PORT ANGELES — Questions on immigration reform, the economy, taxes and a controversial 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision on campaign financing topped the list.
More than a dozen queries were posed Tuesday to freshman 6th Congressional District U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer in a town hall-style meeting at Peninsula College.
“The big enchilada here is we’ve got to get the economy cooking again,” Kilmer said.
About 130 people packed into the Little Theater, the same place where Port Angeles native Kilmer, 39, had a part in a play as a 5-year-old “invisible child,” he recalled in his opening remarks.
Kilmer was anything but invisible Tuesday as he hosted the first of six town hall-style meetings over five days in the 6th District, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties, before heading to the second one at Fort Worden in Port Townsend at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Coverage of Kilmer’s forum in Port Townsend will be in Thursday’s Peninsula Daily News.
Following college President Luke Robins’ introduction of Kilmer as “a native son of our community,” Kilmer said the federal debt and the economy are his biggest challenges as a member of Congress.
Kilmer, a Gig Harbor resident and former state senator who succeeded 18-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, stressed his efforts at bipartisanship in a Congress fractured by division during the first quarter of his two-year term.
As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Kilmer organized a meeting of a dozen Republican and Democratic freshmen on the committee, and also meets regularly with a larger group of Republicans and Democrats in the House known as “The Bipartisan Working Breakfast Group.”
Asked about immigration by a man who said, “I want to take care of Americans, first,” and said the country did not need more sick, old people coming to America, Kilmer responded that he supports “some sort of pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants.
It would include their payment of back taxes and penalties, and going “to the back of the line” before they become legal U.S. residents.
“The current system is not working,” Kilmer said.
“Those playing by the rules are disadvantaged,” he added.
“It’s time for us to modernize our laws to keep up with today’s reality.”
He also urged beefed-up border security.
Lois Danks, an organizer of Stop the Checkpoints, which has protested the expanded Border Patrol presence on the North Olympic Peninsula, urged that the billions spent on border security be spent on such needs as education and to dent the impact of budget sequestration.
She said an increase in guest-worker programs for high-tech jobs could hurt those legal residents who already are looking for work.
Kilmer said high-tech companies are having difficulty filling jobs.
In Tacoma, for example, some companies have had high-tech openings for more than six months, he said.
“They can’t find people with the skills they need,” he said.
Loopholes in the tax code also should be closed and the entire code re-evaluated, Kilmer said.
“We are all bearing the brunt” of loopholes pushed by lobbyists decades ago, he added.
Kilmer also said CEOs should pay the same tax rate as the people who work for them, a proposal commonly called “The Buffett Rule” for billionaire Warren Buffett, who proposed it.
“That, to me, makes sense, to have a tax system that works for everyone and in particular middle-class families,” Kilmer said.
Military veterans also should have more opportunities when they return home from war, he said.
“If you fought, you should not have to fight for a job when you come home,” he said, adding that a Veterans Affairs backlog on processing applications is “the issue more than any other that my office deals with.”
Employers should get tax credits for hiring veterans, and those veterans should get credit for the medical, technical and other experience they gained in the military so it can be converted into educational credits, Kilmer said.
Kilmer also said he favorably viewed a constitutional amendment that would nullify the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which loosened restrictions on corporate campaign donations.
“I don’t think that corporations are people, and I don’t think money is speech,” Kilmer said, referring to a widely held interpretation of the ruling.
“A few bills are trying to address it,” he said.
“It’s a problem, and it needs to be fixed.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
