(lively orchestral music) - Hello and welcome to this Your Vote 2026 debate between the two candidates vying to represent Maine's 1st congressional district.

I'm Jennifer Rooks, and we are live at Maine Public Studios in Portland.

Let's introduce the candidates.

Democrat Chellie Pingree is seeking her 10th term in office and challenger Ron Russell is a career army officer who served as a member of the Army Special Forces.

This debate is presented by Maine Public in partnership with NEWS CENTER Maine and the Portland Press Herald.

Our panel of journalists is Maine Public Political Reporter Kevin Miller and Phil Hirschkorn, who covers politics for NEWS CENTER Maine.

The candidates will have 90 seconds to respond to questions, but we will begin with one-minute opening statements.

The order was determined by random drawing prior to the broadcast.

First up, Chellie Pingree.

- Hi, I'm Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, and I've had the great fortune of representing Maine's 1st congressional district.

These have been two very challenging years here in Maine and across the United States, and much of that has been caused by the challenges proposed by the Trump administration.

Whether it is the war in Iran, which was a war of choice, which has driven up prices of diesel fuel and home heating oil this year, the unnecessary and illegal tariffs, particularly on our border, neighbors in Canada, or the Big Ugly Bill that is cutting food to some of our hungriest citizens, will cut Medicaid kicking in after the first of the year, which will impact our hospitals and healthcare systems, or the $70 billion given to ICE, which has done an enormous amount of damage to our state.

I am anxious to be back there, and I hope I am in the majority.

I think in the majority, we can work on pushing back on some of those cuts, on changing the policy, on ending the war, and moving forward on an agenda that makes sure everyone has healthcare, that childcare is affordable, that we have adequate housing, and that people don't go without in this country and just give the breaks to the billionaires.

- All right, thank you, Congresswoman Pingree.

Next up, Ron Russell.

- Good evening, I'm Ron Russell.

I was born and raised in Fort Fairfield, Maine.

I'm the son of a potato farmer and an elementary school teacher, so I learned the value of a good education and hard work at a very early age.

I left Fort Fairfield when I was 17 years old to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

And I graduated in 1976 with a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering, and I was also commissioned on the same day as a second lieutenant in the infantry, like my father before me and like my son since then.

I spent 30 years and 28 days in the United States Army as an airborne ranger Green Beret, and I served in all the major operations from 1976 to 2006, and you all know what those are.

After I retired from the military in 2006, I started a small business with three friends, and we grew that to a large business.

After the election in 2020, I was very disappointed and lost my way.

(Ron speaks faintly) - Hopefully, we can finish your thought as we go through the questions, which were determined by journalists from our three media partners.

And we're gonna begin with Kevin Miller, who is from Maine Public.

- Thank you both for being here tonight.

First question, we're gonna start with Ron Russell.

So, no surprise to either of you, affordability is a top issue for voters this election.

Heating oil is hovering around $6 a gallon.

Groceries, gas, electricity, they're all getting more expensive.

The reality is that Congress can only do so much to control some of the major cost drivers that are driving up the prices, such as oil and natural gas, but my question for you is, do you have specific steps that you think Congress can take to quickly lower the cost of living for Americans?

- Well, the major driver for the cost is fuel, of course, and particularly for heating, oil, diesel, and gasoline, as that drives all of the consumable goods that will be coming into the marketplace.

So, when President Trump took office, he reduced the price of gas and those fuels by 20 cents or so per gallon, but the Iran war kicked off, and of course, that has had a significant impact on the cost of fuels.

I don't think ending the Iran war is going to change the cost of that, any, because the Strait of Hormuz is open here now, so we are moving as much fuel as we did before.

The war between Ukraine and Russia has had an impact on diesel fuel and the refining capability in Russia, where we get a significant portion of our diesel fuel from, so that needs to get fixed there as well.

In the last administration, we reduced our refining capability by five refineries, and that has had an impact on our own ability to produce diesel fuel.

So, I think when we get to be back with a fuel independence and the Strait of Hormuz is totally a moot issue, the war in Iran is over, then I think we'll be much better off from a price perspective.

- Are there any things outside of fuel or gasoline or oil that you think that Congress can do, steps you would like to see them take?

- Well, for heating oil, as an example, we have a program to help individuals who are having problems with heating oil in terms of a subsidy for them, and we need to make sure that we have enough money in that fund to accommodate the increase in prices here for those in the northern sector of the United States.

- Congresswoman Pingree, do you have specific steps that you think Congress can take to quickly or immediately lower costs for Americans?

- Sure, I think there's a very long list.

I mean, number one, I do think we have to stop the war in Iran.

It was a war of choice.

It's gone on for eight months.

It's cost us $47 billion, but it also shut down the Straits of Hormuz.

That has made heating fuel already for Mainers who have started to fill up their tank.

It's cost 80% more than last year.

Diesel fuel is up at about $6.50.

And diesel fuel adds to the cost of everything.

That's how we transport goods around this country.

It certainly impacts the cost of food, so ending that war would make a huge difference.

That's number one.

The tariffs.

The president, he's used power that he doesn't even have to implement tariffs in random ways that have not really helped our economy and cost most people over a thousand dollars a year.

Particularly for us, the Canadian tariffs have been impactful, but that impacts a lot of things, whether it's food, precious metals, just a lot of different things are impacted, and so getting those back into a sensible way would be helpful.

The Big Ugly Bill took away a lot of subsidies for healthcare.

For a lot of Mainers who get their healthcare through the Affordable Care Act, the loss of those subsidies for some of them meant their healthcare costs went from something like $500 to $1,500, or tripled at even greater rates, so rescinding the cuts in that bill would make a huge difference on healthcare, which is a major component for a lot of people.

Also, the Medicaid cuts which will kick in after this election are there.

