 Sue Racknelly, president of the League of Women's Voters of Vermont, and on behalf of our co-sponsors and the League, welcome to the 2022 U.S. House of Representatives Candidates Forum. The forum is sponsored by the League of Women Voters, the Vermont Commission on Women, Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Voices for Vermont's Children, Vermont Works for Women, Vermont Women's Fund, Women's Business Owners Network Vermont, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Burlington Chapter. A purpose in hosting this forum is for you, the voter, to hear what the candidates have to say on issues of concern to women and families. The League of Women Voters is a volunteer, non-partisan organization that neither supports nor opposes any party or candidate. Our mission is to empower voters and defend democracy. Eight candidates are seeking to fill Vermont's lone U.S. House seat as Congressman Peter Welch is vacating his seat to run for the U.S. Senate. Six candidates are here today. I'd like to introduce Cary Brown, our moderator, who will get us started shortly. Cary is Executive Director of the Vermont Commission on Women, an independent state agency dedicated to advancing rights and opportunities for women and girls in Vermont. She is also a member of the Montpelier City Council, representing District 3. Cary will introduce you to the candidates, and we are so pleased that you have joined us this evening to learn more about them. Cary? Thank you so much, Sue. I am so pleased to be here. Welcome to all the candidates who are here, and welcome to all of you who are watching. We have a very interesting evening ahead of us. This is a forum dedicated to issues of concern to women and families, which I would argue are issues of concern to everybody. But we're going to specifically focus on issues that were brought up by the partnering, sponsoring organizations, and so you'll hear questions from all of those as we go. I do want to say that when we speak about women, we are doing so expansively and inclusively, including trans women and non-binary folks and gender-expansive folks as well. So into the format for tonight, here's how things are going to work. We are going to have nine questions for the candidates. As I said, these came from submissions from all of our partnering, sponsoring organizations, and the very first question will be one that the candidates have all seen and had a chance to prepare for, but the rest of the questions, they'll be hearing for the first time tonight. So we will have two minutes for each candidate to answer questions. We have this very nifty little timer app that's going to be on the screen. Hopefully you all can see it. It's called Blue Sky Timer. It's on right now. It's counting down from two minutes. And so candidates, as you're speaking, I would ask you to keep an eye on that. And when it gets to 30 seconds remaining, it will turn red. And so you can see that kind of gives you a little bit of a warning. And then I will get out the cane and yank you off if you go past two minutes. And because we're going to try really hard to keep to time here, we have a lot of questions and a lot of candidates. All right. So I would like to introduce all of our candidates today. Thank you all so much for coming. As Sue said, we have six candidates here tonight. So joining us, we have Senator Becca Ballant. She's the president pro tem of the Vermont Senate, and she's running as a Democrat. She's from Brattleboro. We also have Shanae Chase Clifford. She's running as a Democrat from Essex. And we also have Lieutenant Governor Mollie Gray. She's running as a Democrat and she's from Burlington. Leah Madden is an independent running as a Republican from Rockingham. Lewis Myers is running as a Democrat from South Burlington. And Anya Tino is a Republican from Charleston. Welcome to all of you. And we are going, I'm going to draw lots right now to draw your names to determine the order that we're going to go in. And so we'll set up our order to begin with and then we'll rotate who goes first on each of the questions. Okay. So are you ready? Okay. So number one is Liam. And number two is Molly Gray. And number three is Becca Ballant. And you don't have to remember all these. I've got it here. Number four is Shanae Chase Clifford. Number five is Lewis Myers. And last but not least is Anya Tino. All right. So to start off with, each of our candidates will have 90 seconds for an opening statement. So I will call on each one of you in this order that we just drew and give you 90 seconds. And you'll see the blue sky timer keeping track of your timing. And let's start with Liam, please. Liam Madden. Hi fellow Vermonters and thank you, League of Women Voters. This is such an honor. If I have a little disruption, I will be right back at some point. But I just, I'm introducing my little nuisance win. So my name is Liam Madden. And I think some of the experience that I think sets me apart from the other candidates is I was a Marine and I risked my life for our country. Also maybe more importantly, as the leader of the nation's largest anti-war organization of Iraq veterans, I've also risked my life to ensure our country does what is right. I am a renewable energy professional and the co-winner of MIT's Solve Award for Sustainability Innovations. So with some unique credibility among the candidates in this election, I can say that I'm alarmed that no one in either party is acknowledging this fact. Our economic activity is completely dependent on energy. And if the economy is to grow at just 3% a year, we will use the same amount of energy in the next 30 years as we have in the last 10,000. And that is impossible. And appropriately responding to this fact would entail a scale of change that is not something our current two party political system is capable of delivering. So we need profound structural change to our politics and our economics. And that is what I will help us achieve as Vermont's representative in Congress. Thank you so much. Next is Lieutenant Governor Mollie Gray. Thank you, Carrie. Thank you, Sue. Good evening to everyone tuning in this evening and welcome to the other candidates. I'm glad we're here this evening. I'm glad that we're talking about the issues that are at the focus of this forum. I decided to run for Congress because I know that the challenges that we face here in Vermont will not be solved by Vermont alone. From workforce, to housing, to broadband, to childcare, to paid family and medical leave, we need strong experienced leaders in Washington who are going to be ready to deliver for Vermont. But what we also now know from the January 6th hearings and an attempted coup from what's happening in Ukraine, from the radical Supreme Court that is not only stripping back our actions on climate, but fundamental reproductive rights, and also refusing to engage on guns, is that right now in this moment, we need to squarely address and work to protect our democracy. The experience I bring is diverse. One, I've spent nearly half a decade working in and with Congress, not only with Congressman Welch, helping to run his office and set it up, but with the International Committee of the Red Cross working both chambers. Second, I've worked both in the federal judiciary and as an assistant attorney general. I understand what it means when Congress gets it wrong and the courts have to fix it. Right now, I know we need leaders that have a strong legal background so we can counteract this radical Republican court. And finally, I worked overseas to promote human rights. I've been a leader on humanitarian assistance, working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and we know that Congress has a strong foreign policy role to play on the matters ahead of us, including with Ukraine. This evening, I look forward to talking about the diversity of experience I bring and the issues I will champion as Vermont's Congresswoman. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. Next, we have Senator Becca Ballant. Thank you so much all for being here. This is going to be a really great evening. So for those who don't know me, I'm Senator Becca Ballant. I represent Windham County. I have served in the legislature for four terms and was also the first woman ever to be elected President Pro Tem of the Senate. But I also want you to know that I am a mom. I live in Brattleboro with my spouse and two kids. I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old, and I taught middle school for many years here in Vermont in four different rural public schools. And I bring that perspective of being a middle school teacher with me into my work in the legislature. And I always joke that you cannot be a middle school teacher if you don't believe in a possibility of change. And you can't really be a legislator if you don't believe in a possibility. And I have been incredibly honored to be able to serve as a senator and also as the President of the Senate. And together with my colleagues, we have done tremendous work for Vermonters from increasing the minimum wage to passing a child tax credit this year, investing in child care, making sure that we had climate action, and also we passed the strongest reproductive rights, some of the strongest in the nation here in Vermont, and we started that process back in 2018 that was of us in leadership anticipating what was going to be happening at the federal level. The other thing that I want you to understand about me is that what drives me in this moment is that I see us sliding into authoritarianism. The populist fascist tendencies that we see right now, and it's coming out around the January 6 commission is not unique to this country, although it is alarming. We see it in many countries around the globe. And for me, it's not theoretical. My family's history is a tragic one. My grandfather was killed in the Holocaust, and I know that rights do not get taken away overnight. They get eroded bit by bit as we demonize each other, as we turn away from each other, and that's what drives me in this moment to serve us in Congress. I hope to earn your support. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Next is Kate Clifford. Hi. Good evening. I am really excited to be with almost all of the candidates tonight and be able to talk about the issues most pressing to the League of Women Voters. And as was said at the top, I think the chief concern when we're talking about women and families are the chief concerns of our entire communities. The reason that I'm running feels clear than ever these days. It is abundantly clear that our status quo will not deliver on issues that are most important to us. It's abundantly clear that establishment politics will continue to fail us. We need desperately a different perspective and a different approach to policymaking, and I feel uniquely equipped to be that change in this race and in Congress, because as my experience as a social worker, I certainly do not feel like a politician, feel like a social worker who is relentlessly in community. And from my experience, understand the depths of trauma that we need to heal in our communities. And as a former congressional staffer, also understand what we need to get done and the type of activist and organizer energy we need to bring to Congress. So we have far less of status quo politicians running and fundraising on the issues that we know are most important to us and failing to deliver. So I am much more interested in answering your questions than I am just talking about myself. So excited to engage with you all this evening. Thank you. Next up is Lewis Myers. Thank you, and I don't see the little clock you mentioned, but just wave your hand or something if I get close. I'm very excited to be here because the League of Women Voters has a remarkable history. I come from a background of social work in the 1980s and medicine from the 1990s to the current time. I work at Rutland Weachel Medical Center as one of their hospital doctors. I grew up in Washington, D.C. I had a mother who was about five feet tall but rather feisty and she took us to every large protest march that occurred, including PFLAG, the Great Panthers, civil rights and the anti-war moratoriums in the late 1960s. In Washington, I went on to intern for Senator Edward Kennedy that stayed in D.C. to become a social worker through the MSW program at Catholic University and worked for several years for the District of Columbia. Then went to medical school in Washington and came to work in primary care and then came to Vermont 10 years ago and have been working at Rutland Weachel Medical Center since then. There are so many issues we're going to talk about and I do want to stress that these national and international issues affect us all and that I hope we'll understand at the end of the evening that you don't have to be a woman to understand and want to contribute to the solving some of these terrible problems. Thank you very much. And finally, we have Anyutini. Thank you very much for having me and thank you to everybody who's taken their time to tune in tonight. I will say that I know that as a woman, one of the biggest challenges we face is having enough time to do everything that we have to do. We are always running. It feels like the day never ends and there's just never ending stuff that needs to be done for women and I'm sure that this is not exclusive to women. I'm sure men feel the same way, but as a woman, I do understand that and I want to thank you for taking your time. I currently serve as the Orleans County Committee woman to the state GOP as the vice chair of the Orleans County Committee, GOP committee and the secretary and treasurer of the Charles Republican Committee. I very much enjoy my role as committee woman because that means that when people have concerns, they can bring them to me and I can help address them with the state party. I also have a background in business and marketing and have talked to people in businesses around the state about the need for economic viability for Vermont and what I can do for them in Washington DC. I look forward to going to Washington DC so that I can help the state of Vermont so that I can help our citizens to be at the forefront of prosperity, which unfortunately we haven't been for quite some time. We have had single party rule in the state of Vermont since the 1990s and I believe that it's a time for a change because the people in Vermont are not better off for what they've had so far and I look forward to this discussion tonight to share my ideas and to hear from the other candidates so that we can get a broad picture of what we're going to do to help the state. