Today, Pete Gallegos, who's running for Congress, who was a Congressperson in the 23rd District before. And we have here all of the students enrolled in the interviewing class this semester who have put in a bunch of questions that they want to ask you and prove that they've actually learned something in this interviewing class, as I certainly have. And I also brought with me just so you know there are a couple of other folks in the class. Ashley Rodriguez, who is an intern at Nowcast SA this semester, and is graduating from SAC with her associates in radio, television broadcast in December. And also, there she is, Jamie Lynn Keaton, who is UTSA. She also graduated from SAC. She's at UTSA College of Public Policy. And she's an intern at Nowcast also, and made me promise to bring her because she's a public policy wonk, so there's that. OK, so go ahead and. What do you think will prompt more Hispanics to get out and vote this year besides voting to defend their families, as you said, in an interview with News 4? Well, getting Hispanics to vote has always been a particular challenge because what happens to me as I knock on doors is people will tell me, mi vida no cambia. My life won't change if this person wins or that person wins. What's it to me? I mean, my life is the same. I'm stuck in my same dead-end job. I've got my same problems. I mean, why should I worry? This year is very different because this year, when you see that kind of rhetoric, it has affected different people in different ways. But I think Mr. Trump has kind of awoken a lot of people about what's at stake. He really has, in a very real sense, for me, when he talked about immigrants as an example, that was my abuela. So he was talking to me. When I talked to a lot of other people, they said, why are you offended, Pete? Because the truth is, there is a divide among the Latinos with the folks who are more recent arrivals than the folks who've been here a long time. And so everybody was among my friends and stuff. It was like, he's not really talking about us. He's talking about the people that just got here. And then Mr. Trump followed that up as a lawyer, married to a lawyer, who's sister is a lawyer. It's all first-generation stuff, right? I mean, because our parents didn't have those opportunities. But when he was interviewed and he talked about a case that he's involved in where the judge is Latino and his parents were from Mexico, he was born in Indiana. And what he said was, essentially, the judge wasn't qualified to sit in that case. And he used the words because he's Mexican. And at that point, all of my friends who are very apolitical, I mean, I grew up in a neighborhood where I was the weird one because I actually liked this stuff.  Because now it's our kids that can't do X or Y or Z because of their parents. And so I really believe that this election has taught people the difference of having someone who you can talk to who worries about your stuff and not. And I think that it won't be just this election. I think once we start voting and we see what we can do, that makes all the difference in the world. If you're used to your vote not counting or you feel that way and your candidate always loses, then you don't have any incentive.  And I think we're about to realize that we matter. And when we realize that we matter, then I think you're going to see that as it happens. The one thing that I wish that people my age and older had done more of is we didn't teach our kids to vote. We didn't teach our kids the importance. Last night, I drove in. I was at a rally in Petula. And it was interesting talking to so many people who were talking to me about La Razonilla days. And for me, that was the age that I came up in during all of that. And they were unhappy and they wanted to make a difference. And they busted down the doors. They sacrificed a lot. Our parents sacrificed a lot. And in your case, your grandparents, so that we could get these opportunities. And I want to make sure we don't forget that. I want to make sure that we keep those doors open so that you all can have whatever opportunities you want. Thanks. In a previous interview you stated, and I quote, I'm glad that both sides have reached a compromise and that our taxpayer dollars will not be used to implement a law that was intentionally crafted to suppress voter turnout in relation to the current ID. Yes. Can you explain what about the law you felt specifically suppressed voter turnout? OK. I'll give you an example. How many of you have an A&M ID, student ID? Do you realize that's a government-issued ID? I mean, it's issued by the state, right? You realize that that's not acceptable. That's not an acceptable form of ID. I think that's horrible. My mom is 88, and she lives in Alpine. My hometown is 6,000 people. She still drives around town. She goes to the store. She does her little errands. But my mom's not going to be driving that much longer. When she stops driving, she won't have a driver's license. Her driver's license will expire. How will she get to them? Because her ID, if you live in rural areas, if you go to the DPS office, it's only open certain days a week. And if you live in Peresidio, which is 85 miles away from Alpine, you don't even have a DPS office. So you've got to drive to go get one.  And so me, look, if you're going to do this, I don't have an issue with having to prove that you're you, per se. I just think it should be easier to prove that you're you. We ought to be taking more stuff. If you have a concealed gun permit, it doesn't even have your picture on it. And that's enough ID. I mean, if you're worried about me going and saying, or one of you goes to the polling place and says, I'm Piqua Diego. And you show my concealed, if I have one, I don't have one, but if I have one, and you show that, then that would be enough to get you to vote. And you wouldn't be me, right? And the truth is that the instances of somebody showing up and saying there's somebody else, that doesn't happen. Where the fraud is has been in the mail balance. Where you request a mail ballot and somebody goes to your mailbox. And before you have a chance to pick it up, somebody picks it up for you.  