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aloha and happy new year i'm congressman ed case coming to you from capitol hill in washington dc with another edition of my congressman ed case reports these reports back to you are for two reasons number one of course i want to let you know what i'm doing on your behalf in washington dc but equally important number two i want to invite you to provide me with your guidance to ask me your questions and to let me know what my office and i can do for you some of the most important information i can provide you in this entire show is going to be flashing on the bottom of your screen and that is how to get more information on my office and how you can contact me the absolute best entree to my office is through my website at case.house.gov case.house.gov that website gives you a whole bunch of information on me on my activities on my votes on the issues that i'm dealing with here in washington dc and back home and on how to get in touch with me it also provides you with the opportunity to reach me by email that's very easy ed.case mail.house.gov or please feel free to call my honolulu district office at 650-6688 all of that information should be on the bottom of the screen please check it out and contact me after all this is your office let me provide you a little bit of an overview on the show and get into some details later on and exactly what i'm facing in this congress as i tape this show it is january 4th 2021 and yesterday january 3rd i was sworn in as a member of the u.s house of representatives representing hawaii's first congressional district for the 117th congress now what does that mean it means that since adoption of our constitution for our country in 1789 our congress has met for two year sessions every two years this is the 117th time we have started a session of the united states congress the first one by the way was in 1789 of course and that went from 1789 until 1791 washington dc wasn't even created then or at least it was not much of what it is today the first congress started in new york city and then moved on to philadelphia later congresses started in washington d.c the first congress was the first two years of the presidency of george washington so i'll tell you that we've been doing congresses for a long time 117 of them now these have been happening throughout our country's history through war and peace through stability and calm through difficulty and relative lack of difficulty every two years congress has convened for a two-year session and it has been our responsibility throughout that history in each one of these congresses for us to provide the national leadership that is needed for our country and so the 117th congress which just started will run from today yesterday uh through two years from now so it will run until january 2023 at which time the 118th congress will commence my current term as your u.s representative goes congress by congress so my term is a two-year term and i'm reporting to you at the very very beginning of my current two-year term in 117th congress this is actually the fifth time that i've taken the oath of office to defend and protect our constitution as a u.s representative i was a member of the 116th congress representing hawaii's first congressional district during the prior two years 2019 to 2021. i also served hawaii uh in the second congressional district in the 109th congress 2005 to 2007 108th congress uh 2003 to 2005. and a portion of the 107th congress in 2002. previous to that i spent almost three years in my in my early part of my career as a legislative assistant at the u.s congressman my predecessor and later u.s senator spark matsunaga right here on capitol hill so i'm coming up on nine years here in congress and i have never felt a greater responsibility to our country to our hawaii and to you than i do right now i'd like to start every congress in these reports by kind of going back to the basics just to lay the groundwork for you on on what's going on uh in my life and and in my job responsibilities on your behalf so allow me to kind of go back to the beginning many people know this already but sometimes we can all stand a refresher including me by the way also let me tell you a little bit about this strange institution that i work in called your congress the first thing i want to tell you about congress which we all learned in in high school and in civics class but sometimes we forget is that congress under our system of government under our constitution is one of our three branches of government we know that the executive branch headed by the president congress and then the supreme court with the supreme court justices but what is often forgotten is that congress is a separate independent and co-equal branch of government separate independent and co-equal that means that the president is not my boss i don't answer to the president that's not how our founding fathers constructed our country they thought it was unwise to centralize that much power in one person and so as we all know they built a system of checks and balances under which congress is responsible for making our own decisions of course we want to work with the president whenever and however we can of course we all want to find the common ground for our country but we also have it is a responsibility to make those decisions for ourselves and not just take the word of the president or of his or her administration we are guided by what the supreme court tells us but within the bounds of our constitution and our laws we are charged with making our own decisions uh in conjunction with our constitution and laws as interpreted by the supreme court so my role in in my job is to function as part of a separate independent and co-equal branch of government this is sometimes awkward it's often difficult there's stresses and strains in our system uh when we disagree and we have to find a way forward together but again that's how our founders envisioned it and that is the responsibility that i have so my responsibility flows directly to the people that i represent you and not through anybody else not through a president not through another member of congress nobody it's