FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Congressman Gary Palmer - Jeff Poor Show - Wednesday 9-25-24
[Music] Ja'Pour sure, different talk, 106.5. Thank you for staying with us on this Wednesday morning. 2513430106, if you're able to be in touch with the program, that's the best way to do so. Still go on a program. Joey Clark at about an hour from now and then from Yellow Hammer News, making Fred Grayson every. But joining us now on the line, we always appreciative of his time. I talked to our audience down here on the coast, but Gary Palmer, congressman for the six congressional district. Congressman, good morning. How are you? I'm good. I appreciate you having me on, Joel. Appreciate you coming on. Always appreciate your time. Well, let's kick it off here and you made a, I guess, sort of, where are we on this CR? Why do you think it's going to happen? And I kind of walked the street because it sounds like, I mean, we're really playing a little, a little close to the deadline here. Well, I think it's going to pass on suspension today. And what that means is some of my colleagues would not vote to allow the bill to come to the floor as a regular bill. So they're going to bring it to court under suspension, which means you've got to get a higher number of votes for passage. But the Democrats are going to vote for it. I think a lot of them are putting pressure on their leadership to support it because they're, they're in really tough races with Republicans and they want to get home to campaign. Well, and I mean, I know you've been in Congress for a little while. I mean, like this close to an election, that seems, I don't know if it benefits one way or another. It seems like Congressman, all of these, all of these sort of sort of potential government shutdowns and head in the shutdowns, the blame somehow or another always falls on the Republican. That's because I think we're partly the blame because we don't go through the appropriations process like we should. And what the other problem is, is that the Democrats controlled the other chamber. And your listeners need to know that there's 12 appropriations bills. We passed eight of them sent them to the Senate and Schumer didn't even look at them. There's a what we call a top line number for total spending. The Senate has never discussed that with us or agreed to any number. In addition, of the 12 appropriations bills, the Senate was response, they're responsible for passing 12 themselves. They had 11 of them out of committee and ready to go to the floor back in July. And Schumer did not bring a single one of them to the floor. And the 12th one was on Homeland Security and they held it back because of the assassination attempt on July 13th to try to determine if they needed to plus up the money for Homeland Security. And of course, that's where the Secret Services, they're part of Homeland Security. So we're in one of these situations where they have the White House and the Senate. And they drag us to these fiscal cliffs so that we'll get a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government operating. And this CR is going to end in December. I call it the Christmas cliff. And Schumer's thinking that that's where he's going to load this thing up with all kinds of new spending and more determined to not let that happen. Well, what about, and this is, I guess, the gripe from a lot of our fellow Republicans, you need some kind of electric integrity component to this CR. This is your chance. Even if you got that, I don't know how you went enacted and enforce it. But what do you think of that? Well, I thought it was important to put the say back in the bill and send it to the Senate because I think there's some Democrat senators over there who are in really tough elections that would have put a lot of pressure on Schumer to bring to the floor. And I think Schumer might have done it knowing that Biden's going to veto the bill and there would never be a veto vote in the Senate because these senators would have had a chance to show their support for it. So it was gangmanship from the very beginning. It would have been helpful on our side. And we've already passed it out of the House. So we know we've got a record of the Democrats who voted against integrity in our elections that we have a handful of Republicans that it's their way or the highway. And they vote against this stuff. They vote against bringing the bill to the floor as a regular bill. So we're on worst enemy a lot of times, Jeff, in handling these things. This continued resolution that we have now is something that the Democrats are going to vote for. It's only going to be three months. So we'll be back at Christmas Club situation again. Well, what's going to happen here? This is more long-term and post-election and everything. Do you foresee the Republican caucus? I mean, I, you know, sure, you'll have the majority, but man, it just seems like there's always these controversies or feuds or whatever bubbling up. And I, you know, you never will get the kind of like lockstep that the Democrats have and somebody like a Nancy Pelosi or even Hakeem Jefferies. But, but like, do you see some of this sort of some of this drama settling down in the future? I think the only way it's going to settle down is if we get a bigger majority and I'm hoping that we will. But now I know this to shock