And then you say, I never got my mail ballot. And so you show up to vote in person and then, and you know, voter ID doesn't have anything to do with mail ballots. And that's where the problem has been. So to me, this whole voter ID thing was a solution in search of a problem. And it was done deliberately because I was in the legislature when we were having these conversations. And I remember talking about how they thought that this would shave about 2%, maybe 3% of the vote off the top. And in a close election, I mean, 2% or 3% matters, right? I mean, in my case, it was the 2% that mattered last time.  What do you think needs to be done in Congress to manage border security and prevent the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs with the government? Yeah, we're still on the top. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Coding. Coding. Oh, okay. Well, polls show most voters don't think the government works. What would you do if it liked it to fix the underlying structures and systems that seem to be broken in Congress? So, I commit everything as a parent, okay? Because I came to a parenthood really late and my nickel loss, it was pretty hilarious. Last night, I was 20, telling you I was in Cotula and there was a guy who spent 30-something years as a DPS trooper that I went to college with and I hadn't seen him in 20-something years and he has two daughters and they both live in San Antonio, one's a lawyer, and one's gonna be a lawyer. And I'm thinking, man, I'm behind, I'm not a voice ball.  So, the first thing I do is I teach nickel loss the difference between right and wrong, okay? Now, if something is wrong, does it matter who's doing it? No, because if it's wrong, it's wrong, right? If something is right, does it matter how few people are doing it? I don't think so. What Congress keys off of is not whether an idea is a good idea or a bad idea. What Congress keys off of is whose idea is it? Because the Democrats won't vote for a Republican idea, the Republicans won't vote for a Democratic idea, and at the end of the day, nothing moves, right? And so, that's the frustration that I have. So, what I started doing, when I first got to Congress, I can tell you, I'll tell you one true story really quickly. I got a call from a lady in San Antonio and I'd been in Congress, I don't know, two weeks, three weeks. And the lady said, you know, they told me that when you were in the legislature, you used to give Texas flags to kids that had made their Eagle Scout. Sure, okay, I did.  And I thought about it for a second, because I hadn't really thought about it, and I said, sure, I could do that. And she says, good, and this was like a Wednesday afternoon that she's calling me, right? And she says, good, because my little boy's Court of Honor, Eagle Court of Honor, is Saturday. And I would really like a U.S. flag blown over the Capitol. So I thought, I mean, come on, how hard can it be to get a U.S. flag blown over the Capitol? I have a person out there, they hire people to raise the flag, fly it for a little while, put it down, raise the flag, fly it for a little while. How hard can it be to get one of those, right? So a guy named Michael Buchekko, who had worked for me at that point for about six years, I called Michael, and I said, Mike, can you take care of this morning? It needs to be, you don't need to do it today, though, or tomorrow, because you'd have to overnight it by Thursday, so that she can have it by Friday, because this young man's Court of Honor is Saturday morning at 10. So they have to have it by then. So a little while later, Michael calls me back, and he says, I think we're gonna be able to do it. And I'm like, why not? And he says, well, today was the Democratic flag flying day, but all the Democratic flags have already been given away. Tomorrow is the Republican flag flying day, and you can't have any of the Republican flags. So you won't be able to get a flag until Friday, and by Friday, it'll be too late to get the flag to center flag. So, imagine how appalled I was where the simple act of flying the US flag, mind you, not the Democratic flag or the Republican flag, but flying the US flag hasn't become a partisan act, okay? So I called Michael back, and I said, you know, I thought about this, and I'm really unhappy. And I said, you know, Call House Administration or the Speaker's Office, whoever it is that we need to call, tell them, look, I'm gonna call CNN, and I'm gonna call the New York Times and the Dallas Morning News and the LA Times and all of these big news favorites, every news favorite that I can find, and I'm gonna tell them, look, I just got to Congress, but already I've found out why this place doesn't work, because, and I'm gonna give this example, of the flag. So, needless to say, I got my flag, right? I'm gonna give you this flag. But what I started doing at that point is, I asked my fellow Texans, there's 36 of us in the house, there were 36 of us, and there was two senators, and I said, when do we all get in the same room at the same time to talk about how we could help the Texans move forward? And they said, we don't. The Republicans need for lunch on Wednesdays, or the Democrats need for lunch on Wednesdays, the Republicans need for lunch on Thursdays. And so I started doing breakfasts, where I brought everybody together, and we all sat in the same room and talked about how we could help each other. And then I started doing that on the committees that I was on, on armed services, so that I brought all of the freshmen together, so that we could talk to each other before the hearings, because it's amazing when a camera comes on, how people change, right? And so, trying to have those conversations so that we could ask our questions in advance, so that we didn't have to be so hardcore, and we would know the issues. And so, that's the kind of stuff that I like to do, is to put people together in advance, so that we don't have to yell at each other in public, and we can actually find common ground that way, and move things forward. And that's what I was always good at in the legislature, is making everybody feel like they were part of the process. And I think that's a skill that Congress needs. Sarah. Hello, Mr. Gallego. So many young adults live with their parents while going to college, and their parents make pretty good income, yet they are not helping pay with college tuition. So although the family's income is good, they rarely get help with financial aid. So what I would like to know is, how would you be able to help students go through this tough time, and how will you do it? As a result of the campaign, and this amazing thing called TV, which used to be black and white when I was a kid, I didn't have a mom's, right? But everybody knows, now it seems, everywhere I go, that I grew up watching dishes in a restaurant. I would probably still be the best dishwasher in Alpine taxes, if it wasn't for the chance that I had to go to college. You know, of the four of us that hung out in high school, I'm the only one that went to college, much less anything else, okay? And a lot of that was because people thought it wasn't an option, or they couldn't afford it, or they didn't think they were smart enough for any one of the other reasons. For me, it's really a big deal. Look, if you wanna go, you need to be able to go. Now, not everybody wants to go, and that's fine, right? But if you wanna go, we need to give you that shot. And you gotta be able to graduate without owing this huge mountain of debt, right?  