So much of the safety net has been damaged by this administration, and we will be able to reinstate much of that, whether it's about housing, childcare, healthcare, a whole variety of things.

- All right, Phil, you'll ask Chellie Pingree a question first.

- Okay, Congresswoman Pingree, you've already talked about pushing back.

Let me ask the question this way.

Like the US Senate, Republicans have a very slim majority in the US House.

I think it's also three seats right now.

So, make the case for me and our audience why it would be in Maine's interest and the nation's interest with you holding onto your seat for the Democrats to retake the House majority.

- Well, I truly believe that we will help to rescind some of the Trump agenda, and a lot of what people are suffering because of today has been the Trump agenda and Republicans who have just been sitting on their hands and unwilling to fight back.

Congress has the power to declare war, but many of our Republican colleagues refused to vote for the War Powers Act, which would have taken that power back and kept the president from starting this war.

Congress has the power for tariffs, for tariff authority.

The president has gone ahead and done that under some minor legal things, and we could be pushing back on that.

Republicans passed the Big Ugly Bill, so the cuts to healthcare, the cuts to SNAP benefits, which will impact a lot of Mainers when it comes to food for seniors and children and families, that's all on the president.

Also, the ICE money, $70 billion that went to ICE.

We can repurpose and rescind some of that.

And that has damaged our economy as well, as workers are afraid to go to work, employers have been suffering those costs.

There's an enormous number of things we can do in a Republican majority.

We also have the power- - You mean a Democratic majority?

(Phil laughs) - Ron, I didn't mean to give that.

Take it back.

(Phil laughs) No, in a Democratic majority.

The Republicans have not used the power that they have.

We have the power of the purse.

I sit on the appropriations committee, and I have watched bill after bill go through our committee, where the Republicans refuse to fight the repurposing of money, the stealing of money from accounts from this administration.

We can bring that back to a sensible level and restore the funding to a lot of areas where we really need it to make sure people are whole.

- Before I turn to Mr.

Russell, quick follow-up.

You didn't say impeachment.

Some Democrats are saying that word.

I don't know if that applies to President Trump or cabinet secretaries like Pete Hegseth.

Is that something on your mind the Democrats should do if they got the majority back?

- Well, I think the president has committed impeachable offense.

And as you know, the Democrats impeached him twice through the House of Representatives, but didn't have the power to convict in the Senate.

I don't think it should be our number one issue if we don't have the power to convict in the Senate.

It will be yet another exercise in just reminding the American public, who already knows all the things that he has done.

But I do think that, you know, the question regarding impeaching Secretary Hegseth was about to face the Congress.

It will face us when we get back, and I think he has not done a very good job.

- Mr.

Russell, same question for you that I initially asked the Congresswoman.

Make the case for me and our audience why Republicans holding onto the House, perhaps with your help winning this seat, would be in the best interest of Maine and the country.

- I think the biggest reason is we won't go back to the way we were four years ago under the Biden administration.

We have an idea about what's gonna happen if the Democrats take the majority.

We've talked about impeaching President Trump.

We've talked about impeaching a lot of the cabinet officials, not just the Secretary of War.

We've talked about healthcare for all, which I think is a socialist idea.

The Democrat socialists are rearing their ugly heads here and gaining a significant amount of traction in the Democrat party, and I think that's worrisome there to me.

I spent five years in West Berlin and I got to see communism and socialism up front firsthand, and it's not a good thing.

It's not something the United States needs to go to here.

President Trump is not on the ballot at this time.

He's gonna be the president for the next two years unless he's impeached.

We've seen that process before, and we know how disruptive it is to the United States, so I'm thinking we don't need to go down that road at all.

- Thank you.

- The next question will be from Kevin Miller, and we'll start with Ron Russell.

- I'd like to talk about Social Security, major issue here in Maine.

Unless Congress acts in the next six years, Social Security recipients could see their benefits reduced by 20, 22% because the Social Security Trust Fund is running low on money.

That would have an enormous impact on folks here in Maine because of our aging demographics and because the state relies more heavily on Social Security than almost any other state in the country.

What specific steps would you support to prevent this crisis?

- I think increasing the cap on Social Security would be one of the first steps that I would take.

I also think we need to look at a different system other than Social Security to privatize that and get away from a government-run system.

Look at how much money I've invested into Social Security, and I think if I had that invested in the stock market, I'd be doing a whole lot better off here now than I am currently with my current Social Security allotment.

So, I think those are a couple steps that we need to take.

I would not impact the people who are relying on Social Security in any way, shape, or form here currently.

They have earned what it is that they are getting here now, and I don't think we need to degrade what it is that they are earning already.

- Just follow-up on two of those things.

So, increasing the cap right now, you're talking about the maximum income- - Exactly.

- Set at about $184,500 right now.

- [Ron] Right.

- Is there a dollar figure that you think where it should be?

How much would you increase it, or would there be no cap at all?

- Well, I think there ought to be a cap, certainly, but I'd have to do the math on that to figure out exactly what that cap should be.

And the folks that are a whole lot smarter than I am can figure out what that cap ought to be in order to get us solvent here for the future.

- And you mentioned privatization.

That's a pretty controversial topic.

- Yep.

- It comes up on occasion in D.C.

Explain a little bit more about how you would see that happening.

How it would be carried out?

- Well, I would just- - How would you protect the folks?

- I would use an example.

In the military, when I came in the military, if you spent 20 years in the military and you retired, then you would get 50% of your base pay when you retired.

Several years after I came in the military, anyone who came in after me got 40% of what it was they would have earned, the same salary that I would have earned, so we went to a system where we privatize.

We gave them Thrift Savings accounts or they were allowed to start Thrift Savings accounts so that they could save their own money here, and I think that's probably the way to go with Social Security.

