McMorris Rodgers faces lively town hall

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) met with her local constituents, who peppered her with questions ranging from school safety to border security during a town hall meeting in Pullman’s Pioneer Center on Thursday.

In her opening remarks, McMorris Rodgers boasted of gains made in health care, bemoaned stalls to her plan to enshrine protections for Washington dams and declared progress on the economy and unemployment she said was made possible by the controversial Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The first question of the evening, posed by Washington State University student and Young Democrats President Quinton Berkompas, addressed McMorris Rodgers' vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

"You voted to take health care away from 18 million Americans, and I want to know why," Berkompas said.

In response, McMorris Rodgers spoke of a return to individual freedoms in the health care market and a need to cap rising insurance premiums.

"The legislation that I voted on didn't take health care away from anyone," McMorris Rodgers said. "What it would do is repeal some of the regulations coming from the federal level so that we would have more options as individuals and small businesses for health insurance plans that would better meet your needs."

McMorris Rodgers was met with challenges - and at times, outright laughter - when responding to a question concerning the dissolution of the Obama-era Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals program and whether the Republican Party was prepared to abandon hopes for a border wall.

"There's a lot of different pieces to fixing a broken immigration system. Part of it is border security," McMorris Rodgers said, before being challenged and spoken over by 30-year Pullman resident Margaret Peyou.

"Now you are separating families - children from families, that is not border security," Peyou said through tears. "Having a mother - having her children ripped from her arms, may never see her again - how do you feel, as a mother, about that?"

In answer, McMorris Rodgers tied border security to the opioid crisis. She said she was reminded of the importance of securing the Mexican border during a series of recently held roundtable discussions concerning narcotics.

"We have an opioid crisis right now," McMorris Rodgers said. "The heroin and the fentanyl, where is it coming from? It's coming from Mexico, and it's coming from China through Mexico, across our border into the United States of America."

McMorris Rodgers moved on to say that her biggest disappointment in last year's controversial budget agreement was that it lacked a DACA fix that would address the status of so-called "Dreamers" brought to the U.S. as children. The Congresswoman fumbled for a moment when challenged on what such legislation would look like, but eventually said a DACA fix would give recipients a legal status to work, join the military and go to school in the U.S., with an eventual path toward citizenship. However, she said, a DACA fix must be coupled with border security legislation, which means a border wall.

When the conversation turned to school safety, McMorris Rodgers said she has engaged in efforts to shore up deficiencies within national registries to ensure guns do not wind up in the hands of the mentally ill. Part of the solution includes increased funding for more school counselors and resource officers, she said, and other efforts must focus on mending the social and moral infrastructure of American society. She said she is currently working on bringing a program to Spokane high schools that would encourage students to include lonely or solitary outliers in their social spheres.

Other questions posed in the hour-long town hall touched on President Donald Trump's recently issued gag order to health care providers, which opponents say is designed specifically to hobble funding for Planned Parenthood, as well as her position on the president's decision to move forward with tariffs on Chinese imports, which she said she opposed.

McMorris Rodgers has represented Washington's 5th Congressional District since 2005 and is up for re-election Nov. 6.

Scott Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to sjackson@dnews.com.