lot of properties down in Florida on the coastline? Because if you go down there
on the coastline, a lot of these communities, there's no insurance. Insurance companies won't insure
property along the coastline. Just a little side note. That's just something I deal with when people
say there's no climate change. I point them to the actuaries, and then they're like, OK, I'm good. Anyway,
back to climate change.
So something that's not talked a lot about is we call this circular economy. The circular economy is
recycling, bottles, glass, cans, and such. We need to expand that to building materials, concrete, steel,
because it's been studied over time that concrete kicks off a lot of carbon dioxide if you pour concrete,
so much so it rivals the transportation system. So we need to look at,
You know, developing policies that encouraging not concrete or other alternative forms to build buildings
that are equally or great or strong in terms of strength levels. And we need to look at tax policies
that give tax credits for builders who do that. Because that is, I think I saw in the numbers upwards
to 40 or 45% of total CO2 is from concrete and building. Huge number.
So we have to look at it as another problem we have and a potential solution that I think we can provide
relative to dealing with the climate crisis. And then obviously, we have a lot of power society on what
we do with our dollars, right? We can buy a gas engine or we can buy an electric vehicle. We can buy
investing causes, you know, for the stock market, for example. We can buy, you know,
certain stocks and bonds from a company that supports climate change, or we can buy from companies that
support fossil fuels. We have a lot of power as consumers to directly impact climate policy by just
watching where we spend our dollars. And I truly believe we just need to make the public aware of that.
I think once people really realize where their dollars are going and how it's impacting the climate,
I think that would change people's minds because I'm deeply concerned about not only our future here
on the table, but my kids' future, your kids' grandkids' future in this planet. And I would do everything
as the 9th Congressional District to support those policies that make our economy stable, support our
economy in terms of jobs, but at the same time, attack the climate crisis head on. Thank you.
Abandoning the endangerment finding is scientifically indefensible and dangerous. This decision undermines
the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases and delays critical climate action. I would support immediate
legislation to codify the endangerment finding into law, making it harder to overturn administratively.
Additionally, I'd propose a comprehensive climate action package including
carbon pricing with dividends returned to households, expanded tax credits for renewable energy development,
infrastructure investments in climate resilience, and research funding for carbon capture and storage
technologies. We should also rejoin the international climate agreements and take a leadership role
in emissions reduction. The science is clear. We need bold action now to avoid catastrophic warming,
and the economic costs of inaction
far exceed the cost of mitigation. Thank you all for answering the general questions. Before we begin
the lightning round, I wanted to remind you all, if you have a question that you want to be submitted
into the audience questions pool, please flag down Adela or Michael and send in your questions by the
end of this lightning round.
Reminder about the structure of this round, these are gonna be shorter questions and you guys will each
have about 45 seconds to answer. In the interest of time, I'm only gonna ask three questions instead
of four so that we can get to the audience questions a little bit sooner. And you guys can once again
go in any order you'd like. This first question, one of the most controversial aspects of AI development
has been the growing need for data centers.
prominently within the state of Indiana, with very large demand on electricity and water resources.
What do you see as the potential costs and benefits of these initiatives, and to what degree should
local, state, or federal governments play a role in regulating data center development? I think data
center decisions should be primarily at the local level. However, I think in most cases, it's not a
good bet for those communities.
As you say, they use huge amounts of electricity, often pollute the water, and the job creations. There's
construction jobs initially, but long-range is usually like in the single digits. So you don't get a
good economic return to the community. I'm against irresponsible implementation of data centers.
That doesn't mean I'm against data centers. It means I'm against irresponsible. And we need to define
what is responsible. What does good look like? What does responsible in the community look like? And
then we need to ensure that there is an open process so that you can't have somebody come in and say,
hey, I want to start a data center, but I'm going
Let's have a secret meeting. Let's have secret agreements. Let's keep this away from the people so that
they can make decisions about their own communities. That is unethical and that's inappropriate. We
need to prevent that. Transparency is key here when building data centers. Communities don't find out
about them until after contracts are made.