We need to develop retirement accounts.

President Trump has already started that with the youth accounts here that he has started for our kids under the age of 18, and I think that's a wonderful start there.

We understand the value of money at a very early age.

We'll continue to grow that for our own retirement.

- And so this would be for new entrants.

Younger workers are coming into the system as opposed to folks who are currently receiving Social Security.

- Exactly, anyone who's receiving Social Security, I wouldn't impact them at all.

They have counted on that, and it's too late to change there, as far as I'm concerned.

- Congresswoman Pingree, what steps would you take to avoid the coming crisis?

- Well, Ron and I agree on 50%.

I would be very worried about privatizing Social Security, and I've never seen anyone put forward a plan that didn't raise a lot of concerns on the ideas of the risk that you would be taking with the American public's money.

People pay into Social Security.

They wanna know that's gonna be secure for their retirement, and they wanna make sure that Congress is gonna fix the current problems with the shortfall, but I don't think the answer is to privatize it.

I think there's too much volatility in the market and you would subject all retired people to that moment where we have some kind of horrendous incident occur and people's money is no longer safe.

But I do agree on the issue of the cap, and I think that's been one of the best solutions proposed.

We have bills before Congress that should be working their way through our system.

They've been blocked, but we really should get onto this because the time is getting closer all the time, and we need to give young people a sense of security that not just retirees now are gonna be safe, but their money will be safe going into the future.

You mentioned that there's a cap right now at $184,500.

Most proposals start again at 400,000, and then there is no cap, and so it says to people, "Look, if you're making money in the United States and you're doing very well, you should be paying into the system at a level that compensates everyone and compensates for the advantages you've had being a citizen of the United States."

So, I believe that system, from everything I've seen, it works.

It looks like it would give people a little bit of a bump.

It would allow us to recalculate the way we do the market basket and the COLAs that people get every year.

I think it seems like a good level of reform.

- Next, we'll turn to News Center's Phil Hirschkorn.

Phil, you'll ask your question of Chellie Pingree first.

- Congresswoman, a few years ago, you introduced a bill to eliminate interest on the federal student loan program.

Today's student loan debt is even worse.

It's $1.8 trillion, collectively more than credit card debt.

The average Mainer with student loan debt is 34,000.

And the repercussions are huge.

Kids in their 20s, not just moving home again, but delaying life, marriage, families, starting a business, all the things they could do.

Some of them pay dutifully in their 20s and realize they still have a huge principal by the time they turn 30.

President Biden wiped out student loan debt for five million Americans, which was great for them, but very controversial because other people paid off their loans and other people don't go to college.

So, here's the question.

What do you think would work best?

More loan forgiveness, doing it differently than Biden did, or what about resurrecting your idea of having no interest on the federal student loan program, which is 90% of the loans?

- Yeah, I mean, I still like the idea of not having interest on student loan debt, particularly when it's loan from the federal government.

It's not a place where we should be thinking about how to make money.

It's a place where we should be thinking about the excessive costs of going to college today.

Even public colleges are costing more and more money, and colleges are struggling to make sure that they supply enough scholarships for the kids who should be there.

Now, every young person isn't gonna go to college.

Many of them are gonna go to community college or they're gonna study a trade, and I'm all for supporting whatever people choose to do to get onto the next step.

But the important thing is, for students today who are facing 40, 50, $60,000 in loans, and if you're in the medical profession or get a graduate degree, we're talking the hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's a crippling kind of debt.

In today's economy, as you said, people are moving back home.

They don't see themselves having families or able to afford a house, and that is no way to run a healthy economy.

I was recently at a forum with farmers, and one of the things I hear young people say the most in an era where we're trying to decrease the age of their farmers, is they often say, "I'd like to get started on a farm, but I don't make enough money to pay off my student loans."

And they often don't have healthcare as well.

But I just think we should be thinking as a country, "How do we do this in a way that's sensible and how do we make sure that we have an administration that is fair about it?"

- Mr.

Russell, what are your thoughts about interest-free federal student loans or other ways you think we can tackle the affordability problem when it comes to higher education?

- I don't have any problem eliminating interest, but I do think there needs to be some sort of payment because it costs something to administer the loan program, and those costs need to be covered.

I think what we need to do is just take a good hard look at our schools and what it is that we are trying to accomplish here in our school system.

We certainly need to get back to a vocational education there at a much higher level than where we are at here right now, because we know that we are hurting in terms of individuals with trades, plumbing, electricity, and the like, so we really need to step up that particular type of work.

And those colleges generally are a whole lot cheaper than some of the other institutions.

I think we need to do a better job with our children here in terms of managing expectations.

You know, if you go to college to get a degree in basket weaving, your chances of employment is pretty slim when you graduate, so we need to make sure we educate them in terms of what they can expect when they get into the job market.

The emphasis on trades is our first step in that direction.

We're educating them to accomplish a particular task.

- Thank you.

- All right, well, now we have a section of this debate in which each candidate will be able to ask each other a question.

So, Chellie Pingree, you're first.

Do you have a question for Ron Russell?

- Sure.

Ron, I know I've learned a lot about your military service, and I deeply appreciate the number of years you have given this country and also the expertise that you have from serving in the military.

We talked a little bit about this.

You know, Congress was about to recess, where we were getting ready to do two more weeks in September, and we recessed early.

And one of the reasons that we did was that a Republican member had brought a privileged resolution to the floor to impeach Secretary Hegseth.

And I know you mentioned it earlier, but I'm curious, given the war in Iran, which has gone so badly, given the number of military generals who have been released from service and the impact that's had on morale for young people joining the military today, if we brought Pete Hegseth into the room, what kind of advice would you give him to do a better job, or would you be willing to vote to impeach him now?

