Good evening and welcome to Channel 17's Democratic Primary for U.S. Congressman. Very proud to have these gentlemen with us. My name is Howard Wooden. Let me introduce the folks that we have with us. We have Dan, and Dan it's Dan Freilich, right? Freilich. Freilich. And Peter Welch, our sitting Congressman, and Benjamin Mitchell. We're going to do an opening statement, gentlemen. Ben, we'll start with you at that end, if you don't mind, and we'll try to keep it short because we already have a question waiting. Very good. Well, I want to thank Channel 17. I want to thank you, Howard. And I want to thank both of you gentlemen for joining me here tonight. I have to say that both of you are good men, and that this is going to be a good discussion, and politics doesn't have to be uncivil. Having said that, I'm here to honor Peter Diamondstone, who gave his life to Vermont politics and never asked anything in return. I'm here to honor my grandmother, Ingeborg Lorenz, blacklisted as a communist when she ran the post office in Malbro. And just so you know, we're writing on the backs of a lot of people, but this is a very important time in electoral politics, and I'm delighted to be part of the conversation, so thank you. Peter? Thank you, and Benny, you left out your dad, who served with Margaret in the Vermont General Assembly. Yes. You know, this is an incredibly important election for this country. We have the worst president in the White House in my lifetime. And what he's doing is not just really bad policies. He's attacking the guardrails of democracy. He's attacking the freedom of the press. He's attacking the rule of law. He's attacking our institutions. And this is going to be an opportunity that the Constitution gave the American people to send a message for mid-course correction. There is an opportunity to have a new majority in Congress to go from the Paul Ryan-led Republicans to Democratic leadership. That is going to be a check in balance on Donald Trump, and this is a very important election, and I hope to be part of that new Congress that's going to stand up to this president. Dan? Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Channel 17, Howard, and gentlemen, thank you for participating. I really appreciate it. So the reason I am running is very simple. What I'm trying to do is to return integrity and honor into politics so that we can make better, more objective, less biased decisions on behalf of the people rather than corporations. And as a consequence, one, hopefully we can regain the trust of the electorate and start winning contests throughout the country much more regularly than we do now. And secondly, so we can actually effectively address core issues like wealth inequality, health care disparities, and climate change. And I really appreciate being here to talk and have a conversation about this topic. Thank you, gentlemen. Believe it or not, we have a caller already on the line, but for those who are watching, our number, if you want to call in a number, is 862-3966, and we have a call already. Let's find out. Caller, are you there? I'm here. Please just tell us where you're from and let us know your question. I'm calling from Pealier. My question is, when I was struck by an interview I found, I forget what it was, it might have been from 2010, to hear that Dr. Farlick had voted for Sarah McCain and Sarah Palin, what had stated, and this is my point, that he had in spirit supported President Obama, but couldn't vote for him, and I think my biggest concern is, in a time when people, especially across the country, are supporting things with thoughts and prayers, how can you assure us, Vermonters, that you will take actual action and not be there in spirit to do things that Vermonters need? Thank you. Dan, you might want to speak to that one. Sure, I love it. It's kind of a set-up kind of question, but I think that it's actually really good because it provides an opportunity to discuss that we shouldn't be homogeneous Democrats and Republicans, I know we should be Americans. I completely supported everything that Obama did as a generalization in terms of policy advocacy. What happened is that in the middle of the surge, I was taking care of casualties at Walter Reed, and I was seeing the horrific violence and trauma to American troops in the middle of the surge. And I think at the time, Mr. Obama sort of questioned the effectiveness of the surge, and I thought that that emboldened the enemy, and I thought that as a consequence, more American troops were going to die whether we agree with the war in the first place. That was a totally separate issue. And as a consequence, I voted for McCain. In retrospect, I think that's a bigger picture. I probably would have not done that, but the emotion of seeing our casualties bleeding and fighting for their lives every day was the reason that I made that vote. And it's something that I'm proud of because I know why I did it, and we don't need to be consistent party hacks every time. There's nothing wrong with being an American first. Well, I think that's kind of the real gist of the question is, what do we do when we're kind of in conflict with our party and we choose to go a different way? Has that ever happened, Peter, for you? Well, it has happened. In fact, when I was in Congress after the tropical storm, Irene, I was a delegation of one. I was in the minority party, and I wasn't on the relevant committee. And the cap that we could get in Vermont was $100 million, and we needed a billion. And there was a lot of politics going on, big fights between Pelosi and Eric Cantor. And when Pelosi wanted me to stand with the Democrats, I said, look, no, Vermont first. And in fact, I was successful because