Houlahan Tackles Topics in 1st Town Hall of 2020

Photos by Evan Brandt

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist., speaks Thursday at her first town hall of 2020, held in the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville. At left is an archival photo of  Phoenix Steel columns used during the construction of the Washington Monument, lent to Houlahan by Mayor Peter Urscheler  to "hang in her office as a reminder of Phoenixville."

Ar right, the line to get into last night's town hall went out into the street.

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist., chose Phoenixville's Colonial Theater as the place to hold her first town hall of 2020.

Held Thursday evening, it differed from the 12 town halls she held in 2019, the most of any Congressional representative from Pennsylvania, in that it was not devoted to a single subject.

The Sixth District includes all of Chester County and part of Berks County.

Calling it the "State of the Sixth," she instead, she covered a broad range of topics before taking written questions from the audience.

Houlahan presents Phoenixville Mayor Peter Urscheler with
a certificate for being named "One of 10 Outstanding Americans."

Those subjects ranged from working to save jobs at the Sikorsky helicopter plant in Coatesville; working across the aisle to get a new trade pact with Mexico and Canada; steps to stem the opioid epidemic; legislation to drive down prescription drug costs; climate change; protecting pensions; education; paid parent leave and more.

Houlahan said she had kept her pledge to hold one town hall a month throughout the district in 2019, noting that she is now among four new Pennsylvania female representatives to Congress where previously, there had been none.

And together those four women held "20 percent of all the (Congressional) town halls in Pennsylvania. She added that there are now 127 women in Congress, 106 of them are Democrats, and women now represent 24 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives.

"Hopefully, we'll get to 51 percent because that's what percent of the population women represent,"
Houlahan added.

The 116th Congress has so far passed 400 bills, 275 of them bi-partisan, and 70 have been sent to the Senate and signed by the president.

"We're working to get more bills out of the Senate and onto the president's desk," Houlahan said.

Houlahan came armed with slides for her presentation.

In her first year in office, she said, Houlahan's office has roughly 9,000 phone calls, 3,500 letters and 73,000 emails "and we respond to everyone."

Running that office, she said, costs taxpayers $1.3 million per year but, by her calculations, her efforts and those of her staff have brought $1.8 million federal dollars back to the district, meaning "you're getting a 38 percent return on your investment."

That does not count the 500 jobs she and others worked to save when Sikorsky abruptly announced in June it would close its Coatesville helicopter plant by year's end, a decision which was ultimately reversed.

Nor does it include the 477,900 Pennsylvania jobs that were supported by a new trade pact negotiated with Mexico and Canada. Houlahan, who often talked about the need to sidestep partisanship and find compromise, said she supported the deal negotiated by President Trump because "two thirds of Pennsylvania's experts go to Mexico and Canada."

Houlahan addresses her vote to impeach President Donald Trump

She said she was reluctant to vote to impeach Trump because "our country is damaged. As you've hopefully heard in this conversation, our mission is to heal our country, and our community as well. In the beginning, I felt what was going on would only hurt the country even more."

However, "when the Ukraine situation and investigation came up, I and six other members of the freshman class, all of whom had served in the military or intelligence communities in the past, really felt like this was a different animal," Houlahan said.

Answering a question later about why she voted to impeach President Trump "when you know he's going to be acquitted," Houlahan said "because I take my oath seriously and there are some things that should not be permitted. I believe strongly that elections have consequences, but when you're playing with future elections, that's where I draw the line. It needed to be said that 'this shouldn't stand' and the vote allowed us to learn more about what we don't know."

"These are clearly challenging times," said Houlahan.

Here's s video of her prepared comments on the subject:


Houlahan said her most pleasant surprise once she got to Washington "was the quality of the people working there. They are really public servants, working really hard,"she said. "They might be working at cross purposes, but that's what we elected them to do. But that may be why it looks like nothing is getting done."

Mayor Peter Urscheler reads some of the written questions 

submitted for U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan Thursday.

She said the picture painted by the media makes it look like Washington is city of extreme right, and extreme left, "but there really is a strong middle and you never hear about that."

Houlahan said she is a member of several caucuses, including the "New Dems," whose members are trying to find common ground with Republicans.

"I wish we could find compromise, find solutions and knock off the nastiness. I hear things like 'they started it,' and it comes from both sides of the aisle," Houlahan said. "They sound like 5-year-olds sometimes. We're so fractured. There's no room for empathy or disagreement."

It wasn't easy to find a place to sit in the 640-seat theater
during the Town Hall meeting Thursday night.

As an example, she pointed to the H.R. 1, the first bill passed after the new Congress convened, a "huge bill" that called for campaign finance reform, "dealt with Citizens United issues" of anonymous campaign funding, "and ethics in government."

But the bill's preamble was "largely partisan" and Republicans could not support that language "which is not super helpful."

But something needs to be done and perhaps its better to address those issues in smaller doses, she said.

"This is a broken system, a deeply broken system. My colleagues and I are raising resources all the time and some of the smaller parts of that bill are being pushed forward."

Houlahan ended by recalling a ceremony for the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shootings and observing "tomorrow isn't promised to any one."

Houlahan concludes her first town hall meeting of 2020.

And so the nation should work harder to work together, she said, showing a picture of a quilt that hangs in her office. "We are that quilt. Stitched together for common purpose," she said, adding "and it can be stitched back together."

Quoting  Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, she concluded "we are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."