Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-05-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

09-05-25_FRIDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. It's so great to have you here on Find Your Phone Friday. Join in at 77056633-770 KMED. By the way, if you want to email the show, email Bill at Billmyershow.com, read them all. Try to respond to as many as I can.

I am a staff of one. But, you know, we make things happen here. in Southern Oregon for sure. We appreciate your listenership and going over all the various news and talking about things. A lot of people emailing me about the Pacific Power Cool Keeper program, you know, taking over their, taking over their HVAC and heating unit in order to, well, cover up for the lack of power availability or the power generation and the weakness in the grid. But we'll have, we'll share some of those on an email of the day segment, of course, this morning, okay?

So we'll have quite a bit of that going on. Medford officials endorsing, this is the Medford City Council and a Chamber of Commerce. Of course, naturally the Chamber of Commerce is going to go for this because anytime the Chamber of Commerce can get taxpayers to pony up money for some private partnership, of public private partnership of some sort, they get very happy. Yes, I know I'm being very sarcastic about this. But yeah, they are going to refer ballot measure 15238 would allow the Medford. city charter to increase the lodging tax up uh let's see up to two percent from a maximum fee of 11 to 13 percent this in a kobi i 5 now and the thing is is if it's passed

and a successful private public partnership is is secured then we're talking about the the ball team we're talking about the ball stadium we're talking about uh conference rooms in a you know new hotel complexes, Creekside Quarter is what they're talking about this, and it is a half, is it a half billion dollar project? It would be a pretty big project and even people like Kevin Stein, who never saw a public project, public private proctor, public private partnership that he didn't like is, it's going to take a number of years to happen. But it's about, you know, getting that all redeveloped once again.

getting entertainment at taxpayer expenses because I guess that's how we're all going to get wealthy and everything's going to work well. Okay. All right. Although I must say, you know, it's not the worst idea that I have seen. I'm just hoping that we keep a minimum, a minimum. All I would say is that there's a reason. And I've talked about this before, and I know it's not that I'm an anti-baseball guy,

but there is a reason why the taxpayers turn down building a business. brand new stadium for the Eugene Emeralds because the crowds that would come for it were pretty basic, you know, 1,500, 2,000 people the game. It's not a huge magnet. It's not like all of a sudden, hey, we're going to go and travel to Southern Oregon because the Eugene Emeralds or the Medford Emeralds or whatever the, maybe they'd call the Medford Timber Jacks again. No, we don't want to talk about Timberjack. That would offend liberals that want to be baseball fans. You know what I'm getting at here. It's like this whole thing is Eugene voters turned it down.

Eugene voters said, no, we don't want to spend $90 million. Here, I guess we want to spend maybe for $80 million, a little bit of seed money. We'll see if people are in the mood for kicking this in or not. We'll get a chance to vote on this in the near future. Okay. Big national story, though. RFK Jr., we've got to talk about this one. RFK Jr. ended up facing critics, appalled critics.

There were just a ton of critics yesterday. And essentially, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been willing to fire people who have undue influence and doing his best to clean out the total laydown, I guess, with the CDC and HHS for the pharmaceutical industry. and the vaccine recommendations and making staffing changes to make it work better to him and it has riled up a lot of people and so let's go through some of the people he rounded up and it includes, yes, our very own

Senator Ron Wyden but we're going to use him as the finale as it were. First it had to do with Elizabeth Warren, Senator Elizabeth Warren. These were all senators that ended up in Bernie is in there to, Senator Elizabeth Warren. What you should be doing is honoring your promise that you made when you were looking to get

confirmed in this job. You're going like this. And that is you promised that you would not take away vaccines from anyone who wanted them. You just changed the classification of the COVID vaccine. I'm not taking them away from people, Senator. It takes it away if you can't get it from your pharmacists. Well, most Americans are going to be able to get it from their pharmacy for free. Most Americans will be able to get it from their pharmacy free.