just me to you and that's my job um i think we all know that congress is made up of the u.s house and the u.s senate but let's just go through those basics as well the united states the senate has a hundred members two per state regardless of population that was set up uh in the beginning to really equalize the power and influence of small states versus large states it was felt that small states might get swallowed up if all you did was just base it on on population and so it's two states two people per state whether it's california or for that matter hawaii in the u.s house on the contrary it is by population there are 435 of us voting members of congress and that is divided up roughly by the population of our country so if you take the math and take roughly 330 million of us in the united states and divide that by 435 you'll come up with about 750 000. so each of us is responsible for representing 750 000 uh of our own constituents and that's just about exactly what i personally represent in the first congressional district of hawaii let me tell you a little bit about my district and how i view my district first of all it is just an amazing district it stretches from makapuu a point in the east it is really described by most people as urban honolulu we all know that that doesn't quite describe my district because it's not all urban honduras but that's an easy way to look at it honolulu and the immediate suburbs if you want to look at it that way it starts on makapuu to the east where the sun rises over oahu it flows through kalama valley queensgate niu aina haina waialai kahala central honolulu the valleys the ridges the plateaus of kakaako the high-rises downtown through kalihi mapuna puna moanalua ivilai the airport and then westward pearl city aiea into waipahu crestview waipio mililani mililani mauka launani valley up to the borderline of wahiawa i don't actually have any of wahiawa other than for a small sliver right there on the lake but then it comes back down through waipahu and out to ewa down fort weaver road to have a beach out through the credible communities of of new eva if i can put it that way kapolei koalina honokai hale and it ends at kahe point close to where the sun sets on oahu uh it is one of the most uh diverse districts in our entire country by many many markers ethnically absolutely one of the most diverse origin one of the highest percentages of folks that were born in another country and came to our country looking for a better life uh one of the uh incredible uh areas of great disparities in income disparities in wealth uh where you have very wealthy neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are not doing very well at all uh a neighbor uh a community of of distinct neighborhoods um each of them its own but all making up honolulu proper it is the economic engine of our state i represent waikiki and our tourist industry represent downtown i represent many many of the small businesses throughout our entire state right in my district it is the center of our country's national security in the indo-pacific we all know a little bit about our military's function and role in hawaii but think about this that when we take a look at our national defense and our military they are divided up throughout the world by joint commands what is referred to as joint commands so it's kind of a centralized command for all the armed forces from from the army to the navy to the to the marines the air force etc coast guard and that joint command is led by a a commander of the indo-pacific region indo-pacom for short and indo-pacom is located right in my district not only is indo and the kuleana of indo-pacom the region of the world that it is responsible stretches from the west coast of california to the west coast of india from alaska to antarctica it is the largest unified command of any of our commands by far geographically throughout the entire world it is the most from my perspective the most important joint command we have in our entire country right now a given the rise of china and the potential uh not just potential but the great problems posed by the way that china has approached the rest of the world including our own backyard of the pacific and so this is a critical area not not just for indo-pacom itself but for all of our armed services who are headquartered also on oahu the navy the air force the army the marines the coast guard all right on oahu and most of them physical headquarters right in my district uh it is the center of higher education uh in our in our state uh the university of hawaii at manoa is in my district along with many of its community colleges and and associated universities including the newest at west oahu in my district many of our institutions of private learning chaminade weight pacific university all in my district i could go on and on about my district i hope what i'm communicating to you is that number one i feel incredibly privileged to represent such a diverse and vibrant community but nonetheless the responsibilities have represented a community uh with with all of those uh differences with all of those needs with all of those opportunities uh is is an immense responsibility that i take very seriously now here in congress i don't do this job alone and i think what i want to do is talk a little bit about my partners in this enterprise which is representing you in the united states congress of course we have two united states senators senators schatz and hirono worked very very closely with both of them in the last congress and look forward to that partnership again and then i was privileged to work with former congresswoman tulsi gabbard in the prior congress we had a very good working relationship and i wish her only the best uh yesterday kayali kahele from my own hometown of hilo was sworn in to take congresswoman gabbard's place and to represent hawaii's great second congressional district i've known congressman kylie for a long long time we have been friends we have been partners before you even got to congress uh and um i've watched his preparation uh to become hawaii's newest united states uh representative and i think that he has done an incredible job of getting himself