The Daily Signal - #410: Texas Lawmaker Says Border Wall Is ‘Absolutely Critical'

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, joins us to share this thoughts on border security. He’s also the senior physician in the House, and he’ll give us his take on the so-called Medicare for All proposal. Plus: If you’ve ever wondered which states are the most sinful, well, there’s a new study for you, and it lists everything: greed, vanity, lust -- and each state gets a ranking. We also cover these stories:•House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., announced Monday a major investigation into Trump world.•Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded the Senate had enough votes to block President Trump's national emergency declaration.•Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is again being criticized for making anti-Semitic remarks. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, March 5th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, the battle lines have been drawn between House Democrats and President Trump on his declared national emergency at the border. House Republican Michael Burgess represents a district in Texas affected by all things border security. He'll join us to share his thoughts. And he's also a senior physician in the House. And so he'll give us his take on the so-called Medicare for All proposal. Plus, if you've ever wondered which states are the most.

sinful. Well, there's a new study for you and it lists everything. Gride, vanity, lust, and each state gets a ranking. We'll discuss. And before we get to our headlines, just a reminder that if you enjoy this podcast, please mention it to your friends, your families, distant neighbors, Facebook acquaintances, everyone. Please subscribe and please leave a five-star review on iTunes. We are here to make sure that busy conservatives can get the news highlights and in-depth interviews they need every day and we'd love your help in spreading the word. Now, on to our top news. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York,

announced Monday a major investigation into Trump world. According to the committee website, the investigation will focus on, quote, obstruction of justice, public corruption, abuses of power, and with the latter, quote, including attacks on the press, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies, misuse of the pardon power and other presidential authorities,

and attempts to misuse the, power of the office of the presidency, end quote. Nadler said in a statement, over the last several years, President Trump has evaded accountability for his near daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms. Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress in a core function of the House Judiciary Committee. Trump also commented. I cooperate all the time with everybody.

And you know the beautiful thing, no collusion, it's all a hoax. You're going to learn about that as you grow older. It's a political hoax. There's no collusion. Well, it's looking more like the Senate will approve a measure to block President Trump's emergency declaration on the border. On Sunday, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky became the fourth Republican to openly support the measure in the Senate, bringing support there to 51 likely votes. The other Senate Republicans likely backing it are Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Toll, Hillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The measure already passed in the Democrat-controlled House. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted he won't be able to shield the president from the vote. What is clear in the Senate is there will be enough votes to pass the resolution of disapproval, which will then be vetoed by the president, and then in all likelihood the veto will be upheld in the House. 23 people at least died in a tornado that hit Alabama this weekend, and three of the deceased were children, according to the New York Times. Sheriff Jay Jones told CBS affiliate, WRBL, this about the storm. I cannot recall, at least in the last 50 years and longer than that, a situation where we have had this type, this loss of life that we experienced today.

Donald Estes recounted to the Associated Press what the tornado was like. I just watched it, just sucked the clouds in and everything. And a heavy wind and everything. And then we ran inside. And after that, it was just a lot of debris flying. And we just watched it out the window. And then we come outside and start helping the community clean up. President Trump tweeted Monday,

FEMA has been told directly by me to give the A-plus treatment to the great state of Alabama and the wonderful people. who have been so devastated by the tornadoes. Governor Kaye Ivy, one of the best in our country, has been so informed. She is working closely with FEMA and me. Well, Russia has formally suspended its participation in the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or the INF Treaty, a Cold War-era nuclear arms agreement signed by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Kremlin cited the U.S.'s recent statement that it would no longer abide by the treaty,

but failed to mention the U.S. complaint that Russia had already broken the agreement by testing a nuclear-capable missile. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the unraveling of the pact could produce a new arms race. The agreement was initially signed in 1987 and led to the destruction of nearly 2,700 U.S. and Russian missiles. Juan Guido, who's been recognized as the head of state of Venezuela by the United States and dozens of other countries, returned to Venezuela Monday. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that Guido's, quote, safe return to Venezuela is of the highest importance to the U.S. Any threats, violence, or intimidation against him will not be tolerated and will be met with swift response. The world is watching. Interim president Guido must be allowed to re-enter Venezuela safely. And while dictator Nicholas Maduro has threatened Guido,

nothing happened to him as he entered the country. We know that. the risks that we face, Guido told media, according to the Wall Street Journal, we are stronger than ever before. We are going to end the usurpation in Venezuela very soon. Well, every year, Google conducts a study to investigate pay disparities within its own ranks. This year, they expected to find that women and minorities were underpaid, but the result was surprising. It turns out, per the New York Times, that men were actually underpaid for doing similar work. In response to the results, Google gave $9.7 million, in additional payment to over 10,000 employees, the majority being men.