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. All right, thank you to all the candidates. We're ready to move on to our questions now. The first question is one that you have all seen in advance. It comes from the League of Women Voters. What will you do to increase access to voting for all eligible voters, particularly those who have been historically disenfranchised? And we will start with Lieutenant Governor Mollie Gray. Thanks. This is such an important question, especially over the last couple of days I've been hearing from so many young people, so many Vermonters who feel so hopeless, feel so hopeless because of the Supreme Court outcome, feel like how is it that we got here? What are we going to do? Do I vote? Doesn't even matter, right? This feeling from so many young people who feel so disenchanted. So I think that the moment before us is really significant, not only in how we run our own campaigns, how we engage people in the process, how we share information about voting right now. This primary is underway. I'll take a moment to say you can request your ballot online. You can request your ballot from your town clerk. You can go and vote right now out of the gate during this early voting period. But I think the most important thing is that we have to have voting rights champions in Washington. And while we've done a lot here in Vermont, we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that vote by mail is part of our primaries moving forward. But at the national level, we have to do everything we can to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And what does that include? It includes making sure that same day registration is a reality across this country. We see states outlawing it, banning it, making sure that vote by mail is available, especially to folks who may be at home and may not be able to get to the polls. I do strongly believe that we need to have a national holiday on election days to ensure that folks don't have to rush the polls before, after work, but actually have the day off. And then finally, making sure that ballot drop boxes are available. And so much of this is accounted for in that legislation. But if there's a moment where we need to ensure that every American has access to the ballot box, it's now. And then doing everything we can to engage the next generation and make sure they know their voice matters, their participation matters. They run for office and they engage in this election. I think it's the most important one of our generation. Thank you, Lieutenant Governor. Next up, Senator Ballant. Thanks, Gary. I want to start by saying I think like a lot of the folks who are tuning in tonight to watch this voting has been very important to me throughout my life. I am the child of an immigrant dad who came here as a refugee and rebuilt his life here. And I think when you grow up in a household with an immigrant, sometimes you love this country in such a deep and abiding way. And so went into the voting booth with him at a very young age. And it's something that I now do with my own children. And so voting connects us not just to government. It connects us to our communities. It connects us to our reasons for working hard on behalf of each other. And I have been a champion for voting here in Vermont. We've expanded access to voting. We made it easier for people to vote. And I'm proud of that work and know that we need to have a certain similar laser focus on this issue in Congress. So, yes, we have to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. I think you're going to hear a lot of similar things from the candidates tonight. But in addition to passing that Voting Rights Act, we actually have to fund the enforcement of it. So what we often find in legislation, if you pass the law, but you don't have the teeth to actually enforce it, it doesn't do a whole lot of good. So we really need to make sure that we take the money and invest it in the Justice Department to investigate when there are issues of people being denied access to the ballot. We also have to, as I said, I think you're going to hear a lot from all of us about making sure that Election Day is a federal holiday, making sure we do everything we can to end partisan gerrymandering. But we also have a responsibility as elected officials to make it clear why people must vote. That's part of our job. Thank you. Shanae Chase Clifford, you're next. Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry. The clock is so big on my screen all of a sudden. Maybe it's a subliminal message. We absolutely need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and restore and overturn some of the detrimental actions of the Supreme Court in the Shelby case, et cetera. We also, there's this other very, very important voting rights bill is HR1. There's a reason it's number one, the For The People Act. And it would establish independent redistricting commissions per state to stop partisan gerrymandering. And to make sure, and that's, we have to talk about that. That's really important. It happens. Both parties do it very effectively because it traps folks in communities. So when we tell folks go out to vote when districts have been so tightly gerrymandering, their part of vote has actually been diminished. So that's why that's so important. It's not just a talking point. It's so important that we think about ways to limit this gerrymandering. Also in HR1, there are pieces of public financing for campaigns and small donor matching and helping 16 and 17-year-olds be pre-registered to vote when they turn 18. Yes, absolutely thinking about making, not thinking about, but making Voting Day a federal holiday. And also thinking about not just what happens when you enter the ballot box, but how we get onto the ballot, how we get onto the ballot, rank choice voting, campaign finance reform. So folks actually get to vote for candidates they feel passionate about and are excited about and not just the folks who have the most resources in the deepest pockets. I think that's certainly, you know, we can talk about voting rights a lot, but I will, I'll keep it there. Thank you so much. Lewis Myers. Yes, thank you. Well, we live in a democracy and I don't need to tell the League of Women Voters that they know that the foundation of democracy is free voting, being able to cast your vote freely. There are some very dark stains on our history when it comes to voting. Women, as we know, were not allowed to vote until the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. And black people and people of color, particularly in the South, had only a brief period of voting shortly after Civil War and then not again until the mid-1960s with the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax and with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was achieved only through a lot of injuries and hard work and courage, including on the Pettus Bridge in Alabama. In 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby County versus Holder revoked the pre-clearance requirement, which had required southern states, which had previously discriminated against people of color to get clearance before they could change their voting patterns. Texas and other southern states claimed that this was no longer a problem. They were obviously being rather disingenuous. It is a problem. What can we do now? I think that we should focus on achievable goals, because I think there are some. The electoral count proposal in Congress, I believe, has bipartisan support. That would be the electoral college vote, which would prevent any future outgoing presidents or others to hijack what really should be a very formality-filled process of the electoral count. Paper ballots backing up these computer systems is critical, and there are movements across the country to install those. Open source coding to make sure to look for any bugs and interference with the voting, and possibly federal poll watchers in areas where we know it's going to be a problem, certainly if Jimmy Carter can send people to observe elections in Africa and other countries that we should be able to do that in this country. There are certain issues where I think perhaps we need to be careful and not get too far ahead of the American people. The majority of American people actually support photo IDs or are not opposed to those in voting. Early voting, I think, is helpful. I think in Vermont the six-week early voting is perhaps excessive. There are many people who have already voted this week, and they're not going to won't have heard this debate and all the debates to come. I pose lowering voting age to 16, and I think the majority of Americans do at this point as well. And finally, I'm somewhat equivocal about allowing non-citizens to vote. I think there should be an extensive debate about that, but it has its pros and cons. So there are many areas that we can make some progress on. Thank you so much. Anya Tiniel, you're next. Thank you. I'm going to disagree with both of things that have been said previously. I believe that we, first of all, don't need to separate the need to vote from the BIPOC and POPs communities. Both are equally significant on solutions that help both of them. Going forward, I would like to see voter ID. I would like to make sure that we secure our elections. We need to work very hard on that and to restore faith in the election process. And I do oppose HR1 as taking control of the elections away from the states. We do not need to have the federal government running the federal government's elections without state interference. That's very important to me, and I will be voting against it in Washington. We need to maintain the electoral college. In the state of Vermont, we have three electoral votes. We would have almost no voice at all without an electoral college. And it goes that way for many rural states and smaller states, states without major cities of large populations. In order for our voices to be heard, we need to maintain that system. That being said, we need to encourage people to get out and vote. We need to restore their faith in the American process of electing leaders who represent what they believe in and will work for them. People feel like politicians are very much out for themselves and only going to be working towards their own personal goals. And I think that we need to restore faith in the idea of public service, where politicians are working for the people and not for themselves and not for a particular political agenda, but what the constituents need them to do. That is what I intend to do in Washington, D.C., work for the state of Vermont, make sure that the people are well represented and their voices are heard, that they can reach out to me whenever they need to have a question answered or if they need help to get through some kind of a process that I'm able to help with. I think those are the ways that we encourage people to get out and vote. Thank you. Liam Madden, you're next. Hi. Improving the health of our democracy is the core theme and focus of my candidacy. And the reason that's my focus is because we can't solve any problem we care about, whether it's reproductive rights or climate change and you name it, without a government able to solve increasingly complex and difficult problems. And our ability to solve collective problems is deeply undermined by many aspects of the two-party political system that dominates our governance. And one of the highest priorities I see to alleviate this problem is to create avenues for the public to be able to bypass politicians who don't listen to us. I think this is best and most simply achieved through federal ballot initiatives so that the people can propose their own laws and remove bad ones. And importantly, this can and should be conducted online with appropriate safeguards. There is no reason that the public should wait every two to four years to have a voice on matters of important policy. The technology exists to give us more accountability over office holders than the founders ever dreamed of. Practically speaking, I support the policies most traditional liberals would have on this topic things like election finance reform or voting by mail or automatic registration. I like right choice voting and proportional representation as well. And of course, defending against new Jim Crow tactics that are often embedded in voter identification laws. However, I want to emphasize that these familiar options would be insufficient without fundamental innovations to truly give us the power needed to have a say in the future and the responsibility that must go along with that power. For more in depth discussion, I refer you all to my website, the section entitled initiate our democracy. The future will belong to those most effectively leveraging advanced tech. And I am the only candidate discussing the ways open and democratic societies must embrace new technology, new governance processes, new mindsets so that the future belongs to all of us. Thank you very, very much. All right. Our next question. Last Friday, the US Supreme Court issued one of its most historically significant rulings when it overturned Roe v. Wade and removed the right to legal abortion. Please tell us your personal response to this decision and please tell us how you would use the power of the federal office to respond to it. And we are going to start with Senator Ballant first. And so Carrie, always, always 90 seconds. Is that the, I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Sorry, you've got two minutes. Two minutes. Okay, great. Wonderful. So what happened last week was, although shocking for many of us, it was not a surprise. This has been building for many, many decades. And I just want to be really clear that the reason why abortion is still legal here in Vermont, despite what happened at the Supreme Court, is because a lot of work that was done in the legislature to make sure that if we got