Imagine this. I took, when I was in college, about 21 hours just in my car, but it cost me about $210 a semester. And now, when you look at the cost of tuition, then hey, $10, I got an hour. And people are, so one of the differences I have with Mr. Hurley, which he and I differ in a lot of areas, but this is a big one. Because I would never, ever, the Republican budget plan did a lot of things, and one of them was provide less money for Pell Grants. And for me, that's an area where I would put more money because you got more kids than you ever had trying to go to college, right? Our population gets bigger and better. The other difference is that I always wanted to look, I can't tell you that I went to school on grants all the time because the law school part, I had to borrow money to go to law school. But it was a very low interest rate. So imagine this, imagine, if you had a choice, and I said, look, you can get a loan with a low interest rate that's fixed, or you can get a loan with a variable interest rate that floats with the market. So I mean, I'll give it to you at 3% right now, but if the interest rates go to 21%, you're going to be paying 20, which one's better for you? The fixed, come on, that's not hard, right? And so that's the kind of stuff I want to do, but that's not the kind of stuff that the majority in Congress wants to do right now. And that is really disappointing to me because, again, the key word here is opportunity. Mr. Gallagos. How are you? Good, and yourself? All good. Awesome. So my question for you is, what are your thoughts on how we can reduce student loans and the student debt? I know you just kind of touched on it a little bit, but I was wondering if maybe you could just go into a bit more detail. I'm actually in a position where I'm about to take out student loans. So I want to know what is it that your plan is, I guess, and tells? One of the things I really appreciate about what Congress did in the first years of the Obama administration was change the way student loans were handled because when I went to school, you got, it was called the NDSL program. It was the National Direct Student Loan. And so you borrowed money directly from the government at the slow interest rate. And then what ended up happening is that people said, you know what? The government should hand this over to the banks so that the banks can make money off of this and we'll let the banks get. And so then it became a kind of a guaranteed student loan program, but it was no longer a loan directly. Now, instead of going from the government to you, it became the government with the bank as a middleman. So I like the fact that we should be going, we should be cutting out all the middlemen and we should be going directly to you. And what we should do is, one of my jobs in college was I worked in the financial aid office. Some kids worked in the library, some kids worked, and it was called works, for a lot of folks, it was called a work study program, right? So we need to provide more opportunities to give people a chance to work when they can in the library at night or whatever, those kinds of things so that you can maximize the opportunity to not only go to school, but to earn money in the meantime. There is really, in my view, you're never gonna get away, you're never gonna catch up. It's gonna be really hard, let me put it down right, to catch up to the cost of a higher education. It took me 15 or 18 years to pay off my student loans. But I will also tell you that that was the single best investment that I ever made because I wouldn't be sitting here if I hadn't done it. So the question is, not how do we fix it so that you don't need loans, but how do you fix it so that your loans are reasonable and you can afford the payments on your loans? Because right now nobody can afford, I mean, if you wanna go to medical school, you'll borrow 150,000 bucks, well that's where I live. That's like three houses, you know?  I mean, that's the economic security argument that I make is that all of us are teetering on the edge, right? I mean, we're one good catastrophe away from going. Most of us don't have real savings accounts. I mean, because we live month to month and we gotta be able to fix some of that that way. Good. So knowing that education is one of your top priorities, I would like to know how you feel about guns being allowed on campus and if you believe that by allowing students and others to carry if it would make campuses in Texas safer. Before I ever ran for office, I was a prosecutor and I worked really closely with the law enforcement community and for whatever reason, a bunch of the guys that I went to college with all ended up being DPS members. So I've been really good. And, you know, the sheriff, for example, in my hometown, we met on our first day of fourth grade, okay? So don't keep a close relationship and here's what I worried about. The center of my universe, el re de mi alma y de mi vida is 12 years old. Six years from now, he's gonna be off to college at the college of his choice. What really scares me, what really scares me as I talk to my friends in law enforcement is that if something happens in a dorm, right, and you call, somebody calls 911 and all of the law enforcement shows up, right? And then somebody walks out of their room with a gun. How is the law enforcement officer supposed to know if that's a good guy or the bad guy? Okay? We don't wear labels that says I'm the good guy. That's the bad guy, right? And a law enforcement officer has a split second to make that decision. And it's a very, very, very, I know those guys. And I know that every day when they walk out of their house, they worry that they'll never walk back in. And I have gone to more DPS funerals than I care to count over the course of my life's life career. And so I don't like the idea of guns on a college campus because I think of the danger to Nicolás and the danger to all of you. Now, in other places, that may be a different story, right?  