The question is everyone who wants it. That was your promise. I never promised that I was going to recommend products with which there is no indication. Now, see, that is a specific point there. I'm not going to just put a recommendation on it when there's absolutely no data that supports this. And, of course, Warren is Hall at this point where he wants. wants where she wants everybody who has a pulse to be able to just demand a free COVID-19 vaccine. They have restrictions on it down, which, you know, generally speaking, you have to have some real

preexisting issues and be over 65 because those are the people that have most of the risk. But, you know, once again, everyone's taking money from them. We'll talk about that here just a bit. When you said, and I know you've taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical company, Senator. Did you hold up a big sign saying that you were lying when you said that because you are the one who said you would not take them away? Now, Senator, I'm not taking them away from that. You want me to indicate a product for which there is no clinical data? Is that what you want?

Okay. Next one was up was Bernie. Bernie Broh was there, and he was getting into this also. Their little exchange was quite interesting. Dr. Oz, then I preside. So you've got a few doctors who agree with you. What I'm giving you the name? You're not a few doctors.

What you're talking about is there's a big different senator between established science and the scientific establishment, which has been co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry. So you're telling me, you're telling the American people that the American Medical Association representing hundreds of thousands of people have been co-opted and that they should not trust their doctors. I would. Maybe Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wouldn't say it, but, you know, the American Medical Association is not only in on sustainable development and all the other things, but they're all in the transgender deal, too.

All sorts of things. It's, you know, everything that is involved in the woke world comes out of the AMA, too. But I digress, we'll continue. American Academy of Pediatrics, the American, and by the way, just for the record, every single Republican. I don't mean to be political here, Mr. Chairman, has received pack money for the pharmaceutical industry. Are they all corrupt as well? And I'm telling you, the American Heart Association has been co-opted by the food industry. Everybody, but you said it, but you know what?

When you ran for president, you know, we have a corrupt campaign finance system. Maybe you will agree with me or not. Okay, you were ordered per president, you got a billion a half behind it. You received $300,000 from people, not from the industry, people in it, as I did, from individuals. You corrupt. President Trump got $3 million. Every Republican got corporate pack money for the pharmaceutical industry. Democrats as well. Everybody is corrupt.

But you, is that what we're looking at? I don't think so. And I think the issue now. I don't even know what you're talking about. All right. So I find that strategy from Bernie, bro, really interesting. We're going to take down RFK Jr. by saying, we've all taken money. Are we all corrupt?

Yes. Yes, you are, Bernie. You know, that's the answer. It's almost like, we're all taking it so, you know, so we're all a part of this? Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, it's certainly a lot more difficult to be Mr. clean hands on something like that. If you've taken, like Elizabeth Warren has taken $8555,000, just in the most recent cycle.

I mean, okay. We're all taking it. So we're all corrupt. We're all co-opted? Yeah, pretty much. I would dare say it's pretty hard to resist this when the, you know, you get hundreds of thousands of dollars to the pharmaceutical world. You'll tend to do whatever it takes to make the pharmaceutical world happy. And that means lots of vaccines and lots of, uh, of, uh,

medications that are put on the formulary for Medicare, and the taxpayers are hosed at every step. You know, that kind of, it should. But yeah, Bernie's thinking that's going to be a really good strategy to say the quiet part out loud. We're all corrupt. Cracks me up. All right. And as we continue here, let's see. Ron Wyden, Fetter Wyden, I think he took, last check, about $103,000 in B.

farm of money over the last most recent cycle here. He's taken about 400,000 over the last 10 years. But he may not be the most, not the least either. They ended up by getting into a tooth. So it's Senator Wyden. Senator Wyden, front and center.

My first question, Mr. Secretary, is did you, in fact, do what Director Moneris said you did, which is tell her to just go along with vaccine recommendations? even if she didn't think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence. No, I did not. That's a yes or no.