Google has been defending itself recently against claims of pay inequality for similar work. It's facing a Labor Department investigation as well as a potential class action lawsuit covering over 8,000 past and present female employees who say that Google pays men more than women for doing similar work. Representative Ilan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, is facing charges of anti-Semitism again. Last week, Omar said, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country. Two Democratic House members, Nina Lowy and Elliott Engel, both of New York, were critical of Omar. Engel, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement, her comments were outrageous and deeply hurtful.

On Monday, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. saying, quote, accusing Jews of having allegiance to a foreign government has long been a vile anti-Semitic slur that has been used to harass, marginalize, and persecute the Jewish people for centuries. And added, in light of these additional anti-Semitic statements by Representative Omar, we ask that you give the entire Congress an opportunity through a House resolution to voice its rejection of her latest slur and make clear that no matter what may divide the 435 members of the House of Representatives, they are united and condemning anti-Semitism. Now the Washington Post, citing unnamed sources,

is reporting that the House will have a resolution on anti-Semitism, potentially even as soon as Wednesday. Well, up next we'll bring you my sit-down interview with Congressman Michael Burgess from CPAC. He talks about immigration and health care. Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Seatown. Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash briefing. It's easy to do.

Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. Well, I'm joined now by Congressman Michael Burgess. He is a Congressman representing Texas 26th District in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Congressman, thanks for being on. Oh, thanks for, thanks for letting me be with you. So, Congressman, I want to ask you,

about a couple of issues. First, starting with an issue that's highly relevant to your state, immigration and border security. We've had, recently, the House Democrats have, as you know, passed a bill to try to block the president's

declaration of an emergency. Obviously, probably not going anywhere, but it does kind of mark it marks a change in the debate. You've been in Congress for I guess over 15 years now, So how have you seen the debate change in your time in Congress?

Well, the debate actually has been pretty consistent, as has been the consistency of not getting to a conclusion. I mean, all is set with the backdrop of the 1986 law. I wasn't there then, but the Simpson-Mazzoli law, where President Reagan signed into law that provided amnesty for those people who were in the country without benefit of citizenship. The deal was supposed to be that now we will have the border. security so that there will be no more people who would require amnesty in our country.

But we all know it didn't work out that way. And in fact, the numbers continued to increase even though the amnesty was provided. So now, especially the area where I represent, when citizens contact me and they are concerned because, number one, they are fearful that once again the numbers have gotten so high people in the country without benefit of citizenship that Congress is going to do some type of amnesty again, so they don't want to see that. And the fact that never, since that bill was signed in 1986, through none of the succeeding Congresses, through all of the difficulties surrounding 9-11, 2001, never have we had the border security as we needed. A lot of discussion

occurs around the fact that in 2006, I was in Congress in 2006, we passed what was called the Secure Fence Act. Fence was never completed, 400 and more miles under President George W. Bush, over 100 miles under Barack Obama, but the job was still left undone. And for Texans, that place that is the most vulnerable is the lower Rio Grande Valley sector, and it is overrun with people who come across coyotes who bring people across the river, across Lake Anzondoulos, drop them on the opposite shore, disappear, and these folks are then picked up by our game wardens,

Customs of Border Patrol. They are then brought to centers where they are processed. If it's unaccompanied minors, they go into shelters that the federal government provides. But it is a phenomenal number of people. I think I saw a figure just the other day for last month. It was in excess of 7,000. It is an incredible influx of people that is uncontrolled.

