Senator Martin Heinrich thank you so much for being with us today it's always great to be here I want to ask you first about the Border your Republican opponent Nella dichi says Heinrich has actively made our border crisis worse with a dangerous voting record of opening our border and unleashing cartels and lethal drugs from China into our state first is that true and second in your opinion what is the problem that we are having with the water New Mexico CO's biggest problem with the border and what needs to be done to change that well thank you for the question uh no it's not true and and the reality is that multiple times now I've come together with Republican colleagues to try to do both border uh border enforcement reform but also immigration reform and the truth is we need both uh we need a secure border but we also need legal documented immigration we need to make dreamers into citizens we need wider Pathways for people to access immigration through legal documented vetted pathways on the border itself uh the biggest challenge we have right now is that our Asylum system has been gamed by cartels who are taking advantage of refugees but also taking advantage of folks who do not qualify uh for Asylum or as refugees and they are coaching them and bringing them to the border and it's overwhelming the capacity we have we had a solution for that it was a bipartisan solution it was crafted by uh my my colleague from Oklahoma who is one of the most conservative a fine gentleman somebody I work with on Intel all the time but very conservative and Donald Trump pulled the rug out from under he told all of the Republicans to walk away from the deal that it would be better to have an issue than to solve problems and the way I I view this job is it's our job to solve problems my opponent was silent When Donald Trump did that and I think that speaks volumes let's move to Crime this uh you know New Mexicans right now are anxious about crime their experience of having their cars broken into their homes broken into uh shootings and stabbings on the news what do you see as the primary driver of our crime issue and what is the federal role in making that better I I think the biggest issue is addiction and especially postco there are just a lot of folks who kind of came unmowed after the pandemic that have very serious addiction problems some of them are homeless um and the biggest thing we can do at the federal level there's a couple of things we can do one is I passed a bill called fend off fentanyl uh it is a law enforcement uh mechanism that gives both prosecutor and and um law enfor enforcement the ability to go after not just the criminal activity of bringing fentanyl into the United States selling fentanyl but it allows them to go after the bank accounts of the cartels and the gangs that are moving this poison into our country and that gives them a much more powerful weapon to be able to take them on uh additionally I work hand and glove with local police departments uh police departments Sheriff's departments the Attorney General to get them better tools so that they can solve crimes a lot of crimes go unsolved in New Mexico a shocking number of crimes go unsolved so when I can use my position on the Appropriations Committee to get somebody a ballistics analytics machine a DNA analytic machine or a drug analysis machine that means that law enforcement are able to do their job and solve crimes and they're not spending their time driving around the State taking a few shell casings from Roswell to Santa Fe but you know you said you think that addiction is a primary driver why not address the addiction part oh we have to uh absolutely and we're trying to rebuild our behavioral health system in this state uh it was destroyed by a previous governor and it has been hard to rebuild that uh we need to make sure that people can access those services in a way that meets where they actually are which means we need we need more for example mobile clinics who can meet people on the street and get them comfortable with seeking treatment before you ask them to do you know take five steps you have to ask him to take the first step and you mentioned homelessness too you know we have in recent years thought of this as an Albuquerque problem but now it's in Santa Fe and Espanola we've got tent encampments in Las crusis uh there are lots more people on the street in Farmington and Gallup this is the wealthiest Nation on Earth why do we have people sleeping on the street because they um they need basic things before they can become housed uh they need treatment they need oftentimes uh me mental health treatment as well um and you have to take those steps before you have a stable uh uh life system again we also need to build more housing dramatically more housing we quit building housing in this country around the 20 2008 2009 uh recession and we lost that capacity we have to rebuild it and that means we need incentives like tax incentives for Builders to do more not just low-income housing but middle income housing so that we take some of the price pressure especially off of uh rental housing and the price uh pressure is serious the median home price in New Mexico is about $375,000 uh but the average household income is $60,000 so that's 4,000 bucks in take-home pay and a $2,000 mortgage payment what can you do to make that less painful uh one we can we can upskill people so that they are in jobs where they're making1 $120,000 and so they can afford more and two we can also increase the supply so that we can finally bring those those prices down but I mean that 60,000 was household income what are these magical $20,000 a year jobs they're electricians right they're plumbers they're they're not they're not just college educated jobs we have an enormous Demand right now in large part because of policy because of the chips and science act because of the inflation reduction act which is largely a big energy and climate bill um so we have factories moving to New Mexico again uh and those are good jobs we're seeing folks like array Technologies expand their factories new factories like Arosa wind towers in Valencia County new solar manufacturing all because of those those policies and those are high quality jobs their careers they're not just jobs and so when people have those kinds of jobs or they're working on the sunia power line or they're working at the labs as electricians and pipe fitters those are jobs where out of of high school after your apprenticeship with no college debt you can sometimes be making six figures now you mentioned transmission lines and clean energy you've been a champion of building more transm transmission lines which are essential to getting this clean energy to the people who need to use it but right now the state's largest industry is oil and gas uh which your opponent says you're trying to kill how do you make sure that all of these people who are making their great livings right now in oil and gas these towns um these industries these individuals how do you make