US Congressman Chris Smith Lakewood Republican Club

going above beyond the call of duty going the extra mile for us we thank you for it and welcome to like thank you very much it's great to be with you again good to see so many good friends including a pop singer who we work so closely on the state level and with the federal level and of course with the miscibility thank you for your work here just so many good things happen because of a well-run government and I really thank you for that and we also how everyone came together when Aaron went missing Aaron Sofer and and you know it was like you rarely see that kind of instantaneous mobilization on behalf of someone who sadly passed away but at that point was missing so that's a great tribute to the community but also to the leadership so thank you it is great to be here back in Lakewood and and to join you here at the club I am running for reelection it's my 19th race for Congress I as many times that I've run it always feels brand new so I'm just like the beginning of a school year you know you just you know you're in grammar school you smelt the crayons you had that that sends I get rejuvenated I know Bob has that same feeling and I'm sure many of you do as well that you know the challenges are so great that it's just it's a privilege to be a candidate to run with a good team and to hopefully get reelected and it doesn't look good but nothing is ever a given we all saw with our Majority Leader who had a very big and rude surprise when he lost Eric Cantor was a an excellent Majority Leader and would have been speakers someday and was upset in a primary so no one can ever take any of these jobs for granted you've got to earn every vote and I do try I am running on a platform of I hope people will recognize this accomplishment you know the issues are big but I do work on a lot of laws I've read a lot of laws fourth of the entire US House of Representatives over the last several decades walk combined in actually turning bills into law and the two most recent was the Sean and David Goldman international child abduction and and prevented the return Act which took all of the lessons learned working on David Goldman's epic battle to reclaim the son who was kidnapped to Brazil five years I was involved in the final year when not much was being done on the congressional level on his behalf and mobilized Congress and he did get his son back and they're doing extraordinarily well but I learned that the State Department well-meaning did welfare and whereabouts real good and real you know they did that part of it but when it came to policy there wasn't a whole lot going on to do a government-to-government and that's what the new law will do I used as a template a law that I wrote in the year 2000 called the trafficking Victims Protection Act it is our landmark law in combative modern-day slavery sex and labor trafficking use the idea of holding countries to account and imposing sanctions if they fail and trade a pattern of non-cooperation of child abduction cases and so took the whole idea of the TPPA the trafficking law and applied it to child abduction it was signed into law on August 7th and now it's a matter of faithfully implementing it I'm hoping that the office of children's issues at the state and our ambassadors abroad take seriously the mandate they've been given by Congress another law that just got signed in August was the the autism law providing 1.3 billion dollars for autism research services I frankly actually got the idea for the original law which passed in 2000 from two people in Brick Township Bobby and Billy Gallagher they thought there was a prevalence spike of autism in brick I went met with him we spent three hours in our first meeting they had stacks of research that they had done jesting a prevalent spike in brick so I brought the CDC up to brick they did a study and found out that from their data calls to surrounding municipalities that there was an elevated number of autism cases there too so right Allah wrote along that created Centers of Excellence at CDC NIH that is now the law that we just reauthorized four or five years and one of the biggest changes I put into the law is the whole idea of aging out we're finding and you see it too I'm sure that large numbers of children are becoming majority aged every year that are on the autism spectrum the estimates are 50,000 a year and we're not ready from an employment point of view all kinds of services and educational or housing to meet then huge spike in demand and for the parents who are as heroic as it gets I mean I'm just speaking at the autism conference on on Friday in Atlantic City and I can tell you having met with so many autistic or autism parents of autistic children the patient's to love the devotion the commitment tie bit every other way that they make to their kids is heroic and yet now they're getting a little more gray their children are in their 20s some will be soon than they're 30 some already are and they don't know what they're gonna do well we need to step into that breech and we need to find solutions in the new bill the new law has two ways of trying to establish a blueprint for action one is with the general Accountability Office study by them and the other is by all of the agencies of the US government to figure out to a total inventory what's out there what are we doing trying to come up with best practices and then replicate and replicate and expand so you know there will be a new bill soon as we get their data back from from that aging out to studies that are underway now there are big issues that I frankly think the president has not done enough on we have a deadline coming up on November 24th visiter Iran that they already got one delay which I thought was awful we should have said you know a deadline is a deadline okay this is the second deadline and and Iran is already gaming the system in the Foreign Minister I think is on their side is very much convinced that they will have a major victory that allow them to keep the centrifuges going as they Kareem towards becoming a nuclear state with the capability of nuclear bombs and and we're all too willing I think to cut a deal and I think that's a major mistake on November 25th the day after the deadline if they haven't you know made a major concession we want to snap back right to our sanctions and they are strong sanctions but I'm very worried that that's not going to happen I read The Jerusalem Post every day people's daily every day I read the online versions and a couple of internationals and I read the periodicals and