The Daily Signal - Senator Blackburn Discusses Crucial Issues Facing America

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

In this edition of the Daily Signal podcast, Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn discusses key questions and issues surrounding our politics. She articulates the key themes and principles that Republicans need to articulate as they head into the 2022 elections. Senator Blackburn then considers the economic distress, inflation, and energy issues that are facing American voters and discusses what needs to be done to bring relief in these crucial areas. Finally, she articulates what comes next in abortion policy if the leaked Dobbs opinion is actually published as the court's opinion. 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 Friday, June 3rd. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Doug Blair. The Daily Signal team is still in Nashville for the Heritage Foundation's annual resource bank conference. Today, Richard Reinsch chats with Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn. They discuss a myriad of topics, including the border, the baby formula shortage, and the failure of the Biden administration to solve our country's biggest issues. But before we get to Richard's conversation with Senator Marsha Blackburn,

let's hit our top news stories of the day. On Thursday, Tulsa Chief of Police, Wendell Franklin, revealed new details about the terrible shooting that left four dead at a medical facility Wednesday. Via global news, Franklin shared the names of the victims. We have Dr. Preston Phillips, Dr. Stephanie Husson, Amanda Green, William Love. Franklin revealed the shooter, who the Daily Signal is not naming to keep the focus on the victims, had recently had, had back surgery from Dr. Preston Phillips, one of the victims. The shooter was unhappy about how he felt after the surgery and had been complaining to Phillips, who had seen him since the surgery. In the days between the surgery and the shooting, the shooter purchased a handgun at a pawn shop and an AR-15-style

rifle at a gun shop, according to the chief of police, who added this about the shooter's motivation. We have also found a letter on the suspect which made it clear. that he came in with the intent to kill Dr. Phillips and anyone who got in his way. He blamed Dr. Phillips for the ongoing pain following the surgery. The shooter is now deceased and is believed to have shot himself. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia now controls around 20 percent of his country. Zelensky delivered this sobering news during an address to lawmakers in Luxembourg, urging them and the rest of Europe to provide more aid to Ukraine, as well as impose more sanctions on Russia. During his address, Zelensky noted that while this current invasion of Ukraine has lasted

nearly 100 days, Ukrainians have been fighting Russians since 2014 when Russia took control of the Donbass region in southern Ukraine. The Hill reported that Zelensky said, It is reminiscent of World War II when Nazi aggression threatened the lives of entire nations. Therefore, we must significantly increase the pressure on Russia. to stop this catastrophe and prevent such aggressions in the future. The European Union, of which Luxembourg is a member, has finalized another package of sanctions targeting Russia, per the BBC. Support for same-sex marriage reached a new high level, with 71% of Americans backing it in a new Gallup poll. When Gallup first pulled the issue in 1996, only 27% of Americans supported it.

In 2015, just before the Supreme Court handed down the Obergefell decision, which legalized same-sex marriage, 60% of Americans supported it. There's one notable trait that opponents of same-sex marriage have in common, attending church regularly. Among weekly churchgoers, only 40% support same-sex marriage, while 58% oppose it. Among those who go to church nearly weekly or monthly, 70% support same-sex marriage. Among those who rarely or never go to church, 82% support same-sex marriage. Now stay tuned for Richard's conversation with Senator Marcia Blackburn as they discuss how the Biden administration

is failing to help America get through multiple crises. Conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories that are a particular individual, interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are

often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to politics and policy. Plus, we bring you an exclusive interview with a problematic lawmaker or conservative activist every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts. And we are also problematic on social media. So be sure to follow us on Instagram. Hello, this is Richard Reinch. I'm a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. We are here at Heritage's Resource Bank Conference here in Nashville, Tennessee. We're with Senator Marcia Blackburn of Tennessee. Thank you so much for joining us. I am delighted to join you. Thanks so much. All right. Senator Blackburn, we are headed into the midterm

elections this fall five months away. What do you think the messaging, the policy, the focus should be of the Republican Party heading into this fall? It's so interesting to me that when you look at what the Democrats have pushed forward, you kind of have Biden's greatest hits of failures. And people are talking a lot about inflation, crime. They're talking about the open border, drugs on the streets, they're frustrated with Afghanistan, with the Chinese Communist Party. You know, the list goes on and on. It's like a Tennessee and told me a couple of weeks ago, said everything this administration does makes my life worse. Interesting thing is that was a Democrat. And people are beginning to say, what are you going to do? What's the difference? They don't like the agenda of the

Democrat Party, and they see it all is pushing people toward big government control, protect the government, don't protect the people. So then they look at the Republicans, and they want to know what our vision is, what our, what we are going to do to walk back toward freedom and free markets and free people. And I think it's going to be up to us to say we have a vision. We have a vision. They have a checklist, but we have a vision for a better country, better days, hope for a better country, opportunity for all citizens, equal justice for all. As you think about these issues like the border, the Biden administration, seems to be running a de facto open borders policy.