So you have an opportunity to call her a liar if you say that you didn't do it, but I'd like to see you respond to this. No, I did not say that to her. And I never had a private meeting with her other witnesses to every meeting that we have and all those witnesses will say, I never said that. He's lying today to the American people in the Wall Street. General. Yes, sir. Okay. Next, it was getting into the children. Forced to rush their little one to the ER. There's no worse.

I've got 30 seconds. Dangerous respiratory viruses like RSV are on the agenda for the next advisory meeting. Countless parents have been awakened in the dead of night by a wheezing kid gasping for air, forced to rush their little one to the ER. There's no worse heart-wrenching fear. The RSB vaccine offers these kids protection against the worst effects of the virus. But now it looks like you're on a crusade to make infants and babies more vulnerable to the terrible illness. That's what we're doing with the COVID changes. And please make your answer brief, Mr. Secretary. I've said that. The position is indefensible. I think it's possible. Congress has been investigating that committee for 23 years because it is, it is, it is

pervaded with conflicts of interest. What we did is we got rid of the conflicts of interest and we depoliticized and put great scientists on it from a very diverse group. Let me close very very pro-vaccine. Let me close with this because like Senator Crape, I'm a few seconds over. I don't think, Mr. Secretary, this is about you and me. This is about kids being pushed in harm's way by reckless and repeated decisions to get scientists and doctors out of the of the way and allow conspiracy theories to dictate this country's health policy. I don't see any evidence that you have any regrets about anything you've done or plans to change it. And my last comment is, I hope that you will tell the American people how many preventable child deaths

are an acceptable sacrifice for enacting an agenda that I think is fundamentally cruel and defies common sense. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Do I got to reply? Senator, you've sat in that chair for how long, 20, 25 years, while the chronic disease and our children went up to 76%. And you said nothing. You never asked the question why it's happening. Why is this happening?

Today, for the first time in 20 years, we learned that infant mortality has increased in our country. It's not because I came in here. It's because of what happened during the Biden administration that we're going to end. I would say that was match point right there. Federer Ron, in their 25 years, never asked about any of these problems

as chronic health conditions continue to rise and rise. Autism rate continues to rise and rise. Nothing to see here. Because, of course, it could never be any of the medications that we're taking. Because, you know, there's probably all sorts of multiple issues we're talking about in this country, environmental toxins and various other, the type of food we're eating and or not eating,

that kind of thing, lack of nutrition, all sorts of things. But no one's supposed to be able to ask those questions in RFK Jr. For his flaws is asking the questions, asking the questions in moving the chest piece, and people who deserve to have their cheese taken away in the HHS and CDC are having their cheese taking away.

and I think it's pretty good news overall. And it's going to be ugly, but it appears that RFK Jr. has pretty big shoulders on this thing. So far, so good. He's moving some of the corrupticos, the people that brought us the COVID disasters, and I think that's a really, really good start. We should be happy about it. I wouldn't want to trust him in environmental policy and various other things, being the environmental lawyer, but I think he's doing a good job on this one so far.

he has the right enemies, including Fennerner Widen. It is 625 at KMED on the Bill Meyer show. It is growing. Now proudly serving Brookings, Gold Beach, and the entire... KMED.

Thinking about that ad there for MediShare, you look at what's going on. We were talking about that with Dr. Jane Orient MD yesterday. The cost of a family employer-provide medical program here. Now, you go back to insurance in 2000. thousand, it was about $6,000, $6,000 to get medical insurance for your family from your employer. You paid about $1,500 of it. The employer paid about $4,500 of it, that sort of thing.

And then now it's $25,000. And the employer's share of it, the employee, yeah, the employeeee rather, the employee pays about $6,000 of that. just insane. And this is all in the wake of Obamacare. Hey, we prepay everything and it's going to become affordable. Not really. Kind of running out of everybody else's money. I don't know. All right. Hey, quick one on the medical conversation here, too, since RFK Jr. found himself under such criticism here yesterday. Hawaii, he has also joined the vaccine, the West Coast Health Alliance, which essentially is a status quo on the vaccines. And we're going to tell you to continue to get the jab or else.