ready for this job i think he's about as well prepared as any member of the new member of the united states house from hawaii has ever been and so i'm really just frankly uh very very honored and and happy that he's uh joining me as my partner and i think that this delegation um look we're all different people we're not clones of each other we've all had different experiences different lives we have different beliefs and many times we don't vote alike ah but having said that like our predecessors in the hawaii congressional delegation throughout our history we have tried very very hard uh when it comes to hawaii in particular to try to agree on what the best way forward is for hawaii with our federal government on so many issues whether they be our military or assisting with federal housing opportunities the less the list could go on and on we have tried to come together and we have in large part been successful at coming together despite the differences on national policy and i think that that is the secret we all hold hawaii uh close to our hearts so we're all committed to hawaii and we all are on the same page in terms of wanting to help hawaii and so i you know i just think this is a very very good delegation and uh i have a great confidence that we'll be able to do our very best collectively and after all uh collective is always better than individual if you can do it because we can mass the collective abilities of our individual efforts one thing about a small state like hawaii we only have four members of our delegation only four members to represent our state out of 535. contrast that to dozens and dozens of members both senators and representatives from states like california texas or florida new york ohio illinois and on and on pretty soon you realize that you really really have to have a delegation that can work together that unifies where it can for hawaii and it really punches above its weight its individual weight so the only way to really to get this done is collectively and we have been successful in doing that and again i i think that we will continue to be successful uh in this particular 117th congress let me tell you a little bit about kind of how i try to get my job done and particularly my office because i can't do this alone and i i don't do this alone i have two offices two physical offices maybe that means far less in terms of covet 19 but nonetheless we do have offices most of my staff has been working with all of my staff and i have worked been working primarily remotely since covet 19 and that will continue for the foreseeable future while we try to centralize our efforts out of our offices i have an office right here in washington dc directly upstairs from where i'm sitting right now in the rayburn building it's interestingly the office that patsy mink once occupied during her prior service so i feel a certain sense of history in my office and then back in honolulu i have i have an office in downtown honduras which is a very easy for folks to get to once i'm able to reopen it again which i hope is going to happen very very soon i have a great staff that helps me the numbers fluctuate a little bit but today i have eight full-time staff members in washington d.c and five full-time staff members back in honolulu i also um on on on for the most part have interns in my office folks that are in the middle of their education or right out of their education that want to get a taste of of what it's like to work in a congressional office i try very hard to make that opportunity available to our our younger folks back in hawaii and frankly my hope is that they will also choose the same career that i did after my own internship because that's how i started out was as an intern on capitol hill but i especially want them to understand what's going on the real world of congress and capitol hill and to take that back into their own careers often i also for the first time have a fellow from our defense department he is a he is a lieutenant an active duty lieutenant in the navy he joins me actually today and the idea there is that our defense department wants their military officers sometime pretty early in their career the ones that show great potential in terms of their own advancement and leadership they want them to know how congress works and so they ask offices such as mine whether they can put people in their offices for a year uh and that's what is happening in my case and of course from from the defense department's a perspective that's great because they have people that understand congress understand how to communicate with congress on on the military's needs and for me it's great too because i have expertise in my office especially given a state like hawaii that has so much involvement with our military now virtually all of my staff are actually from hawaii uh so they're they're they're from hawaii i don't have to explain to them you know you know where uh wherever beach is or they know it already i don't have to explain to them the diversity the the needs it's pretty easily understood and the very few people that are not technically from hawaii know a pretty darn cold and so i focus very very much on people that actually do understand hawaii that actually can communicate with you so that if you call my office or write my office again you don't have to educate them on on the situation back home they'll already know it so that's been an important part and they are very essential to helping me do my job probably a pretty good opportunity for me to talk to you about what i think my job is i think it's pretty important when you have a job to have a pretty clear sense of mission a pretty clear sense of what you're trying to accomplish and why you're trying to accomplish it and how you're going to accomplish it and that's how i try to treat my office as well and so let me describe to you the way i take a look at my office and my responsibilities what what am i supposed to be doing in this job well i think about it in really three buckets if i can put it that way the first bucket is national leadership the second bucket is helping hawaii and the third bucket is helping you let me tell you a little bit about each of those buckets