I had strong relationships with my work with Eric Cantor on pediatric cancer research that he was very helpful in Vermont getting what we needed. But, you know, Dan, I do have to ask you a question on that because you're raising some of this really pointed. And of course, your experience in the VA, if you're treating those soldiers, I've not done that, but I visited soldiers. And it's heartbreaking. So more power to you on that. Thank you. And I mean that because the sacrifice they give. But, you know, the job that I felt we have, if you're in Congress, or Ben is, our job is to make certain that whatever the policy is of this country where we're asking our men and women to put their lives in harm's way, because they'll show up, especially Vermonters. They show up. We have to give them a policy that's worthy of their willingness to sacrifice. And the war in Iraq was the wrong decision and the wrong policy, and that was made by politicians. Big Hawk was John McCain, the war in Afghanistan, George Bush, Big Hawk, John McCain. So my problem with John McCain is I really disagree with him because I respect him. And Sarah Palin, I mean Sarah Palin, I'd have a hard time voting for either of those. But I do want to acknowledge my appreciation and solidarity with you on respecting those men and women wanting to show that we care about what they served us for. And I appreciate you saying it. And I don't think we should spend too much time on it because the woman applies everything else and Ben certainly wants to talk. I just want to make one comment because it was back. Look, this, I acknowledge I would do differently. This is exactly what I'm trying to do as a congressman if I am elected, is that there will be errors and acknowledging one's errors and say that there are judgments in retrospect that one would do differently. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's the leadership. Ben, this whole conflict, you know, if you get caught with your own conviction versus, you know, the party line or something else. Well, I think another good example would be the F-35 where we have three towns, Burlington, South Burlington, and I believe all of their town meetings voted to stop the basing of the F-35 here in Vermont. It's $400 billion plane. For one plane, it was an idea from the 80s. It's a bad idea. The plane doesn't work. It's a boondoggle. They're dangerous. Their only job is to fly nuclear bombs in a stealth way and be a first strike nuclear weapon. And I understand why you guys fought for it. The Air National Guard are great people. I have friends in the Air National Guard. I know that whatever plane they get, they'll patch it together and they'll make it work. They're Vermonters. They can do that. But here we have the will of the people who voted in town meeting. Town meeting is the most sacred place left in democracy. It's the most democratic thing we have in the world is New England town meeting. And they voted in the, you know, Lockheed Martin sends the Attigin General to the city council meeting in full uniform to try to threaten that we're going to take those 800 jobs away if you don't let Lockheed Martin keep selling this plane for $400 billion. And so I think there's times when we need to stand up to the corporations, the military industrial complex. I think the biggest threat facing this world is the military industrial complex, not the global refugee crisis that we created. And we need to stand up to those people and say, no, I'm going to vote with the people of Vermont. We don't want this plane. The people of the Vermont Air National Guard deserve a mission. They need a mission that's worthy of them, that's the right scale for the airport, that doesn't shut down affordable housing, and that doesn't hand out billions and billions of dollars to a corporation that's already proved that they're not trustworthy and they're not going to do a good job. So there's a lot of conflicts and politics. Well, I appreciate it. I'm going to move the conversation a little bit to more of a one that I think is very important for Vermonters and nationally as congressmen, and that's healthcare. And Peter, I'll let you start this one. Give us some of your thoughts about, you know, here in Vermont, we've tried a universal healthcare type of system or tried to go to it. And what do you think about those issues right now in terms of not only for Vermont but on a national basis? Well, healthcare is the top issue, access and cost. I think all three of us are for Medicare for all, all right? And when I was in the state house, I pushed for broad access and we got the Catamount healthcare plan that by many accounts is the best healthcare plan we've had. And that was a Republican-democratic deal. We focused on access and we focused on cost. It's a mess right now. But the biggest problem with healthcare is how the cost of it, we spend more than any industrialized country in the world, yet we have the highest rate of uninsured. Pharma profits are the most outrageous of any place in the world. And pharma comes up with these drugs, oftentimes financed by taxpayer-financed research at the NIH, and it can do life-saving hures or alleviate pain, but the cost is going to kill the patient. So my view is that we have to have a system where everybody's covered, where everybody helps to pay for it, but it's going to require some governmental action when there's no protection for consumers or for employers who are providing healthcare for their people. And a lot of employers, by the way, I think it'd do great with a single-payer system. They wouldn't have to be running a department about healthcare benefits. So that's where I'm at. And with the present president, we're not going to get him to sign it, but we can begin if we get a Democratic majority in the Congress. And this must be an issue close to your heart here. Yeah, I mean, when you're talking about wealth and income inequality, two of the most rectifiable issues are return to fair progressive taxation, because with the stroke of the pen, you can alter the whole balance of wealth and inequality, and of course, getting universal healthcare. And I think, as you said, Peter, there's no question that universal healthcare system via Medicare for all system A is moral because it covers everybody. B is economical because it saves $800 billion a year in administrative and pharmaceutical costs. And C, it's practical because we already have a Medicare system, so you're not reinventing the wheel.  