No one knows much about their backgrounds. From the children's standpoint, the vaccination status is either unknown. The likelihood that they might have a contagious disease themselves is unknown. So it is a significant undertaking of dollars and personnel to just simply do the right thing for people that we pick up off the side of the river in our state of Texas. So the president has said we need to solve this problem. I think the president a couple weeks ago in El Paso referenced the fact that he had 900,000 immigration cases pending before his courts.

He said that's unacceptable, that large a number. So I get it why citizens at home are concerned about they look at these large numbers that are reported coming across, the large numbers that are reported being in this country without the benefit of citizenship and the large number of people who are clogging the courts and they are, again, are fearful that at some point we're just going to say,

ooh, we can't deal with all of this. Once again, we'll provide the amnesty. And then by golly, we're going to get you some border security. They don't want to hear it. And I understand that. I get that. Look, there are a lot of things that are immediately within our purview to do,

but the president is correct without border security. Really everything else is meaningless. Remember, the spike in unaccompanied minor started as a consequence of Barack Obama in 2012, saying, if you have come to this country as a child and it was no fault of your own, I am going to provide you a status so that you can come out of the shadows and get a job and not have to worry about being deported. It seemed like a humanitarian thing to do, but, oh, by the way,

the coyotes in Central America decided to use that as a marketing strategy and said, if you pay us money to get you across the border, you will get what's called the per miso, and it's basically a slip that will allow you to stay in the country of America until they do the next amnesty. So they sold that. It was a marketing, a marketing ploy. Every time we talk about something like that in the United States Congress,

it gets translated downstream and used by those people who profit from trafficking people across the Mexican deserts. Yeah. Well, we've heard talk of comprehensive border security, so walls, other technology. Would you say the wall really is the most important element of that? The wall fence barrier, it is absolutely critical. Nancy Pelosi stood up in front of a microphone after the president gave his Oval Office address.

She and Chuck Schumer did kind of look like to be a hostage video in the Capitol. But she said, we want sensors and we want to be able to detect when someone has crossed our border. No, with all respect to the speaker, we want to prevent someone from crossing our border. It does us no good to detect it, and then a week later we could get something out there to see where it was that they crossed. That's not helpful when you've got numbers to the degree that we've got. And look, I don't minimize the problems that people are having in other countries. But I will say this, the United States, first off, we're the most generous country on the face of the earth when it comes to immigration. 1.1 million people a year coming to this country legally.

And people shouldn't forget that because we're oftentimes branded as being heartless, putting the clothes sign up on the Statue of Liberty. No, we are the most welcoming country on the face of the earth. All of the other countries combined do not allow the people in that we allow in.

In Central America, we send them foreign aid. Their governments are corrupt. They don't do the work that is required to protect their people and their people get hurt and so they decide to come north. What is the matter with the governments in Central America that they will not do the work. Look, no one forced those individuals to run for those offices.

There was no one who said, you've got to run for president, you have no other choice or we'll come hurt you. No, there was a voluntary action on their part. So do the job that you volunteered to do. And part of that job is to provide safety and security for your citizens. But if you will not, and I have introduced a bill for a couple of congresses, they said we are sending you forward aid generously from the taxpayers, courtesy of the taxpayers of America.

If you are not willing to do the job to take care of your children, when we end up taking care of them on our side of the border in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, it's an expensive venture. We are going to charge you a surcharge per child. No, we know you'll never pay the bill. We'll just deduct up from your foreign aid check. Yeah.

It'll be smaller when it arrived. Yeah. Wow. Anticipate it. Budget for it. Well, Congressman, I want to pivot to another issue you've worked a lot on You are a physician. You've, you've, the most senior doctor in the house of either party. And you've worked a lot on health care reform. Right now, the Democrats are pushing what they call Medicare for all.

I want to ask you. It's a misnomer. A misnomer. They are pushing a centrally government-controlled Soviet-style commanding control. I think that should be the branding. Okay. Because, yeah, right, Medicare, some people say, well, it's, seems to work okay for my mom and pop, but this is not Medicare for all. This is a centrally run

health care system. Look, I ran for Congress. If someone, people probably did ask me when I was running, do you think the government's too big, too small or just the right size? Obviously, it's too big. That has not improved over the years that I've been in Congress. People want to be critical of me for that. They're probably correct. However, you are not going to get to a situation of a smaller government if you give government the responsibility for all health care in this country.