And that's with Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington. The same people who brought you safe and effective in 2021. The same people who stopped any kind of hydroxychloroquine, you know, prescriptions and Ivermectin, things like that. And, of course, Southern Oregon had the Ivermectin, the Ivermectin, the Ivermectin underground railroad. I remember it quite well. Many people going out there. But anyway, that's all coming up. Just know that Hawaii has

joined us too. And coming up, Congressman Cliff Beds will be joining the program. They're talking about possibility of government shutdown. Avoiding that. We'll do a capital catch-up next. Did you know that SISQ pump service does much in Medford? Lithium-Boney and Paint.

You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. 632. Proud to have. Congressman Cliff Bance back on the program here. Heck, they just got back in session for a little while. And now it's a pretty wild battle, I guess, to keep it open. We're back to that battle again, Congressman? Really?

Yes, really, we are. I'm sure everyone's heard this story before, but indeed, at the end of the fiscal year is at the end of this month. And so we've been struggling to get all 12 of our budgets passed. We have several of them actually across the floor, which is a miracle. And if we don't get them all across, then you have to do something, either shut down or go into a continuing resolution. That's the debate that's happening right now. Kind of curious, you know, when Democrats were in control, there was always talk for maybe Republicans to cause some problems and maybe do some shutdown work or deny quorum.

Well, I guess they can you deny quorum in Washington, D.C., like we've been trying to encourage Republicans in the state capitol to do that. I don't know if you can do that anymore, can you or not? Do you know? Honestly, I don't have the exact answer. I think the answer is no, but we'd have to go research it. I'll tell you right now, we have the majority, so we don't need to deny court. Yeah, I know. I know that, but I remember there was one time that Bob Packwood was famously dragged in on a gurney, I think, to do a vote back of the day, if I recall.

Yeah, that's in the Senate. In the House side, I think it's a majority, and we have the majority. So I think that as long as we show up, we're going to get done whatever we want in the House. It's going to turn to the Senate, which is, of course, as you know, they still have seven votes. We have to have the Democrats. Yeah. What are the bones of contention at this point in trying to get the budgets all together and running and everybody happy, at least most people happy, and keeping things rolling? Boy, never ends.

here's the problem. When you look at the Democrat side of things, and they, knowing they have votes that the Republicans have to have to get something done in the Senate, because you have to have 60 votes in the Senate, thus you have to have seven Democrats join you if you're going to get anything done or at least six. So the challenge is finding stuff that you can give them to get those votes that doesn't give away everything you're trying to prevent from happening in the bills themselves. So you've got to be bipartisan on the Senate side, unless you use the reconciliation package, which only requires 51 votes, which is what we just did. Yeah, but as an example, though, you're trying not to give away the farm like refunding

USA aid or USAID, that kind of thing, that sort of thing. That's exactly right. And then, of course, the president with his so-called pocket rescission is giving the Democrats something to point out and say, hey, you're already, you're Republicans are already violating the spirit of things by your president doing what he just did. Therefore, we're not going to agree to do anything. This is a game bill of who gets blamed for the shutdown. That's the game. And so if we go forward and pass it across the budget across the floor of the House or budgets,

because there's 12 of them, and they go over to the Senate, and then all the Republicans are ready to vote for it, but the Democrats are, the Democrats get blamed for shutting down the government, But that gives the president more power, by the way. If your president during the shutdown has the power to determine how the shutdown affects different agencies. And he can essentially direct certain agencies to be funded and other ones not to be, right? It can prioritize in a situation like that. Exactly, exactly right, Bill. And that's the conundrum that Democrats currently face.

Okay. All right. If you were a betting man, do we get a continuing resolution in time? If I were about it, I would say yes. The real debate right now is how long will that resolution run. There's been much changing and shifting of positions on whether to make it a resolution that only goes until, let's say, the end of December, or do we do a full-year resolution which carries other things with it and get you past the election? And so those are the kinds of things, or maybe right before the election.