And at the same time as we need to do regulate at the federal level actually, to make sure that as these
companies are creating data center that they are dealing with their water needs responsibly and that
all of their electricity needs are generated by themselves. Our grid can't handle these data centers
growing at this pace that they think that they need to. And I have a data center going up in
our backyard, almost our backyard, and they are building their own transformer there. So I feel like
that was responsible by them. It's Facebook. But they aren't very responsible with water right now.
So we do need the federal regulations to make them act appropriately. Yeah, so we definitely, relative
to data centers, we need value proposition for the communities.
It's that simple. What's the community gonna get out of the deal? Are they gonna get a five or 10 year
or 20 year revenue stream from that company? We also need transparency, right? So, back to the value
proposition. Years ago, when a semi-plant came in from GM or Ford, right, you'd see five or 10 years,
20 years, 30 years of revenue streams. We need the same thing from a data center.
We also need responsible regulations, environmental regulations that deal with water and electricity,
like we talked about. Those are some positive things I can say. They do create jobs. And another thing
that's going on around the world is we have to deal with this from a national security standpoint. I
know we don't talk a lot about this, but China's doing it, Russia's doing it.
I was a Navy officer for 11 years. I'm acutely aware of some of the security issues. And we have to
keep up with technology. We can't let China or Russia beat us on the technology front, right? Because
if they attack us, we need to be able to deal with them effectively and forcefully. And so
we need responsible data center deployment, but we can't stop it. I mean, we have to be able to do it
in a responsible, very responsible way. Thank you.
Yeah, I've actually written draft legislation on this exact issue. Data centers need to be clean, they
need to be efficient, and they need to provide benefit for the local economy, for the people who live
there. They have to provide their own infrastructure and provide support for the community. They should
provide jobs, they should provide money, and provide all of the infrastructure needs of a data center.
And I've written draft legislation to address exactly that issue. Thanks. Thank you all. The second
question, what do you see as the role of the federal government to ensure high-quality reproductive
health care for all Americans? And that's a very loaded question, because you get very strong feelings
on both sides of the aisle.
the reality of the state, the reality of the situation right now is based on the Dobbs decision that's
at the state level. They make those decisions. And I think, basically, at some point in time,
if a constitutional amendment were brought forward, I would seriously and prayfully consider it. It's
a tough decision.
We're live again. Wonderful. So I believe that we need to restore Roe v. Wade, full stop. This is something
we need to work for. There are serious challenges because of the way the Supreme Court did the ruling,
which they passed it back as much as they could to the states, and we need to try to work against that.
We need to try to get a federal law in place.
One of the things that I am advocating for is a constitutional right to healthcare, and we can include
that as part of it. We can include the right to freedom of choice as part of a healthcare thing. One
of the things that we don't talk about very much, we spend a lot of time talking about Roe v.
Wade and choice, but also Planned Parenthood and contraceptives is under attack in this country.
When my wife and I were first married and we were poor, living poor, we used Planned Parenthood. They
provide a lot of important services to the community and I don't think that they get the support and
advocacy that they need. So I wanted to include that. Thank you. I'm an emergency physician coming off
a night shift last night.
I've drank plenty coming up here. I'm an emergency physician, and even this week, it happens all the
time, I've treated a lot of women who've been raped, and girls who've been raped. And never once, when
giving my counsel, having those conversations, did I ever consider what the government had to say before
these laws came down, the Supreme Court decision came down.
the government just does not belong in my exam room. And healthcare is a human right.
It is not, unfortunately, a constitutional right. But through privacy laws, through working to keep
the government out of our exam room, whether that means abortion rights, whether that means vaccination
rights, whether that means having our ability to make medical decisions through
AI versus doctors, whether that means having insurance companies get out of our exam room when it comes
to prior authorization. How is that legal? It shouldn't be. It will be illegal if you elect me to Congress.
And the answer here is remove the government from the exam room and we will be able to get a lot done.
