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Estes Discusses Immigration, Tax Reform During Town Hall In Wichita

Nadya Faulx
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KMUW
Republican Congressman Ron Estes speaks to attendees of a town hall meeting at Newman University on Thursday.

Kansas Congressman Ron Estes stopped in Wichita Thursday on a four-city listening tour of the 4th District.

About 40 people came to Newman University for Ron Estes’ first town hall meeting of the day.

Estes describes himself as a conservative Republican, and stuck to party lines on issues such as the economy and health care.

"Obamacare has failed," he said. “Obamacare statute just basically broke the insurance system for everybody."

He also took time to defend President Trump, taking issue with one constituent’s use of the term “so-called president.”

"There's a lot of people today in the country that didn't vote for President Trump," he said. "But he is our president. We may disagree with his policies, but we need to support the office regardless of who's in there."

Credit Nadya Faulx / KMUW
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KMUW
Constituents wait in line to ask Estes a question at a town hall meeting Thursday.

Immigration dominated the conversation at times. Responding to a constituent who asked him what his views are on a wall between the U.S. and Mexico (he supports the idea) and immigration reform, Estes said Congress needs to fix the current immigration process and secure the southern border.

"And then the third area is, where do we go in the future? What do we want our process to look like, what do we want our immigration laws to be like?" he said. "That's a tough solution, or tough problem to solve, because there's such a wide variety of opinions on what to do."

Speaking after the meeting, Estes said he wasn't surprised the issue of immigration came up, but he said it hasn’t been a focus in Congress.

“We’ve had a few bills that have come through from that standpoint," he said. "We’ve probably it’s not been as high a priority a some things like health care and tax reform and working on the budget.”

He said priorities once lawmakers return to Washington after Labor Day, priorities will include working on a budget and tackling tax reform.

Estes’ tour marked his first four months in office since winning the special election in April. Other stops on the tour included Winfield, Augusta and Newton.

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Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.