I read this year was the 50th anniversary of the shooting at UT at the UT tower. And, you know, people had guns and were shooting at Mr. Whitman at the tower. But I didn't know until I was reading the coverage and that they were missing. And a lot of them thought they were shooting at the shooter, but they were shooting at the law enforcement. That was at the top of the tower trying to take down the shooter, you know? And, because they were just seeing, they could see somebody moving up there. And they didn't know it was the police officers. So they were, and they were just started shooting. And so then all of a sudden the police officers had to duck. I don't like that stuff. I think that's too, I want to take care of those law enforcement officers, they have enough on their minds. And I want them to be able to feel safe and secure in doing their job, which is to make the rest of us safe and secure. Okay. Could you please make the most important problems facing veterans in District 23 today? If elected, how would you address those problems? Access to healthcare is the single biggest problem that veterans are talking about. And it's not only veterans, it's their families. And it's not only access to healthcare in the physical part, but, you know, some time ago, I went on a visit to Equal Pass and a guy who I had known for 20 years came up and hugged me and, you know, his son had undergone some surgeries and stuff. He'd been hurt, he'd been deployed twice to the Middle East and in the course of his deployments had gotten hurt, but he'd been discharged and had a young kid three, four years old and his wife and he committed suicide. And I can't tell you how devastated that left his family. And so, number one, he had apparently tried to get help, which I think is just absolutely unacceptable. So you have that issue of we need to be taking care of the men and women we're taking. The other thing that happens, you have to remember that there's no map of the district, but this district is 800 miles from one side to the other. Right? So I've talked to you, I used both the idea as an example. Well, if you're in a small town or in a big city, the one thing that ties all of us together is that every single community all across the 23rd district has a bunch of veterans, there's still a few World War II veterans, there's Korean veterans, there's Vietnam veterans, I mean there's, and it gets harder and harder for the World War II to create for Vietnam to get in the car and go to a VA because they don't drive anymore, somebody drives them. And if you're in Brazil, that drive is 300 miles or so. And so your family has to take the day off from work, they've got to pay for a hotel, they've got to pay for meals, it becomes this big expense, right? So what I worked on was this idea that if you live more than 40 miles away from a VA, you ought to be able to see a local physician off. So in the rural areas in the small, everybody wants to live in a big city, right? I don't know why that is, because I kind of like the small town life because to be in my office at eight in the morning, I can leave my house at, I don't know, 7.59 and a half, right? But the challenge is that our doctors now want to practice in big city areas with big specialties and all these other things, right? So there's not enough people in rural areas to make sure that doctors make a lot of money. So, because they've got their loans to pay, frankly, I mean, I understand this is all economic, okay? So I argued that if you can provide this new pool of patients who are veterans, because a lot of times doctors say, well, we provide indigent care and we don't get paid for that. Well, this is an indigent care because if you could fix it where the VA would pay for you to see your local doctor, then that gives your local doctor more patients and he can stay or she can stay there longer, right? So I also argued that if you can't get an appointment, why should you wait in line? You shouldn't be waiting in line. Don't see somebody else. You're the one that needs the help. If they can't see you, too bad for them. You need to go see somebody else. So that became, when I was in Congress, that became the choice card, right? The choice card. And I'm really proud of that. I was the only member of the Texas delegation that got invited to the bill signing ceremony where President Obama signed the bill because of my involvement in arguing for those two things. So we have a long way to go. I saw the article, actually, the story on KSAP. Not too long ago about veterans waiting here at Audie Murphy, outside in the sun in this line, right? I mean, that need not be happening. Why is that happening? Why are we treating the people who took care of us in that manner? I have a particular passion for Vietnam aerobics because you all are too young, but I watched Vietnam. I was, my first memories of TV, I wasn't kidding when I said we had a black and white. And it was frankly one of the few TVs in the neighborhood. And my grandmother didn't speak English. I had a lot of first cousins, all her grandkids that were Indian, you know? And so she would invite everybody over. There was no CNN, there was news every afternoon, right? And you watched Walter Cronkite. He was the most trusted main in news, right? And so my grandmother would invite everybody that she could into the living room of the house because my grandmother looked at this and she would tell everybody to watch the crowd as the camera panned all of these shots to see if they saw one of my cousins, all right? So I grew up watching Vietnam and thinking, oh my God, this is really horrible because the reporters would go out in the field and you could see all of this. And when my cousins came home, was so different from the experience that my dad talked about coming home from World War II. Because in World War II, they came home here. And in Vietnam, they thought not only underappreciated, they weren't underappreciated, they were unappreciated. Our country had asked them to serve. And yet when they came home, they came home to people not very happy with that. So for me, if you were in particular of Vietnam then, I went out of my way to make sure I had cousins who died of cancer that was caused by Agent Orange. But the VA wouldn't admit that Agent Orange was ever used or that Agent Orange caused cancer or that Agent had cousins that served in Laos and Cambodia when the US denied that they were in Laos and Cambodia. And so they couldn't get any help, right? Because, and so I have strived to make it up to Vietnam guys ever since, because of what I said. Hello, Jan. People are struggling to live on minimum wage which has not been changed since 2009 when it went to $7.25 per hour. What would you address, how would you address that if you were elected to Congress? Look, I'm in favor of raising the minimum wage. I believe we need to have a livable wage. I meet people every day who are working two and three jobs trying to make ends meet.  