There's many different avenues that are currently being discussed when it comes to the length of time to continue a resolution last. I think that's where the debate has focused right now. Yeah, and something tells me that any CR that was going to last for about a year would have even more of a Christmas tree bill aspect to it. Would that be a fair assessment? Oh, you're very, you're very experienced bill. That's exactly right. The one-year continuing resolution allows what some people call community benefits. things, other people call them earmarks.

And so there are folks who are very, very supportive of the continuing resolution for a full year because that allows these add-ons of earmarks. So you'll see that kind of logic on full display in this debate. Okay, good. Hey, out of curiosity, did you watch any of the RFK drama yesterday on the Senate side? I know it's the Senate side, but it was certainly driving the news cycle yesterday. Did you watch any of that? No, we were voting, and then we had several other important things going on.

Not that that wasn't important, but we've had the secretary in front of my committee, the new one that I'm on, the Health Care Subcommittee of Energy and Commerce. So I've got to sit through almost three hours, I think, of the secretary responding to very similar questions. What I saw this morning, because I listened to some of it as I was coming, walking down to work, and then my commerce person and I went over some of that this morning, and it was more of the same, only louder. How's that? Okay.

All right. It does appear that he's, you know, working hard to get a different take on vaccine schedules and things. You have an opinion on that? You're okay with where he's going on such things? Well, I'm very happy for the conversation. I do want to share with you a personal thing about my past that, that affects my view of vaccinations. My mother passed away from complications from polio,

and we were little kids. She got polio when she was 14, and it affected her throat, and she would choke in front of us, we little kids, and we were sure she was going to die right in front of us. It didn't happen once. It happened dozens of times, and it was horrible, Bill. And so we all grew up with a terror of polio. And so the fact that we have a vaccine for such a horrible thing is just a miracle.

On the other hand, my dad took the shot for the infamous swine flu years ago during, during, you know, another administration, I think Ford was president, and he got Dian Bray syndrome as a result and was paralyzed for two weeks on a respirator. So I understand the good and the bad of vaccines really, really, really well. and it's a very, very, very difficult situation and decision. I'm happy that the secretary is bringing attention to it, but I must say I understand the value of vaccines really, really well. And I think he does, too. I think the issue is, though, that there has been a lot of, shall we say, industry capture,

and let's face it. And we all have many masters, especially when you take campaign contributions. That's just a, you know, it's just, you know, it's just, human nature. I think they were talking about congressmen. But I do find interesting is that they're talking about, you have Senator Warden Warren talking about taking away vaccines

when in essence what they're doing is saying, hey, there's no evidence that let's say a COVID-19 vaccine for example benefits a young child unless the young child is really severely compromised and these are the kind of restrictions coming in and that most of the time

it's people over 65 that are having a problem with this that are needing that so it seems to be well I'll be really interested to see what happens especially because I know that the secretary is really wanting to change the way that it's tested in which we have real placebos because what has happened for a long time and I don't know how this ended up coming into a being

and I don't want to get off too much in the weeds but when they were going to test a vaccine they would test a vaccine against an existing vaccine rather than an actual placebo. So all you're doing is, you know, testing something problematic against something which could potentially be problematic. And I think that is probably good sense. And we'll see where this goes.

But a lot of drama. A lot of drama. That is for sure, Congressman. Yes, a lot of drama. Okay. I'll tell you, I'll just tell you, I'm very happy to be on the committee that's at the forefront of this on the House side. Very happy to be there.

Okay, glad to hear that. What else do you have maybe cooking here? And I'm kind of curious about, and this is something we've talked about. It's been a few months since we talked about this. But energy, since you're on energy, you're on energy, correct? I'm on energy and spending a huge amount of time on it, so I'm very happy. Whatever question you're asking, I'm very happy. That's good, because this is right in your wheelhouse.