Yes, I'd be in favor
Reinstating Roe, of course. I'd also be in favor of a constitutional amendment if we could ever get
it passed. And then obviously, I would definitely support funding for Planned Parenthood, any and all
those services for women to support women. I'm per women's choice, so I truly believe in funding and
supporting whatever women need in that regard. Thank you.
Yeah, I actually wrote health care legislation on my website. It specifically defines reproductive health
care as health care and denial free. So that's my answer. All reproductive health care is just health
care, and you should get it without question. Last question, should the federal government
play a role in supporting or subsidizing energy initiatives to support US energy independence and economic
leadership? Well, it seems like we've been trying to do that for a while. I guess we actually do produce
more oil than we consume, but there's actually an issue with the refineries. We can't refine all the
oil that we produce in various parts of our country, so we end up having to ship that out.
and then bring oil back in from other places. We really need an overall US energy plan. Somebody mentioned
a space-shot-type program to try to bring our energy into the 21st century with heavy emphasis on renewables,
declining emphasis on fossil fuel. All of those are things I think all of us would try for.
It's gonna be difficult. The United States government was involved in supporting, which probably is
a bad thing to say in this room, but we supported whaling when that's where we got a lot of our energy
from. We supported the transition to coal. Then, we supported the transition to oil. And then, we were
supporting the transition to natural gas. And now, we're gonna be supporting, and we have been supporting,
to renewable. This is not a new thing. This is something that we have done for a couple hundred years,
right? So this is a core responsibility of the government to, for the federal government, to look at
what our energy policy is, what makes sense at one year from now, what makes sense 10 years from now,
and what makes sense 100 years from now. And how do we get to that point?
And if we're going to transition sometime in the next 100 years to a better, cleaner energy, how do
we do that quicker instead of slower? We need to be at the leading edge. That is the purpose of the
government, is to work on big things, especially when initially they are not profitable, and eventually
they become profitable, like solar and like wind was. A big, beautiful bill is an abomination. A lot
of people think of it as a health care bill.
tax bill, it's also an energy bill, where pretty much every incentive you had to get clean energy has
been rolled back. And we have incentivized people to invest in fossil fuels by really manipulating the
capital gains tax. And so that needs to be torpedoed using your whale analogy immediately.
And I just want to say one thing. This is a moment. This is an emergency, climate change, but this is
a moment that we can actually bring people together. I've knocked on thousands of doors. People are
mad about gasoline prices right now. And it does not matter if you are a Republican or an Independent
or a Democrat. We don't get unity like this in many things. And so, this election becomes an opportunity
to get into office
and bring some people together. So yeah, my first step in office would be to repeal and replace the
big, beautiful disaster of a bill. It's that simple. It's an abomination. So anyway, back to energy.
Solar panels seem to be working. Solar panels, years ago, they were like, oh, that's a pipe dream. It's
not cost effective. It's not efficient.
But actually, they're starting to shut down some power plants because how cost-effective and how efficient
solar panels are. So that's amazing how the market is working. If we continue to do that, that's a clean
energy policy that is effective, and that's actually saving folks money because there's tax credits.
While there was tax credits, now they stopped them.
You know, as a House representative, a newly elected official, I would obviously advocate to have those
reinstated. You know, it'd be really hard the first two years, of course, until we get a new president,
but obviously I'd advocate for those. And we need to continue to look at other recycling policies. I
talked earlier about the circular economy and other alternative fuels. We need to continue to do that.
And I also talk, and by the way, Jim, it was me talking about JFK, man to the moon, that was me, Jim.
Yeah, but we need a JFK-style man to the moon in 10 years with the climate change. No kidding,
has to happen, quickly. You see the markers all over the planet, right? The global temperature keeps
going up and up and up, and it's not going down, unfortunately.