you and all your listeners, but there's some pretty big egos up here. There are people up here who have a serious need to be noticed, to be on TV, to be the people that the reporter just surround when they walk off the floor. And that's always going to be a problem. So we've got to get a bigger majority so those people can't, can't block everything. And the reason the Democrats are six together is, is that tell people there's not a Democrat anymore. They're either socialist or Marxist. The new definition of a moderate Democrat is that socialist. So they're all coming, reading off the same sheet music where we're, the Republicans are much more diverse. We can't have a majority if we don't have Republicans from New York and California, but they couldn't get elected dogcatcher in Alabama. On the other hand, if I ran in their districts, I couldn't get elected. So we have a number of issues that we have to work through from the very beginning in order for us to move policy. I think though, we get a bigger majority. When we write, we'll write the rules for the House. Each Congress writes its own rules. And I'm going to push as hard as I can for some rules changes that will force us to pass all 12 of our appropriations bills by June 30th. And if they're not passed, no other legislation can be considered on the floor. There's got to be consequences for not doing our job. And the law requires it. The 1974 bus control act requires that all of the appropriations bills be passed by June 30th. And we don't do it. And so I'm going to whatever it takes to get make this happen. I get this rule change and put some enforcement measures in it so that we do our job. Joe Biden, Congressman Gary Palmer, here on the program, well, what is what is the feeling of the House? Because you see how these professional prognosticators say, well, yeah, I mean, they'll even tell you that Trump can win the White House. The Senate, the map is just a Republican map to cycle. But I don't know about the House. It could flip the Democrat. I mean, I don't think that's going to happen if Trump wants to presidency. But there's some people say that. Well, what's the mood? How do you feel about overall Republican prospects for the House representatives? I actually think that we're in a position to pick up seats in the House. And Jeff, I don't pay any attention to these inside the Beltway, Washington consultants. I don't like them. They don't like me. And I'm quite happy with that arrangement. I think they're rip-off artists. You remember last election? They said it was a red wave when I was looking at other numbers that indicated me that it was not a red wave. And I think that they're just trying to sell you whatever they can sell you. I'm looking at individual races and looking at the quality of the candidates we have. And I think we're going to be in better shape than these experts say. On the Senate side, we're going to win West Virginia. And God in Montana, she, he is really running well. I think he's going to win that seat. And I think in Ohio, we've got a really good shot. And you can kind of tell how things are going about what the Democrats are doing. So I think we're in much better shape than people think. But it's an unbelievable amount of money that's being spent. And we're actually about to launch an investigation into this Democrat fundraising program called Act Blue. Because we believe there's some multi-millionaire, maybe billionaires. They've been sending small dollar contributions through the names of people who don't even know that they're making contributions to Democrats. As a matter of fact, some of them might even be dead. There's a lot of things that we've got to work through to straighten us out to not only ensure election integrity, but ensure there's integrity in election funding. Yeah, the sack of blue stuff is, you know, and you see some states getting into game here, but talk about that. It's almost like the way sometimes we think that Democrats rigged elections by registering and having dead people vote. But they're using what looks like a waste of funnel money to candidates through individual contributions, because I know people realize this or not. There's a limit on what you could give directly to the candidate. Now, you know, packs and all that are something separate, but they regulate this right. There's a bigger limit on the packs. An individual can get $6,600. A couple can get $32. I think packs are limited for $5,000. I mean, like what an individual could give to a pack. Oh, there's, yeah, there's no limit on what they can give a pack, but the problem with that is, is the pack is limited on what they can give candidates. So what they're, what I think they're doing is they're running money through Act Blue, as though it was, or as though it's some, you know, lady out in the middle of Illinois who sent in $100 because it's not reportable. You have to report that the FEC contributions over $100. So they're sending all these $25, $50 contributions. And Jeff, they've raised and spent $2.2 billion through Act Blue. Do you think, I mean, do you feel the, a tangible impact? I mean, I know they're doing it. And I mean, they've, they're certainly, their fundraising numbers are off the charts. And they all, they always seem to like just blow Republicans out of the water in a fundraising category. I don't know. Does it