That's why I wanted to ask it here. Oregon has a very interesting energy policy, which is to decarbonize and get rid of anything. which is base load power, whether it is hydropower, whether it is any kind of carbon-based plant, the boardman coal plant being closed, you know about all these sort of things. And now we have Pacific Power that is rolling out their coolkeeper program. In other words, everything seems to be in the state here, Congressman, about managing decline and managing scarcity rather than building out base. power and is there any conversation about that in the energy committee on your on your side of

the aisle just curious because everything's about just making do with intermittent power and it's very difficult to make that happen uh bill you you've hit upon a a condition of situation of a problem of incredible consequence the people of oregon and that's because everybody gets up in the morning and turns on the light. Everybody needs, we need electrical power unless we want to go back to the caveman age. I'll just tell you that Oregon, Washington, California are on the northwest, is on the precipice of an immense disaster. And that is because it's your point. You've already made it. They've made crazy decisions based upon this, let's move away from anything we can rely upon, and then hope that the sun comes up every

morning and figure out some way to, I guess, not use electricity at night. I mean, these kind of, this kind of thinking is, I'm not sure what it is, but we called it out, we Republicans in the Oregon Senate, when we left the state, as you may recall years ago, to stop cap and trade, which is another one of those devices that was created without sufficient thought, and just this idea that somehow everybody would switch over to electric cars with no attention being paid to the amount of electricity it would take. None. And what we have now is a situation, and this has been made worse by Bonneville's failure, abject failure, to take care of its transmission obligations. And what that means is you can have a lot of power in all kinds of

different places, but there's no way to get it where you need it. And I'll just tell you right now that the B2H power line that runs from Idaho up to Boardman has been 15 years, pushing 20 years in the making, not one shovel of dirt turned over yet to try to get that transmission in place. And that's indicative of any type of transmission bill, but it's not just transmission. It's the fact that right now if you wanted baseload from a gas-fired plant, you would have to wait seven to eight years to get a turbine for the plant. There's no turbines out there.

The backup is seven to eight years. And so how are we going to fix this problem that's going to be? If we had a drought right now and the Columbia River dropped down seriously, we would go into blackout in Oregon, for real. And that's how close to the edge we are. And is there a real conversation going about force-feeding baseload? Because these are kind of existential threats. I mean, I know we hear that all these. these data centers are going to be, you know, sucking off of our hydropower or already

are sucking off a hydro power, and they seem to get priority at this point. But meanwhile, you know, in Southern Oregon, rates are high, and we're getting an awful lot of intermittency and safety shutdowns and various other things. I'm just getting concerned that we're not looking at this holistically, Congressman. I'm not talking about you looking at it. No, the bill, you have hit it, you have absolutely described it. perfectly. And that is when you use the word existential, I would say there's like at least two levels of existential that we're talking. One is keeping our lights on without everybody going

broke paying for that. But the other is keeping up with China when it comes to AI. And if you look at the amount of electricity generated by China compared to what's happened in the United States, we're flatlining. We are at level. We're not increasing ours. China is going straight up. What they're doing is they're building literally hundreds of coal-fired plants. They have more power than they need right now, if you can believe it, for real. And so, yeah, it's existential all right. And yes, we are having conversations. And in fact, I'm waiting for a text right now to come in from a group that's trying to get a gas-fired plant up in northern Idaho to shift, have power. It will be, I think, it's 600 megawatts that would then become available. We need 10 times that

easily. But at least it's something and at least activity is happening. Okay. And so that's in Idaho, is there anything like that that is being planned for Oregon that you're aware of? No, and it's the only thing that Oregon has, which I'm very, very happy for, is it does have an immense opportunity for solar, and believe it or not, you can get solar up and running in a year and a half to two years. Yeah. The gas fired, unless you have some secret access to turbines, you're waiting seven to eight years.

The bill, we don't have seven to eight years. We don't. I guess everybody needs to add to their prayers list each night that we don't have a drought and that affects the Columbia. Yeah, I hope you're right about that. Speaking of the Columbia now, is the plan to destroy the dam situation on the Snake River? Has that been held back or stopped or what is the status of this? Because this is something we were talking about a number of months ago.