sure they don't get left behind in this transition one of the things you need to do is focus on the new Energy Solutions that actually have compatible skills you're never going to take somebody who's working on a rig or an oil and gas services and they're not going to have a solar installer job that that those two things don't match up but we now have things like Advanced geothermal where the skill set is largely the same it's how do you drill a well how do you Frack a well how do you build the infrastructure which then takes advantage of that resource and those are very analgous to oil and gas jobs they're almost a a direct matchup so I I think what we need to do as a state is not get caught flat-footed the way that West Virginia and Kentucky did they said we can just hold off the transition and we'll have the coal jobs forever that was a recipe for really bad unemployment for disinvestment so we need to be thinking now about the jobs of the future so that when the market changes we're not caught you know flat-footed and completely dependent on those oil and gas jobs and so we're at record production levels right now we've had the best of both worlds we have record production in the permium Basin and at the same time New Mexico is building for the future we're building the single largest clean energy project in the history of the Western Hemisphere bigger than the Hoover Dam uh in central New Mexico right now it's a giant 3 and half gwatt Wind Farm that's how you diversify your economy but for folks who are not going to be in these new energy jobs folks who are you know teachers and street sweepers you you are the chair of the joint economic committee and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee but your opponent keeps saying New Mex New Mexicans are worse off than they were when you went to Congress and the you know the feeling on the street is that everything is more expensive tortillas gas uh you know buying a house everything what have you done to bring costs down for people who maybe aren't going to get a a better job well one as a as a nation because we've seen this inflation Dynamic play out since 20120 when Supply chains really got broken and that is the root cause of inflation so in 2021 we actually saw 9% inflation which is incredibly painful for the a average New Mexican the United States through good monetary policy and by rebuilding our supply chains have managed that inflation back down to two two and change which is where it should be um so one we did that faster than any country on the planet that doesn't change the pain for the average New Mexican consumer so we also did things things like lowering drug cost through the inflation reduction act for the first time we finally have empowered Medicare to be able to negotiate for drug costs that has an enormous benefit for many New Mexicans who pay a disproportionate amount of their income for their prescription drugs we also made energy Cheaper by uh policies that we created in the inflation reduction act to make sure that people can uh make investments that over time lower lower their utility bills every single month you you mentioned health care costs and it is a it is a pinch point for sure um but we also have a problem in Access we don't have enough Health Care available to people here in New Mexico what needs to be done to make sure that people who need to see a doctor can get there I think there are a couple of things we can do one is we can um we can invest more in the things we know work things like project Echo and the sort of uh tella Health Investments that we've made that we know really get people Healthcare where they are instead of having to drive five hours to Albuquerque or El Paso or some major Metro Center um and two we can do better to incentivize folks who are providers who get very expensive degrees to stay here so we have some programs that for example um forgive the the student loans that that doctors take on to become to get their medical degree we need to upscale those we need those to be much larger and we need to incentivize folks to serve the underserved areas so sometimes that is a suburban area but oftentimes it's the most rural parts of the state where we have the most acute needs and a lot of times the problem we have here is that these folks look at our schools and they say why would I go to New Mexico the education system is terrible I first off let me talk about students in New Mexico our students are as smart as any in the world we have not always served them well with our education system um and there are a couple of things that do work and work in New Mexico and we know they work my kids went to public school here they're doing great uh one's in college one's about to graduate from high school they were able to get the kind of instruction they needed we need to make sure that every student in our Public Schools can do that so early childhood education that is a fight that we that took us a decade but that system is being stood up right now what does that do it takes kids who were showing up to kindergarten um not ready to learn and it gets them ready to learn they they show up knowing their numbers knowing their letters having the social skills you need in school and so before we were seeing these huge divergences between kids who showed up to kindergarten ready and kids who who weren't and who didn't no one had given them those skills we're closing that Gap right now that's really important we need to follow on with things like Community Schools that that uh remove impediments to learning that are not classroom based and then going back to the skilled trades I think we need work-based learning in high school where you can get a a paid apprenticeship where you can see that pathway to a quality career that you can actually build family around let me move backward a little bit into families Family Planning abortion Donald Trump brought up late term abortion in the debate and as you know New Mexico is one of eight states that does not have a limit on how late an abortion can be performed here you are a supporter of abortion rights um if you could have a national law which everyone is saying they they wish one way or the other right and and kind of codify it um but it would risk strict abortions after the first trimester would you take that deal I I trust women to make their own decisions and so what I support is giving them the power to decide when and whether uh to have an abortion I have never met someone who's had an abortion who wanted to be in that position or certainly um you know in the ter in in terms of late term abortion it's usually U very serious medical problems so I think what we need to do is is have a national policy a national law that allows women to make that decision and that is a very different position than my opponent uh my opponent has said that that's a sham uh she has said that the words pro-choice don't even have meaning anymore and if you ask the thousands of women from places like Oklahoma and Texas who have to come to New