Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
We have on the telephone with this, uh Congressman Josh mckin. How
are you doing, sir, I'm good. Next, Tom, let me
join you again. Well, I'll tell you what, it's always a pleasure
having you around. A couple of big things happening. First of all,
the defense built tell us a little bit about that. That's a little bit
different this year. Yeah. Well, let me say that that the Republicans
passed a authorization last week that is extremely conservative. The NDAA in the last
many years has been something that was bipartisan supported, but it contained all the
garbage that I think that Eisenhower and Douglas mccarthur would be looking at and saying,
are you kidding me? It's the stuffs and social media is you know,
a flame with showcasing that we're doing. Joe Biden is doing a drag
Queen story hour some you know somewhat with our men and women uniform subjecting from
the highest rank of the lowest rank everyone to set and not in agreement.
And that is not we need. We need a military that is lethal,
that's fears that's speared by our enemies. Uh and and you know, Joe
Biden's administration has turned this thing into cleaner off of mash and it's been it's
it's it's ridiculous. And so what we did was we said, no,
we're not going to do that. And so the Republicans passed out of the
House Representatives last week could build a pull back garbage out and it said we're
going to focus on on lethality and if it's not leading to more readiness and
easy deployment, then it doesn't need to be in there. So it's not
just the millions that this administration has been spending on transition surgeries and cross hormone
UH blockers, but it's also tom they they're undermining the rule of law.
The Supreme Court in in the Dobbs decision, said, we're correcting what Rov
Wade got wrong. The federal government does not have the ability to be engaged
in promoting abortion. And this administration the last two years it said, if
you're in a pro life state, we're going to use the taxpayer dollar.
If you're if you're serving your country and you want an abortion, we're gonna
we're gonna pay for your reimbursement. Go to a travel reimbursement to go to
a state that advocates for abortion. That's not what a National Defense Authorization bill
is for. Wow. And so there's a multitude of other things that we
pulled out, the di diversity, equity, inclusion stuff that it's just plain
silliness. And we need to be injecting fear into our enemies, not being
a laughing stock. And so Republicans passed to bill out that returns us to
what a National Defense Authorization Act needs to be. Congressmending recently down at the
border again, what you see, um, welcome Tom. It's it's the
same madness that continues because there's a desire to increase those who vote for Democrats.
And maybe I'm going too far there, but I don't think so.
I think that the ultimate design is is too for the Democrats who are leading
this party, the liberal side of that they're leading their party. They want
amnesty. And so we've got poorest borders six almost six million at this point,
which is one point five times the population of Oklahoma's uh higher population.
And that's the amount of the illegal this administration, through their absurdain policies that
are allowed across the border, and it's it's it's far and beyond anything has
ever happened in any previous administration. And and look, so Biden is letting
the liberals have control of the ship. That's what's really going on. But
for every signed and are moved and assigning the law, you can multiple times
thirteen the number of regulations, most of them to the utmost liberalists trying to
uh, you know, advance by the by guidance and by rules. I'm
by the act of the will of people to through congressional law. And so
we just no, I find our office oftentimes we're playing defense, legislative defense
because of this administration is constantly trying to come up with new better dance their
ideology. And now I'm doing it the way that our founders set up.
Still give you the idea, Let the cars vote on it, go to
the House, go to the Senate. Let it be tuning the law.
Well, they know they're gonna, you know, have problems, and so
um the stroke of a pen or by a bureaucrat setting in a cubicle.
They're trying to inject upon the American people the uh, the most extreme ideology
they can My goodness, when you said the defensive legislation, you just outlined
it pretty dart and well there it's you go to Washington to try to get
something done. It sounds like you're you're there most of the time these days
just to keep from something from happening. Yeah, people often say, you
know, well, you know, shouldn't we be, you know, trying
to shouldn't you get something done? Shouldn't you if if if you're being blought
by Congress, shouldn't you do everything you can? Know? No, we
are a nation of blass, not a nation of men. Founders plainly said
that. John Adams has said that what that means is you have to follow
the rules we designed to be that way. And I'm I've said this often,
but people I challenge people go look at Federalist Paper seventy three, the
Federalist papers, the eighty five of those Federalist papers were designed to tell the
States, this is why we need the Constitution. John Jay and Hamilton and
Madison and Hamilton lays out very well in Federalist seventy three that we set it
up be different from European experiments to governance. Europe they have, you know,
like parliamentary parliamentary parliamentary control. Parliamentary control where one party who wins an
election gets to run the gamut. It's not the way it is in America.