national leadership that's my constitutional obligation as a member of congress as a member of a separate independent and co-equal branch of government to chart the course for our country to make the decisions for our country to provide the national direction for our country to try to try to work out with my colleagues in congress the best way forward for our country these are any and all of the issues that face our country on any given day from domestic to foreign policy what should we do with iran how do we how do we address the growing threat of china how do we reach out to the pacific islands to forge relationships with our with our partners in the pacific how do we try to solve the intractable issues uh in the middle east i could go down the list those are not those are national foreign policy issues domestic how do we protect social and preserve social security how do we handle the demands between federal spending on the one hand and trying to maintain physical responsibility on the other how do we provide for the truly needy in our country how do we how do we protect our environment these are national issues and i have a role in those national issues the second bucket helping hawaii that's more about hawaii that's about this basic question how can our federal government help us because our federal government exists to help all americans nationally as well as those in the individual states and so my job in terms of helping hawaii comes with what is the federal government doing or not doing that helps or doesn't help hawaii and how can i either increase that aid or get the federal government to correct matters that are not helping at all and that falls across the board a great deal of that part of my job comes out of my membership on the appropriations committee the committee that is responsible for all federal discretionary funding so the federal money and i'll get back to that because that's a critical part of my job i want to spend a little bit more time on the probes as we as we call it but it's not just the probes it is it is facilitating um grants to folks throughout hawaii not a direct appropriation not a direct federal fund but certainly helping somebody uh in terms of federal funding sometimes our federal government just doesn't get hawaii it's not that they don't mean well but when you have a lot of people sitting in these fancy marble buildings in washington dc trying to figure out how to administer the laws of our country as they as they affect hawaii they don't get certain things about hawaii that are just so obvious to us and we don't get that they don't get it and so sometimes you've got to work through that i have a favorite story that i tell along these lines because i think it illustrates the point perfectly it comes from my my first my first tour of duty here in washington dc back in the the 2003-2007 time frame i got a call from a veteran [Music] he lived on lanai and he said i'm not getting i'm not getting a reimbursement that will allow me to travel from my home on lanai to tripler and that reimbursement is important to me i can't i can't pay for it myself the federal government is supposed to not only treat me at tripler but also to try to get me to tripler and that is true our law does say that our law says that veterans are entitled to care and if if they need extra assistance in getting to that care that is also part of their care and i said what's the problem and you said well this is that and that so i called up the veterans administration and said what's the problem you're not giving my veteran um any any reimbursement in the and uh the the va person said well you know what's the issue we're giving him the reimbursement and i said uh well you're not sufficiently compensating him for his travel costs and they said well how much does it cost to drive from lanai to oahu they just hadn't focused on the fact that we had a bunch of islands they didn't mean badly they just didn't understand now i could take that and macro it out to a lot of other areas but the bottom line here is that there are incredible opportunities for our federal government to help us in hawaii and there are incredible opportunities for the federal government to sometimes make mistakes and so you you try to take the areas where it's helping and amplify them try to take the areas where they're not active and get them active and you try to take the areas where perhaps there are some handicaps and try to fix those candy caps that's about helping hawaii that's the second bucket the third bucket is about you every single one of us in one way shape or form has some individual contact with our federal government maybe it's taxes that's a pretty well known individual contact area and no i can't i can't get i can't make anybody pay less taxes or change your tax laws so that's not part of my job but i can certainly make sure that the irs treats you fairly and gives you answers to your questions and there are many other areas of interaction between each and all of us and our federal government some of the most common are social security for all of our folks that are on social security medicare same comment our veterans i've already mentioned that immigration i mentioned earlier that we have one of the highest levels of immigration in our entire country and many many of our families here also have their own family members in their countries of origin who have applied and want to join them in this country lots of times they don't get the answers that they really need to make their own plans about the status of applications so every one of sometimes people don't get benefits that they think they're entitled to sometimes people just don't get an answer from a federal agency or at least an answer that makes sense and this part of my job is helping you with your individual issues and so in this area i especially ask people to contact me if you have any particular issues especially those that are federal now a lot of the issues frankly are state or county issues we have a tremendous example of this in the midst of our covet 19 crisis having to do with unemployment unemployment is a state program it has some federal supplementation to it but i have no direct