So anyway, that's kind of my policies on energy independence, and we need to continue to advocate and
basically cancel what the Trump administration's doing and reinstitute those policies so we can get
an active and have them really supercharge the industrial base to encourage financially people to buy
that product so we can limit the CO2 and methane gas emissions.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm pro-wind, pro-solar, and pro-new nuclear. Those molten salt reactors are the bee's
knees. I mean, I would have one in my backyard if I could. I mean, I burn 3,000 kilowatts a month. So
nuclear's about the only way I could go. Thanks.
Now we're moving on to audience questions and Tyler is going to take this over. All right. Yep. Thank
you all for your answers. So we've got a lot of audience questions here now. We're not going to be able
to get to all of those. So again, I'll remind you, we'd love to see some of you at Lenny's afterwards
if you have further questions. So let's actually reverse order here. So we'll start with you Floyd,
this first one.
Thousands of people throughout the country are concerned about the unregulated explosion of AI in the
accompanying data centers that gobble energy and water. Would you support a moratorium on data centers
to allow appropriate policy to be developed? I can't really support a moratorium on data centers or
AI. No other country will be doing it, and it would just put us behind to do it ourselves.
We need to do some responsible funding, responsible research, and responsible development. But a total
moratorium would just put us in the backseat to everybody else. Yeah, I... I would be hesitant to institute
a full moratorium because of the national security implications, right? China and the other countries
are doing the same thing. But like I said earlier, we need to have responsible environmental policies
we need to have a clear value proposition for that community. And when I mean value proposition, I want
to see tax revenues going into that community, roads, bridges, schools, additional funding to support
that community if they're putting in a data center in the backyard. And then we also have to
have transparency, of course. We can't have a shadowy company coming in building a data center and nobody
knowing who's
who the company is, where the materials are coming from. So that's kind of my position on AI moratorium.
Thank you. You can't build a data center unless you comply to our environmental regulations, water,
electricity, to our local community needs. That should be the law. That will be the law that I would
pass. So in that way, if you want to call that a moratorium, great, but I'm pretty sure that
Google, Facebook, whomever can do that immediately, and still build the building, and still build their
data centers. So moratorium with regulations. We should immediately pass legislation that requires
transparency. That's the first thing. Let's start with getting transparency.
and then we also need to engage the EPA, and then we need to fund the EPA so that they can do proper
enforcement. So there's things that we can do now that we're not, and one of the reasons is that what
they've done is they write a law, and then the EPA comes up with policy and implementation. And through
recent Supreme Court, they said, no, no, no.
you've got to go off of the law, you can't go off of the regulations. Which means that it's pushed it
back into the responsibility of Congress to act. And that's not an excuse for us not to act. That's
why I want to get into Congress, because we need to write legislation that actually addresses these
quickly. And we should be able to do that as quickly as we can get a law passed that would be a moratorium.
to center, so I'll address the AI situation. I think we should all be aware that because of the nature
of these deep artificial neural networks, there are two key technical shortcomings. The first is that
unlike the earlier rule-based systems that they had some years ago, these new systems can in general
explain how they do their reasoning.
They're just interconnected networks, and they've done iterative adjustment of the weights until they
reach a stability point, and then they give it a prompt and a result is created, and they can't explain
it. And the even more scary thing is, you're probably all aware of it, sometimes they just simply make
things up. Facts and citations and everything else. They cheerfully refer to that as hallucinations.
And then they say, well, we should use this for medicine, and we should use this for this and that,
and for military applications. That's ludicrous. Obviously, we need some guardrails on the development
and deployment of AI. We need guardrails about children being exposed to chatbots. And beyond that,
my opinion is that strict liability laws should apply.
Someone is injured as a result of AI, the company that developed that should pay for it and should be
accountable. You have a bunch of good lawyers in Bloomington and lots of other places that would hold
these people and would probably they might think twice about some of the things that they would release.
Thank you. So for our second one, again, start with you, Floyd. What will be the first bill you will
introduce in the twenty twenty seven twenty twenty eight Congress?