newspapers they should say everyday the concern in Israel is is is huge president Prime Minister Netanyahu knows that that you know we're preoccupied with Isis I'm not sure and we missed that one too that was a few years lakelyn coming and and now we have a situation where that's festering out of control and Iran is on the threshold we don't know when but I mean any anyone who thinks that with a straight face their nuclear program is for domestic energy consumption I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge I mean it's just it's Millar not naive we know why their building is and why they're testing missiles including ICBMs you know they want to project that power and they want to be a nuclear state and don't count on any responsibility or restraint if they were to acquire it so that's a huge deadline coming up on the 24th finally domestically one of the biggest issues that were facing and Obama has delayed and I think illegally delayed one timetable after one mandate after another as part of his Obamacare so-called Affordable let's not forget that past it wasn't didn't take effect for four years later that was so that they could get a better number to mark it and say how cheap it would be how it was not costing the taxpayers the amount they were getting revenues in for four years without any kind of expenditures on the outgo to speak of now that it's hitting I you should see my mail and the number of people who last year who got the letters who said your your your insurance plan is infirm you have to get a new one in businesses that we're told you need to putting up more money well the New York Times had a piece just a few days ago they talked about how the larger companies are now going with higher deductible plans you know and their pricing you know people are saying I'm not either going to go to the doctor or if I do I'm paid six or 1,000 or more upfront cost right out of my pocket before any of my insurance even the co-payments kick in and they have gone up as well in terms of the co-payments this is a one of the person worst laws that has ever been conceived it's its consequences we're not debated hearings were not held on sections when I read a law we don't just bring it to the floor we don't write it in the back room somewhere we have hearings on we go through what the text says and what the possible consequences are and hear from all sides to get a sense of so we legislate with our eyes completely open that didn't happen with Obamacare it was rammed through in a totally partisan manner and there could have been bipartisanship on reform that wasn't it and and now we have a situation where it is a parade of horribles that just keeps getting worse the fact that the signup time is not October 15th for this next open season that was delayed by Obama to November 15th wonder why right after the election you know all of these deadlines just keep getting pushed you know past the next election that they to win I thought it's about affordable care I thought and it's it's so ill named it's not an affordable care it's the unaffordable Care Act and and the more people learn about it the more of a disaster and the train wreck that they say this we have voted to repeal it on the House Republican side you know conclude with this Go Go to link more times dozens of times it whole or in part and the Senate never takes up the bills and I'll finish on that matter the Senate people say that Congress is dysfunctional that is to do nothing Congress well I'm working hard I'm getting something else passed into law but I have five bills pending on the house Senate side had passed in the house one of them had to do with Hurricane sandy it was a bipartisan bill I was a prime sponsor of it it said that synagogues churches any kind of house of worship that was destroyed and hollered part by Sandy is eligible for FEMA funding and there's nothing in the underlying laws called the Stafford Act that precludes this it's all administrative exclusion and so we got the bill passed and passed 252 274 went over to the Senate it's a dead letter we can't get it out of the Senate the administration have posted it the FEMA director were posted they put out talking points against it when it came up on the floor and we won the debate hands down over 300 I think it's more like 380 I don't know the exact number House Republican bills job-creating bills bills up to abolish Obamacare which they may not want to take up languish over on the Senate side and never even get a vote I have one bill that I've worked on for seven years twice passed by the house I'm the prime sponsor it's sort of the idea called the international Megan's Law and Megan Kanka that precious little girl's seven-year-old who was murdered by a pedophile live across the street you know we have Becca's law in the entire country well one of the dirty little secrets is at forty five hundred convicted paedophiles get a passport every year hop on planes and go and they abuse little kids overseas forty five hundred passports as we all never good for 10 years so they fan out this legislation would say under penalty of severe prison time you must notify the State Department before you travel and when you do we notify the country of destination so they can either deny a visa to you or keep watch you like a hawk to break up this pedophile sex tourism then that's happening right in plain sight of day it also would seek to get a reset reciprocity create Megan's laws all over Europe all over the world that look just like ours so we know and they're coming here to abuse our children because it's going on it is is growing in its numbers and we need that passed overwhelmingly in the house sits over the Senate side for now a year I can't even get a vote on so if we take the Senate there are a lot of pent up legislative initiatives by my colleagues on the on the house side including international Megan's Law that we will be standing in the queue to get passed again and hopefully the Senate will take it up and then maybe they get vetoed but then we have 2016 to work on that one thank you so much for your support hurricane sandy the amount of damage I was close to late but now it was about three million dollars and the 10% happened that is obvious about 300,000 the county loaned us the money for the $300,000 while we're waiting for FEMA to bring them to send us the money today we've only seen about 160,000 dollars with FEMA now here is waiting anxiously we can't get to first base with FEMA to see the rest of the money that's owed to the town okay right away I appreciate that like soup on the chicks