(Houston, TX) – Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07) held her first telephone town hall this week, and more than 1,000 constituents participated. Congresswoman Fletcher answered their questions on issues including election security, border security, the environment, and health care.

One caller asked Congresswoman Fletcher to look into H.R. 647, the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act, and consider signing on to the legislation. After reviewing the legislation, which requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide support for Palliative Care and Hospice Education Centers, Congresswoman Fletcher became a co-sponsor of the bill. See below for more highlights from the town hall.

In response to a question on election security:
“The first thing this Congress did, we passed our first bill, which was H.R. 1, and it addresses voting rights among other democracy-related reforms. And it does a whole lot of things, to automatically register eligible voters, to make sure that Election Day could become a federal holiday, so that people are able to cast their ballots. At the same time, we are working on some other legislation that’s been introduced to make sure that various forms of voter suppression are addressed and some of the practices that keep people from voting who have a right to vote are addressed.”

In response to a question on border security:
“What we need to do is make sure that anyone who presents themselves at our border is treated with dignity and respect and with an acknowledgement of our common humanity. And the stories that we’ve all heard, especially over the last month, have really tested that. To find out that there are people waiting for days without a shower, who don’t have enough room to lie down at night, who are under lights 24 hours a day, people who are sleeping under bridges, there really are real challenges facing everyone who is addressing this crisis.

“And this is why we voted in the House two weeks ago now for the emergency supplemental appropriations for humanitarian assistance and security at the southern border. It passed the House by about a 3-1 margin and it provides four and half billion dollars in emergency supplemental appropriations to federal departments and agencies for humanitarian assistance. It was a compromise bill, it was not the original bill that passed out of the House, but I voted for it because I think it’s critical to get the assistance to the border right away.”

In response to a question on energy and the environment:
“There are a lot of questions about what our overall energy future looks like, and I’m working hard to develop a long-range plan that I think works. But in Texas, we are an all-of-the-above energy state, we believe in all kinds of energy and using them where appropriate…Texas leads the country in wind energy production. And so, we have renewables in Texas, we have a very large solar presence in Texas, in addition to our traditional oil and gas companies…

“So I think that there are some really great opportunities for us to continue to lead, but we have to invest in the science. I voted last week to support the Department of Energy’s continued research on carbon capture and making sure that carbon capture technologies are being developed at the federal government level in Department of Energy labs, and to make sure that we are also working on direct air capture. What we know is that these things are within our sights, but they are not viable yet. So, we are continuing our investment in that and I think that that’s critically important.”

In response to a question on health care and private insurance:
“We’ve passed 10 pieces of legislation bringing down the cost of healthcare, cost of prescription drugs, and addressing kind of at the federal level things we can do to bring costs down. But I don’t think that the answer is to eliminate private health insurance.”