Every parent loves their kid, right? And I would love to be able to spend more time with Nima Las. A lot of parents don't have that luxury because they're working and they don't work just one job. They work two or three trying to make ends meet. And we've got to, the best commercial, non-commercial cartoon, one of the best cartoons I've ever seen about this was as a, it was during the Bush administration. So it's an old cartoon. But you see this big state dinner, right? And you see the banquet table and in the middle is the podium with the presidential seal, right? And the waiter's walking by with his tray. And the president is speaking and the president says during my administration we have created seven million new jobs. And the waiter's walking by and you see his little thinking, right? And he's thinking, yeah, and I have four of them. And so we've got to fix it so that people are making enough money at their jobs where they feel more comfortable and have an opportunity to spend more time with their kids. Our lives have changed so much. It used to be that it only, with one income, a family could survive. That's not true anymore, right? And since both parents are now working, that has repercussions for the rest of society. And so you've got to fix it so that people have a living wage because there's too big a gap. You know, the other thing that really makes me mad is I visited a school not very long ago and I come from humble roots and so I hang out with humble people. I gravitate. I like that, right? I mean, that reminds me of real life and it reminds me of how I grew up. And so I was talking to this group of custodians in a school and one of them looked at me and he said, we're gonna send you to Diego. And he said, you know, Mr. Diego, how is it in our country that we, and he was pointing to the other custodians, we have a hard time. We're making not very much money. We work hard, but we pay taxes. How is it that Mr. Trump says he's a billionaire? How come he doesn't have to pay taxes? And you know, I don't have an answer for that because I frankly think that's wrong. And I think that we need to fix that so that those folks on the higher end of the scale are paying, of those two whom much is given, look, that's why I sacrifice and do things because I think I have an obligation of those two who much is given, much is expected. And I really believe that. And so I believe that those folks who are struggling right now, they're not maximizing their opportunity because they don't get one. They don't get one for their kids, right? It's the same thing in school finance. When one kid gets educated on $500 a kid and one kid gets educated on $5 and 4 cents, well, who's going to do better on the LSAT or the MCAT or the GRV or the whatever? We've got to maximize opportunities for kids. And the way that you do that is by trying to help people create that opportunity. And look, not everybody wants to work that hard, right? Not everybody wants to do those kinds of things. But for those of us who do, we need to have a shot. Speaking about opportunities, returning to the subject of immigration, you have said that you are a strong supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. Big time. Including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Absolutely. Under the current policies, illegal residents are required to leave the United States as part of the application process. But in doing so, we come barred from reentering for another 10 years. That's dumb. So would you support or present a bill to repeal at least the reentry bars that are placed on those immigrants, which for many is the only obstacle standing in their way from being able to follow the legal process of gaining residency? Absolutely. So think about this. Y'all are gonna be at some point in your lives where I am. Okay. I live in fear. I live in fear that something that I, in fact, it has happened, okay? Where someone has sent the threat, right? That because I said or did something that they're gonna take it out on my kid. I live in fear that my son is gonna be punished for my sins. In what society is that okay? In what society do you punish the kid for the sins of the parent? Nikolas has no say in where he lives. He gets dragged along wherever his mother and I are, right? It's our decision. Now, when he turns 18, that's a different story, right? But when he was two or three or four, you know where he was? He was where we were. And so for those kids who were brought here to punish them for the sins of their parents seems to me a complete miscarriage of justice. I don't know any country that punishes the kids for the sins of their parents and their mothers. And so it's important to me that these kids who we have invested in as a country because we have educated them, right? Many in the public school system. It's important to recognize that they have talents that can contribute to the American economy, right? If they get jobs, they're paying Social Security and they're not drawing anything out. We're benefiting from that. So, give them a shot at the American dream. They don't have a country to go back to. It's not as if they feel like they're from, you know, wherever. I mean, they have an affinity for the U.S., especially those who want to serve in the U.S. military because that to me says a lot. I was outraged completely. And one of the things that I was working on, the little piece of immigration reform that I had, and I don't remember now the instance or the details, but I remember, you know, if your spouse gets killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, you're buried with full military honors, right? And they give you a flag and they tell you that they're giving you this flag on behalf of a grateful nation, all right?  