That's a good question because I have an app that I call the Congress app and where all my constituents
get to vote on which bills they like and I've written like 26 of them and So whichever ones my constituents
decide they want me to push first is what I push first. I Don't have a personal priority All right,
I'm gonna tell you a little bit about me so
Couple jobs ago, I was sitting at a desk, and I was trying to figure out this complicated engineering
problem. And I was sitting there, and I was thinking, man, this is gonna take probably two hours. And
then a friend of mine says, well, just go to the guy next to you, like literally five feet away,
and ask him, he could tell you in about three seconds. So I go to him, he goes, oh, three seconds. So
I guess that's my answer. I'm all about efficiency. I want things done quickly. First answer is ACA
subsidies. I think that can happen.
quickly. So I'm all about getting that done. Because that can happen quickly, like literally probably
in the first session of Congress. Assuming the Democratic Party or party takes over. I believe
the legislation is already there. It's just turning the key. Thank you. Our health care system come
January 1, 2027 is under threat of collapsing. We
ACA subsidies are going to have millions of people be off of insurance, but so is the Medicaid rollbacks.
There will be another 10 million or so coming off in the next 10 years. And then Medicare rates are
not going up with inflation. And all of this needs to be fixed.
immediately because we are going to move into, on day one, a system. When we take office on day one,
the same day, all of these things will start to be cut in great, very deeply.
So that is the emergency that we will have on our hands that we need to address. So before going to,
yes, health care is a human right. We need everybody to have health care. We need to roll back all of
these big, beautiful bill cuts that happened. Otherwise, we're going to lose our hospitals, and we'll
lose hospital services. And your hospital here will be even more busy than it already is. Comp check?
Good, it works. OK, so we have number two.
in my night of agreeing with Dr. Peck, and that is repealing the Big Bad Beautiful bill is really important.
After that, impeachment and removal for the Iran War. I'm done.
You asked me what number one was, and I snuck in number one and number two, and I didn't want to press
my luck and go for number three. You know, I think tonight, if nothing else, there's so many things
that need to be repaired. It's going to take the next Congress and Congress after that, and maybe some
more. But for me, the first legislation that I would push for is to restore the cuts to veterans' programs
and veterans' hospitals.
Those people put their lives on the line, and we owe it to them morally to take care of them.
Thank you. We got time for one more. Let's make this quick. What is your view of nuclear power development
in Indiana? I haven't reviewed any of the current nuclear power development in Indiana. I'm 100% pro-nuclear.
I think it can be great if done properly.
We're not gonna put any carbon reactors or, you know, no Chernobyl, no Three Mile Island, but a nice
salt, molten salt reactor would be nice. Other than that, I'm not aware of it. I mean, I've heard of
it, but I don't have anything to say about it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know a lot about the local regulatory
issues right now with nuclear fission,
if what I've heard is correct, is I'm hearing they're very efficient, and they're very efficient, and
they put out a lot of electricity. But there's a lot of concerns with the regulatory, the environmental
impacts, the cost, and everything else. One good thing about nuclear is no emissions, right, other than
you have to deal with the spent rods and such. So that has to be dealt with efficiently, like it has
been done in the past.
And to be honest, like a good engineer, I don't know all the answers. I will find them and make a good
policy decision. Thank you. We have a very interesting new pressure on nuclear to accelerate the technology
to make it smaller and even portable, which is we are going to the moon.
We are going to put a base on the south pole of the moon, which doesn't get much light. The reason is
that's where the water is. Because of that, we need small nuclear reactors that can go on a spaceship
and then land on the moon, etc. That's going to accelerate the technology greatly. I think instead of
looking at large nuclear reactors, we should be pushing on this technology to go small,
and safer, and get it to the point where, thank you, get it to the point where we are all having nuclear
be much more efficient. I wish I could support nuclear. I really do. I would love to be a nuclear supporter,
and I'm not. My feeling is, if you want to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, that is an excellent place
for it. Okay? And here's my issue.