- I would not be willing to vote to impeach him now.

From my perspective, he hasn't done anything wrong.

He is the civilian leadership for our military generals, and as he is the civilian leadership, he gets to pick who those generals are in his entourage.

From my perspective, he should listen to warfighters if he's interested in warfighting to get their advice about who to release and who to keep on board.

And from my perspective, looking at who he has released, folks that I know individually, there are some warfighters in there of the finest essence of the word that he has let go, and I think that was a mistake, but he is the man making the decisions there on the behalf of President Trump, so I don't think anything that he has done is impeachable there from my perspective.

- Okay.

- Ron Russell, you may ask Chellie Pingree a question.

- You've been in Congress now for 18 years, Chellie.

I would like to know what bill that you have personally sponsored that you are most proud of and what the impact is for the Maine people and for the people of the United States.

- Well, I've had the good fortune of working on hundreds of bills, and because I'm on the appropriations committee, our biggest goal there is to make sure that the language of our bill gets incorporated into the appropriations bill.

I also sit on the agriculture committee, so I do the same.

I write a bill and I hope to put as much of it as I can into the agriculture committee.

I mean, some of those things have included a program that I did on produce prescription, which is we've gotten about maybe $40 million into that program.

That's to make sure that one of the programs is at the VA.

If you go to the VA, you spend time in the hospital, but you have a chronic disease, when you come home, your doctor can write you a produce prescription and make sure that you can continue to afford to buy healthy foods.

We also have done that at the Indian Health Service and at HHS.

That's something I've been very proud to work on over the years that really fits in with the agenda around food is medicine and making sure that people eat healthy foods.

I've done a lot of other things in the farm bill.

Just this year, I put in a piece that allows the Farm Credit Program to expand its loans to fishermen, not just farmers, because that's where that is covered.

Done a lot more to expand infrastructure capacity for farmers.

There's never enough processing facilities or slaughterhouses, more to do more local and direct marketing, something that helps farmers to increase their income.

So, those are some of the areas that I work on, but it's a long list, and I'd be happy to talk about them anytime.

Thanks.

- We're gonna return now to the questions from our journalists, and the first question in this section is from Maine Public's Kevin Miller.

You'll start with Chellie Pingree.

- Congresswoman Pingree, one frequent criticism of Congress is that because of the intense partisanship in D.C., very little gets done on very complex and crucial issues, whether it's immigration reform or healthcare or Social Security as we just talked about.

Can you give an example of a time that you voted opposite of your party leaders on a very important kind of a critical issue?

- Sure.

Most recently, the lobster bill.

We had that on the floor of the House very recently, and there was a lot of debate about how we would support that.

Most of the Democrats went along with one side of it, and I supported the side that supported Maine lobster fishermen and got us an extension to some of the regulations that they're worrying about going into the future.

But that's the kind of thing where I think more about how will this impact Maine, not necessarily what's the national agenda, even though there might be concerns on both sides.

- And this is the bill that actually would extend the timeline for lobstermen to implement new gear restrictions to protect North Atlantic right whales, is that right?

- Right, right.

And it's a controversial topic.

It wasn't an easy one to make a decision about, but again, I tried to take into consideration what were the discussions going on in my home state and defend it to some of my colleagues who, you know, saw it the other way.

- A follow-up, you're a member of the Progressive Caucus, I believe.

On the other side of the aisle, there's the Freedom Caucus.

Do you believe these groups, these caucuses?

Are they helpful or do they kind of promote a groupthink or this partisanship that leads to these stalemates in Congress?

- I would say cable news and social media leads to the kind of partisanship that really makes it more difficult to operate, and then most recently, the Trump administration and just their extreme partisanship.

But interestingly, you know, I don't really worry about the label.

I may be a member of the Progressive Caucus, but I work closely with all of my colleagues, and I try to work across the aisle whenever I can.

And one interesting sort of, you know, convergence recently has been the work I've done with the MAHA Caucus.

They're a lot of the members of the Freedom Caucus, and I work closely with Representative Massie on legislation to keep Bayer from getting immunity from some of the health issues that people have experienced because of the use of glyphosate, Representative Paulina Luna from Florida.

I actually work with a lot of people on both sides of the aisle.

If I can move forward on my agenda and the things that I really care about or I think the things that I think will impact Maine, I'm all in.

- Mr.

Russell, since you don't have a congressional voting record yet, I'll kinda tailor your question to, can you give an example of a high-profile issue where you have disagreed with President Trump since he's the dominant figure in the Republican Party right now?

- No, I don't know that there's anything that I disagree with.

I disagree with how he goes about conducting business, but I don't disagree with the policies that he has implemented.

And I think they are significant in terms of helping out the American people.

- An example would be Congresswoman Pingree brought up tariffs, so you're comfortable with President Trump's tariff strategy and the tariffs on Canada?

- Right, I think from a tariff perspective, we have helped developing nations around the world with our tariff policy, and we never amended it when those developing nations got to a point where they could stand on their own.

The same with Canada.

We have a issue with some goods that Canada refuses to let us import into their nation.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

President Trump certainly has... We need to start the negotiations with Canada again.

They are our next-door neighbor, our biggest trade partner, but I don't have any problem with him applying a little bit of pressure to them to get them to the bargaining table.

I will also say, you know, in terms of working across the aisle, Susan Collins was ridiculed by her opponent here in the recent debate for having a 94% voting record there with President Trump.

Your voting record is like 97.3% with the Democrat Party.

That doesn't seem to be working across the aisle to me.

Any legislation passed in Washington, D.C.

that is not a function of both parties working together is bad legislation because if it's a partisan piece of legislation, 50% of the nation is being ignored.

- Chellie Pingree, I'll offer you a chance for a rebuttal since he singled you out in a factual way.