to this day, we would have those rights protected. And so it was instrumental in doing that work with my colleagues in the Senate and my colleagues in the House. And so I absolutely believe in the right for each of us to have bodily autonomy, especially around what we choose to do around reproduction. And so I want to encourage everybody to get out. If you support bodily autonomy and reproductive liberty to vote for Proposition Five, which is the constitutional amendment to the Vermont Constitution. And we are going to have so much work to do ahead of us to make sure that, although we may still have these rights protected in Vermont, we need to be looking outside of our borders to how to protect the rights of others around the globe. So first of all, we have to pass the Women's Health Protection Act. We have to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which has blocked abortion coverage for women under so many of our federally funded healthcare programs. And we fundamentally have to abolish the filibuster in the Senate. That is what is holding us up from being able to make sure that this is codified in statute. And I do believe we also need court reform. I think we should have term limits in the court. I think we need to take a really hard look on the number of decisions that are being made by the so-called shadow court, which is the emergency docket, and why the number of decisions have increased in number so dramatically during the last two presidencies because of the activism of the court. So I think for all of us who care so deeply about this right, it is difficult, so difficult right now to be able to be hopeful. But I'm seeing so much hope in the number of people that are reaching out to me who are not been politically active who are saying, how can I get involved? Not just about protecting reproductive rights, but how do I make sure that we are voting for people here in Vermont and supporting candidates around the nation that are going to help us win back those rights? And so it is unfortunately, this is tied up in other rights that Justice Thomas has said are also potentially on the chopping black from reproductive contraception and the rights of people like myself who are of the LGBT community. So it is a time for activism at the strongest, deepest levels. Thank you very much. Shanae Chase Clifford, you're next. Yeah, this is, it's really frustrating for a lot of different reasons. One of the reasons it's frustrating to me is that, we've known this is coming, we've known this is coming since the original road decision, and there has been a resistance to listen to advocates, to listen to activists. This is not just this Congress's problem. The Women's Health Protection Act has been introduced over and over again. The each acts, which would permanently repeal the Hyde Amendment, which does keep, which has kept folks who access Medicaid and Medicare and TriCare and other federally funded health care programs from having the protections of Roe. These bills have been introduced year over year, session over session, and we haven't seen anything done. Meanwhile, folks have been broadcasting that their sole goal is to dismantle Roe and aim for a sweeping legislative change as possible. And so when progressives like myself say, hey, we'd like to see a health care system for all, and we're told you're asking for too much, you need to take piece by piece, you're never going to get that. And we've seen the intense you know, it is a level of activism from folks who wanted to dismantle reproductive rights. They've succeeded. So we need to harness energy and act on an issue that Democrats have fundraised millions of dollars off of. And that certainly is bypassing the Women's Health Protection Act, certainly by abolishing the Hyde Amendment and the Helms Amendment and the Weldon Amendment and all these little vestiges of reproductive threats throughout our appropriation system. And yes, also we need to pursue court reform in a way that that makes sense for our court, but also doesn't pass the buck from the work that Congress needs to do. Thank you. Louis Myers. Yes, thank you. I've said before, and I'll say it again, this is a tragedy. It's a tragedy for several reasons. One is that women are losing a right which has been theirs for 50 years. My recollection, the Supreme Court has never taken away a right. They've added rights in the past, but never taken away a fundamental right. It certainly affects the doctor-patient relationship. And as a physician, I'm very aware that this introduces the court into, very much into the office where those decisions or intimate decisions are made between with a physician or other health care provider and the patient. But most importantly, women's lives will be lost. Pregnancy is not entirely safe. It carries its risk under the best of circumstances. And unfortunately, the women who are most at risk because of their financial, because they are financially affected and because they have pre-existing medical conditions live in the states, which are going to have the harshest and most draconian restrictions. So they are going to die. We've already seen the mortality rates begin to rise. We have among the highest mortality, maternal mortality rates in the Western world. The question is, what can we do about this? I think that hearing many of the suggestions to some degree unfortunate or aspirational, we've seen in the gun control legislation, which perhaps we'll talk about tonight, but even the very slightest improvement, very slightest legislation last week, took a great deal of effort to get to an unfortunate great deal of lives lost. So I'm not optimistic that we're going to be able to reverse this right away. What we can do is we need to work very hard not to protect contraception. And the contraceptive methods, which have improved, which have decreased teenage and other unwanted pregnancies, people may not be aware of it, but unwanted pregnancies have decreased by 50% in this country over the course of a generation. And that's particularly true in the teenage years and particularly true among some of the minority groups. So we need to protect the contraception, which has gotten more and more effective. We need to also strengthen women's clinics in general so that women's health, we can optimize their health even before they become pregnant and obviously after they deliver, which is also can be a risky time. And finally, we might want to think about establishing federally financed centers for abortion and providing a transportation with those centers. They could be done regionally, it could be probably be done under executive action. And we can start those centers and at least provide some resources, even in states where it might not be otherwise available. Thank you. Anyutinio. Thank you. It's important for people to realize that in the state of Vermont, the decision overturning Roe actually has no effect on abortion in Vermont. What it does do is turn it back to the states, which as a states rights person I agree with, I think that the state should have that right. I also personally improve life. So I agreed with it on that aspect. That being said, I do think that we need to invest in helping women who are pregnant. I think that pregnancy resource centers are a very valuable tool. They provide their services free of cost to the community and without taxpayer funding as well. So it's an underutilized service that I would love to see more women be able to go to them, receive the services that they offer and to receive that help. And they continue that help after birth as well. They offer educational programs for women and men and help educate against STIs, which is an important work as well. I think that we need to focus very much on the fact that there are two lives involved in an abortion scenario. There's the woman's life and there is the baby's life. And there are safeguards against taking human life in this country, but it was not being afforded to the unborn. And I'm glad to see that argument is coming up again so that we can argue that out, legislate that. As I said personally, I'm pro-life and I will legislate in favor of life. Thank you. Thank you. Liam Madden. I'm hearing a lot of interesting things that I want to respond to. I thank you, Becca, for what you've done in Proposition 5. I will be voting for that. Lewis, what you're saying about these federal centers to actually solve a problem, which is a life-threatening situation for a lot of people who will be in states where abortion is no longer allowed, I think that is a very practical thing to do. And I support that. I would just have a carve out for not forcing people who are pro-life to fund that. I think that kind of thing can really be solved in the wound. And I have sympathies for people who are pro-life and wouldn't want to be a part of that kind of program. When we talk about there's two lives involved, I agree there's two lives involved, but for the first 24 weeks or so of pregnancy, there's only one life that is independently viable. And so if we recognize that over 99% of abortions happen before 21 weeks of pregnancy, then we should recognize that a woman's right over her own body is the paramount decision there. There is only one life. And I think after 24 weeks, that may be far less than 1% of abortions that are for any reason other than a medical health of the mother type of situation, sure that can go to the states. But the states, I'm states rights too. I like it when the states get to decide their own systems of government, the laboratories of democracy, but states don't have the right to trample on individuals' rights. And I think pre-fetal viability, a human being has a right to determine their own medical choices. So I think after fetal viability, that less than 1% of pregnancies that go into the second half of pregnancy with an abortion choice on their hands, that can go to the states. And that to me is the kind of compromise that I think if we had the type of government that actually had people voting on this instead of elite controlled wedge creating political parties, we could actually agree on. And that is why focusing on better governance and systems to integrate the voice of the people into government much more frequently is one of the foundational focuses of my candidacy. Thank you. And finally, Lieutenant Governor Gray. I've heard from so many constituents over the last several days is one obviously a focus on everything we can do to codify proposal five here in Vermont. But it's the bigger question of what does this really mean? What's next? Is it access to IVF? Is it access to contraceptives? Is it equal marriage? Is it the other right to privacy rights as Justice Thomas acknowledged in his concurring opinion that we believe are protected and now may not be protected? I've also talked to so many women and I feel this as well that is this about control? Is this about control? Is this about government mandated pregnancy at a time where we have a very high maternal mortality rate still in this country that we don't have access to child care that's affordable quality don't have access to paid family and medical leave. So the impact is extremely significant. I guess what I want to talk about what will I do if I get elected one I've worked as an assistant attorney general. I've worked in the federal judiciary as a law clerk. I'm a trained lawyer. My expertise is human rights law used to teach international human rights law at Vermont law school. Excuse me. And I know that right now we need leaders who are going to hit the ground running understanding constitutional law and doing everything we can not just to codify row but what else can we codify and how quickly can we do it? Of course, I support passing the Women's Health Protection Act that may require eliminating or abolishing the filibuster and spanning our majority in the Senate expanding title 10 funding but really doing everything we can right now to support women to support caregivers to support families. I think it's so important that we have leaders who are ready to do that in Washington. Thank you. We're ready for our next question now. Change of gears. War and the war economy hurts women and children leaving little money for the things they need and care about such as healthcare, food, education, childcare, housing, climate change and more. As a legislator, how will you work to change our economy to one that works for people and planet and not for the military industrial complex? And we will start with Shanae Chase Clifford. Absolutely. We need to, even within our military budget, we need to center people. My brother is serves in, continues to serve in his 20th year in the United States Air Force and he struggles to find on base childcare. There's nearly 50% of military bases have poor or failing childcare on base. So even within our military spending, we are failing our service members. We know that there's many disparities between tri care and the type of health care that civilians can get on the marketplace. So again, within our own military budget, we need to be centering people and not lining the pockets of a few contractors. And I also do want to say that there is, it's not necessarily in either or, especially right now, as we are rightfully sending funding to Ukraine, which is a devastating humanitarian crisis. And those people need our support. And also, we can still do the things that we need to do here, including passing a livable wage that permanently ingests for inflation, investments in housing, investments in healthcare. It doesn't have to be in either or, especially because we know that when it comes to money, we always find funding for war. We always find funding for tax cuts for the wealthy. Congress finds funding for the things it cares about. We just need to actually deliver on those forever campaign promises. So certainly doesn't have to be in either or. And also, we can think more critically about our military budget. So we center people and everything we do and don't just line the pockets of the few. Thank you. Lewis Myers. Well, I agree with Ms. Chase Clifford. I think she made some very good points that it's not either or that it's not guns and butter entirely and that our logistics, the arms that we're sending to Ukraine are helping protect both