As Kyle said, as an engineer, I wanna know the facts. I wanna know how it works. I wanna know, you know,
what the issues and what the control surfaces are, and all these details. And corporations are gonna
say, we've got it, this is what it is. And then, we're gonna have to rely on the government to do that
analysis, to make sure that they've covered it, to make sure that they implement it as they said, to
test the edge cases,
because when nuclear goes wrong, it goes really wrong, okay? And if you look at the accidents, they're
not one thing that happened that you look at it and the engineer goes, oh, yeah, I should have thought
of that. It's five or six things, and the engineers look at it and go, crap, I never would have thought
that happened. If we don't have a strong federal government that can really do its job to make sure
that it's safe,
that I can't trust the analysis, and therefore, the only place I want that stuff to be is on the moon.
Like all technologies, there are benefits and there are risks, and I think with the small nuclear reactors,
they certainly sound promising. A number of them being built across the country. We'll have some test
data for you pretty soon, Brad, so... Tell me again in 30 years how it worked.
because of the moon thing. But I understand you're making light of it. But the amount of technology
advancements that we've had in this country and this world because of space travel makes up much of
the technology that we have. I would give it a chance to see what's coming of this.
incredible pressures on people to come up with new technologies. And if we don't at least embrace the
possibility to get energy independence to save the world of its climate disaster, then we're playing
with one arm behind our back.
Sorry. So NASA's funding is they're going to cut it by 47%, so they're going to be doing their work
on a shoestring. I agree 100%. I want to be for nuclear. It's not that I'm against nuclear. It's that
I can't trust the government to do its job when it's politically motivated, when we've got people that
think that they can inject bleach and make things go away. When we don't have credibility, when we don't
have the trust in the government to do their job,
When they're captive to industry, we can't rely on the science because the science is being undercut.
That's my issue. I want it to work. I want us to develop it. But it has to be done responsibly. It has
to be done safely. It has to be done with oversight that we can trust. And I cannot trust this administration
and what they've been doing.
Well, that concludes our question period. So now we'll move to some brief closing statements from each
one of you. Floyd, we'll go ahead and start with you again. Science just isn't a body of knowledge.
It's our best method for understanding the world and solving problems. As your representative, I'll
bring my technical background and practical experience to every policy decision, ensuring we're guided
by evidence rather than ideology. We face complex challenges.
And that demands scientific solutions, from climate change to public health to technological disruption.
And let's be honest. Sometimes looking at our government, it feels like strange things are afoot at
the Circle K. But we don't panic. We get to work. By restoring scientific integrity to government, investing
in research and development, and supporting our scientific workforce, we can build a healthier, more
prosperous future.
I'm committed to making decisions based on facts, data, and rigorous analysis, because that's what works.
Thank you. Sure. I don't know if most of you are aware, but STEM professionals in Congress are definitely
a minority, okay? Most of them are lawyers, non-STEM-related. So we need a candidate who can explain
things of around policy,
in economics. Economics and policy have to go hand in hand. Because the reality is, as a representative,
we're going to be trying to sell and communicate why this policy improves economics from a governmental
standpoint. How are we going to be able to bring in higher tax revenues? How are we going to be able
to create jobs? It really all comes back to economics and dollars.
So we have to create STEM policies that drive that home. I believe I am the candidate that can effectively
do that with a cross-function of groups. I spent 11 years in the Navy. I used to deal with two, 300
folks in my battalions. I was a production supervisor. I used to deal with many folks in different
communities. And I have that experience and breadth and background to be able to communicate and work
with people in different backgrounds.
and build those relationships, and agree to disagree, because you're going to come across folks that
you just, quite frankly, you have to disagree with. But at the same time, you have to be able to talk
to them at a human level, ask them about their family, ask them about how they're doing, and learn to
agree to disagree, but be civil. Because if you build relationships, if you know how to build relationships
in this job, you will be successful.
People will come up to you and help you support your legislation when you didn't think would show up.
And that's what the job is. It's relationship building. It's a leadership. It's being able to deal with
folks from all across the country and to get them on board with your legislation. You have to have those
people skills. You have to have that empathy. And you have to have that human contact, asking them how
they're doing, how their family's doing. Get to know them.