- Sure.

Well, one reason I could have that record right now is because this has been such a partisan Congress, and the Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, operate under something they call the Hastert rule.

They won't bring a bill to the floor.

The Republicans refuse to bring a bill to the floor unless it will pass with a majority of Republicans, so they won't even negotiate with us on bringing a bill to the floor.

And the only bills we're able to do in a bipartisan way are the ones where we have a discharge petition, which means that one of our colleagues puts forward a petition, we sign it, and if 218 signatures are there, then we'll take that to the floor and we'll have a bipartisan piece of the legislation.

But for the most part, Republicans, particularly in this era under Donald Trump and Speaker Johnson, they don't bring bipartisan legislation to the floor, so there isn't, most of the time, such a thing.

The only things that we've really passed on the floor through a discharge petition are like the release of the Epstein files, or we had one on the tariffs, the War Powers Act.

They're very limited and usually something that we have to find a handful of Republicans or the Republicans find a handful of Democrats to go along with them.

So, I'm very much in favor of bipartisan legislation.

And as I said, I work with my Republican colleagues as much as I possibly can.

We don't vote on a lot in a very dysfunctional Congress, but I'm not taking responsibility for that.

That's the Speaker of the House and President Trump who refuses to work with Democrats.

- Ron?

- Yeah, I would say I would be working on that legislation so that when it did come to Speaker Johnson, he would bring it to the floor because we have worked together and come up with the best bill possible to move the nation forward.

- All right.

Thank you, we'll move on.

We'll go to Phil Hirschkorn, and you will begin with Ron Russell.

- Mr.

Russell, the Iran war's already come up a couple times, so I'm gonna shorten the question I had planned.

President Trump offered several justifications at the beginning.

Iran can never have nuclear weapons, it's a state sponsor of terrorism, regime change being in the best interest of the region, and so forth.

Why do you support the Iran war?

Why was it justified or necessary?

- So, I don't believe that regime change was ever one of the objectives there for President Trump.

Stopping Iran from having a nuclear weapon was a primary objective, and I think that's still an objective.

With the operation in the summer a year ago, we put a significant impact on the nuclear capability, but in recent negotiations over the last couple of months, our negotiators in dealing with the Iranians, the Iranians said, "In 10 days, we can have a nuclear weapon."

That's why we did what it was that we did.

So, there was an imminent threat there to the United States, so I fully support what he did.

They are the sponsors of terrorism around the world, the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, and they have held us hostage for 47 years since they came into power.

They have killed thousands of Americans, and they have maimed even more as a result of improvised explosive devices, specifically explosively formed projectiles that had a significant impact in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

They are directly responsible for that.

- Congresswoman Pingree, I know you're gonna tell us you disagree.

In fact, in September, you voted with the House majority to bring military forces away from the conflict zone.

Why and why do you disagree?

- Well, first off, this war has gone on for eight months.

It's cost $47 billion.

We've had the loss of American troops, innocent civilians, and severe damage to our bases, particularly places like Bahrain, which are strategic for us in that region.

Nothing good has come out of this war, including the closing of the Straits of Hormuz and the great increase in fuel prices and the lack of availability of fertilizer to our farmers.

So, it's been all bad.

By all accounts that any of us can read, almost no one advised the president to move forward on this.

He didn't take a lot of advice.

He certainly didn't come to Congress.

He didn't even go to the American people to make his case for doing this.

Most people told him in advance this would shut down the Straits of Hormuz, and he wouldn't have a lot of negotiating power, and it was not a good place to try to put boots on the ground and to have that level of conflict over there.

I was in Congress when we voted for the JCPOA, the Iran deal, as it was called, that was negotiated for years under President Obama.

The first thing that Donald Trump did and Trump won was rescind that.

And most people said to him at the time, "You're not gonna get this back very easily."

And he prefers to use force and conflict as opposed to a negotiated settlement.

Now, we would be lucky to ever get back to anything close to the JCPOA, but that did have a limit on their ability to produce nuclear weapons, observer opportunities, you know, far more limits on their capacity than we have now.

Now, it's just a free-for-all, and this president has no idea how to get us out of this situation, which looks like it's just another endless war.

- You said he didn't make the case.

Should he have gone to Congress for an authorization, or even a declaration of war, like we've done in recent years, say with Iraq or Afghanistan?

- Absolutely.

At the very least, he should have made the case to the American people, but he should have gotten authorization from Congress.

Congress and the Constitution has the power to declare war, and that is so that we go through a deliberative process.

We don't just get ourselves in these no-win situations, like we're in in Iran.

- Is that feasible, given that this was a surprise attack to start the war?

Should he have gone to Congress for an authorization for use of force?

- He went to Congress to inform the Gang of Eight about the operation that we were getting ready to execute here.

And no, I don't think it's feasible to brief the American people or all of Congress because the cat's gonna get out of the bag when that happens, and how many examples of that do we have in our past history there?

So, no, I don't think that that's a good idea.

- You wouldn't have wanted a chance to debate it in Congress if you were in the House, the merits of going to war with a country like Iran?

- According to the War Powers Act, he has 60 days to send in forces, deploy forces- - That's after the fact, though.

- Right, I think the debate occurs during that 60-day period.

- But even with the 60-day period, the president, he pretended that the war stopped.

He said he had a negotiated settlement and the war was over so that he could get around having to come back to Congress because there were many Republican members who said, "Oh, yeah."

And then we've had more people vote for the War Powers Act since he broke that 60-day agreement with Congress, so he's just looking for any loophole not to have to come back to Congress or the American public.

- Thank you.

- So, I would also say the JCPOA would have been over by the time in the last three or four years, so they would have been on the way to a nuclear weapon.

They can't be trusted, as we have seen from the negotiations and the agreements that the president has worked out over the last several months here.