men and women from coming under Russian domination. I have an interest in what the military does because it occupies or takes up a great deal of our budget. I would want to be on the Armed Services Committee at some point if I was served in Congress and see just how we are spending the money. I think that so much of it is wasted and so much of it is pork that we and I would like to begin to explore that. I think how we use our military is important, how we conceive of it. There are so many areas around the world where we could make a difference, where women are being subjugated and killed and our military could help build up the resources in those countries. So I think using the military effectively in that way would be one of my goals. I think that the VA system, getting back to healthcare, has some real strengths to it. We've talked about that in some of our previous debates. Examining the VA system and how that can help both men and women in our healthcare system, the lessons we can learn from their comprehensive care that they provide would be very important. But I agree with Ms. Chase Clifford. We know that there's also some great deal of problem, sexual assault and harassment in the military. They have been examining that in Congress, but there's a long way to go with that. Certainly that extends to the military academies as well. So I think that I don't want to separate the two. It's a major part of our economy. We need to use it effectively and efficiently. Thank you. I'm Eutinio. Thank you. First and foremost, I would like to say that I do not believe that at a time of heightened foreign threats, we need to be cutting our military budget and unnecessarily placing military members in danger by doing so. I, too, like Ms. Clifford have a brother serving actively in the military, so I understand her concerns as well. But I also know that I would never do anything in Congress to put him or other military members in danger. And when we talk about Ukraine, I think that it's a very important subject. We are helping them, but I do think that we could be doing more to alleviate the human suffering faster. And unfortunately, in war, women are disproportionately affected by the horrors of war. And to end that conflict as soon as possible would be in everyone's best interest economically and in a humanitarian manner. I will also say that we need to focus very hard on attracting business to the state of Vermont. We need a stronger economy in the state. We need new money to come into the state. We need a stronger tax base. And I would like to see these companies that come in be offered incentives to have child care onsite child care so that parents that choose to work for those companies would have that as part of a benefit package. I'm not for government interfering on a major level with child care in any aspects of our lives. I think that the government needs to stay out of private enterprise and those companies could attract workers by offering such a thing as a benefit. I'm going to talk quickly about something I've heard a lot about also that has nothing to do with the subject. And that is ending the filibuster and court reform. We should not be packing. Five seconds. That's okay. We should not be packing the court and ending the filibuster would be a mistake, not just for the Republican Party, but for the Democratic Party. Thank you. Liam Madden. Oh, hi. So the question is, how do we transition from a war economy to a peace economy? And this is a question that is near and dear to my heart. I politically awakened as a Marine who felt like a good German and was willing to do anything in my power, including risking prison or a death sentence, to use our military for upholding the values this country is meant to uphold and often falls short of. So I think we could reduce our military budget in half and still have the best military in the world. And we could use that funding to invest in the infrastructure, the housing, healthcare, education that we need to have a just and healthy society. And I would fund a military scale civilian service core. We should still have a Marine Corps, but why not also a regenerative agriculture core and a building core to help us with the affordable housing crisis or healthcare core? I think we that's how we transition to a peace economy. We take the funding from the military and some of the skilled people from the military and some of that organizational structure and the benefits available to people in the military. And we put it to civilian infrastructure work, which is part of a federal jobs guarantee. And how can we reduce the military budget and also keep the best military in the world? But first of all, we still have the most expensive military in the world. But second of all, this goes to the idea of technology helping us have better governance. We could have corruption free accounting through blockchain ledgers. So that the military bloat where you have gougers like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman and Halliburton who charge hundreds to thousands of times more than what they're paying for their cost of goods to the military, you would be able to see that transparently with blockchain ledgers. And I think fundamentally we just need an economy that is built around human well being and not creating comforts and growing for the sake of growth. And in order to achieve that kind of economy, we need an entirely different politics. And that is why I am focused so deeply on how we bring technology and new processes to governance so that we can actually implement any of these ideals that we talk about in terms of creating a peace time economy. Thank you. Lieutenant Governor Gray. Eleanor Roosevelt, someone I admire greatly is the draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She once asked and answered, where does human rights begin? It begins in our communities at home. And I think that's what this question is really about. How are we supporting women? How are we supporting children? How are we supporting working families and accessing childcare and accessing paid family and medical leave and accessing healthcare? And then how do we pay for it? What we've seen right now certainly is that our defense spending doesn't meet our understanding of security needs today from climate to cyber security. There's a lot of wasteful spending. I believe we need a defense department that's modernized and then a budget that really aligns with the actual concerns that we have. But what I know from working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, working in places where women have been used as a weapon of war, working in places where we've seen children displaced in Ukraine, 4.3 million children were displaced in the first month of the conflict and 90% of displaced persons from Ukraine, either refugees or internally displaced are women. So we see women still today bearing the brunt of conflict. So what am I going to do in Congress? One, making sure that we're investing in prevention, which means investing in a strong State Department and diplomacy, making sure that we're showing up with the United Nations Human Rights Council, investing in USAID and humanitarian assistance, and then making sure that we're modernizing our defense budget and cutting the wasteful spending and reinvesting it where we need. What does that look like? It's making sure that our veterans have support. My brother's a veteran. My father's a veteran. We have a lot of veterans here in Vermont from Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, but really looking for every opportunity that we can to use that savings to invest in what we need here, paid family and medical leave, childcare, and support for women and children. Thank you. Senator Ballant. I really, I like this question a lot, Kerry, because it forces me as someone who's studied history for so long to remember that the term, the military industrial complex, is actually coined by Eisenhower. This has been with us for a really long time. And one of the things he was most concerned about was the increase in the use of military contractors that we would have less control over that spending and less accountability for what those contractors did. And certainly we have seen that in some of our more recent roars. So to the question of spending around the military and how to invest the money, I approach this as a teacher. We have a concept in teaching called the backwards design. You figure out where you want to end up, and then you figure out how to build it to that place. And so what is it that we want the supports to look like for women and families in this country, right? We should start with that premise. What do we want? We, you know, from what I hear from traveling around Vermont is we have more women, elderly women living in poverty, because their social security benefits do not cover, especially when they end up being left behind when their spouse dies. We don't have paid family medical leave, which we fought so hard for in Vermont, but we're not able to get the governor to go along with it. We passed a child tax credit here in Vermont when the federal government was not able to get their act together to get it passed. So we have to figure out what are the supports that we need for women and families, and then look to the military budget and other areas of our budget that are bloated. And there is money, as I think Chase Clifford said, there is money. It's about the choices that we make. The other thing that I want to say is closer to home. If you look at the amount of money the federal government has spent on the F-35s, we have been taken to the cleaners by Lockheed Martin on this plane. It is still not functioning at the level we were promised that it would. And so there are other examples like that. And we have to be holding the feet to the fire in terms of budgetary and what we're getting, what we're getting back for our investments. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question is a good segue from that last one, since so many of you mentioned paid family leave. The United States remains one of the very few countries in the world that doesn't guarantee paid parental leave. And Vermont has tried for years to establish a state program to provide this leave. Every attempt has failed. And similar legislative efforts at the federal level have also failed. What, if anything, would you do in Washington to overcome the obstacles faced in the past and ensure that all Vermonters have access to paid time off when they become parents? And we will start with Lewis Meyers. I think this is actually popular among Americans and on conservatives, liberals, as particularly after COVID, when we saw the effects affecting so many families, the cost of staying at home and not being able to go to work has been profound. And it's still affecting our economy. Some states, as you know, have established paid family leave, California in particular. It has proven that it does not have a significant deleterious effect on businesses. These are funded generally by the employees themselves so that it doesn't affect the bottom line of the businesses. Offering paid parental and family leave can increase productivity. It can improve morale. It can improve retention at the jobs. It can attract top talent and overall can have a positive effect on social disparity. And certainly it affects the health and well-being of employees and their children. The Health Families Act in 2019 would require all employers to pay into sick leave. That has stalled. At this time, 80% of workers do have some paid sick leave. In 2020, the Family First Coronavirus Response Act allowed all public employees and businesses, required all public employees and businesses with greater than 500 employees, to provide up to two weeks of fully paid healthcare time off due to COVID. I think this is a bipartisan issue. And I do know as a, previously had my own medical practice, it was a small practice and it would have been difficult to fund that from the small practice. So the fact that most of these requirements kick in for the larger businesses I think is important. But I think businesses, business people and business owners are smart. They see the benefit of this and certainly families want this. Thank you very much. Anyutino. Thank you. I think that paid family leave is a very interesting topic of conversation. And unfortunately, many small businesses and some of even the medium-sized businesses can't afford to implement that on their own. I think that it could operate as something that we pay into almost like social security that it would be available for use when necessary. And it could be an optional opt-in or opt-out based on if you're planning a family, if you have a family, et cetera. Although that is a possibility, I would like to see it go back to a better economic standard in our state where people have the economic ability to not necessarily have to be working during the time of pregnancy and just after it, where families could survive on a one income level if necessary. And also that those businesses could, again, as I said before, provide child care as part of an incentive plan. I think all of those things would help very much for people to get back to work, especially after the pandemic. And also feel secure that their children were in an area that they could have some control over, know what was going on, check on them if necessary, et cetera. I think that we need to look very carefully at the parental rights aspect since we're on the topic of parenting. Parental rights is very important to me, and we need to focus on that. And in Washington, D.C., I will focus on parental rights as being forefront of my policy. And I will seek other representatives that feel the same way so that we can put safeguards in place to prevent parents from being mistreated for just caring about their children and caring about their children's education. Thank you. Leah Madden. Do I support paid family leave? I deeply support it and I feel I'm at it right now, as you can imagine. But what would I do other than vote for the legislation that has been repeatedly said is running into roadblocks? I mean, we have to be honest. I mean, what else can you do other than continue to make your case and vote when it comes up, except for