role nor does the federal government in the administration of hawaii's state unemployment program which has been a real uh issue for so many thousands of our of our fellow residents um who have lost their jobs because of covet 19 and yet cannot get a good answer from the state unemployment office now i can't go in there and make the state unemployment office you know can give benefits where they're not warranted but i certainly can ask them to answer these questions and we do that is actually the highest number of folks in months and months that have asked my office for individual assistance but again anything that we can possibly help you with let us know sometimes it's just getting you to the right place we answer a lot of questions from people who call us up and say i've got this particular issue who should i contact well we know government we have partners throughout government our state government our county government our private sector business members our non-profits our community organizations usually we can get you to the right place if we can't actually do anything about it ourselves so that's the third part of my job so again a national leadership helping hawaii and helping you those are my for missions if i can put it that way um in terms of um how then do i go about the job i want to come back a little bit to the appropriations committee because i think this is a an area that is particularly important to how i do my job i mentioned earlier that the us house committee on appropriations is responsible for all federal discretionary spending that's roughly 1.4 trillion dollars a year and so uh appointment to that committee is is is highly coveted uh and um highly desired and i was incredibly fortunate when i started uh the 116th congress two years ago to be appointed to the committee on appropriations we hadn't had a hawaii delegation member serve on the appropriations committee for decades of course we're a little bit more familiar with senator inouye serving for decades on the senate appropriations committee and senator schatz has also gained appointment for for some years now to the senate a committee on appropriations uh so the opportunity for hawaii to not only have that seat again on on the approach committee in the united states house but they have kind of a twofer uh shots in me is a tremendous opportunity for us and we try very very hard to utilize that opportunity as much as we can to responsibly direct uh federal funding uh wherever we can to the needs of hawaii and comparable parts of our country programs such as for example i talked about our military earlier not only i believe do we have a responsibility to our country to host our military and to help our military wherever we can throughout hawaii but let's face the reality that by doing so we also see incredible investment by our federal government in hawaii as a matter of fact if you take a look at the kind of the traditional economic pillars of our hawaii travel and tourism clearly number one federal government number two our military accounts for some are in the range of 15 20 percent of our total economy by some measures higher and that gives all of us jobs and helps our economy and so that's an important part of appropriations but across the board i try to provide appropriations where i can spend a lot of time in that particular committee i'm looking forward to continuing service on the appropriations committee in the coming congress the appropriations committee actually breaks itself up into 12 subcommittees and each of these subcommittees covers a certain segment of our federal government so you will have for example the subcommittee on defense you'll have the subcommittee on energy and water the subcommittee on on the interior health and human services i serve on currently or i should say i used to serve because of course we're in a new congress i serve on the subcommittees on military construction and veterans affairs which is responsible for what it sounds like which is a critical area for hawaii all military construction and all veterans affairs we have one of the highest rates of veterans by population in the entire country not only are do we have 120 000 or so veterans and their families but we have one of the most diverse veteran populations in the entire country whether you want to talk about ethnicity or gender right on through the ranks and we have some very very special and unique needs for our veterans in hawaii i already mentioned one of them which is just distance from from tripler that also equates for example to how do you actually provide care the same level of care throughout a state that's separated by islands there are major issues in terms of our veterans maintaining benefits so anyway the the the obligation to our veterans on that particular subcommittee is great and the opportunities to help are great as well my second of three subcommittees is commerce justice and science commerce cjs as we call it responsible for all science spending throughout our country that's been valuable in terms of trying to assist our research institutions and universities and and and companies in hawaii who are into scientific research with federally funded scientific research grants and outright funding justice all about for example assisting our our community policing assisting on substance abuse programs run by the state commerce very very important across the board but most importantly probably is ocean research in hawaii of which our country does some of the leading ocean research in the entire world right in hawaii and we try very hard through appropriations to try to fund that wherever we can my third branch uh just because you're probably curious is is the legislative branch and so that covers all of the appropriations for congress not directly relevant to hawaii but it's a fascinating job people on that subcommittee are i guess referred to as the mayors of capitol hill in some ways i do expect that in this congress i'll i may have a different set of subcommittees that focus perhaps a little bit more directly on on many of the areas that i think are particularly important not only to our country but to hawaii um let's turn uh to some of the major