They cannot be trusted.

And in fact, the JCPOA limited them to an enrichment level of 3.5%.

The nuclear dust that you know about in these underground facilities there is at 60%, so that would indicate to me that they were never abiding by the agreement in the first place.

- Okay, thank you.

- We're gonna go now to Kevin Miller, who's gonna ask a question first of Chellie Pingree.

- Immigration, another hot-button issue here.

Last January's immigration enforcement surge in the state, which the Trump administration dubbed Catch of the Day, thrust the state into the national spotlight.

We've seen since then, it's been slightly less higher, not as high profile, but we've still seen arrests and deportations from here in Maine.

And then in July, we had the fatal shooting of an immigrant in Biddeford by an ICE agent.

So, Congresswoman Pingree, my question for you is, ICE, would you support reforming the agency, abolishing it, something in between?

What's your thoughts on how to address ICE as an agency?

- Well, we have a very serious situation going on, and Maine has really been impacted by a variety of things, the changes in the Trump administration on immigration policy.

And I would step back a minute and say that just before this president was elected this time, the Senate was about to come together on an immigration reform bill, which is desperately needed, had Republican and Democratic support.

And the president signaled to the Senate, "Please don't move ahead because I wanna keep this as an issue."

Not only did he keep it as an election issue during the last election, but then he has managed to open it up in ways that no one ever imagined.

The president promised us, "I'm just gonna go after the worst of the worst, the murderers and rapists.

I'm gonna stop fentanyl from coming across the border and stop child traffickers."

Well, I am all in favor of having our borders managed to make sure that we stop child traffickers and keep fentanyl from coming across the border and go after the worst of the worst, but we have seen nothing like that.

And Maine is a good example of a state that has a small immigrant population but is deeply impacted, first by the horrendously named Catch of the Day, which is a disgusting thing to do or call something, bring 200 ICE agents into our state, arrest over 200 people and detain them, and most of them had nothing even close to a criminal indictment or record.

Since then, there's been a steady stream of people impacted by this.

I believe ICE should be abolished.

I don't think they're a competent agency.

They have way too much money.

They got $70 billion and they've got over two in the Big Ugly Bill and they've gotten over $200 billion.

They hire incompetent officers.

They operate under quotas.

- Thank you.

- It's a disaster.

- Just as a follow-up, so if ICE is abolished, who would take over the serious responsibilities- - I'm supposed to believe- - That they- - Yeah, I know your question.

So, ICE was only constituted after 9/11 when we created Homeland Security.

We still had CBP, which maintains our borders, and we still have a strong presence of them in our state.

If I thought we could reform them, if the Republicans were willing to go along, which they didn't do when they passed that bill, there were requests from Democrats in the negotiations to try to make sure that they followed some of the simplest of procedures.

No masks, identification, use judicial warrants, don't operate under quotas.

And they have been unwilling to do any of that.

And the way we have seen them operate in our state is inhumane and lawless, and we should not stand for it.

- Ron Russell, do you think that ICE needs to be reformed, changed?

Do you support the policies that President Trump has been pursuing?

- I think some reform needs to occur.

I think they need to do a better job in terms of their personnel selection and training, and of course, all of that requires money, so slowing down the funding there for ICE has not helped.

I think that we should not throw the baby out with the bath water.

I would not disband ICE.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

ICE has done some wonderful things here in the last couple of years since President Trump came into office.

350,000 children came across the border, and they were unaccounted for in the last administration.

ICE has recaptured 156,000 of them.

And they're not out there working in factories or living in someone's playroom.

They are human slaves, basically.

They have been human-trafficked.

And the last operation there right during the World Cup captured a human trafficking ring and released nine of those young children, so that's why I don't think ICE should be disbanded.

We've also closed the border there totally, and ICE has had an impact on that.

We haven't had an illegal immigrant cross our borders since President Trump came into office.

That's a significant improvement in the United States of America.

During the Biden administration, depending on who you talk to, 10 to 14 million illegal immigrants came across the border.

We have a legal immigration system that allows a million immigrants into the United States, and that's only because that's how many we can accommodate.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you have a follow-up or should we- - Just do you have any specific ideas for reforms, or you mentioned additional training.

Any other reforms?

- Additional training, better selection and assessment of the personnel.

I think a good close review of tactics, techniques, and procedures needs to be accomplished.

But those are the reforms that pop into my mind.

- Thank you.

- All right, next, Phil Hirschkorn will first ask a question of Ron Russell.

- Mr.

Russell, earlier in the debate, you referred to universal healthcare as socialism, and in our primary debate over the summer, you told us that you didn't support continuing those enhanced subsidies that were created during the pandemic for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare.

And since those subsidies expired, we've had a net loss of 6,000 Mainers of losing the coverage or choosing not to renew it.

My question for you is, given the high cost of healthcare, particularly private insurance plans, what do you see as reasonable way to bring down the cost, the out-of-pocket cost for people who are dealing with these higher premiums, higher copays, higher deductibles?

- I think there's a number of ways to bring down the costs.

Competition is one of the first ways that I would say.

You've talked about drug costs.

We have a program here now where drugs are significantly cheaper than they were, the favored nation status there, program that President Trump has put into effect.

I think from a healthcare perspective, emphasizing primary care and relying on primary care is a decent way to go.

You need to be in touch with your primary care physician and get the regular checkups so you can detect problems before they become major problems, and I myself am a success story in that regard.

Two fairly significant events in my medical history were detected, and 18 months later, after keeping a close watch on it, we had to address it.

The other thing we need to do is reduce the amount of emergency room visits because those cost more than anything else from a medical perspective.

I would also say that the MAHA movement is significant there in terms of reducing healthcare costs.

So, what you can do from a preventative perspective will pay huge dividends.