Yeah, we had a hearing on that just two days ago in my National Resource Committee. I was able to ask questions of an assistant secretary of Interior, that exact question. I think you can rest assured for the next three and a half years. There's nothing that's going to happen to those dams unless a federal judge tries to step into do something. So right now, those dams are seen by the administration as an integral part of a baseload power and balancing power. No, they're safe as of right now. And there's more to the story, but that's for a longer conversation. All right. How would you evaluate recovery on the Klamath so far? I know you've been kind of crowing about some of the recovery money, which is going in. Is it working out well so far? How would you characterize it?

So, well, we're headed in that direction sometime at the end of this month or early in October to take a look. And so we'll be better able to answer that question in about three and a half week. Okay. But the short answer is, I don't know, but I will. All right. Congressman Cliffbentz, we're welcome to have you back on any time you want to come on. And, well, do your best to keep the plate spitting as best you can. And by the way, to keep the lights on because it almost seems like the federal government at this point is probably working at cross purposes to what the state of Oregon energy policy would wish to be. Is this where we find ourselves at the moment?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And thank goodness for that. Thank goodness the federal government actually understands now with Trump in power that we have a problem and we need to fix it. And so we're working in that direction. And I'm happy to that. And I'm actually going to be attending a rose garden dinner tonight at the White House at the invitation of the president, me, and I'm sure hundreds of others, but I'll be there. Congressman State of Oregon of course has been going through some funding issues and that's why they even have a state you know a special session going on kind of on pause at the moment and is there any are you hearing any political conversation that there might be a willingness to back away from sanctuary state and sanctuary city policies because a lot of grand stream funding has been rescinded and or withheld or not being granted to Oregon because of sanctuary state policy. And we've been that way since 1987. Are you hearing anything about there? Any noise?

Yes, in certain states are looking at whatever their policies might have been in that space and are addressing them aggressively. Other states, not so much. And I would put Oregon in a not-so-much category. Okay. It was done back in 87. I just want to say that we are having conversations, active conversations, with the White House and trying to point out that there are many parts of Oregon, my district,

for example, that want to assist in addressing this immigration issue at all levels, not just the get everybody out of the United States that came in illegally tomorrow. As Stephen Miller, the head of this exercise from the White House sold us three nights ago at a meeting I attended with him. In his numbers, he thinks 20 million people came in. during the Biden administration, 20 million. Other numbers put it as something closer to six or eight, but it's somewhere in between.

And as he pointed out, to try to get that many people out of the United States quickly is impossible. And so he agreed that he would be working with us to try to address that issue. His approach, I think, is the most aggressive you could design, but he expressed a willingness to work with us

to try to figure out some way to talk about farmers and talk about agriculture, and talk about the spaces that cannot manage the abrupt loss of whoever it is that's doing the work. And I would include firefighters, and I'm aware of the situation where two firefighters, I think, were picked up by ICE. It's a complex situation, but I am happy to say that I'm in conversations with Stephen Miller on this, and we're forming a group to address those issues. You think the picking up of the firefighters that were actually working up there at that time, those two? And I know that some Democratic folks have been really bent out of shape over that,

but maybe, I don't know if I'm going to call it a misfire, but maybe a little tone deaf on ice at the moment, maybe? I don't know. Well, so, yes, I think the facts are probably pretty important. I think they were two people working for a contractor on the fire. Yeah, they're from Medford. It's Table Rock Forest. Table Rock Forestry.

Right, and so tone-deaf is probably the right word for it. I don't, you know, if you're comparing the damage that's going to occur from the fire on the one hand and the damage of not removing those two people on the other, the fire is the more dangerous thing. So, need it a little more thought, it seems. But as usual, I always like the facts, and I'll be down in your area toward the end of the month, and we'll be following up on that. Okay, well, you make sure and drop by when you're down here, okay, Congressman, thank you. Oh, thank you.

I'd love to. All right, Congressman Cliff Beds. Thank you.