So, you know what that grateful nation was doing? To spouses of people who have been killed, but the spouse wasn't a citizen, the grateful nation was deporting them and their family. And I just, there's certain things, fundamentally, that are just unfair. If I could fix all the unfairness in the world, I would, I would, but I can only fix, you know, a limited number and you go and you do the best that you can. What do you think used to be done in Congress to manage border security and prevent the illegal immigrants and jugs across our border with Mexico? Well, part of the challenge is that you've got to get people who actually know something about the border to work on border policy, because right now our border policy is driven by people who don't know anything about the border, right? They come here for one day out of 365 and then they think they're, they got a helicopter tour and they think they're actually. And that's just, you know, Steve King of Iowa, for example, I mean, our border policy is driven by phobias and fears, you know? So a couple of key things to remember, we all want to sleep safely and soundly in our beds, okay? We all want border security. Just because you're not in favor of a wall doesn't mean that you're not in favor of border security. But there's some things that we can do with equipment and personnel. You'll find if you travel to the Ophillo and you look at the equipment at the international bridge there in the Ophillo and the facilities there. And then you travel next door to Eagle Pass. You'll find a big difference in the facilities. We've invested in one place. We haven't invested in the other. If we're serious about this, we need to move the technology forward that can actually help us look for those drugs and those different kinds of things. There are not that many crossings in the country where there's a railroad crossing, right? But there's more than one. But how many machines do we have that will scan railroad cars to determine what's in a railroad car? Well, the last time when I was in Congress, something I don't know now, but we have one. And so at the other ports, you just, they took their chances, right? So first you've got to invest in the manpower and in the technology. I drive by checkpoints all the time and there's always a sign that says, if you're interested in working for us, here's the number. Because they always have vacancies and they always have vacancies because they'll get paid well. They're ours, you're careful. And we need to do something to make those jobs. We need to incentivize people to be able to stay and to be able to like work in the border patrol. So those are the two things, three things really. If you can count the first wing where you have people that actually know about border policy, driving the train on border policy. I laughed the other day when during the KTSA, I was going to debate with Mr. Herb. Mr. Herb said that he would leave that to the people on the ground. And it's like, this is a border district. You were one of the guys on the ground. You know, you should be driving this train. You should be leaving this conversation. So, because that's what I would be doing. I would definitely be there. The latest on the Affordable Care Act is that premiums are increasing this year by 25%. What's wrong with the Affordable Care Act? And if elected, what would you do to improve the system? I'm a youth believer, except from the beginning, that it's an imperfect system. There are a few things that I think are important to keep, all right?  Speaking of preexisting conditions, I don't know how many of you know someone who has had cancer or diabetes or any one of the number of things, all right? Those folks wouldn't be able to get health insurance because once you got sick, you have a preexisting condition and you can't get health insurance, all right? I don't know how many of your parents have health insurance. But now, you can leave your son or daughter for me. That's important because Nicholas can stay on health insurance on his family's health insurance until he's 26. Those are big deals, all right? Now, let's talk a little bit about how a bill becomes a law because the Republicans have spent, when I was in Congress, they were at 50 something times that they had tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, all right? And repeal means getting rid of everything and going back to what was before, okay? So you wanna, what's the Affordable Care Act called? Obamacare, all right? So for a bill to pass, it has to pass the House, it has to pass the Senate, and it has to be signed by the President, all right? And the President's last name is, okay, so if the President's last name is Obama, is he gonna sign a bill that repeals Obamacare? Okay, so why are you spending all your time and effort on something that's not gonna happen, all right? It's a political statement, that's all. Why can't we spend our time and effort at fixing things? That was my frustration, because there's things clearly that need to be fixed. This chair, if it was built for four legs and it had three, would I be able to, would I be comfortable sitting in it? Why not? I think we should take care of it. You can take a bow or something. All right, so one of the parts that was built into the Affordable Care Act to help take care of people and to keep premiums low was the expansion of the Medicaid, right? Putting more people in the Medicaid. Now, did Texas expand its Medicaid program? Governor Perry refused to do it. Governor Abbott followed suit. So they've turned down a lot of federal money. And when you turn down federal money, it's not like you're doing anybody a favor and you're lowering the deficit, because your tax dollars in Texas, they've just went to California and New York and Florida. So California and New York and Florida got the benefit of the tax dollars that you paid, all right? So the first thing is, you've gotta build this network. You've gotta create a system of exchanges and exchange was a marketplace. Let me go back for a second. The interesting thing, y'all don't remember this, but when President Clinton got elected and his wife, now Secretary Clinton, decided that she wanted