The question, therefore, I think we all agree that we should have Medicare for all. My issue is that the Democratic Party, at least the establishment within the Democratic Party, has really been very lukewarm in terms of its advocacy. In fact, when Bernie put his Medicare for all bill back in 2009, 2010 forward, only two senators and Patrick Leahy actually did not cosponsor it. So it's indicative of sort of this incrementalism, and it's okay to do things slowly. I think it's okay to do things slowly if one is wealthy, if one is powerful, and if one isn't hurting. But Americans are really hurting, and I think that we as Democrats need to advocate for this forcefully on a day-to-day basis. The bully pulpit of our sole congressman has to be used every day in protests, in telephone conversations, in whatever needs to be done, email and social media and everything, where this is one of the front topics every day. I think an occasional support is just not sufficient, and the Democratic Party has to embrace this as sort of a win-win-win, and this is what we're going to make happen. Ben, what's your experience? Well, I agree with both of you in spirit, and I think, but I remember interviewing Jake McLaughlin, we talked about him, we both know the same gentleman, and when I was interviewing him, I was working at a college, and I was interviewing him to be there. We were talking about healthcare, and I was promoting the idea of Medicare for All, and he said, yeah, but with so many people making so much profit off of healthcare, how are you ever going to change? They're controlling the system, and that's a really, I think you have to not underestimate the enemy in this situation. That's why my view is that we need to start just by providing the public option, which was originally part of the affordable healthcare, if just all of the exchanges had the public option where I could choose to buy into Medicare, make that choice, you know, that's a choice. People need more choices, and I could either buy the Blue Cross thing where they'd be taking 20% of the money and stuffing it into their pockets and putting it into their friends or whatever they do with it, or I could choose the Medicare, and I would say I want to use my money to support public option, and I think that's what we need to do. And a lot of these, you know, I'm a democratic socialist, and I've been that for a long time. I'm a Liberty Union man through and through, and I believe that by giving people more public options within banking, within healthcare, within energy, people will work against sort of the, you know, the religion of free market capitalism which controls most of the debate in our country. How would you pay for it, Ben? How does that happen? Well, I'll explain to you, every month I get a pay, or every two weeks I get a paycheck and a portion of that goes into my healthcare, and rather than going into Blue Cross and Blue Shield, who are going to keep jacking it up and squeezing me more and more and more, I would choose to pay for Medicare. How about you, Peter? I want to add on it, because what Ben's saying makes a lot of sense to me. You know, when we were doing the Obamacare bill, I was on the Energy and Commerce Committee and very much a part of it. But I was the sponsor of the amendment to offer a public option, and we got it through committee, we didn't get it through the House. But it was the same argument that Ben's making, let a person choose. Let Dan choose, me choose, you choose. Buy into the government system already? Anybody age 50 or older, including employers, to buy into Medicare to start bringing it to age 50, to start bringing that down, it's got public confidence. But there is practical challenges to making the transition. You know, we've got a lot of people who are in the healthcare system that we're in. Our local hospitals are all dependent on a system they didn't create, but they have to navigate in order to give better care. So how do you transition from where we are to where we want to be, where everybody's covered, everybody helps pay? And on this question of cost, which is absolutely a fair question, and when we were doing catamount care, that was the question that Governor Douglas asked. The Democrats were asking what about access and we realized, you know what, we're both right because you can't have sustainable access without affordable cost. You just can't. But I think all of us here know that we spend way more than we need to. The biggest problem with healthcare is if we can get an efficient system, and that's what a lot of us who favor Medicare for All approach think will be more efficient. We can have better coverage at less cost. What's your viewpoint? I think that if one is going to advocate for public good, you have to make sure that you're funding it from some source, otherwise it's just politics. I think there's no question that if we did adequately fight for good return to progressive taxation, sort of payroll