recognize that Princeton University did a study in 2015 saying that there is a zero percent correlation between whether or not the majority of the people support a policy and if it gets passed or not. It's not the case if you're a high-income person. There's actually a much stronger correlation than zero percent. And so we need to recognize that even if we want things and even if we were willing to vote on the right side of it, there's something inherently wrong with our politics. And unless we can, first of all, create ways for people to vote on these issues, we're probably not going to get somewhere. But also if we continue to live in the insanity of trying the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I believe the Republican and Democratic parties are trying the same things over and over again and expecting different results. And voters who are voting for Republicans and Democrats are trying the same things over and over again and expecting different results. So we need to break and undermine the power of that system if we want to change the kind of conversation that's happening. So that's one of the reasons I am an independent and would renounce my party affiliation if that was something that kept me on the ballot. So that's the way I see it. We need paid family leave. And if we actually want to do that, it's like any of the other things I've suggested. We're not going to be happy with the results until we liberate ourselves from the two-party system. Thank you. Lieutenant Governor Gray. I think if we elect more women, we're going to see different issues rise to the top, be it childcare, be it paid family and medical leave. And I want to make sure that we talk accurately about paid family and medical leave. It is about maternity leave. It's about paternity leave. But it's also about leave to be able to care for a loved one. And here in Vermont during the pandemic, I know the data isn't crystal clear, but we saw the highest percentage of women, I believe, in the nation leaving the workforce during certain months. As I toured around the state as Lieutenant Governor, meeting with Vermonters, meeting with hundreds of unpaid caregivers who were telling personal stories about not only having to leave the workforce, but showing up in a state where as one of the oldest in the nation, we see a generation caught caught between caregiving for aging loved ones and caregiving for children at the same time. That is my personal story as well. I am now a proud mom to an 11 and 13 year old stepmom, excuse me, and also I've been providing care to a mother with multiple sclerosis. And I know what it's like to get to the point where you're out of vacation days and sick days and trying to figure out your own economic security while caring for a loved one. So I think it's important to recognize this isn't just about women. This is about all of us. And it's also about our economy. When we see women and caregivers leaving the workforce, we see fewer taxpayers. We see more and more people going on unemployment insurance and we don't benefit. So what I would champion in Congress is building the strongest coalition possible. I will be a co-sponsor, original co-sponsor of paid family and medical leave legislation working with Congresswoman Clark or Congresswoman Presley as Shanae well knows, been such a champion. They always say you have to know what you're willing to lose over and I'm willing to lose over paid family and medical leave and take it to the map because I think it will be transformative not only for our state and for our nation. And at the state level, we have to keep pushing. You just keep going and making sure that you send legislation to the governor and then build the strongest coalitions to override a veto. Thank you. Senator Ballant. Carrie, as you well know, we've been working on this for many, many years together. And we have made real strides in my first legislative session. We took on paid sick days and it took a while to get there but we guaranteed sick leave for people and we have worked hard to pass paid family medical leave here in Vermont and we've passed it multiple times only to have the governor not stand with us and had promises made that there would be a system pairing Vermont and New Hampshire to make sure that we had this opportunity for people for both maternity and caring for loved ones and that hasn't come to pass. So this is incredibly important to me and I think there's a real opportunity here. The economy post COVID is truly being reimagined. People talk about it as the big quit or the big resignation. What we're seeing is workers are demanding more. They're demanding different things from their employers. I talk to employers every single day here in Vermont and they say we are having to change the way that we do business. We are having to offer different systems and supports for our workers to keep them on the job. So I just want to remind people and I, you know, you alluded to it at the top there Kerry is we're an outlier. We're an outlier in the world. We do not take care of our families well in this country. We say that we do but we expect them to fend for themselves on so many fronts and so I want to add one little piece of this that hasn't really been brought into the conversation. It's something that I think is going to happen more and more here in Vermont. I met with a group of Alzheimer's support givers in Vermont and more and more folks who are in that situation of meeting around the clock care for their loved ones and they're needing to put their jobs and many of them are facing dire straits financially. So this is an incredibly important issue and I will just like I've been a champion on it here. I will continue to do that in Congress. Thank you. Thank you. Shanae Chase Clifford. Well I will say for folks who are interested in the idea of having a payroll tax funded the the Family Act exists introduced by Congresswoman Deloro and Senator Gillibrand. That is how you know the the paid family scheme that we have introduced in the House and the Senate right now is is funded and I think that if folks better understood the legislation and also understood where this bill is at because you know in the Senate it doesn't even have all the Democrats as co-sponsors. So this is really a space where we need to leverage our collective political capital and actually move the needle on this and again it's one of these issues to talk about when the the legislation is there and captures a lot of what folks are are concerned about. It has a dedicated funding stream in a marginal payroll tax to pay for so small businesses can also pay into this and it won't have to compete with other funding streams within our in total budget but still folks aren't completely on board with that and it and it really is just just just just a start because it's a partial a partial paid leave program but appreciate that legislation because it is so expansive and everyone will be able to be a part of it. I also worked with my my boss the congresswoman former boss congresswoman Ayanna Presley on a bill called the support through loss act which would ensure that folks who have lost a pregnancy are also able to get time off to to grief and to heal there. I will also say yes we need standalone legislation to support if they paid family leave but we also need to make it easier for for workers to unionize so within their collective bargaining they can ask for these benefits and as we support labor in general because this is what it's about this is certainly a women and families issue but this is a core labor issue so when we support our unions and make sure folks are able to unionize they're also able to collectively bargain for these benefits as well. Thank you. All right we're moving on to another question. Many suggested young Vermonters pursue training through career and technical education programs to address job shortages in the skilled trades and yet little attention is being paid to the low enrollment of girls and gender expansive students in these programs. Vermont's three-year career and technical education enrollment average of female students in non-traditional programs such as construction and engineering is only 11.7 percent. So I have a very specific question for you. How will you help Vermont better utilize federal funding to address gaps in equity and access? And we will start with Anya Teenio. Thank you. I will start out by saying that right out of high school I got a job managing a dairy farm which is not what most people consider a five foot three girl does but I grew up with agriculture and it was something very near and dear to my heart and it still is so I am aware of what it's like to be a woman and frankly a very young woman at that time in that role and here's my thought on this. Women and girls should not be forced into a profession that they don't want to be part of and a lot of these professions are very physical, very physically demanding and we should not be forcing people to take those roles if they do not want to be part of them. If they do want to be part of them by all means we should help them in every way to achieve that goal and to learn everything that they can to be successful in it and to be treated fairly within that role. When I hear conversations like Mr. Madden was talking about having work cores to me that's very much a red flag and sounds very similar to communist work camps and we need to be very clear of forcing people into professions they don't want to take. We can incentivize them, we can talk about the benefits, we can help them in every way to do that but ultimately a person's profession is going to be their own choice and we need to respect that choice and we need to not stigmatize any choice that they choose along those lines. We need to focus on the trades though in this state because we are coming to a very serious crisis of not having enough tradespeople to handle the volume of work that needs to be done and I do think that it is a very valuable program that we have through Vermont Technical College and so forth that young people can go learn these trades and make very excellent money doing that and I would like in Washington to be an advocate for trade schools to talk about the benefits to go to high schools and talk to students about how that can benefit them and what their life might look like partner with the colleges and have tradespeople that are very satisfied in that career to go with me and talk to the students directly and talk about what it's really like to have that job and I look forward to doing that as a representative. Thank you. Leah Madden. So I agree with Anya about the idea of trades, trade schools being more a part of funding streams as well as just the conversation, the culture. I have a college education thanks to the GI Bill but I actually have my job in the renewable energy industry largely because of my experience in vocational training and I think we try too hard to shove most of our young people onto the college path and that's not right for everybody and it actually it's leaving a severe workforce shortage in so many important areas that are very practical and very well-paying jobs. I'd like to strongly disagree with Anya about the idea that there's any sort of correlation is laughable to me between a job corps and a communist work camp. I think these would be voluntary institutions that people could join to learn skills and do a four-year term just like they were doing in the military and get some of the benefits that you get from joining the military because I don't think you should have to risk your life in an often for-profit and senseless war in order to get some of the benefits that service can afford people and in terms of access for different gender groups for this type of tech and construction and stuff like that I think access equal access is incredibly important but I don't think even if we strive for that we would achieve like a 50-50. I think women and men are often just interested in different things and that is a inherent immutable part of our makeup but that doesn't mean we can't strive to have the taboos and the culture help people feel willing to explore wherever they're interested in and I'm very much in favor of that. Thank you Lieutenant Governor Gray. I think I'd begin by starting to do a lot of what I've done as Lieutenant Governor which is trying to bring the voices and experiences of those who are operating in the space. I engaged regularly with Vermont Works for Women as Lieutenant Governor as part of a seat at the table series that I hosted almost hosting like a congressional hearing bringing in experts listening trying to understand what the barriers are. So in Congress one I've been very open I'd like to be on the Education and Labor Committee which is the committee that addresses workforce and education investments. I'd love to have a first hearing on what are the barriers and how do we address them? Is it workplace safety? Is it child care? Is it access to transportation? What is it that's keeping women and under other underrepresented groups from going into the trades? And then separately engaging with our unions who have done a lot of work in this area trying to address employment opportunities and also ensure that there's workplace safety and support. But additionally stepping back from that really looking at how we're investing in the trades. When are we getting young people onto the track of exploring being a carpenter, a plumber, electrician and knowing right now that when we work to meet our biggest goals be it deploying solar or building houses or deploying broadband we lose as a nation, as a state, when we don't have diversity and we don't have equity and we don't have full opportunity to a full workforce in being able to participate. So I've been very proud in this campaign to put forward a federal workforce agenda. I've been a strong supporter of investing in our trades and trade schools making CCV free. We've seen that work well here in Vermont making sure that degrees or certifications up to two years are available and high demand sectors looking at student loan debt and how can we ensure loan forgiveness in high demand sectors. I think it's one of the biggest challenges but also one of the biggest opportunities of our time and if elected