We have an inflation issue sprung by insane monetary and fiscal policy. and energy prices amongst all prices continuing to rise. Are you surprised at the intransigence of the Biden administration, sort of the refusal to rethink what they've done, or do you see this maybe as he cut deals with the left wing of the party to get elected to earn that nomination, and now he's stuck whether he likes it or not? I think you have to look at the repeated actions

and say this is intentional. This is their agenda. And Richard, that's what people have moved away from. They're just so frustrated. I was talking with somebody over in South Carolina last night, and early voting started yesterday. They had been working the polls, and they said so many people that were coming in were pulling a Republican ballot. And as people exited, they would say, I did this because I'm so fed up with what Biden is doing. the inflation, the open border, you know, Richard, the things you're talking about,

these are the things that when they were going to vote, this is the reason that they were going to vote. And people like their freedom, and they don't want to hand that over to the government and let the government dibby back out to them what they think they deserve to get. Thinking more recently about this baby formula shortage, what's behind that? I mean, I read a lot of heartbreaking stories, people traveling 30, 40 miles to try and find baby formula. What did the government do specifically to cause this crisis? And it would seem to me that the solution is to find ways to incentivize production and distribution of that good.

What's the Republican approach and solution on that? Yes. What happened was Abbott has a plant that makes a little above 40% of all the baby formula that is on the shelves. in the country. And there was an accusation that came at them that the formula had been tainted and caused the deaths of a couple of children, which is tragic. And it had to be investigated. So the FDA had shut down the plant.

Then once it was shown that the formula was not what had caused this, they did not open the plant back up. So this administration knew back in February that they were already running at a 25% shortage in the marketplace. But they didn't do anything. So not dealing with the, not having the FDA not deal with the issue as what has caused this shortage. Now also back in February, they could have said, we're going to put some waivers in place for Canada, the EU, UK. get the formula in. They didn't do it then. They waited until it was a crisis. And Tennessee was 54% of the best selling formulas were totally out of stock in the state.

And at that point, the administration is going, we've got a crisis on our hand. We have to do for us. Cheer for us. Planes are landing now to import this formula. They should have waived those restrictions in February. This would never have happened. I'm thinking, I mean, a similar crisis in energy. And, you know, the fear being as we're, you know, move into summer, could gas go even higher. I think many people think it will. We've already seen it rise in the last few weeks, despite releasing, you know, oil from the strategic oil reserve. Again, it seems to the Biden administration refuses to move in the direction of markets, move in the direction of production. They tout that federal energy, are open and available to these companies. The response to the companies is that may be true, but there are a lot of regulatory restrictions on using that land. And, of course, they've been under a lot of restrictions, whether the past five, six years, from how capital can be flowed or directed away from them. Also, by encouragement from the administration, from major shareholders, as you think about America's energy industry are one of our major domestic strengths, policy-wise, what are you?

pointing to. You have to begin with the Biden policies through the executive orders and regulations. The executive order on day one ending the Keystone pipeline. That pipeline would have been finished by the end of 22 had he not stopped it. So he did that on day one. Then he followed that with making it difficult to drill on leases. He took Alaska, the shore in Alaska off. You can't drill there anymore. Offshore drilling. Can't do that anymore. Go talk to people in Louisiana. They're really upset about this. And then you have to look at the impact of all these regulations. You've got to realize 69 major regulations, and most of them targeted to energy. That is enormous. Donald Trump did 22 regulations during four years, and he took 1,600 existing regulations off the books. But if you're going to restrain oil production and not issue the drill permits for those existing leases, it doesn't do you any good to have a lease.

It doesn't do you any good to have mineral rights. They're worth nothing without a drill permit. And a company, whether they're a wildcatter, an independent, a major oil company, they cannot put a drill in the ground. until they get that drill permit will not happen. So they have one person at the EPA doing these drill permits. Now, if you want to help out Ukraine, help out what our EU allies, NATO allies, you need to make us energy dominant again like we were under President Donald Trump and exporting energy.