tax, for example, if corporate loopholes were removed, such as delayed repatriation, you'd get another 100 or 200 billion there. If the income marginal rate was increased to what it was throughout most of the 20th century, it's easy to fund these things. But I want to stop there because it's actually misleading to even make an argument that the threat of whether we should do Medicare for All is an economic one because the money is all there. So everybody knows in a Washington Post last week there was the George Mason review of Bernie's Medicare for All. What would it cost? And Mr. Ryan from Wisconsin picked up the first half which was this is going to cost another 31 or so trillion dollars over 13 years more or less. What he didn't say is the second half. That was to the federal government because, of course, you're transitioning from private industry to the federal government. What he did not say is the second half, which is that we were going to save about three trillion dollars for the system as a whole. You would know better than me, but I'm not surprised. So I think really we need to be honest. We need to make sure that Americans know that this Republicans should know that if you want our industry to be more competitive, the best thing you could do is to remove the yoke of employer-based health insurance which is about, we'd probably save about 4,000 per employee. So rather than doing tariffs, why don't we fix our own program and maybe we'd be able to do that. Well, why don't we talk about tariffs then? What do you think about the tariffs and their impact and what would you do if elected? Well, I mean this is a place where it's complicated because frankly I believe that the religion of free market capitalism thinks it's a really good idea to take raw materials from the United States, ship them across the world to China, turn them into plastic things and then ship them back to us so that we can buy them at the dollar store for inexpensively. Anyone who looks at that just from a resource management perspective can say this is a terrible plan. The reason why we need it is because incomes are so low that we don't have any choice but to go to the dollar store to buy our materials. In terms of, I do, my personal preference would be to have locally sourced economies, small micro-economies that you can buy from the farmer's market. You can get as much as you can locally sourced that supports your friends and neighbors. I think we need economic policy that changes from this idea of scarcity and profit which is kind of the religion of free market capitalism and take on this idea of abundance. Right now there's corn everywhere, there's food everywhere. It's August here in Vermont, there's an abundance of food, there's an abundance of products there's this idea of abundance and then think in terms of resource management. How to do that within the global economy that we have right now is really difficult. Obviously it's a radical voice in the wilderness. Nevertheless, let me just say one last thing. I don't believe his aim is actually to get a better deal with China. I think he's working for Vladimir Putin. He's just trying to undermine all of our relationships on a global level and he's basically trying to weaken the United States as a power in the world. Although I'm sympathetic to the idea of questioning NAFTA and questioning trans-Pacific partnership, I don't think that that's at his heart. I don't think his goal is to really create locally sourced sustainable economies, frankly. Peter, well I'm with you on corn in August. Supporting our local economy, buy local as much as we can because the stronger you have a local economy, the more we're tempered and protected against globalism. Here's the deal on the trade issue. Trump's got a point about China ripping us off. But if he's right about China, why is he attacking Canada? Why is he attacking the EU? Why is he attacking our farmers in the Midwest? Why is he attacking dairy here in Vermont? If he was focusing on addressing the rip-off policies that China has been getting away with for a long time, I'd be with them. They're stealing our intellectual property. They're forcing many of our companies that do business there to turn over their technology and then copying it. They play with the value of their currency to our disadvantage all the time. We've got to face those things. And when Trump talked about them, he had a point. But his implementation of this is just crackpot, very harmful. These tariffs on Midwest grain and the farmers there now on dairy, he's talking about a $12 billion impact and it's a wrong-headed policy but instead of changing the policy, he now wants to go to the taxpayers and have us pay $12 billion to make up for this. He's using an exaggerated definition of national security that is the authority which has allowed him to impose these unilateral tariffs to justify attacking Canada. And I imagine we're all in agreement that we don't feel an imminent threat from Canada or from the EU. I think they're actually building a wall and we're going to have to pay for it. So the trade issue here is one where it's about China and we should be working with our allies, Canada, the EU and even Mexico to deal with that. So I don't like how he's doing it. Dan, we have a question on but I want to get your viewpoints on tariffs before we go to the questioner. I appreciate that. So I mean, first of all, I alluded to it earlier. I believe that tariffs is sort of like the last basket that you reach to when you have issues with international trade. I'm not a free trade person. I'm a fair trade person. What that really means is free trade that's regulated kind of like I guess socialism is regulated capitalism. The global