Panetta town hall focuses on Trump, immigration, healthcare

HE WOULD get questions about healthcare, immigration and other important issues at a town hall meeting at Cal State Monterey Bay Monday, but Congressman Jimmy Panetta opened the night with a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump, including the commander in chief's "weak" response to the killing of a woman in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12 by a man said to be a Nazi sympathizer.

Days after returning from a congressional trip to Israel, Panetta fielded questions from constituents at a well attended meeting at CSUMB. Panetta first spent more than three minutes slamming Trump for not initially calling out white supremacists and racists for the violence in the city — criticism Trump has received from Democrats and Republicans.

"You would think that in the immediate aftermath of such a horrific and horrendous event, that our president would have maybe provided some words of healing" and words that "bring people together; some unity," Panetta told the crowd at CSUMB's World Theater.

Instead, the Democrat said Trump delivered what he considered to be a "pretty weak and equivocal statement about the wrongdoing of many groups."

"I can tell that it wasn't many groups. Instead, what drove that violence" and what Trump "should have discussed," was the "hatred, was the discrimination, was the antiSemitism, was the racism, was the white supremacism. That's what should have been discussed," said Panetta to strong applause.

A 20-year-old Ohio man was arrested and charged with plowing a car into a group of protestors and killing Heather Heyer, 32.

News footage and photographs shows violence by extremists on the right and left, and Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said Monday that "mutually combative individuals" were involved in the fray.

While Trump issued a stronger statement on Monday condemning the KKK and other racist groups for violence in Virginia, Panetta said, "to me, it's too late. It's too late."

And the Democrat continued to admonish the president.

"It seems that every week we come to a situation where it's the president's worst week ever," Panetta said to audience laughter. "And it's understandable, because in these last eight months he has been in the White House, we've seen a president who literally is incapable of learning on the job. He's incapable of rising to the occasion, and he's incapable of speaking with conviction about something besides himself."

Many concerns

Panetta then took questions from an overwhelmingly accepting crowd at the town hall, which was moderated by Monterey College of Law president and dean, Mitch Winick. Panetta's parents, Leon and Sylvia, were also there. Responding to a woman who decried the rolling back of environmental regulations by EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and asked Panetta how to "stop him," the congressman said that Democrats have "put the full court press" on Trump in response to his April executive order calling for a review of designations and expansions of all national marine sanctuaries, and to consider the possibility of energy exploration.

Panetta said they've proposed legislation that seeks to stop offshore oil drilling in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and sent a litany of letters to the heads of the departments of Commerce and the Interior opposing the concept.

"It's just continuing to let our voices be heard that they are not going to take away what is so important to us," Panetta said. "And I will be the stalwart fighter when it comes to that."

Immigration

Reading a question posed to Panetta by someone on Facebook, Winick said, "How are you going to convince Republican colleagues to work with you on immigration reform?"

Calling immigration his "number one issue," Panetta said he wrote a letter coauthored by another Democratic Congressman and two Republican representatives from California to "explain to [Trump] how important immigration and immigration reform is to our agriculture."

"Now I don't know if he read it; he probably didn't," Panetta said. "But the fact is, that was just the first step in bringing Democrats and Republicans together."

Panetta also pointed to the Blue Card Agricultural Worker Program Act, which would allow illegal immigrant ag workers and their families legal status and the right to work in the United States if they show "consistent employment" for two previous years, pay a fine and pass a thorough background check. A three- to five-year path to citizenship is offered for those who continue to work in ag for the requisite amount of time.

"We need to make sure we keep them here, and that's what this blue card bill does," he said.

The bill seeks to keep immigrant ag workers in California in light of a shortage of such workers, 60 percent of whom are over age 50, Panetta said.

But the bill — a companion bill to one proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein — won't pass without Republican support, and it fails to address, for instance, what would happen to law abiding illegal immigrants who fall short of working in ag for two years, and those who don't happen to work in agriculture, which is most of the country's undocumented employees. It also says nothing about tightening up border controls.

Healthcare

A 55-year-old woman from Pacific Grove said that while she's been a proponent of the Affordable Care Act, as a selfemployed person living on the Peninsula, the healthcare plan has "majorly backfired." When her Blue Shield plan was canceled, she went onto the state's exchange, which cost her three times what she had been paying, and her deductible went up four times. Meanwhile, her coverage went "way down."

"Over the years, the premiums went up and up and up," she said. "And I just got this lovely letter from Anthem Blue Cross canceling me for a second time."

She wanted to know what Panetta could do to help ensure that she and others have healthcare in 2018. Panetta said healthcare was the second most-talked-about issue on the campaign trail, after immigration, and he mainly heard from those who were "dissatisfied with it." "This story is common — you are not alone," he said. "And that is why I have always said, [Obamacare] "doesn't need to be repealed, it needs to be repaired.'"

Though Panetta conceded he wasn't sure if anything could be done soon to improve the healthcare conundrum, he said he would try to "protect people like you and make sure people here who benefit from the ACA continue to have their insurance and healthcare."

Panetta also fielded questions about veterans affairs, transgender troops, federal funds for senior housing, the possibility of statehood for Puerto Rico and other topics.