issues uh that we all face and that i face uh in my office and when i start here um there's no way we can avoid kobit 19. it's hard to believe that it hasn't even been a year as i taped this that covet 19 really showed up in in any material way in our country it hasn't even been 11 months since we had the first case of covet 19 in hawaii it hasn't even been 10 or 9 months since we really went into any kind of preventive measures as to covet 19 and yet it has been such a such a devastating part of all of our lives uh during that short period of time um and um you know we all wish that we could see the actual end in sight in just a couple of weeks and i could take off this mask and talk to you without a mask on and we could meet again in the top stories in school cafeterias that i think are so valuable to my job but that's not in the cards covid19 is going to be with us and with me for this congress for two years now you know uh we we we certainly hope that from a public health perspective we have it pretty well in hand within that two-year period but certainly even if we do the economic and social and community harm done by covet 19 will be with us for a long time beyond this current congress and so i fully expect that my number one priority in this congress is going going to be helping our country and our hawaii with kovid 19. that doesn't mean that there's not going to be a lot of other challenges some that we know of today some of which i've mentioned already and some that we have no idea ar coming at us but covet 19 is going to be there and it's going to be at the top of the list so what's really happening with kobit 19 in in in my kuleana right now now well of course covet 19 you could you could really segment that out into the public health side the economic devastation side and the social uh devastation side on the public health side of course the the real effort besides maintaining a high level of scrutiny and and prevention and and following the advice of our scientific uh experts in terms of how we live with covid19 that's critical and the federal government has a major part of helping the states uh and the and the uh counties and and the country uh with that part of it of course we've already provided a major funding for things like testing and contact tracing now the big one is vaccinations because ultimately that is the answer that if we can get enough of us safely and quickly vaccinated to develop a broader safety net if i can put it that way or what some people call herd immunity i don't particularly like that term but you may know it as that where most of us are immune to contracting copit 19 and we can start to mingle again which is not only important to us in our lives but to our tourism economy in particular and everything related to it from restaurants to entertainment and well beyond vaccinations is the answer of course we we have vaccines that the fda has approved and the challenge now is going to be to continue a rate of manufacturing that is sufficient for the country to have enough folks vaccinated as quickly and as safely as possible but it's you know it's one thing to manufacture covet 19. it's another thing to distribute it to the states but it's quite another thing once it arrives in the states to distribute it throughout the states and right to the people to get that vaccine and that's going to be a major part of my effort is making sure that our federal government is taking it all the way and contributing all the way through all the way through to the actual vaccination for folks the economic side again that's going to be with us for a great deal of time and let me summarize uh what we've done from that perspective and what i think we're going to have to do when kobit 19 hit congress actually did something that was pretty unique it actually agreed in a very short period of time as did the president on a major relief package of the trillions of dollars that was passed back in march and that was emergency assistance to the country that was desperately needed that assistance i got out throughout the country in hawaii through a lot of work by a lot of folks i know that our congressional delegation certainly worked hard we saw somewhere around 10.6 billion dollars that came in uh to hawaii uh from from the cares act and that's by the way still growing because the karzak money has not um disappeared it's still being distributed just at a much lower level areas such as a small business or the the ppp program unemployment supplementation by the federal government of course direct stimulus payments that we all know about and aid to our state and local governments were major components but there was also other aid that went out through the cares act in fact in my office we tracked roughly 76 separate federal funding pipelines programs that were all being funded through covid19 these range not only from the ones i already mentioned but for example aid to agriculture to try to improve food security aid to education directly aid to our health care providers for basic ppe personal protective equipment the cares act did what we intended it to do but it was not enough and it never was going to be enough we started advocating in the middle of last year for a second emergency assistance package tragically i think that didn't actually come to pass until after months and months of delay and frankly way too much disagreement and uncertainty at the end is the weather was actually going to be signed it was signed at the end of last month uh and that package of roughly 900 billion dollars is is on its way out and it again has major components that are going to be very very critical to our country um it is by the way the second largest emergency assistance package ever for our country cares being number one so these are major investments by our country in in the needs that covet 19 has generated it it includes again economic stimulus payments a great disapproval and and disagreement over how much they should be i felt that they should be more the compromise the practical compromise in congress between what people like i felt and some of my colleagues who felt there should be no additional economic stimulus payments uh was the 600 that