to make her cause insuring kids, okay? So she put forth a plan, the Republicans hated it. And so the Republicans, the speaker at that time was a guy named Newt Gingrich. So he put forth a plan. And he put forth a plan that was essentially market driven that created what were called exchanges, marketplaces, where insurance companies could come and compete, all right? So fast forward to the Obama administration. The Obama administration saw what had happened in the Clinton administration. They didn't wanna have the same fights. So they took Newt Gingrich's bill, right? Which at that point had also been Mitt Romney's bill, who was governor of, which is why the Democrats sometimes call it Romney care, right? And so he took the Republican program and proposed it in Congress thinking, gosh, well, since the Republicans liked this before and they liked this at the state level, they should like it now, all right? Not a single Republican voted for it. And in fact, they did everything they could to muck it up. And so now we're left with a system where we need to do some things to fix it. And first of all, we gotta put more people into the system to drive the cost down. So one of my suggestions with the, if you're a small business, you're considered, you gotta have 25 employees or less, right? Well, why can't we make that 50 employees or less? So that at 50 employees or less, you're entitled to these kinds of things. That'll put more employees in, that'll put more people in, and you can do that. Why is it that we make it so difficult to enroll? Not only if you wanna be a provider, but if you wanna just sign up, we make 80 screens or however many things you have to fill out, and why do we do that? That doesn't have to be that way. We can simplify it both for the people who are trying to buy insurance and for the people who are trying to provide insurance. We've gotta also decide how we're gonna fix this thing where insurance companies play fairly with more doctors. Because right now, I mean, y'all don't know this, but I've been having some interesting conversations with the physician because a couple of weeks ago, I woke up and I couldn't see out of what I am. And it turned out I needed emergency eye surgery. And in talking to these doctors, just in conversation, because one of them casually mentioned, oh, I've seen you on TV, and let me talk to you about, and so having I worked on it, I'm talking to you about the Affordable Care Act, right? And so they're telling me that from one day to the next, the insurance company just drops you and says, we don't want you anymore. You can't participate in this planning. So we've gotta fix that. And then one of the biggest things, this is me growing up on the border, okay?  That is a problem in and of itself. But problem number two comes in the fact that the single biggest provider of prescription drugs in this country is the federal government through all the Medicaid program and the Medicare, all these systems are.  Can you give me a volume discount? And the drug company will tell Wal-Mart or Costco, whoever's sure, we'll give you a volume discount. It's the biggest buyer of prescription drugs, is the government. And you know the government is prohibited from asking for a volume discount? It's against the law to give the government a volume discount on medicine. So that your tax dollars, you have to pay more for medicine when we have to be getting a volume discount like everybody else. So for me, that's also a big repealer, right? That was a Republican provision where they were trying to help the drug companies make more money, which I mean, look, I understand. But why is it that the cost of all of these things, I mean, you all may have read recently, if you Google EpiPens, okay? And you're looking at somebody who's allergic to peanuts. You know, when my doctors asked me about, they wanted to finish the conversation about Obamacare when we went to dinner and they said, where do you wanna go? And I said, one of them wanted to eat Thai. And you know, Thai's cooked with a lot of peanuts. And I said, well, I'll go there if you carry, if you bring me EpiPen and if you wanna work on your CPR skills, then I guess that's the only, you know. But the cost of EpiPens? And how are normal people supposed to pay that stuff? So anyway, those are all my frustrations. Those are things I would do to help. Do you see any flaws in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and what steps would you like to see done to improve it if you're elected to Congress? So the GDP is a really controversial proposal. I can't tell you that I've read it, detail by gory detail. So what I will tell you is that there are certain basic guidelines that I would look for. I'm more of a believer in fair trade as opposed to just free trade. I think we learned a lot from our NAFTA experience about things could be better in the enforcement mechanisms when somebody doesn't do what they're supposed to when somebody doesn't follow through. I think we need to be able to take care of our own, make sure that we're okay because many times you don't want the jobs that you will need later going away to some of their country because it's gonna be really difficult to get them back. And so in the event of some national emergency or some national crisis, if you're looking right now at some of the technology, we buy so much, for example, from China that if our relationship with China was ever broken and not repairable, then we would be in a world of hurt in our technology stuff. We need to have enough capacity in enough industries at home where we will be okay from a national security perspective. So those are the kinds of things that I wouldn't look for. I wanna make sure that employees are treated fairly because I don't want a situation. I don't want to contribute to a situation that makes people suffer more. And by that, I mean, over the course of time, if you've traveled at all in Mexico, as an example, you see a lot of little really young kids that are Nicholas's age who are having to work to make ends meet for their families, right? And that in and of itself, look, I started working young and that's okay. But it's how they're treated, right? And it's how many hours they have to work. And it's the fact that they're not going to school. There's certain things that I think are too expensive in the long term. I'm a big believer, you know, whether you like labor unions or not, that a lot of