economy and the way we pursue globalism, for example, various agreements such as NAFTA and TPP is that they are all corporatist. And the problem is that corporatism is the essence of our downfall in everything including our politics. So the TPP in theory, for example, has a lot of things that could create increased wealth for many Americans and for many overseas people but the problem is that it's so inundated with various little tidbits that help the corporate spirit as opposed to what you're saying. So NAFTA, on the other hand, is the same thing but most of the injury from NAFTA already occurred because we've sort of become now an integrated system between Canada and the U.S. and Mexico. But all these systems are corporatist problems. I want to end this just so we can take the call and say that the problem is that this is in essence deep in our politics. And I'm very critical of our party because we're in a sense corporatist light. The Republicans, I would say, would be corporatist heavy. But the corporatist light is bad enough that we don't do anything very significant in terms of truly addressing the core values because every core issues because everything we do is always with the core participant. And that's a big critique I have of the incumbent who I'm running against. And I don't think what you do is any different than what establishment Democrats do. But the concept of representing Americans while most of your money comes from corporations, I think is abhorrent. I think it's so damaging to our democracy and to effective democratic principles. We're going to go to our first... We have a couple of callers. We'll go to our first one here. We'll see where they...that takes us. Good evening, caller. Just tell us where you're calling from and give us your question. Hi, I'm calling from Burlington. Go ahead with your question. My question is... So I wasn't familiar with the two candidates running against Congress in a while, so I had to look them both up when I heard their names. Reading for a seven days article with Ben Mitchell, I was actually shocked to see that he was supportive of legalizing all drugs, even though it's like heroin. I was wondering if Mr. Mitchell could exchange his stance. Thank you. That's... Yeah, so I am in favor... In this studio talking about legalizing marijuana for 14 years, and I really...I take my hat off to Scott. It would take a Republican to do it, and I really appreciate that. What I meant to say... I didn't say that we should just be handing out heroin to children. I believe that we need to treat drugs as a health... and a mental health issue, and not as a criminal justice issue. We can't afford to keep, you know, locking up nonviolent drug offenders, I've been talking about it for a long time in the studio, and we need to treat it as a public health issue, and that's much more appropriate. In terms of... since that discussion was happening, we've seen a huge increase in what I call the zombie apocalypse of the opium epidemic here in the United States, and I think that there are very specific companies doctor the evidence. I've done a lit review. Even before the Affordable Care Act came out, it was very clear that the increased prescription of opiates was leading to a significant increase in addiction, and that was already available. That information has been documented in the public record for a long time, and yet now we're finally saying, oh, hey, maybe this is an issue and this is a problem. So I think we need to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies who saw this as an opportunity to make a lot of money off of, so is the right thing to do to go in and arrest them and send them to jail? Maybe. In that case, I do think that we need to sue the pharmaceutical industries. I think we need to go after them with everything we have. The Purdue pharma and the rest of them, they knew what they were doing, they did it intentionally, and they did it to my community, to my former students. Every month or so, another former student will like Facebook me and say, I need money from my phone bill, I can't get 50 bucks, and these are people, they were like brilliant young people, writers, thinkers, people I taught to read, people who found their voice, and now their only choice in life is to scrounge around and try to get a bag of whatever fentanyl, and the people who are profiting off of this need to pay for this. This is totally inexcusable. This is why free market capitalism does not belong in healthcare. These two things are different. Market capitalism is very nice for whatever, people who want to make a lot of money, but this is healthcare, this is an essential right of humanity. Thank you. I'm not sure how Seven Day has characterized it, but yeah, I still agree, it should be a public health issue and not a criminal justice issue. Does anyone else want to respond to the issue of the opioid addiction and what it's having, its impact on Vermont, and what you could do as a congressman for it? Well, two things. I don't agree with you on legalizing heroin, but I do believe you're right about treating the opioid incredible crisis as a public health issue. And Vermonters are doing that. I mean, it's really quite remarkable. When you go to first responders and law enforcement people, our city officials, our medical people, they are all working together as best they can to treat this as a medical issue. There's been opioid roundtables in communities all around the state and I've been just amazed at how communities are coming together in Rutland, in Burlington, in St. Albans, in Bennington, in Springfield, and cooperating in a way that is a good example for how we don't operate in Washington because at the end of the day it's one