In fact, you're guaranteed to get a bigger government. We used to talk about banks that were too big to fail 10 years ago during the financial meltdown. You have got agencies that are too big to work right now. Department of Health and Human Services

bless their hearts. They do hard work, but at the same time, they are asked to do so much that they literally don't do anything well. That is going to get worse if you move more health, from the private sector to the government. Look, here's the fundamental difference between

people on the right and people on the left. In my world, in a perfect world, people, individuals are responsible for their health care. I recognize that insurance and the reasons that you would want to have a protection against a catastrophic event. So yes, insurance has now kind of dominated the discussion and many people get their insurance through their employer. And that's a good thing. That is a consequence of wage and price controls that were in the Second World War. The Supreme Court had a ruling that if a person gets retirement and health care benefits through their employer, it is non-taxed. So that was seen as a benefit, and it has endured over time.

That's why our system has grown up the way it has. I'm okay with that. I think if an individual or through their employment, that is how they secure access to their health care, I think that's great. safety net for people who for whatever reason are not able to provide, I'm okay with that. In the Democrat world, they would rather your government just be in charge of everything. And so if the government is in charge of everything, then really you have very little freedom for anything that's left over. It is troubling to me to see the rapidity with which people seem to accept that that's an inevitability. We, of course, we went through all of the

the debates with the Affordable Care Act with Obamacare. Remember all the criticism, why can't America be more like Canada? What people forget is Canada, their health care is on budget. That is, they get a big block grant for the provinces. When the dollars are spent, the dollars are spent. And so if the dollars run out in October, you better wait to January for your hip replacement. And that's why you have so many people. of means from Canada coming to this country

to get their procedures done because they simply can't wait any longer. In this country, we do not put healthcare on a budget. It's what's called an entitlement, it's automatic spending, the bill is incurred, it's paid by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Congress now has no role in that expenditure. So we do not appropriate money for Medicare and Medicaid.

It is simply charged to the government, government and the bill is paid when it comes in. So that, by definition, is the entitlement type of spending. I'm a little bit confused with some of the versions I've seen of the health care bill that they talk about, which is the government-run single-payer system. Some places I see it talked about as a block grant, okay, maybe we've got something to discuss there because they say it will be on budget. Other places, they talk about it being an entitlement. Well, an expansion of an entitlement right now when we can't afford the ones we have and I'm not talking about my generation. I'm talking about your generation because as bad as the as a debt and deficit is today,

it will grow significantly. And you've heard the estimates that people like the Mercatus Center and Dr. Holtziken have put out $32, 36 trillion. These are massive amounts added to what is already possibly an unsustainable level of debt, but there's no way to ever get out of it if you don't, if, if, if you go down that road, are there, are there other solutions? You know, and I would say, look what has happened since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Five million more people are working. These are people that previously were the long-term unemployed, they were, they were out of the workforce, but they weren't even counted anymore in the unemployment rate because they'd

given up looking for work. These are people who've come back into the workforce. Many of them have job-associated insurance policies now, health insurances. So Trump Care, if you will, is I would love to see the Congressional Budget Office create the coverage numbers, the number of people who have been covered by employer-sponsored insurance since Donald Trump took office. And I think you would see a big spike in that. Of course, they won't do that.

They'll criticize me for the work I tried to do a couple of years ago. with trying to roll back some of the Affordable Care Act, and you're going to kick all these people off their insurance, what about acknowledging the people who have been welcomed into an employer-sponsored insurance? And you know what? That's probably the best of all situations, because under a group of laws called ERISA laws, these are employee laws for the governed employee benefits,

under ERISA laws, that health insurance does not allow for an exclusion for preexisting conditions. Wait a minute. Have we heard this term before? This is not Obamacare that protected them from preexisting conditions. This is Arissela law passed back in the 1970s, and Donald Trump has made more policies available to more people because he expanded the economy, he cut the tax rate, he grew the economy, more people at work today than ever before in our history. And that includes minority groups, that includes women as well as men.

