Hurricane Milton response
The town hall began with Ramiro Gonzalez, a voter from Tampa, Florida, who noted more than one hurricane had struck his home.
“Rumors are that your administration didn’t do enough to respond to the last hurricane. What would you specifically do, or your administration do, to help us in the Tampa Bay area or the Central Florida area with this hurricane?” he asked Harris.
Harris responded by decrying disinformation spread about the federal response to recent hurricanes. “I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she said. She then listed her continual briefings and contact with state and local officials on the ground, and warned against companies that are raising prices in impacted areas.
Economy and health care: “Prices are too high, still… and we have to deal with it.”
Asked by Wendy Solares — a mother who houses her children, as well as her parents — what Harris would do to help the middle class, Harris took a more sympathetic tone to the rise in the cost of living.
“I know prices are too high, still. You know prices are too high, still. And we have to deal with it,” she said, before listing out her economic plan to lower costs through being more aggressive on price gouging by grocery companies and by issuing tax credits for parents and down payment assistance for first time home buyers.
Martha Rodriguez, a 62-year-old homeless woman whose medical conditions — a heart attack and “long COVID” — caused her to lose her job and income, asked Harris how she’d help disabled citizens get their insurance faster through Social Security.
Harris noted that she pushed to designate long COVID as a condition that should be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that as president, she would work to make sure medical debt does not affect credit scores.
“The point is being very simple, frankly, which is that all people, regardless of disability, should have equal access to housing, to job opportunities, to education, and again, community, and there’s still a lot of work that we have to do in that regard,” Harris responded.