That is the fastest way to make certain we provide for our allies. The other thing, when you look at the inflation rate and what is happening there, everybody knows it's well above 8 or 10 percent, because what you're paying to fill up your car, what you're paying for food at the grocery store, clothes, shoes, everything that you're purchasing that has a polymer component. whether it's a plastic bag or a fabric. You know, it all is coming out of hydrocarbons.

And so in addition to the transportation and the home heating and the industrial energy, you also have that impact on the marketplace when it does come to the polymers that are being used. Thinking also about difficulties that American energy industry is facing, we just spoke about at this conference. we heard from Vivek Ramoswamy, Andy Puzzder, some others on this ESG movement that's been receiving now a lot of pushback, you know, environmental, social, corporate governance, and attempts really by BlackRock and other major proxy firms that hold pensions and 401Ks of Americans using that weight to try and in succeeding and forcing capital away from the energy industry. Is there a policy response from Senate Republicans that can be made? made to stop this from happening or limit the power of it.

Yes, there are a couple of things that can be done, and our banking committee is looking at some fairness components. Also, when it comes to policies of an administration, and this is going to be a big thing in the 24 election cycle, is to make certain that you're not seeing these executive orders in this push on industry. to have these ESG policies. Because this administration and the left writ large, go back to Barack Obama's first term.

We're going to radically transform this country. They couldn't get their policies through Congress. So Donald Trump gets elected. These guys are out. So they spend their time pulling together an agenda. And we all know that they're the ones that are making all the decisions. That's why they refer to this as the third term of Barack Obama. They see this as their open window to force companies to do what they could not achieve through legislation,

which they'll never achieve through legislation. So it's up to Congress then to push back on that and to say, oh, no, you don't. You're not going to use corporate America. You're not going to use the not-for-profit sector to achieve your goals. I want to ask you, you were recently censored by Facebook for a post that you made about women in sports. You also had, I thought, a great moment with Biden's judicial nominee to the Supreme Court where you asked her, what is a woman? Could you tell the difference between a woman and a man? And she said she could not.

That seems to be becoming day rigour amongst our progressive elites, that you've got to be a biologist now to make these determinations. What do you make of this? Is this something that sort of just questions the very idea of citizenship in America that reality itself is optional? I had one of the county mayors out in Tennessee. I was out in some counties yesterday, and one of them looked at me, and he said, Marcia, you know what's right is now wrong, what is up is now down, what is forward is now backward. He said, I've never seen such in all of my life. And I kind of chuckled because that is where so many people are.

If you have someone who's a nominee to be on the U.S. Supreme Court who will not answer the question about a curriculum that instructs five-year-olds to choose their gender, who will not say whether or not they agree with Justice Ginsburg that there are enduring differences between male and female, will not answer a question about the NCAA. allowing biological males to compete against biological females. And then I thought out of frustration, well, just give me the definition of the word woman, and she refused. She refused. And then you look at Facebook censoring me for putting up some information about competition between biological males and biological females. And 80% of the country agrees with me. but Facebook decided that was hate speech, and they needed to take it down.

It's not hate speech. It's called common sense. And that Facebook move raises also the specter, similar to what we're talking about, the SG, of major private corporations functioning, it seems, has arms of the federal government. Well, they do indeed. And this administration will protect government and protect big business and not protect the people. That is their modus operandi. They do it every single day because they want to tighten that circle of control,

and just a few people will have that control. And Big Tech is playing right along with them, because if you exercise censorship under Section 230, and it's why we have to rework that, then you have the ability to control what people see, what they say, what they hear, what they think, and how they vote. final question for you the Dobbs draft opinion leaked you know many people think it will hold that that opinion will be released Republicans have been a pro-life party for decades let's say that that opinion holds what's next

I think we just pray every day that that opinion holds because we have talked for years as conservatives about sending the issue of abortion to the states and so the issue would be sent back to the states, and that is the opportunity for states to move forward with their regulations and restrictions on abortion and how they're going to approach that. I know Tennessee is reviewing their regulations and will be ready to move forward. We should all agree our goal is to protect life. the largest number of lives that we can. And when you look at Roe and you look at, and you can look at Eisenstatt, and say these were wrongly decided, the premise was wrong, the precedent is incorrect, and to revisit that, and reset that, and allow the people to have their say and how this is regulated is appropriate.

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Thank you so much for joining us. Delighted to join you. Thank you so much. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast on Apple Podcasts, Iheart Radio, Spotify, and Google Play.

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