In my company, we paid a benefit to our employees for gym fees so that they could maintain their health status, and that decreased healthcare costs as well.

- Congresswoman Pingree, I believe you're in the Medicare for All category.

Maybe you can explain why you are.

And I've just mentioned that your friend, Matt Dunlap, who's running in the 2nd congressional district, told us in an interview last week that he believes Medicare for All would save a trillion dollars in out-of-pocket costs a year for Americans, which surprised me because skeptics always say it's gonna cost the Treasury trillions of dollars.

So, Medicare for All, how would that work, how would you phase it in, and why do you think that's the best approach?

- I think when somebody talks about overall savings from a universal healthcare program like Medicare, they're talking about preventative care, more people being covered, and also less profits going to the insurance company.

It's an overall cost savings.

But let me just talk about this overall.

I voted for Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act.

And if that were working well and if we could keep that working well and make the necessary reforms there, I would be much happier, but we've already seen this administration who has tried to eliminate Obamacare many times and force a vote in Congress, most recently took away the tax subsidies, which we talked about earlier, and has made it almost unaffordable for people.

That's just left a lot of people out there with no health insurance, so there is nowhere to turn.

Whether you wanna call this socialism or some other name, people want affordable healthcare.

People wanna go to a primary care physician, but so many of them don't have any healthcare coverage.

They can't do it.

They can't afford to call a doctor up.

They can't afford to go to a hospital until it is an emergency.

That is the most expensive form of care.

And charity care is putting our hospitals, charity care meaning when you go to the emergency room and you don't have any form of health insurance, that are putting our hospitals in a vulnerable position.

We've already seen the closure of Waterville.

We've seen other hospitals close birthing centers.

It's a disastrous situation out there, and everybody knows that.

And if we have the trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts that the Trump administration and the Big Ugly Bill have proposed or have passed and are meant to kick in after this election, that will also do an enormous amount of damage to the coverage of Maine people and to our hospitals.

Private insurance plans are too expensive for most people, and that is why we need- - Thank you.

- Universal access to care.

- Would you phase it in?

Troy Jackson says 55 in year one down to 45 in year two.

And do you have a price tag for Medicare for All?

- I don't have a price tag in my pocket right now, but I know we are working on calculating that and I know that people have been working on the idea of Medicare for All for a very long time.

I mean, look, it's disingenuous to say to the American people, "If you're over 65, we've got you covered."

Oh, that's not socialism.

That's just how we take care of our seniors.

And I'm very happy we take care of our seniors with Social Security and Medicare, but then to say, "Yeah, if you're 50 and you get cancer, you're kind of out in the cold."

We know how that system works, and the reason so many people talk about it is exactly what you were saying.

We could gradually move our way into it, assess the costs along the way, and we could also do something to negotiate for the price of prescription drugs at the same time.

- [Phil] Mr.

Russell, your response?

- You know, Matt talking about saving a trillion dollars, he's operating on the wrong side of that equation there.

I think GAO has estimated that $77 trillion is the bill for healthcare for all over the course of 10 years.

So, that's outlandish.

In the military, when we develop courses of action, we have a test, suitability, feasibility, and acceptability.

From a suitability perspective, healthcare for all is a wonderful idea.

And from acceptability, it's also a wonderful idea.

But from a feasibility perspective, it's not feasible, and so $77 trillion over the course of 10 years is way more than the United States can afford.

The other aspect about healthcare for all is those who have insurance plans here, what's gonna happen to those plans?

And under Obamacare, you can keep your doctor.

We know that's not true.

It's called the Affordable Care Act, and we know, 'cause we have to have subsidies for it, it's the Unaffordable Care Act.

It's not working.

- Okay, thank you.

- Well, and Chellie Pingree, do you have something to say back to make it even, if you'd like?

- Yeah, I mean, look, it's disingenuous for two people to be up here, both of us.

I mean, I'm fortunate enough to be a member of Congress, and I get my healthcare covered as a federal employee.

You're a retired member of the military and you get your healthcare covered as a retired military member or through Medicare.

You can talk to almost anybody on the street today, and they will say, "My healthcare system doesn't work."

So, yeah, there are kinks that we have to work out in the system, and how do employers deal with this?

But I know for a lot of employers, their businesses are less and less competitive.

For union people, they're less and less able to negotiate because they're so worried about negotiating their healthcare benefits into something and they can't negotiate for wages.

If we had universal access to some form of healthcare, and let's just remember, we're the only Western country right now that doesn't have a healthcare system that works, that depends on privatized insurance in the way that we do, and it is a disaster, and the measures are not good in our country.

We just have to tackle this and fix it.

- All right.

We're gonna move to a question from Kevin Miller to Chellie Pingree first.

- Congresswoman Pingree, you voted against the SAVE America Act, which, among many other things, would have required folks to bring either a passport or their birth certificate in order to register to vote.

Given the concerns that some Americans have about election security and integrity, why not add additional safeguards to make sure that only eligible people can vote?

- Well, I mean, we're in a very perilous time.

We're only days away from Election Day, and we've got an administration that is trying to stoke fear, and that's what the SAVE America Act did.

It tried to stoke fear in the eyes of the American public.

Maine has an incredibly good and well-run election system, and voter fraud is almost non-existent if it ever exists here.

It is already illegal to vote if you're not a United States citizen.

And vote checkers have lots of ways to go about making sure that you are legally a resident of that community and legally allowed to vote, but the SAVE American Act was incredibly prohibitive.

Less than 50% of Americans have a passport, so first, you're asking people to pay hundreds of dollars to go get a form of identification that they don't have, or bring in their birth certificate.