It's it's designed to where you have a House and you have a Senate.
In Federal seventy three, he said, and look, we made it
much more complicated because we even give gave the president the ability to veto and
he said, and people are going to cry that because they know it's going
to stop good bills from getting passed. And Hamilton says, we were more
concerned about bad bills getting passed, and so we're willing to not let some
good bills get passed so we can maintain stability. So when people are saying,
we'll just get something done, the Founders set our system of governance up
into maintaining stability. In fact, in that paper you'll find him talk about
the excess of legislating, the excess of legislating. They wanted the states to
be doing the perimentation, the laboratory of democracy and tweaking the things that we've
turned the federal government into doing everything you know, it wasn't empowered to do
by the constitution. And it's it's led us down this path where cost constantly,
the bureaucrats, the fourth leg of government is running rush shot over the
will of the American people. And Microman, did you get too Yes?
Absolutely, Gosh, fer Ken, you've been out and about, You've been
doing a lot of town halls, and you really put the miles on because
you've got such a vast, big geographic district here in Oklahoma. What are
you hearing from your constituents that, Paul and everybody's being hit by inflation and
inflation. I've got a good team of field reps that are out in the
field and going into businesses and asking them what are you dealing with? Catching
people at work, what are you dealing with? And consistently through those field
reports of costly reading people talking about just the cost of everything already in the
field report last week, constituent talking about in the food market, it's you
know, them saying it. It's not fifteen percent like everybody's talking about.
I can tell you this, this was this one person's take. It's a
thirty percent increase in food process that she's then having to pass along to the
customer in a restaurant setting. And and it's the inflationary impact of runaway federal
spending, the evaluation of our currency. It's impacting everyone. And in Congress,
nobody, nobody, um, you know, wants to cut seemingly well,
if we're going to get control over this runaway Congress, it is lashing
the credit card every time they vote and going on. There's no problems.
Just keep increasing expenses. You're never going to solve this problem. If you
don't start cutting, you will not uncomfortable. Yeah, it will come up,
it will come up to bid its twenty percent, the evaluation of our
currency. You hold up one hundred dollars bill, it's lost twenty percent since
twenty seventeen. Wow, so just fold it and fifth. Hold that one
hundred all millions fifth and you know you take off one fifth of it.
That's the loss of buying power. You've lost nine of that one hundred dollars
bill since nineteen hundreds. That's amazing, It is absolutely amazing. Oh,
Mike, when are you coming back to do the Bartlesville where you're around in
Oceanada? You're up and doing and all parts around. Uh, were you
going to be back? You think? Well, I know, you know,
next month in August we'll be doing a serious town halls again, and
I'm not sure the exactness of locations, but I'm sure we'll be in northeast
Oklahoma. I'm sure you will. Hey, I want to thank you for
being with us here today. Thank you for breaking it all down and and
telling us, you know, kind of the behind the curtain what's going on
there, because folks really like the sunshine that you provide by explaining what's happening.
Well, thanks Tom. And if anybody's wanting to to find out where
our next town hall, we've done forty four town halls this year live town
halls and and so if anybody wants to know where our next onan do is
go to Burken dot House dot gov. That can also get on our Josh
Urkeen Congressman Josh Berkein Facebook page and it keeps people up to up to speed
on when we're coming to a town near them. And it's also a great
way to you know, get something to your congressman as well. Uh,
you're always open for communication. That's one thing that look, yeah, we
take we take information that you know comes up in these town halls, and
we're turning into legislation the healthy healthy Snap idea that we're running right now.
That's you know, eight eighty eighty percent of what we're of a farm bill
consists of food stamps these days. So when a farm bill comes up,
eighty percent of the dollar value is coming going directly back into food stamp programs,
the Snap something nutricians business program. And someone and Hugo said to us
and said, look, why aren't we taking wick women have been children where
they say it's going to be nutritional instead of buying garbage that ultimately increases costs
on Medicaid and Medicare taxpayer paste for And so we said, that makes sense.
And you know, ten percent tom of the food stamp program is just
soft drinks, soft drinks. That's nasty. And so we're saying, look,
if this dessert or candy or or ice cream or soft drinks, if
you want to buy it on your own grade, but don't expect the taxpayer
to pay for it. That has, you know, a trend of increasing
obesity numbers that then we know is a large driver of the healthcare costs the
taxpayer picks up on the Medicaid and Medicare front. Wow, gosh for king,
thank you it's always great to talk to you. Thanks man. You
two have a blessed day. Tom