Speaker 1: Five.
Speaker 2: I think you have care CD Talk station a very
Speaker 2: happy Wednesday, extra special Wednesday.
Speaker 3: And of course I always.
Speaker 2: Call my favorite hour radio here on the fifty five
Speaker 2: here see morning show when we get to here from
Speaker 2: Congressman MASSI followed by Judge Jennena Paulatana, who may be
Speaker 2: very well be listening. Welcome back, Congressman Massy. Always a
Speaker 2: distinct pleasure to have you on my program.
Speaker 4: Great to be on your show again, Brian, don't know
Speaker 4: where to start.
Speaker 2: I want to start with Terris, but I know we
Speaker 2: got other things to talk about, so let's start with
Speaker 2: and you can explain to my listeners the Dual Loyalty
Speaker 2: Disclosure Act, which I know is on your short list today.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 4: So this is a bill I introduced just last week,
Speaker 4: and it says that when you file to run for
Speaker 4: a federal office, if you are a citizen of another
Speaker 4: country as well as the United States, that you have
Speaker 4: to disclose that. And the concern here is that we
Speaker 4: may have members of Congress who are citizens of other
Speaker 4: countries and therefore have to other countries. When you are
Speaker 4: sworn into office, you take an oath to the US Constitution.
Speaker 4: We want to know who else you're obligated to. And
Speaker 4: people say, is this ever happened? How do you know
Speaker 4: there are members of Congress with dual loyalty. Well, it's
Speaker 4: hard to know. That's why we have the bill. But
Speaker 4: sometimes when they run for president, we find out or
Speaker 4: they find out that they do have citizenship in another country.
Speaker 4: The two conservative examples I can give you was that
Speaker 4: I think it was Michelle Bachman had a citizenship in
Speaker 4: Switzerland and Ted Cruz had citizenship in Canada, and they
Speaker 4: both renounced their citizenship, which I think is what you
Speaker 4: should do. And by the way, my personal preference is
Speaker 4: that you only have citizenship in the United States. But
Speaker 4: I thought it would be easier to get a bill
Speaker 4: passed that requires you to close it and then the
Speaker 4: voters can decide whether you should be a dual citizen
Speaker 4: serving in Congress.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that makes perfect sense. I one of
Speaker 2: my dear friends from you know, high school age married
Speaker 2: a French girl, and he's been living in France now
Speaker 2: for the past thirty at least thirty, maybe forty years,
Speaker 2: and I know he considers himself more French than a
Speaker 2: US citizen. He's critical of US government, its policies and
Speaker 2: some even some of the freedoms we enjoy. So I
Speaker 2: know where his loyalties lie, so it stands to reason
Speaker 2: that they could be could certainly something like that could happen.
Speaker 2: So the big question is who would be against this
Speaker 2: common sense proposal?
Speaker 5: Congressman Massy nobody should be against it.
Speaker 4: I don't know yet, although I've only got I think
Speaker 4: four co sponsors for it, Clay Higgins, Marjorie Taylor Green,
Speaker 4: and one of the I think Andy Biggs, and somebody
Speaker 4: else joined here recently. So if you're listening to this
Speaker 4: show and I'm not your congressman, please call their office
Speaker 4: and ask them to co sponsor this bill.
Speaker 2: All right, I guess is it in committee right now?
Speaker 2: I know these things have to come out of committee
Speaker 2: in order to be advanced to the floor, and of
Speaker 2: course needs to be put up for vote on the floor.
Speaker 3: So where are we in process?
Speaker 4: So it's I introduced it so recently that I'm not
Speaker 4: sure that it's if it's been referred to a committee yet,
Speaker 4: And sometimes they're referred to more than one committee, but
Speaker 4: this is such a short bill, I think it would
Speaker 4: just go to one committee, and it would be the
Speaker 4: committee that oversees election law, and I'm not sure which
Speaker 4: one that is. It's not one that I serve on
Speaker 4: because the way I structured this bill is it requires
Speaker 4: an FEC disclosure, just like when you file to run
Speaker 4: for office, you have to disclose your financial you have
Speaker 4: to give financial statements. So it's just one more thing
Speaker 4: that you have to disclose when you run for office.