This is a positive story that the president can tell. and he's used the tools that were available to him. So credit to him for that. Well, I think we'll leave it right there, Congressman. Michael Burgess represents the 26th District of Texas in Congress. Thank you, Congressman, for being on. Thank you. Want to get up to speed about the Supreme Court? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast about everything that's happening at the Supreme Court

and what the justices are up to. Sin is not a concept we hear a lot about these days. But Wallet Hub, a personal finance site of all things, did an analysis of all 50 states to determine the most and least sinful using statistics related to violence, alcohol, gambling, and porn. The five least sinful states, according to Wallet Hub, are Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho. The five most sinful states, well, no surprise, Nevada is number one, followed by Florida, California, Texas, and this struck me as a little bit random, Tennessee. And what about the particular vices? Well, drinking to a case.

Success happens the most in Wisconsin and the least in Utah. When it comes to the most average time on adult entertainment sites, Mississippi is the worst offender and the best state is Rhode Island. So if you're starting Lent this Wednesday, some good food for thought here. Daniel, were you surprised by these? Yeah, some of these I was a little surprised about. I guess the one that I really wasn't surprised about was Nevada being number one for greed and gambling, which is natural. kind of expect that with Las Vegas. Weirdly, three of the most populous states, Florida, California, and Texas all made it into the top

four most sinful overall, which I don't know what that means. Maybe the more you're around people, the more sinful you are. I really don't know. Gosh, I hope not. I did not an exhaustive analysis of the study's methods, but that struck me as odd, but it did appear that they were doing things per capita, so it shouldn't have been that just by sheer quantity, I guess they were actually worse. Yeah.

So Tennessee, it says anger and hatred number one. Florida jealousy. I mean, so how do you feel about being being? You're a Californian, and I see that California was number two on the lust scale. Texas, my Texas is number one there. So nothing to brag about, but your thoughts on that. Well, you know, I think it's sort of interesting in the sense of like, I mean, and I think this is a point, I want to see maybe Ross Douth that has made this, that a lot of red state's private behavior does. isn't accord with their public standards.

And I mean, I think, you know, California is obviously not a red state. Texas, on the other hand is. And I think it's interesting. I don't think, you know, I mean, this is really getting off in a tangent. I don't think hypocrisy is the worst thing in the world. Like, I think it is better to have standards and fail them than not have standards. But, you know, it does strike one as concerning if private behavior isn't matching public standards. And this is not the first time I've actually heard.

that, you know, Texas seems to enjoy its porn for lack of a better way to phrase it. Okay. Well, I mean, so you're saying California, it's all out in the open and everyone's just like, yeah, sin. And in Texas were like, hey, keep that behind close doors. I think they would just be like it's not sin. I mean, they're like, they're post sin in their own minds. Right, right, right. Maybe not in reality, I would say. But that's right. Yeah. And I mean, I think it is interesting, though. But I mean, it's, I don't know. Wisconsin drinking the most surprised me slightly, although it shouldn't have because I believe they have the most bars per capita, not necessarily from this one, but from what I've heard before. But I don't know.

That always strikes me as a little bit random. Like I don't think of hard partying when I think of Wisconsin. Yeah. In Vermont, the lowest overall. I mean, maybe we, should we be listening to Bernie Sanders? You know, most virtuous state? I mean, I don't know if that's Bernie. Actually, I have never been to Vermont.

It's the only state in that like northeast that I haven't been to. I've never been either. Vermont. It's not, this is of course not a serious theory, but it is where the Von Trapp family ended up settling. And they did have a resort there. The Von Trapp family? Yeah, from the Sound of Music. They were a real family?

Oh my gosh. Yes, they were a real family. I thought this was all fiction. No. As someone who's actually read Maria Von Trapp's book and knows way too much about this, there were some key departures that the movie made. For instance, they condensed a timeline that I think was 12 or 10 years into like six months. Like she married the captain and then about a decade passed and then they fled the Nazis.

But no, it is a real family. They own some kind of skiing resort in Stowe, Vermont. And they actually went around the United States and sang. Wow. The original seven plus the three kids from the new marriage. And yeah. That's mind-blowing. I can't believe you didn't know that.

Something new every day about that. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce of Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a five-star rating and a review on iTunes for feedback. Thank you to user SJSGN. I'm not sure what that stands for,

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