U.S. Rep. Bill Keating spoke to members of the Wareham Democratic Town Committee over breakfast at Lindsey's Family Restaurant on Sunday morning, touching on a number of local and international issues from homeland security and health care to jobs and education.

One issue that has both local and global implications, and one that Keating has tried to work on while in office, is climate change.

"Where we live is one of the most affected areas in the country. We knew these things were going to happen, but not as quickly as they are," he said, noting the recent report from two different teams of scientists about the unstoppable disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Locally, the congressman said there are problems with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's flood insurance maps, that FEMA is not addressing the problems and that these incorrect maps are preventing people from buying and selling homes.

This was made apparent by Charlene and Tood Pardi, who can't rebuild their house in Wareham because of the FEMA flood maps. They had a house fire in November and would need to spend more than $100,000 to put it up on stilts, even though they've never had a flood before.

The Pardi's are currently living in a trailer in their driveway on Fairfield Drive.

"A lot of the people are effected by [the maps] they just don't know it," Pardi said. "If something happens to your home, this could be you."

"We've seen the economic effect it's had in our region," Keating said.

Most of Keating's speech was about the economy and homeland security and the relationship between the two.

Keating said that when the Joint Chiefs of Staff are asked what the biggest key to our safety is, their answer is the strength of our economy.

"The stronger we can be at home, the stronger we'll be abroad," Keating said.

As far as staying safe abroad, Keating said we need to focus on countries and areas that incubate terrorists and our resources need to be spent on women in these areas.

"When women and mothers are involved, more money actually goes to the aid and education of the children," Keating said.

He noted he'd heard about the approach of empowering women from Hillary Clinton who, "if everything goes well, is likely going to be our next president," he said. "These issues can't just be flushed out with the military. They have to be dealt with in a more fundamental sense."

Keating said important issues aren't getting into the public discourse because of some in Congress who prefer to focus on things such as the eighth set of hearings on the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

"Those people are dealing in two different worlds: One in D.C. and the one actually going on out here," he said.

Keating told the crowd that in the face of misinformation from outside special interest groups in the run-up to November's elections, "we have to tell it the way it really is...time will prove us right."