I'll be a champion for women and women in the workforce in Washington. Thank you. Senator Ballant. I wanted to start by saying when I was in middle school everybody in my school had to go through a series of classes. Boys and girls all went through the same series of classes and they were to expose you to different careers that you may work with your hands and so I took a semester of plastics and a semester of metalworking and a semester of woodworking as well as baking and sewing and all of these things that got us thinking about how we might want to work with our hands. I mention it because these kinds of things these imaginings of like can you imagine yourself in a career it starts in middle school and by the time we are funding career and technical education in high school which is critically important and we need to continue to do that in Vermont. It's almost too late to catch people that have that interest as early as 12 and 13 but see no place for them no pathway so I would very much like to see us investing money more in a sort of many apprenticeships many pathways starting as young as middle school to give them a sense and I agree with Liam that we often try to shunt everyone towards a four-year college education. I want people who want that to get that I want people who for whom that is not what they want for themselves to truly see a viable opportunity for them and the other thing that I would say is we've done a tremendous amount of work here in the Senate in Vermont on pathways professional pathways apprenticeships making sure incumbent workers can change their careers and get the supports to do that but I would really focus some of my efforts on what's happening in in junior high around the state and the nation so that people can imagine themselves in those different roles and then of course we need funding to support those programs. Thank you. Shanae Chase Clifford. My dad who I talk about all the time he is entering his 30th year in his 30th year of teaching in Vermont public schools and he teaches physics and that's not a gene I got you know but it was it was really cool about 15 years ago seeing him start the robotics program at Essex High School and what has been really phenomenal about that is he's seen a continually more girls more non-binary students more neurodivergent students coming into his design classes and taking robotics because it's something he's incredibly passionate about but also because he has I've seen him really hustle to get grants and make relationships with tech companies around our region to make it the best program possible and this shouldn't be something we have we ask teachers to do on their own you know I saw all the boxes of the Lego kits on my kitchen table this should be something that we are supporting and with grants to our schools so they so teachers can and we can set up the programs for really exciting not just after school programs because we know that if these programs are only after school it puts extra barriers up for students who have to work or who have transportation issues but making sure this is part of their school day so that they can fully experience what is really important educational opportunities and you know through through the robotics program I know my dad has sent a lot of kids who never you know it was their first time ever thinking about engineering or anything steam or stem related and they go off to some of the best engineering programs our country has to offer so certainly making sure we're investing in in school time for folks to explore all sorts of engineering and technical aspects in us has been said making sure we're we're de-stigmatizing anything that's not a four-year a four-year college experience and and making sure in our guidance programs and as we're talking to middle schoolers really talking about not just where you're going to go to college and pick the school that has the most activities but think about what it is you actually want to do in your life and what type of life you want to build and pick an educational experience that's going to support that. Thank you Lewis Myers. I was thinking as we talked about my own profession of medicine which is you know somewhat different than the trades but there's been a tremendous change in medicine in terms of participation by women two generations ago most medical schools were predominantly men probably 75 80 male were students from men this past year over 50 percent over 50 percent of the average medical school classes women and I was thinking how that happened I have taught medical students for many years and so I was watching this trend I think it started at home I think that many young people who go to medical school their parents one or often their father and past generations was a physician father started to encourage their daughters as well as their sons to think about going to medical school so I think it started at home and I think in the trades it can start at home the number of the medical schools began to use federal funding and other funds to diversify their classes bringing in more women bringing in more people of color and and minority groups once they got to medical school they were supported in many hope in many medical schools and once they got into residency they began to see role models and mentoring from other women who had come before them and that's just continued and progressed as more and more of them have come through the system a number of schools are also providing tuition help and also child care on campus of the medical schools so that women can begin to have their children they don't have to wait until the end of residency or postgraduate training which is often their late 30s I would also add that in the middle schools as as senator balance said education the math and sciences became much more popular among young women that had often been they had often avoided those so and then following medical school the residencies have been restructured there are now time limits on how many hours a resident can work and even once you get out of residency many practices now are limiting the the number of hours per week that people are assigned so is it is uh it's been a remarkable change and I don't think we're ever going to go back obviously and I think it's been a great great uh step forward for my profession thank you on to the next question according to the US Census Bureau's pulse survey in March 30 percent of Vermont households with children were having difficulty paying for usual household expenses the number of homeless children counted by the annual point-in-time survey has increased significantly from prior years and with food and transportation costs rising many families are more economically precarious so as a member of congress what federal policies would you prioritize to bring an end to child poverty and increase family economic security in vermont and the nation and we will start with Liam Madden well to start with the people who are most vulnerable we need to increase people who are on fixed incomes whether that's for uh they're on they're on federal disability or a federal program or if they're just on minimum wage it's kind of a fixed income we need to peg those benefits and those wages to the cost of inflation and we just need to flat out increase what those wages are um I am for a um $12 minimum wage for a small business and an $18 minimum wage for a large for employees of a large business um again this comes down to is our economy built for human well-being or is it built for quarterly profit and right now we have an economy built for quarterly profit and the way to change that is both through culture and through politics and I think in culture we need to be okay valuing things other than comfort and money we need to value community and um and that can spill over into politics because politics I don't think are often um leading culture I think they're often reflecting culture so in some way it's always attention between what do our people value uh and what do our politicians represent but when it comes to what the leaders what politicians can do as leaders I believe it's to um fund human well-being it's as simple as that and we you know what what we do I've been pretty explicit it's not going to be a terrible surprise anybody I think we need to tax billionaires and their wealth and not just their their income I think we need to reduce the military budget and I think we need to invest in human well-being more than an economy that is just unethically unequal and a dangerous it's a danger to democracy as well thank you very much lieutenant governor gray uh there's so much to say and I'm gonna try to be as concise as possible um but the question brings me back to a recent experience as lieutenant governor I don't think called lieutenant governor for a day trying to have as many students into the state house as possible but also getting out and visiting a lot of our school's teachers um and was out of school in Randolph and one of the most um I guess prideful moments for the principal was showing me a health clinic that was built right into the school also showing me their rise center where they're supporting mental health and support services for kids and it really comes back to the recognition of what is it that our schools now offer for kids um and at the federal level how can we support that um universal access to school meals um access to healthcare making sure that our schools are safe and well supported our teachers are well supported I think one of the biggest challenges is that you know we've seen a rollback of the child care tax credit or not a reauthorization of that so making sure that families have support I would be a champion for um bringing the child care tax credit back making sure that child care is affordable accessible and these are just some pieces right I mean it's healthcare it's housing it's all of the things that we're doing to support working families but to talk about child care for a moment Vermonters pay 25 percent of their income on child care that is the highest in the nation and until we get that sorted out I support Bryden's proposal of um and seven percent of income for median income families until we get that sorted out and we've done a lot of work in Vermont we're not going to see families fully supported so I don't think it's one simple thing I think it's a lot of different pieces but showing up for families and doing everything we can to support our next generation um so that they have bright equitable healthy futures thank you senator ballant so the thing that uh drove me to run for the senate here in Vermont in the first place was when I saw my my kid's school in Brattleboro um the number of kids on free and reduced lunch when I first moved to Brattleboro was about 50 percent of the kids at at the local school were on free and reduced lunch already incredibly high by the time my kid started there the number had crept up to 70 percent of the kids qualifying for free and reduced lunch which is a marker for for child poverty so that has been uh central to the work that I have done in the legislature is trying to tackle this very complicated issue and I just want to give a shout out to Liam uh he really spoke my mind when he said it is absolutely unethical and unconscionable uh that we do not take care of kids and families and and we don't tax billionaires wealth and we don't tax their income in the way that we should there is money available to deal with childhood poverty we're just making the wrong choices so um of course wages have been stagnated since the 1970s they haven't kept up with inflation so we did a lot of work here in Vermont about increasing uh minimum wage um still not a livable wage but we made some some great strides um we made childcare investments um making sure that people had access um to to childcare and um you know one of the main drivers here in Vermont as well is that uh housing is so incredibly expensive and not available and so many different levels we need to invest in at the federal level um one thing that I'm very intrigued by and I think we learned a lot during the pandemic when you put more money in parents' pockets their kids do better um they do better emotionally psychologically and so that is money well spent so I'm intrigued by universal basic income I'd like to look more at uh those studies and see how we might be able to put some form of that in place thank you Shanae Chase Clifford um absolutely I think in the short term we know there's a child tax credit lifts families out of poverty we saw when it was expanded during the pandemic it had that result and we saw what happened when it was not expanded so permanent expansion of that tax credit but we also know that our system of just adding tax benefits comes too late in a lot of folks' budgets and we need systemic reform and that means we need to invest in the baseline resiliency of our working families so that means as has been said but I'll say it again we need a livable wage that permanently adjusts for inflation we need housing investments so folks don't see 50 to 75% of their monthly income go to housing costs we need we need universal health care we need Medicare for all so folks don't see thousands of dollars leave their pockets to pay for copays and premiums and and there's also there's there's a lot of nuances here and how we can support our young people we know that LGBTQ plus youth are nearly 40% more likely to experience homelessness so it's also why it's it's not just you know to be nice and to be kind which we we need to do but when we're talking about anti anti gay and anti trans rhetoric it has real safety implications for our young people they're pushed out of their homes and they cannot find safety in many shelters so that's incredibly important that we focus on our on our young people who have additionally marginalized identities we also need to make sure that we're thinking about the trauma that is intergenerational poverty and that's again why it's more important than ever that we think about a universal health care system that is inclusive of universal mental health care and supporting our young people at an early age with socio-emotional supports and you know I was I was a young person that was acutely aware of my family's financial situation