Eric Swalwell: “I came to Congress to help people, not to hurt people, and this shutdown is hurting innocent Americans. This past…”

“I came to Congress to help people, not to hurt people, and this shutdown is hurting innocent Americans. This past Sunday, I flew back home because Congress was not in session. We were not voting on Sunday, so I took a flight home to California to meet with my constituents in my congressional district. I held a town hall. I held it at Dublin City Hall. Dublin City Hall is where I served as a city council member. Dublin is also home to many Federal employers. In my congressional district, we have 4,000 Federal employees, plus a number of government contractors who work at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories. I also held it there because, for 2 years as a city council member, I worked in that chamber day in and day out to make sure that we provided a balanced budget. We provided a 2-year budget. It is so frustrating for me here in the Congress that we provide budgets that are only 45 or 60 days at a time, and across America our city councils are thinking big and thinking forward and balancing their budgets while taking measured investments in the future. So we gathered the community of California's 15th Congressional District at Dublin City Hall, and we had over 150 people attend. The room was filled with fear and anxiety. Federal workers were in the room, worried about what this was going to mean for the personal incomes, for their families, for their household bills.…”