what we know today is thanks to a labor union, right? The fact that you have five-day work weeks, where did that come from, right? The fact that you get paid separately for overtime, where did that come from, right? The fact that your work day is only X number of hours long, where did that come from? And so I want to make sure that we put our best foot forward so that in some other country, we're not incentivizing that behavior so that they're working their folks, 80 and 90 and 120 hours a week, in order to make money for just a few people. Because at the end of the day, we're all, you know, look as one of the world's leading superpowers. At some point that comes back to us. And so from a national perspective, a national security perspective, I think you got to keep enough, you got to watch out so that you're not sending all of your industries to some other place. The next question is from a student, I believe it's not here, right? So I'll take the privilege of asking for him. One of his classes assignments is to ask parents how they're keeping their children informed about the campaign when some of the language and some of the issues are not PG. What are you and your wife doing with Nicholas about the campaign? How are you handling it? I have really tried hard not to let him see stuff. I have not been entirely successful because he's a really inquisitive kid.  I'm embarrassed at the tone and tenor of the campaign. And I have been for 15 months. I mean, this is not a new phenomenon. I don't see how you can talk like that. And so what I do is I sit with him and I talk to him about how that's not acceptable. He's an only child. He doesn't have sisters. But he has aunts and he has a mom and he has a grandmother too. And not only that, but I want him to have respect not only for them, but I want him to have respect for every little girl in his classroom. So I talk to him about how and why that is absolutely, totally, thoroughly and completely unacceptable. And what, why is wrong?  I was in the legislature. He spent his mornings. If you Google Nicholas, I have your remarks. You will see that he has spoken. He spoke at the State Democratic Convention to about 15,000 people. Not many 11-year-olds can say they've done that, right? And he did a great job. He's extremely extroverted. But he doesn't understand why people say the things that they did. And it's hard as a parent. I mean, four years ago, the first time I was running for Congress, I made the mistake of leaving a flyer on my table. And I wanted my wife, Maria Elena, to see it. Because I tend to bounce things off before we chat about how do you move forward? Well, four years ago, Nick Ross was seven, right? So it was a fold-out flyer. And on the front page, it had an image of the... It had an image of Jesus. And it said that I had abandoned my Catholic faith. And the back was an image of the Virgin Mary praying in rosary, praying for my soul, because I had abandoned God. And I won't tell you, there were some really graphic pictures inside the fold-out, which Nick Ross saw. And Nick Ross comes to me and he says, Dad, is this true? Have you abandoned your Catholic faith? And the irony is that at this point, Nicolás was going through for Catholics, this first community. And I smiled at him and I said, Nicolás, yeah, por favor. The reason that you're going through your first community right now is because your mother and I think it important that you be grounded in our faith. Our family has been in the Catholic Church for generations, it's part of our core value. It's part of our core culture. And I want you to understand not only your history, but I also want you to understand how important it is to have a relationship with God. So then Nicolás' next question is, okay, so you're telling me it's not true. So if it's not true, why do they say? So the next question, the answer, I said, look, Nicolás. You know, in politics, sometimes people exaggerate.  And I said, well, yeah, exaggerating is lying. So then the next question was the hardest to do now. Because the next question Nicolás asks is, so you have to explain to me, Dad, why it is that you want anything to do with a profession where it's okay to lie.  And I said, well, Nicolás, it's not ever. But the reason that I do this and the reason that I subject myself to this and frankly, the reason that you get subjected to it too is because I want to run because I want to change the rules. I don't think it's okay. I want to hold this to a higher standard. I want life to be better than it is right now. I want rules to be more clearly understood and defined and I want people to respect. And so those are the kinds of things that I think are important. They're simple values. Look, I don't think that anything in life is that complicated. You want to solve the deficit. There's things that you can do to do it, right? You want to do immigration reform? We can do immigration reform.  You just got to do the policy. And because we're so carried away in all of the politics and the yelling and the screaming that we don't fix. And so that's what I try to tell Nikolax is I try to tell him, look, keep your eye on the point. Focus on what's important. Lead by example and set your standards high so that people always say, you know what? That guy, he's different. He's different. And I really try to be different. You just answered the last question, brother. Which is, why should students vote for you? So you skip the head. So I think it's okay. Anybody have any follow-ups? I was that boring, y'all are asleep? No, I'm fine. That's the one good question. How important do you think it is for higher education institutions like A&M newly based in district 23? How important do you think it is to have these newly established institutions in this district? Oh, I think there would be a lot. I mean, anytime you create more opportunities, this one is special to me. And I'll say why. Frank Matlow is a great friend of mine. I served in the legislature with him. I knew him well. You know, in Spanish, you would say era, era íntimo mismo, me llego mucho. He was not only a friend, he was a mentor.  And so this, the South side as a whole was always important to him. But this was his passion. This was his drive. This was his dream. And so I had the opportunity as another member of the legislature to make his dream come true. And even now, when I have an opportunity to help his dream grow, I try to do that. All right.