Because that's how you build those relationships. That's how you get things done for our community.
My name's Kyle Rourke. I appreciate if you just go to KyleRourke.com and appreciate your vote.
Thank you. I think we've seen from a lot of these questions here that science is one of the answers
to save the world, is to save our environment and save so many things. And I spent my career translating
science into real life, whether that be by the bedside
to policymakers. I spent years in DC doing bipartisan legislation to make telemedicine a reality. And
with public, the public in southern Indiana. So I say about Indiana 9, it's a microcosm of America right
here when it comes to science. It's pretty incredible. We have this world-class research institution
that we're sitting in right alongside a rural community.
In that rural community, just like rural communities across the United States, skepticism is real. And
our future does depend on the translation to those people of what's happening. So this line of communication
of what's happening here in Bloomington to those people in Bedford, but then back to the people in DC
who support the actual research and policy to make the people here in Bloomington actually be able to
do their work, that
Circle is broken right now because trust is broken. And we need leadership that can bridge that world
between facts and belief. And that's the work I've done. That's the work I'm ready to do. And if you
have your trust in me and your vote this May 5th, I will bring that work to DC. Thank you so much. This
planet is not our inheritance.
This planet was given to us in trust from our parents to give to their grandchildren. It's what we passed
down. It's not something that we use up so that it's all used up the day after we die. It's something
that we have a responsibility to future generations and to ourself. And economics is always, there's
always this pull between economics and the environment
And what are we going to do? And the answer is always, unfortunately, economics, right? Our environment
loses so often in that tug of war. And one of the things that's really nice about science is it begins
to give us answers to how we can balance that better and how we can move forward and optimize those
two things that people are trying to keep an eye on. It is our future.
it is at risk, it is being undermined. And that's why I want to go to Congress to fight for this.
You know, when I talk about fighting, I'm not talking about duking it out or having a knife fight. Sorry,
for those of you that weren't in the other... he sometimes references knife fights, so that was not
a threat, so don't anybody get triggered. But it's about standing our ground and saying, these are our
values, these are our priorities,
and helping people understand why we see this and understand why it's in their best interest. It is
about relationships. It is about trust. But that doesn't mean that we have to lose ourselves and blend
in with the people that are causing this mess. It just means that we can disagree without being disagreeable.
And we need to stand up for what we believe in. Thank you.
Yeah, the actual quote, Brad, was that we're in a street fight for our democracy. And I can handle a
street fight. As I said in my opening, I've been a science guy all my life. If elected, I would put
a high priority in trying to bring back rational problem solving and particularly looking for compromises
that lead to win-win solutions. They're out there. We just need to apply ourselves to do that.
I would certainly do my best to try to bring back the independence of the National Science Foundation
and maintain its funding. I would do my very best to fully fund the EPA and isolate it from political
influence. The other thing I think is that I have the technical background, including a PhD in the science
area, applied science, and I think I'm capable of...
very capable of analyzing the new technical challenges that we face in things like artificial intelligence,
small nuclear reactors, and cybersecurity. I've been through the rounds of actually writing proposals
to the National Science Foundation, to DARPA, and other places. I know how that science works. I know
how important that is. I would appreciate your vote on May the 5th. Thank you.
Thank you all. I'll hand it over to Michael now for the closing remarks. No real remarks. I just want
to thank our candidates for doing a beautiful job here, showing us how it's done in a civil and thoughtful
manner. Again, round of applause for everybody at the library who's helped us set this up. And big kudos
to the leaders of Advocates for Science at IU, especially Emma and Tyler, for doing such a beautiful job.
I want to remind you that we have got to be out of this building in seven minutes, but the good news
is, if you're willing, I don't know how many of you can join us, but we have a few tables reserved upstairs
at Lenny's, out the front door, down a block and a half to the left, just before the sample gates, and
we can continue some conversation. And also, we're going to invite all the candidates, including
Representative Houchin, to submit answers if you'd like in writing
as a follow-up. Okay, thanks everybody and thanks for being here.