addicted person at a time who's got to find the strength and the support to make it happen. At the federal level, it should be number one, we've got to provide resources because the real work is going to be done back in the communities and that includes access to the NARCAM. It requires support for our first responders in our healthcare system. Two, it does definitely mean defending Medicaid. You know, the Republicans down there, we're all talking about the opioid crisis because it does affect people in their districts and passing minor legislation but cutting the heart out of the Medicaid program is a good treatment thing. Third, we've got to support research at the NIH for non-opioid treatments of pain. And then four, we've got to really have a very strong education program and Dan can probably talk about this for our medical practitioners to have proper prescription of it because a lot of people got in trouble when they got a prescription for a disease and they couldn't get on hook. So there's a lot to be done. So my last mobilization with the Navy is I was brought back to manage the Navy Comprehensive Pain Management Program which was the Navy's being told by Congress here's a hundred and something million dollars fixed opioid issue and the other services got similar kind of things and I was brought to manage that program. So I kind of know a little bit about this and of course I spend a lot of time in emergency rooms and with inpatients at the VA and in the military. So it's all hands on deck and when we say all hands on deck it has to start with responsibility and I think that is sort of go back to what is fixable and what are core issues and what are core values for everything and I'm going to use that as an example to be more specific. With respect to physicians physicians need to act reputably they cannot be prescribing opioids loosely like you said and they need to be adhering by guidelines and they should be held accountable. There are a lot of pill giving doctors out there and they really need to be stopped. As a people we need to recognize that not everything is curable 100% and people need to learn that it is possible that we need to manage chronic pain not always cure it and addiction is part of the issue but about 50% of addictions are caused by my colleagues when they give opioids such as oxycodone freely but the other part is if we have an expectation that the people out in the trenches whether they be in the healthcare or the people who are potentially getting addicted and patients if they are going to need to have more personal responsibility our leaders in Washington have to have more personal responsibility too and this is where it is really important that our congressmen and senators role model and that they for example refuse to take money from pharmaceutical companies pharmaceutical distribution companies companies like Purdue one should not be sponsoring bills on behest of pharmaceutical companies that strip the DEA of its power in order to stop distribution of pills so it's all hands on deck the we Democrats need to be honorable and we cannot have conflicts of interest that are destructive and are very harmful to Vermonters and Americans in general Thank you Real quick we have another caller I was never advocating the legalization of heroin as just sort of a great idea I was talking about changing the focus from criminal treatment to seeing it as a medical issue but I do want to echo what you're saying that you know we need congressmen who stand up to the corporations and we can't be co-sponsoring bills that protect the companies that are doing harm to our communities from prosecution you know and I'm sure that wasn't your intention when you co-sponsored the bill but the fact is when you receive $100,000 from the pharmaceutical lobby and then you co-sponsor a bill on their behalf to protect them from prosecution watch the 60 minutes episode on it it's that's where we need you, you're coming from a liberal state you run unopposed you have $2 million there's no reason you could stand up to anybody and we would back you up 100% if you stop taking corporate money I'll drop out right now seriously this is where taking that money certainly it challenges our ability to respect there's two things one is the money and another is the bill the bill was a totally benign bill that ultimately went through congress with hearings in the house and in the senate and that's not the regular means of business because it was a benign bill that clarified what responsibilities were I got involved because there was a local company it wasn't Big Pharma it was Burlington Drug which has been owned recently sold but owned by a family in Burlington for 100 years and it just provided clarification of what their responsibilities were because at times when you were another physician would prescribe an opioid that had to go from the manufacturer to the drug store so the patient could then get the prescription filled that you provided that's really what it was and it was so benign that the DEA supported it I didn't even co-sponsor until after I checked with law enforcement here no problem with Burlington Drug and then it was passed unanimously by every member of the house and the senate after review and approval by the DEA after review and approval by Eric Holder and signed by Barack Obama and incidentally on that that bill's been in law for two years there's literally not a single instance of a single pill improperly as a result of that law being on the market so it's an issue and the corporate money you know campaign finance we've all been talking about this this is a huge issue and it's a huge issue in a scale that we've never seen ever since Citizens United was passed