I worked as soon as I could as soon as I turned 16 I was working so I could contribute to my family's budget I know what it's like to have to talk to to talk to uh the gas company that says like hey we can't we legally can't not give you gas but like just let you know your parents are behind um that stays with folks and that's really part of I think our trauma crisis in communities so there are so many reasons why it's also it's it's a health imperative it's a racial justice imperative but they're again we need to deliver on these perennial campaign promises to make people's lives better thank you sorry yeah well thank you I you know we've known for for generations that um single family uh single parent households struggle are more likely to struggle economically and and their children as well um so keeping families together uh I think is critical and how do we do that I mean we can certainly talk about um some of all of the programs that we've already discussed in terms of giving money directly to children but I think whatever we can do to support the two parent household is going to help the children all of these services basic income uh I I think is worth exploring the child tax credit clearly worked in the short period of time that was there um providing head start and universal pre-k uh providing affordable child care free school lunches for for all children affordable housing and uh mental health in particular as as a number of the candidates have discussed but I think the focus should also be in whatever we can do to help keep families together thank you thank you on yutinio thank you very much first of all I would like to agree with mr byers that two parent households do have a stronger ability to provide for children and obviously that's just not possible in some cases but we should be working towards supporting the parents staying together and being able to raise their children and what I will do in washington to address childhood poverty is to address the underlying issues we are talking about extreme inflation a lack of supplies um businesses declining workers receiving less than a livable wage because of the price of the products that they need to buy the war on fossil fuels that are driving gasoline prices through the roof there's something that I like to call the working poor they have jobs that technically should be able to support them and their families but the cost of living creates a situation where they're now the working poor and unfortunately rising gas prices negatively affects working people more than almost any other class we need to in washington we need to focus very hard on reducing inflation lowering taxes and helping economic growth in our country I will focus on getting our nation to be agriculturally and energy independent so that we have a strong base of supplies and we are not charging these rates for fossil fuels we have to stop punishing families for using fossil fuels to heat their homes and drive their cars when we have put forth no viable alternatives to those to driving a regular vehicle or using oil to heat your home and by raising the rates the way we have and by stopping drilling for oil in our country and stopping refining oil in our country we are placing people in a very dangerous situation I have people come to me every day and talk to me about how they don't know how they're going to buy their heat this winter and I'm concerned for them I'm concerned what they're going to do and how they're going to be able to do it so in Washington DC that's what I will do I will focus on the underlying issues and it's important to realize that children are not poor without their families being poor it children that are in a stable family situation are not going to be poor on their own so we need to help these families to overcome the challenges that we're facing right now and I will work on that and thank you I'll move us on to our next question the the number of women-owned businesses has grown since the pandemic what steps would you take to provide these entrepreneurs the support they need to create and sustain a thriving business and we will start with Lieutenant Governor Gray only two minutes okay let's see here um one it's been amazing here in Vermont to see so many leading Vermont businesses be it Mamava be it um Burton um be it so many businesses are showing up and engaging in our communities helping to keep our economy going especially during this pandemic in Congress I would absolutely support increased small business loans again I think it comes back to how are we supporting women going into all sorts of fields where we're traditionally underrepresented be it the trades be it business be it leading I think supporting investor networks where we're really looking at how do we support women in getting businesses off the ground and where does that support come from looking at capital but also I think it comes back to paid family medical leave and child care and if we want to have women-owned businesses that thrive and also workplaces that thrive we have to have workplaces that are supportive of women that means that we're going to have thriving economies so while there is so much work to do I think a good congresswoman is bringing what we've done really well here in Vermont to Washington hosting hearings bring our leaders to the table and then also trying to figure out how to build the strongest coalitions possible to invest in women-owned businesses not only here in Vermont but nationally thank you senator ballant I think the single biggest most impactful thing that we can do to support women-owned businesses and businesses in general is passing Medicare for all we have seen that employers and would-be entrepreneurs can't make the leap to either start their businesses or expand their businesses because they simply cannot afford to provide health insurance and other benefits to their employees we have to decouple jobs from health insurance and I know it's a big lift I think that we can expand Medicare in bands we have seen Medicare be incredibly successful but for a huge swath of our population I'd be interested in lowering the age by which you can buy into Medicare for all I also think that we need to invest in job training certainly in certification programs to boost the workforce a lot of times people start out in a career because they started in the workforce in that same career and then they see you know I have an opportunity here to build my own business and yes we absolutely need to invest in affordable high quality childcare it's holding back so many workers within our economy and of course specifically women-owned businesses thank you Shanae Chase Clifford I think you know there's a lot there's a lot of things I've said so far that I agree with but take a little bit of a different tack there also has to be I think a better outreach from the Small Business Administration especially for women of color-owned businesses we saw with PPP loans in particular that there's a massive disconnect between intention of programs and how they're actually implemented so we need to do a much better job about being proactive and reaching out to community leaders who understand where the landscape of businesses and making sure that people know what types of programs are available because again the best laid programs don't mean much of the folks that they're intended to aren't able to access it and if we have you know well resource people able to game the system so definitely having better constituent service in that way and also focusing on our micro businesses the smallest businesses in our communities as well and making sure also that the SBA is inclusive of co-ops and different types of businesses as well because I also think that in lending I also think that is a way that we can be more inclusive of all sorts of women who are we're trying to also be a little bit different in the types of businesses that are starting as well. The last thing I will say is in general not just in the SBA but in lending in general we know that there are significant disparities and access to credit so we have to you know I would hope to serve on the financial services committee make sure we're holding businesses accountable and doing more to make sure we have more fair lending and accountability for fair lending so when folks when folks are excited about a small business maybe can't get one through SBA or for whatever reason when they go to a bank or go to their local credit unions which I also hope to support too feel confident that they're going to be seen for the totality of they are of who they are and the brilliance of their idea and not for the identity they occupy. Thank you. Lewis Myers. Thank you. I'm not sure I have a lot more to add because there have been some terrific points made by everyone who's spoken already on this. I would say again begin early begin in schools teaching business teaching finances because often and make it sure that girls are included in those classes and are encouraged. Internship and mentoring as we said talked about a few minutes ago in the medical field is critically important. Making sure that banks are not discriminating which I think we just talked about and then I think looking at how over time women owning business is going to change the business world I think it's going to be very interesting to watch. Will there be a new business models coming up which have which will make businesses really more approachable more humane more more people centered. So I look forward to the changes. Thank you. Anyutino. Thank you. I first want to say that I love entrepreneurship. I think that it is one of the best things that we have in our nation and the ability to follow the American dream start your own business work for yourself all of those things. One of the things that I have seen happen too often is that people follow their dream and they start a business they start a small business and then they're not able to make it thrive and unfortunately there is a lot that can be done on a statewide level but in Washington I intend to address the fact that it is almost impossible for business to thrive in Vermont it's overregulated and overtaxed and businesses struggle very hard to be profitable within our state and we need to change that and it goes back to affordability. I wish to sit on budget appropriations so that I can regulate government spending and look at where government spending is going to go and how we can use the taxpayer dollars to go back into the economy and bring our economics ability to a point where we have a better opportunity in the state for young people for women for men for everybody. I'm also going to say really quickly that when we talk about women-owned businesses I think that women in agriculture is a very important thing. I know I'm a little biased on the subject being from an agricultural background but it's a wonderful way that women can actually be home with their families and still make money raise their children in an environment where they are learning skills as well and I think that we need to encourage women in agriculture very much more than we do encourage agriculture in general but definitely women in agriculture. Thank you. Leah Madden. Well my mom was an entrepreneur she owned her own restaurants so this is just the water I swim in it's to love and then and expect as not really anything out of usual a woman-run business is just in my DNA what do we do to support that more? I think Molly and Becca said some really insightful things that it's about encouraging the conditions where people feel safe taking that risk into entrepreneurship and the paid family leave as Molly said and healthcare being much more affordable and accessible as Becca said are foundational. That is it. Yes we can have more loans from the SBA and as a really bureaucratic and I don't think that's going to be it. I don't think it's about the small business administration making a lot of loans. I think it's about encouraging the conditions in our country and our economy to make people feel safe taking a risk. Yes I think just like as Becca and Louis said about education starting in the STEM fields early to encourage us I think entrepreneurship is also one of those kind of hands-on activities that you can encourage young people to engage in and get a taste for early and understand some of the basic skills that help contribute to it and there are things that I've been a part of as a fellow for a and social entrepreneurship accelerator and these accelerators as what I would like to see the small business administration funding because they're really good at finding innovative exciting entrepreneurs who are solving problems in their local communities and I think the small business administration is never going to be that. There's a stodgy bureaucracy but if we could fund the accelerators that are already doing that that's exciting to me and to piggyback on what Sine was saying employee ownership is the fastest way encouraging and incentivizing employee ownership is the fastest way to on scale encourage business ownership of the entire population and I think that that is a foundational issue to me the more we can dramatically incentivize companies to democratize their workforce the more we can shift our economy to be one that is healthy and just. Alright thank you we're going to move on to another question thank you all for hanging in this very long process we've got here really appreciated these are all very important issues I'm glad we're having time to spend with them. A recent report released by the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence concluded that domestic and sexual violence cost the state of Vermont over a hundred million dollars each year in addition to the economic impact of violence the human cost is profound what do you think ought to be done here in Vermont and on the federal level to prevent domestic and sexual violence and we will start with Senator Ballant. So this is something that I talk about a lot out on the campaign trail and also in my role as president pro tem we have a serious problem with domestic violence in this state and even just saying that is important because so many people do not see it and one of the best ways that we can help to reduce and stop sexual violence