Mexico to get those service is whether the words pro-choice have meaning I think they would all say yes I want to go and pivot here to gun violence um your position on guns has evolved over the years you used to have an a rating from the NRA you're flunking now you've got an F uh despite perceptions gun violence is down a little bit from the pandemic but the state of New Mexico still has as many gun deaths per year as countries like Yemen and Ghana how do you move past politics in Washington to make change on the effects of gun violence in this country well you start by doing what we actually did in the last Congress where I work directly with Republicans like John Corin Susan Collins Tom Tillis to pass the first gun safety legislation in 30 years that's a start it doesn't go far enough but it's a meaningful start and the portions of that legislation that I actually wrote are things around straw purchases and gun trafficking they're both huge problems for New Mexico in part because we're a border state and gun trafficking used to mean you know the risk was Guns being brought into the United States the problem for the last 25 years has been American Guns being trafficked to Mexico and Central America into the hands of cartels and destabilizing those countries so we made that we took it from a paperwork cross that no one would prosecute to a hardtime crime and people are now being um prosecuted for trafficking Firearms here in New Mexico a lot of our violent crimes are committed by someone who is not legally allowed to have a gun and what happens is they get a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a cousin or uh someone else to go in who who has a clean record and buy that firearm for them and hand it over and then it gets used in a crime that never used used to get prosecuted it's called a straw purchase that is a hardtime crime now and it is being prosecuted and those tools are now there for law enforcement and prosecutors to take advantage of those are just a few of the things we can do but I've also written a piece of legislation called The Go SAFE Act which pays close attention to all the rulings that the Supreme Court has issued on guns but would really restrict the kinds of particularly dangerous firearms that we see used over and over again in mass shootings yeah you have uh taken a leadership role in Congress on artificial intelligence uh Americans love AI in their daily lives we love talking to Siri and asking Alexa to order more toilet paper um but we are also anxious about how AI is going to impact our jobs um our privacy and our future so how do we balance the potential and the danger of AI I think you framed it perfectly because AI is coming it's enormously powerful uh and the fact that you talked about Siri is really helpful because it it's a people don't realize that AI is that simple it's something they already engage with we need to maximize the potential to create jobs here uh and to take advantage of AI for fundamental things like new drug discovery new materials Discovery but at the same time put some guard rails on it so that we don't make the mistake we made with the internet where we basically said hands off we're not going to regulate it and then 20 years later we have a huge problem with Teen Mental Health and Social Media so we need to get ahead of this and write AI policy now while it's still a small enough piece of our life that we can get our hands around it and and really protect some of those dangerous uses um you know zooming back out protect us from those dangerous uses I should say zooming back out to the big picture here um what do you think has been your greatest accomplishment since you've been in the Senate it's actually something that got almost no press coverage in New Mexico uh but I think will go down as historically important and it was the Federal role of standing up our early childhood educ ation and child care system in the state um when we came into the Union uh there was a bill an enabling act that allowed New Mexico to join the union and it really set out how we could spend our Permanent Fund so I had to go change that law in order for what the voters already approved and the legislature approved to stand up uh Universal prek I had to change a federal law to make that happen it was a hard lift I had to fight people like Mitch MCC uh a vet Herold was not helpful in that effort um and yet we got it done and as a result we're seeing the beginnings of change in our education system that I think will Ripple through New Mexico's economy for for generations to come Democrats are framing this election Nationwide as a kind of a Do or Die moment right um but the country did survive four years of this of a trump presidency already what happened happens if Harris loses what happens if you lose I'm I'm at the point now where I'm I'm focused on what we can do in the next few weeks to make sure the election comes out uh the way we all want it to um I think we always have to respect the math is the math in my view with election so I will never be an election denier and if I were to get less votes I would absolutely accept that but I do think it's important for people to realize that all of the guard rails that were in place the last time Donald Trump was in the white house he will not accept those guard rails in a future uh Administration and the adults that were in the room and there were adults that I could call uh in the White House on specific issues or in the administration they're not going to be there they've all said we're out like this is It's why you have people like Liz Cheney campaigning for vice president Harris um I think people need to realize the gravity of the situation but at the same time um I think Tim Wallace kind of hit the nail on the head they're kind of weird this time like Donald Trump it's good to like watch one of his rallies now and watch it back in 2016 he does not have the same faculties that he had a few years ago and and I don't think he is ready even if I agreed with his positions which I don't to be the commander-in-chief he doesn't have the mental faculties to be a president and and I think irregardless of where you are on the political Spectrum we need an adult in the White House and that's what this election's really all about there's there's a lot of potential change and movement um depending on what happens in November um a lot of people have been talking about you running for governor um is that something that you would consider or are you commed to staying uh in Congress I I think other people have been talking about me running for governor I haven't been talking about me running for governor um I will make my decisions the same way I always have which is one first I consult with my family on any decisions like the decision to run for re-election and two where can I make the most difference for the state of New Mexico um because I view these jobs as public service and that's how we should view these jobs Senator Martin Hinrich thank you so much for being with us my pleasure