feel like it's moving the numbers to you much? No, we know going in that they're going to have more money than us because they're left wing agendas, their religion. And most of the people support us or people who are giving to a lot of other things, including their church, politics is the church for the left wing radicals. And they'll outspend us two to one, but we can still win. They outspend us much more than that, though, it becomes a real problem. The thing you got to keep in mind is there's just so many ads you can run in a 24 hour period. And it just becomes background noise for people. They don't pay attention to them. That's true for the radio or television. I think the key for us is to have a really good ground game. We've got to knock on doors and meet people face to face and ask them for their vote. And I think that that's going to be the difference between this election and the last two elections is how much we've invested in and just getting out and meeting people. Let me ask you this. And I think 22, you mentioned that and all the prognosticators say it was going to be a wave and it wasn't. How much of it was abortion and how much of it was kind of coming out of Dobbs and a very, very motivated left because of the Dobbs decision, giving money to like all of these like Planned Parenthood's PAC and other other like pro choicey kind of groups. But like, do you think that's going to come back around for this? Will that be one of the issues where we were sitting around on election day and the exit polls come out and they start talking about issues? Do you think we're going to see that pop up on the radar screen? Well, some in some places it's going to pop up but the big issues and I keep trying to tell my guys this, the issues driving this election, the dynamics driving this election haven't changed. They're still families going out to buy their groceries and not buying things they used to buy because they can't afford them anymore. They're buying store brand products because they can't afford an a brand. They can't afford a box of cereal or you know, just basic things. The Democrats are trying to use abortion because they want this to be about emotions not intellect. That when you look at the cost of living, you look at the crime that we have and the Democrats are responsible for a lot of that and that defunds the police. We probably have a third list of police officers on the street now that we had before and then the open border and all that that entails, those dynamics are not going to change yet between now and November 5th and I just think that's what we got to stay focused on. But in the last election, the thing that drove me crazy was our consultants were saying, "Well, you don't want to talk about health care. You don't want to talk about abortion." Well, how's that different from what the Democrats have done, not let them come and talk about anything? I think we owe it to the American people. We owe it to the voters to tell people where we are and to talk about the solutions that we think will really be a benefit to them. It's not a deal with these things. But you got these inside the beltway people up here, these consultants that tell us, "Well, you can't talk about that. Well, that's below me." We need to get out and talk about it because the thing that people are desperate for, Jeff, is authentic leadership. When you come out and you sit your finger in the air to see which way the wind's blowing, that's not only not authentic leadership. It's not in courageous leadership. It's not even intelligent leadership. Last question will get you out of here on this, Congressman. The shooting in Birmingham on Saturday night, and sort of the state of affairs, public safety-wise in Birmingham, I assume you keep an eye on it. I mean, you got parts of Birmingham in your district. What do you make of that? What do you think ought to happen there? Well, it's not about guns. The lift runs around. The Democrats run around. They want to make it about guns. I got news for a murder is already illegal, but they're still killing people. Bellans owning firearms is already illegal, but they're still getting firearms and committing crimes. This idea that we're going to take certain kinds of guns are all guns off the street. I mean, comma wants a mandatory registration and require that everyone to lock up their guns in their homes and even suggested at one point that don't be surprised to become a door and want to see where your guns are locked up. That doesn't change anything. These are the same people that attacked police officers and advocated for defunding the police. Comma was out talking about social intervention, like a sociologist could solve all of her crime problems. I think the way you solve this is you go after these gangs, you go after these people who are trafficking drugs and involved in sex trafficking, and you can lock them up and throw the freaking key away. That's how you get guns off the street. You get people who are committing violent crimes with guns off the streets and you'll take those guns off the street. Hey Congressman, we're short on time here. I got to cut you off, but thanks for making time for us. Thanks for having me on Jeff. I got a little passionate therapist. Appreciate the opportunity. Understand. Gary Palmer, ladies and gentlemen, It'll be right back. This is FIT Talk 10065.