and domestic violence is to pass smarter gun safety laws and we passed the red flag law here in Vermont it is something I'd like to see get passed nationally it is an important protection for people living in dangerous situations with a partner who is not not safe to be around so extremist protection orders are an important tool. I also know that part of the work that we have to do here in Vermont is to deal with the issue of alcohol use and abuse and that is something else that we don't talk openly enough about and the role that alcohol in particular plays in domestic violence across Vermont so certainly I will be someone who champions gun safety laws just like I have here in Vermont I will do that at the federal level and I will support huge investments in substance use prevention and treatment as well as mental health supports and we have to get honest about our struggles here in Vermont before we can tackle the issue so that's part of what I've been doing on the trail is trying to get people to talk more honestly about what's happening in their communities. Thank you. Shanae, Chase Clifford. As a social worker this is something I think about a lot certainly from how do we support folks who are experiencing or suffering from domestic violence or intimate partner violence in helping them figure out how to safely exit those relationships and the support our mental health and behavioral health field needs to be able to do that better. We certainly need to invest in these essential workers who do have networks and systems and understand how to do this work well and we need to make sure that our frontline most essential mental health service providers are not experiencing these record high employment vacancies and that also has root causes in student loan debt and how expensive becoming a mental health professional is and so there's certainly that area that we need to focus on and also we're going to think about the root causes of of community violence in all of its forms and my understanding of how communities operate it's intergenerational trauma and we need to think about wholesale investments in our communities and that is particularly the economic resilience of our communities certainly investing in substance use supports and mental health care again as I said too but making sure it's widely available at an early age and social emotional learning is so essential and making sure we have the adequate ratios of behavioral health professionals in schools both to respond to domestic violence but also to help abate trauma that appears and often this is how intergenerational trauma is is passed down so this is a it's a really it has multifaceted root causes and I believe the issue has to be an entire wholesale investment in the well-being of our communities. Thank you. Lewis Myers. Well yes I mean I think it's important to recognize we have made some progress in this country over the last 20 years when I was in graduate school and social work I spent some time looking at this issue in 2005 the Violence Against Women Act was passed by the federal government and that has had an impact particularly in working with local police departments to provide grants to implement mandatory arrest or pro arrest programs and policies for protection order violations. It's had a profound effect on on some of the state laws governing domestic abuse so we have made some progress there's so much more to do I totally agree with Senator Ballant I about the fact that we ignore alcohol and use in this state alcohol dependence and abuse and that it's a major factor obviously we need more mental health services mandatory counseling as a either pre-conviction or post-conviction as part of probation and we should recognize too that this is a particular problem for undocumented immigrants in the country who are women who are afraid to go to the police because of their legal status and are at huge risk for being abused and not having recourse so there's still a lot of work to be done. Thank you. Anyutinio. Thank you. So we do need to look very closely at underlying causes alcohol abuse, addiction, human trafficking is a very serious problem that we face and unfortunately is something that Vermont faces but we face it around the nation and we need to be much tougher in our sentencing of such crimes and make sure that we're removing offenders of this type of crime from the streets. I'm a big proponent of women's second amendment rights women should be trained to defend themselves to protect themselves to protect their children and I think that it's very important that women have access to the proper training and the ability to obtain firearms when they feel that they're in danger or that they need to protect themselves or others so I would work very hard to continue those rights in Washington DC so that the accessibility to the second amendment protection would be available for women. We also need to talk about moral background when children are not being taught to respect one another and are not being taught how to behave with one another. They grow up to cause harm to others and it's a sad state of affairs that we're facing in our school system but they're not being really taught a moral background and I would like to see us get back to that in school so that we can address some of these issues. There is systemic abuse through families oftentimes you know somebody has been abused and then they continue to abuse down the line and I think that a lot of that is going to come down to tougher sentencing to getting abusers off the streets and having much tougher sentences for child abusers and making sure that they are not able to continue that abuse. We also need to fund the police so that these type of calls are responded to quickly and accurately and that can save lives oftentimes in a domestic violence situation it comes down to seconds count in domestic violence and we need to be very aware of that and be very active in making sure that our police force is ready to respond. Thank you. Leah Madden. Yeah a lot of very insightful things definitely resonates strongly with what Shanae said. She's obviously deeply immersed in this this topic and one of the things that struck me what Dr. Meyer said which is the the things that have worked the Violence Against Women Act were related to funding and training police and I think it's clear to me from my own family history that you know one of the reasons why Shanae's words were so resonant with me is I know that trauma does echo through the generations and it's important to realize that this is a really multifaceted issue you know where it comes from cause stuff yes it's about it's about morality it's also about education it's about alcohol so there's so many underlying causes but the thing that is important to you know prevent this on whatever the underlying cause is the symptom from harming people is police and I think if we had more people like Shanae as close allies with police not a replacement for police but someone who's integrated into their response to these situations I think we'd be in much much better situation and I think Vermont is in a situation where we're having far more retirements and people leaving police forces than we have new recruits coming in and that's a troubling situation and that that probably means we need to fund police more and we need to have a society where police are not so often demonized but also that police are held accountable so there's less less cause to demonize them so I think that it's just a multifaceted issue policing is where I would focus thank you and Lieutenant Governor Gray it comes down to three different areas prevention accountability and support and to take each of these different areas in order I think one as was mentioned we have to strengthen red flag laws across this country we've got a lot of work here in Vermont but need to bring that to the national level making sure that weapons are not used and held by individuals shouldn't have access to them and obviously there's a lot of other measures we need to take on guns but red flag laws are completely relevant here second making sure that we're inventing investing in mental health and support services which is support for individuals who've experienced intergenerational trauma individuals need support for substance use disorder and then to speak to accountability uh Senator Leahy has obviously been a champion on VAWA and VAWA reauthorization we need to continue that work I do not support defunding the police as someone who's worked as an assistant attorney general and with investigators across the state when we don't have victim advocates where we don't have investigators we can't accurately and thoughtfully prosecute domestic violence as it occurs here in the state and then to speak to support we have so many organizations across Vermont who are supporting victims of domestic violence on a shoestring budget and until we properly fund them at the federal level and make grants available and we're not going to have full access to support services which include in the Family Violence Prevention and Services Improvement Act which represented McBathis championed access to emergency shelters related support services also I think it's really important some of the leadership that has happened here in the state around access to employment still employment you know access to a salary if you're a victim employment protections and then again mental health and support services knowing that victims of domestic abuse oftentimes end up with mental health challenges and need a significant trauma related support so I think it's a multi-prong approach but it means supporting the work of all of the organizations here in the state that are doing such a tremendous job thank you all right we are a little over two hours into our forum and so it's time for us to wrap it up I'm going to give each of you 30 seconds for a closing statement I know that's a very short amount of time but you're all very articulate I know you can do it we'll start with Shanae Chase Clifford what a fun night to just talk policy for hours with y'all it's been it's been a good time um I I hope that y'all have at least you know for the parts I got to talk I hope you've seen that I'm a candidate that is usually focused on policy and really does want to offer a different perspective and a different energy than we've seen in in our political system and excited to hopefully meet many of you on on the trail and be able to talk to you more about these issues you can support and find me at shanaeclifford.com and again thank you for participating and and engaging in this process and again I hope to see and hear more from you all thank you so much Lewis Myers thank you I I think if this evening proves anything it's Vermont is fortunate to have a remarkable group of candidates I don't think we could go wrong with anyone here I would like to look beyond the slogans whether they're from the left or the right I think that the slogans are keeping us from making progress I want to do what we do in health care which is listen understand look at the data keep an open mind be creative and find some solutions that work thank you thank you I'm yutino first of all thank you for having me and thank you to everyone who has stuck with us for two hours here I I really find it a very enlightening evening and I hope that you did too in Washington I will fight for women I will fight for men I view all of us equally and I view the solutions that we need to be economically prosperous and safe to be at the forefront of my campaign and I hope that you will take the time to learn more about my campaign at on yutino for congress.com and attend some of my events ask me questions in person I'm happy to interact with all of you as you know ask me and I'll answer and I ask you to above all get out and vote your thank you thank you thank you for hosting this event this is wonderful thank you to the fellow candidates I learned it was good to hear your perspectives more in full I'm running because I'm a father and I I have young children and I don't believe that either party can be trusted to defy the elites that control their parties and to create a government capable of solving our collective problems and afford our children the societal opportunities to meet their potential as cooperative creative and wholehearted thriving human beings and so I want to be the independent thinker in this election and I believe I I believe I am and you can learn more about what I stand for at rebirthdemocracy.com. Thank you Lieutenant Governor Gray. Thank you Carrie and thank you to all the candidates it's always a pleasure I know that regardless of what's what happens in our respective primaries we're going to be serving Vermont together and that's an honor thank you everyone tuning in this evening I do hope for the first time we send a woman to Washington I do think that's important and it was incredibly important tonight to be able to center this conversation in this moment around women around families around children we have so much work to do in the years and months ahead and I'm excited to get to work as Vermont's congresswoman if elected get out and vote request your ballot and we hope to see you out on the trail in the days weeks and months ahead thank you thank you and senator ballad. Thank you Carrie and everyone who pulled this together like others said it was a very enlightening evening really appreciate it so what I want to say is I am a parent I am a longtime teacher and I'm a longtime legislator and so many of the issues that we talked about tonight from child poverty to paid leave to voting those are issues that I've worked on here in Vermont it made an incredible progress here I'm a coalition builder I am someone who knows how to get work done and I'm eager to take that experience to DC to fight for all of you thank you. Thank you so much thank you everybody to all the candidates thank you to the League of Women Voters for putting this on and for your continued steadfast commitment to access to voting and to information for voters and upholding our democracy and thanks to all of our partners in sponsoring this evening tonight and I will echo what so many of you have said already let's get out and vote please thank you good night everybody.