You have enormous number of people who have no idea where their birth certificate is, and it was even more challenging for women because if it had a different name than you currently use, which happens to many married women, you had to go get a different kind of form to make sure that you could prove you were who you were, so we were starting to call it the Prevent Women from Voting Act because that's what it looked like.

It was gonna make it very difficult for women to vote.

It was gonna make it very difficult for citizens to vote.

We have a very good system of voting and voting security right now.

This administration is doing everything they possibly can and promoting bills like that to make it difficult for people to vote.

If they really wanna do something, they could do a lot more to encourage voting and support voting in states across the country.

- Ron Russell, on your instances, as Congresswoman Pingree mentioned, instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare in Maine and across the country.

On your website, you talk about, quote, "restoring faith in our election system," so I guess my question is, do you have faith in the election system here in Maine and across the country?

- I see problems with the election system right here in Maine.

Our Secretary of State acknowledged that non-citizens voted, were registered to vote.

How can that happen if you have a decent election system?

And you've seen the polls in Lewiston here, as advertised by The Maine Wire, where voters are going in and taking interpreters in to fill out their ballots.

One of the requirements for United States citizenship is be able to read, write, and speak English.

Why would an interpreter be needed for a ballot?

The ballot is one of the most simple documents that we have.

It's got two names, in our particular case here, and our parties are listed below.

If you've done your research before you go in, and we hope that we have an informed electorate, that should be a very easy document to fill out.

So, I'm perplexed as to why that's occurring at all in Lewiston, which is where that happened.

- So it sounds like you would have supported the SAVE America Act.

- I certainly would have supported it.

Voting in the United States is the most sacred responsibility that we have.

I always tell people I didn't serve 30 years and 28 days in the United States Army so that you wouldn't go out and vote.

You need to execute your responsibility as the United States citizen.

- As we're approaching the end of this debate, we're gonna have a little section here for some quicker questions, so these are questions that can either be yes/no answers, or maybe just a sentence.

And we'll start with Phil Hirschkorn.

- Abortion in a post-Dobbs era, there's talk of trying now to codify Roe v. Wade into law, the national federal guarantee of access.

Yes or no, you support that in the House?

- Yes.

- Mr.

Russell?

- No.

- Why not?

- Because I think the decision that was made in Dobbs was the correct decision to move that down to the state level.

Having said that, Maine has a horrendous abortion law as far as I am concerned.

- [Phil] Later in pregnancy law?

- Exactly, so from my perspective as a pro-life person, I think what we need to do is do everything in our power to help the ladies that find themselves in this unenviable position of an unwanted pregnancy to come up with another solution besides abortion.

- [Phil] Okay, Kevin?

- [Jennifer] Kevin Miller.

- Should the US continue to provide weapons and military support to Ukraine?

- To Ukraine?

- Ukraine.

- Yes.

- Mr.

Russell?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- All right.

- With a caveat that we need to provide oversight there because we provided over $330 billion to Ukraine, and I'm not so sure that it all went to where it needed to go.

- Phil Hirschkorn and to Ron Russell first.

- What about to Israel?

- Of course, Israel's our most staunch ally in the Mideast.

- Congresswoman Pingree?

- I supported the bills that have put the brakes on some of the spending in Israel, particularly after the situation in Gaza and the current situation on the West Bank.

- [Jennifer] All right, Kevin Miller to Chellie Pingree first.

- Would you support a ban on assault-style rifles, like the AR-15s that we've seen used in so many mass shootings?

- Yes.

- Mr.

Russell?

- No.

And if I can elaborate somewhat, the problem is not with the weapon.

The problem is with the individual wielding the weapon.

We need to put more emphasis on mental healthcare and the process to determine whether a person should have a weapon or not.

- Phil Hirschkorn, if you'll start with Ron Russell, please.

- The Senate confirms Supreme Court justices, but any reforms on the size or term limits would have to pass both, so do you support term limits like 18 years for Supreme Court justices?

- No, I support no term limits for Supreme Court justices.

- [Phil] Lifetime tenure is good?

- Yes, and I don't support expanding the court either.

- That was the follow-up.

Congresswoman Pingree, term limits or expanding the size of the court, number of justices?

- Number one, I think we should have ethics rules.

Congress is expected to follow certain ethics rules, and the Supreme Court seems to have none.

It's the only judicial body that has none.

I also support term limits and expanding the court.

- All right, Kevin Miller for Chellie Pingree first.

- Representative Hakeem Jeffries currently leads the Democratic Caucus.

If Democrats retake the House, should he be the next speaker?

- Well, like anybody who runs for Speaker, he will come to us.

If we are in the majority and he has the opportunity to run for Speaker, he will make his case.

And we'll see if anyone else runs against him, and we'll have the opportunity to make that decision.

I will be clear that during the last election cycle, I voted for him 19 times against the Republican nominees, but I think it's important, you know, to say we'll have a bigger caucus, we'll have a big agenda.

And anyone who wants to be our leader has to come before us and ask for our vote.

- [Kevin] And Mr.

Russell, if the Republicans maintain control of the House, should Speaker Mike Johnson stay in that position?

- I think we would follow the same process there, but I have no problem with Mike Johnson as the speaker.

- I think- - The question, unfortunately, to Congresswoman Pingree, it was kind of a moot point because they're not gonna gain control of the Congress.

- There you go.

(laughs) - We'll see how (indistinct).

- Someone has a crystal ball.

That's good.

(Phil laughing) I'm wondering what was gonna happen.

- Well, that's the end of our debate.

Thank you both so much for being here.

Our candidates, Republican Ron Russell and Democrat Chellie Pingree.

On behalf of our media partners, NEWS CENTER Maine and the Portland Press Herald, and our journalists, Phil Hirschkorn and Kevin Miller, thanks so much for watching.

Good night.

(lively orchestral music) (lively orchestral music continues)