because what that did was not only continue to allow political action committee contributions to campaigns but unreported closed contributions of vast quantities to advocates who kept their identity secret and their intention secret so let me give a stat I'm going on a little bit here but you guys are both going after me on this and it's important in the last election there was a federal election it was 1.8 billion dollars spent 1 billion dollars of that was contributed by 100 Americans not to my campaign or Dan's campaign or Ben's campaign or any individuals campaign it all went to the super PAC majorities and they started their own agenda for their own reasons and if they brought money in the Vermont or Texas or California it was all to achieve what they wanted and that's what I think is the heart of the problem and I'll give another example this is the final one when I ran in 06 it was the first time the seat was open I think in 16 years it was a very competitive race with me and Martha Rainville she was an exceptional guard extremely respected person each of us raised and spent over 2 million dollars and we got individual contributions and political action committee contributions but every one of those political action committee contributions that she got or I got came in our campaign so when we spent it you knew how it was spent and we were responsible for that and Martha and I early on in the campaign sat down for the last time that's happened in this country and with Citizens United we couldn't do it so we've got to change Citizens United we've got to get disclosure we've got to get dark money out of politics and if we can have public financing and I'm a sponsor of that along with Bernie and Patrick that would take a lot of this question out I want to give some time here I really need there's a lot there we do have a caller hang in there first of all I want to make it clear I don't think Ben and I are attacking on this topic you personally and I want to make that very clear but we're attacking or if you were going to use that term and by the way I was going to offer you some water I'm happy to get you water so on a more serious note this way of raising money for your campaign and when I say you it's any of us the dishonor is very very destructive in it and I don't mean that on a personal level I mean that in terms of the consequences for Americans so I think it's pretty disingenuous to state that this bill was potentially just working on a little mom and pop pharmaceutical company in Burlington that's really not true the company was purchased by a large South Carolina company the vice president was part of a big pharmaceutical alliance which provided you about $11,000 the prior owner gave you $1,000 to $2,000 also and they were basically pushing this bill because they wanted the DEA they wanted to get the DEA off there and their colleagues backs period and to say that the DEA supported this is completely untrue one can always go to an agency and find a person who will support you but the question is what the truth is and I want to make sure to be very accurate this is what the law judge from the DEA said about this bill if it had been the intent of Congress to completely eliminate the DEA's ability to ever impose an immediate suspension on distributors or manufacturers it would be difficult to conceive of a more effective vehicle for achieving that goal so the independent people not only the lawyer who worked for the DEA but the whistleblower all said that this was very destructive in fact the whistleblower said that people who took money i.e. congressmen and senators as blood money because they were so certain people got hurt as a consequence of the bill so I have a document here what this is about 140-150 pages anybody can download it from the federal election commission site so this is all of Mr. Welch's PAC money it is shocking now I'm going to say upfront that my colleague to the right takes less money than many in fact I'd probably give you a C- the problem is that you take a lot of it for some reason and you and your colleagues I don't think you're any different than most are not willing to have the insight to understand the destruction to our democracy and the inability to advocate for middle class people we're going to get the question in real quick they've been waiting a long time let me just give an answer though because we took very seriously the claim and there were two parts to that Washington Post started that made sense and the administration has been helpful to them in maintaining their power to price couch and I've been a leader in Congress in fighting that second there's a revolving door but third on this question of whether this legislation had anything to do with getting another pill we had two years of experience and Dan if you've got a single example where that happened I'm waiting to hear it it's just not there and one thing that I have is a record that shows I have been absolutely a fighter against the federal companies on climate change against the pharma companies on the price ripoffs and I'll continue to do that I'm going to cut you off so we can get and we're going to have very short last statements because we're almost out of time hello caller if you have a quick question for us tell us where you're calling from yes I'm calling from Green Street about six blocks away from the debate my name is Andrew Champagne and I'd like to thank the three candidates I thought that was some interesting conversation and very quickly I would just like to remind everybody that early voting has started now absentees are still available the polls will be open from 7 to 7 on Tuesday and we have now same day voting I have seen a lot of voter