should be forthcoming to folks that that got it or who have since been entitled to it and by the way in this area as happened with the cares act we are available to try to answer your questions on whether you are eligible for that and if you haven't gotten it why not we have been successful in trying to get those questions answered for many many people i know that this is a critical part of the financial aid that many incredibly needy families are entitled to and and should get we also provided for an additional 325 billion dollars for our nation's small businesses 275 of that being for a refunding of the pretty successful i would say more than pretty successful uh payroll protection program or ppp for short that is a program by the federal government that basically provides aid on the condition that you keep people on the payroll i think that's a fair a fair deal the feds will help businesses to survive as long as those businesses help their employees to survive as well we've refunded that program and that was a very very successful program in the cares act for hawaii where we saw close to 2.5 billion dollars go to our small businesses just for the ppp program there were other small business programs that were also funded but the ppp in particular was 2.5 billion and that was one of the highest rates of ppp in the entire country so a lot of people worked hard for that result now we have to do it all over again with our second emergency assistance package to get that aid out to our small businesses we also provide about 69 billion dollars directly to our health care providers in our most recent emergency assistance package and this is this is also uh critical money because uh covet 19 is is both about the economic and social devastation but it's also number one about public health how can we get the public health side of it stabilized because if we don't do that then nothing else is going to be achievable and in the area of health and that 69 billion over 20 billion went to basic testing and contact tracing which of course as we know has been an issue for us in hawaii not not so much the adequate testing which is still an issue by the way but not as much as it was months ago contact tracing which is once we know somebody is sick can we find the folks that they were in contact with so we can kind of head off the virus at the pass that is an area that we have needed additional help this emergency assistance package hopefully will contribute to that i talked earlier about vaccine distribution the federal government you know the vaccine is quote unquote free meaning that the manufacturer of the vaccine is funded by the federal government and the purchase of the vaccine is funded by the federal government the federal government also gets the vaccine to the states but has not carried the responsibility of actual distribution within the states i guess we could have a debate about whether that's a good policy or not i think every state does have its own individual needs and so i don't have any problem with a policy where the states kind of take over at that point but they certainly need the assistance with which to do that that was not previously funded and so in hawaii for example we faced a a budget shortfall of of somewhere in the range of tens of millions of dollars just to get the vaccine distributed in hawaii uh this aid package should help us with that so that's an important uh part mental health funding we just don't i don't think fully appreciate the extent of the toll that covet 19 has taken on all of us for our mental and emotional help we're all dealing with it in our own ways uh some more than others but many of us definitely need professional medical help uh for our for our mental health issues uh arising from covet 19 and we try to provide that assistance through this package to those that have very limited resources in particular that need this and that we should provide it for that is a part of this package in education we provide somewhere around 82 billion dollars for emergency assistance to our to our schools both you know elementary and secondary as well as higher education public and private because i don't think that you know covet particularly discriminates between levels of education or whether it's a public or a private school we think it's fair in this package that that aid be provided where needed throughout our education system certainly is the case with our hawaii educational system which has seen very significant uh consequences from kovid 19 and because it is funded out of our state tax revenues and we've seen tourism and travel dry up there have been significant shortfalls in federal in in state and local funding in our case state funding for public education this bill should provide some assistance there housing uh such an incredibly major issue for us in hawaii with again we all know this one of the highest if not the highest costs of housing in our country both from a from a from a home purchase perspective but more importantly for for for our renters we have one of the highest our rates of rental rentals um in the entire country which would make a lot of sense if housing costs were so high it's just not affordable for people to buy and so these renters um throughout our country uh throughout our state are are in dire straits many of them um who have lost their jobs who who have no resources to try to pay rent that they want to pay and we have had a moratorium in place on the actual eviction of renters which i think is the right policy both at the federal and the state level now what we're trying to do is to provide some emergency assistance to those in particular needs so that they can actually start to pay some of their rent because after all they have uh in many cases um you know family landlords uh that that own a small property maybe for investment income they deserve uh some rent at some point uh so we we we we try to provide the resources to try to try to make that happen nutrition assistance i talked about this a little bit earlier we have had some one of the highest rates of food insecurity in our entire country and especially in hawaii i have volunteered at the at the hawaii food bank food distributions