erosion in a lot of other states and Congressman Welch you've always stood up stood up with this fight and I appreciate you coming to the Old North End and I would just like to hear your views what we can do with Republican legislatures and Republican secretaries of state that are frankly really violating the constitution and I thank Mr. Kondo's for all his good work with the same day registration so I appreciate all of you candidates Dr. Dan, Mr. Mitchell and Congressman Welch thank you and I hope we all see you at the polls thank you Dan I'm going to start with you Jessica I know it's a question appear but the whole issue of voter suppression you know and the things that you could do Congressman to to kind of address that this was asked at a GOP Ben you were there the GOP Rutland meeting that we attended voting should be as easy as possible it's a basic democratic right and any suppression any restrictions should not be there what I really want to talk about is how we get people to show up to vote because that's actually the real issue here there's a lot of stuff in a room and the way we get I'll spend 10 seconds the way we get people to show up to vote is to enamor them that politicians are advocating on their behalf that they're excited, that they're working for them that there's honor in it and that they can make changes if we do that I'm sure a lot of people will show up to vote Ben quickly for voter suppression types of things or encouragement well I think we all probably agree that we need to have I think we should have a vacation day a voting day we should make it easier we should have public transportation which we don't have in the states to get to the polls the more people who vote the more legitimacy we have to our democracy democracy I'm a democratic socialist but the really radical part isn't the socialism you know it's democracy and this is what we're fighting for right now and so you know we need you to go and fight for democracy whatever it takes so I'll let you speak about it both Dan and Ben we do have a problem with the active efforts of Republican state houses suppressing the vote denying people the right to vote they claim it's a problem of voter fraud there's no evidence of that none and the way they're trying to win elections now is dark money I disagree with what you said about my campaign but I definitely agree with you about that dark money and voter suppression and we have to be united we're letting the voters decide and let them vote Ben a final thoughts here and really we're down to like less than a minute or so so what do you want the voters to know I you know that the the biggest thing facing the congress in this next congress is going to be impeachment and we need people in the house of representatives who are going to place the immediate needs of the constitution and the people of the united states before the democratic party in there has claimed to power and I know that the democratic establishment doesn't want to do it because I think it'll use up too much political capital and we need people to stand on the floor and say this is wrong and to fight for our democracy we're watching it fall away and this is important to the people of Vermont and the people of the united states well on the impeachment question you know what here's where I agree with you I think Donald Trump is a real threat to our democracy he's attacking as I said in the beginning the guardrails of democracy the freedom of the press the rule of law respect for institutions respect for each other and we have got to fight that we need a democratic majority to do it but second the through line here and the criticism of me is on quote establishment or corporatist and you know tell my wife that but I just want to tell a little story well we may not have enough time very very short I when I got out of law school I had a chance to work on Wall Street I had a chance to work on on K Street that's corporate America I ended up on bridge street in whatever junction is a public defender and that's where my heart is it's serving people so I had a chance to do the corporate thing but I chose the thing that's been much more rewarding much more enriching and there's all kinds of members of Congress 435 but I'll tell you I'm really proud that with my continued service I had the endorsement recently in Bernie Sanders and the father of the climate change fight Bill McKibben and I want to keep working for Vermonters I work for you Dan you get the last word so what I'm trying to run for is to like I said before bring honor into the process I think if we stand up and if we take ownership of a vote and we insist on something better we don't accept rationalizations we don't say that taking money is okay because we may have some end result that we want we insist that our leaders minimize their conflicts of interest because it's the right thing to do if nothing else and if they do that we can at least be assured and we don't have to try to explain and figure it out that they're actually advocating for us for what matters and I think that we should insist that Democrats and in particular that our single congressman spends his or her eventually hopefully a hurt will have to spend their time on core core issues not telecommunication bills not opioid bills but address wealth inequality, address climate change, address Medicare for all the things that really matter to all Americans I would really be honored to get you vote thank you so much folks we appreciate you watching tonight and you can catch a repeat of this show on cctv.org and we appreciate everything all the viewers all the callers and especially our candidates here tonight you guys are great I appreciate it so much thank you take care