whenever i'm home i try to try to go volunteer not just to help out but to try to check out what's happening you know maybe to talk to some folks hey what's happening and i know that from from from the folks that i've seen and talked with that there are obviously major issues in terms of just basic availability of food from an affordability perspective throughout our country but especially in hawaii we try to provide for some of that assistance in terms of food insecurity and one of the ways we do this especially for our for our younger folks is through our school lunch programs snap school nutrition programs in this area we try to maintain at least that safety net through our schools to be able to provide for that one often time only one good meal a day for many many of our children um i could go on the one thing i would say is that although the cares act was major funding from our federal government and is as is this most recent emergency assistance package there's no way that this is going to be enough the needs are just too great and i believe and i think most of us in congress believe that we will need a third at least a third emergency assistance package to try to see us through that is a very top priority of mine in just the next couple of months in this congress a couple of other areas that i'm going to mention just really quickly to give you a little bit of a flavor of what i'm focused on in the in the range of what i'm focused on on national issues what i try to do is i try to help all of my colleagues with expertise on many of our national issues with the decisions that they have to make with support but there are areas that i kind of pick from my own areas where i can provide that national leadership and lead our country in the right directions for our country uh in the united states congress and so i mentioned just a couple of these as examples uh one of them is our world's oceans i've been in the ocean all my life i have seen firsthand over decades of deterioration in our oceans you know we can we can see what's happening with our air we can see what's happening on our lands it's harder to see what's happening in our waters and yet the unsustainability of our oceans from a variety of areas whether it be you know unsustainable fishing or or pollution or or trash is really deteriorating rapidly and there's no question that we need a renewed and increased federal focus on our oceans i try to do that through my second committee which is natural resources which is responsible as it sounds like for all of our federal natural resources including our federal interests in our oceans and so that's unfinished business for me i'm very concerned about the status of our national debt our federal fiscal situation is of great concern to me and so i try to lead in a variety of ways in making wise decisions uh on the sustainability of our federal finances over generations it is no there's no question uh that in the middle of covet 19 you have to incur debt you have to borrow money you don't have the resources on a year-to-year basis to sustain that kind of investment in helping our country through an emergency such as covid19 there's no question from my perspective that we had to do this even if it had a materially adverse effect on our deficit on our debt because the alternative would have been far worse but that doesn't mean that we don't still have to address the physical condition that this presents to our country and it doesn't mean that we can just get into the habit of pretending that deficits and debt don't matter that we can just borrow as much as we want and it's not going to make any difference our children and our children's children are not going to suffer from it of course they're going to suffer from it and so i'm very worried and focused very much nationally on the issues having to do with our national debt i talked a little bit earlier about the indo-pacific an area where it's in my backyard i have traveled widely throughout the indo-pacific throughout my life i've worked in the indo-pacific in a variety of areas and one of the areas of the indo-pacific that has been really overlooked by our country in many ways over the last couple of decades is the pacific islands so i'm not talking about you know the larger countries uh in the indo-pacific such as japan and of course china and i mentioned australia i'm talking about roughly 25 jurisdictions throughout the pacific itself some of them independent countries some of them freely associated with our country the compact countries as we know it and we need a much more vigorous outreach to these countries many of which are facing existential literally existential dangers from climate change for example to to destruction of their you know economic revenues and etc and this is an area that i try very hard to focus on in congress back in hawaii i try very hard to help out in terms of preserving our natural resources through trying to for example create the first ever national forest in hawaii i try to focus on maintaining the results of our census where we had a very critical year last year and now we have to follow through and make sure we're very fully counted i talked a little bit earlier about the compact countries that are very very important as well and of course restarting hawaii's economy i am a member and and leader within our travel and tourism uh communities and caucuses i hear in congress and i focus very much with our national organizations as well as our own hawaii organizations on on restarting travel and tourism you know as soon as possible i'm coming down to the end of this hour of spending with you and i have i have a few more notes in my hands that of areas that i didn't cover but the main thing i wanted to do today was just to give you a flavor for the agenda ahead for me in national leadership in helping hawaii and helping you and finally i want to leave you with that comment i started with which is the most important thing i can tell you today is that my office is here and open to you it is your office and you can contact me anytime you want with your guidance with your questions and with your needs with that i wish you only the best of the new years and aloha you