Speaker 3: Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Pivoting over to something that it really really gets under
Speaker 2: my skin, the idea that I can't find out and
Speaker 2: can't see from labeling where it is that my food
Speaker 2: has been manufactured. Country of origin labeling. We used to
Speaker 2: have that at some point, didn't we, And somewhere along
Speaker 2: the lines that got eradicated.
Speaker 4: Well, listen, your phone has the country of origin label,
Speaker 4: Your car on the sticker has country of origin label.
Speaker 4: Your shoes, your suit, your socks. You can know which country,
Speaker 4: your tools, which country those things came from. Except now
Speaker 4: with beef and pork, since twenty fifteen, when Congress removed
Speaker 4: the requirement to label the country of origin on beef
Speaker 4: and pork, you can't necessarily know.
Speaker 5: And what's more is a lot of times this stuff will.
Speaker 4: Be stamped USDA US Department of agriculture, and people read
Speaker 4: that label and they think, oh, this has made the
Speaker 4: USA no that could be from any country in the world.
Speaker 4: So I think we made a mistake in twenty fifteen
Speaker 4: when we removed country of origin labeling for beef and pork.
Speaker 4: I fought it tooth and nail. I lost the argument
Speaker 4: because they came to us and said, oh, the World
Speaker 4: Trade Organization has ruled against you in a suit from
Speaker 4: Canada and Mexico. Well the suit was really, I believe
Speaker 4: brought by the meat packers who want to be able
Speaker 4: to sell you meat from anywhere in the world and
Speaker 4: put that USDA label on it make you think it
Speaker 4: came from the United States. And in any case, the
Speaker 4: World Trade Organization, in my opinion, does not have authority
Speaker 4: over Congress. I can't find them in the constitution right
Speaker 4: any kind of superior court. In fact, even the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court is a co equal branch with the legislative branch
Speaker 4: according to our constitution. So I don't believe we have
Speaker 4: to follow World Trade Organization. But here's what the World
Speaker 4: Trade Organization said in twenty fifteen. They said that Canada
Speaker 4: and Mexico can impose retaliatory tariffs on your farmers if
Speaker 4: you keep requiring country of origin labeling. So that was
Speaker 4: enough to scare enough of my colleagues into removing country
Speaker 4: of origin laboring. Here. The thought just occurred to me, though,
Speaker 4: when Trump put these tariffs on, and now we got
Speaker 4: all these other countries and they're going to reciprocate with terror. Okay,
Speaker 4: if we're in a full blown trade war or trade dispute,
Speaker 4: go ahead and put the labels back on.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is part of the deal.
Speaker 4: Let's get back the territory we lost and label our
Speaker 4: dagone food about where it came from. Well, one more,
Speaker 4: go ahead, one more thing. While I'm on this topic.
Speaker 4: The US Olympic Association even advised Olympic athletes to be
Speaker 4: careful about eating meat in China and in Mexico because
Speaker 4: even though they do ban the use of anabolic steroids
Speaker 4: and their animals, they're still using them. There's no enforcement,
Speaker 4: and so you could eat that meat and fail a
Speaker 4: drug tast at the olmpage.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Well, and you just illustrate a great point.
Speaker 2: First off, I wasn't aware of the reality of what
Speaker 2: you just told me. So now I am a more
Speaker 2: informed consumer, and I was just making the point earlier
Speaker 2: when I saw the topics of conversation, most notably on
Speaker 2: this one. If I'm standing at the supermarket and I've
Speaker 2: got a pile of ground beef in front of me,
Speaker 2: and it's labeled, you know, manufactured, raised, you know, all
Speaker 2: United States processed, and I got another pile of meat
Speaker 2: that doesn't have anything related to that that, I'm left
Speaker 2: to guess. I wonder where that came from. Do they
Speaker 2: have the same safety standards as we do. It's the
Speaker 2: same level of uh, you know, oversight in those countries,
Speaker 2: and that allows me to make an informed decision.
Speaker 3: And plus, perhaps I.
Speaker 2: Would just like to support the American farmer and buy
Speaker 2: United States grown and processed beef.
Speaker 5: That's here's what's more of that.
Speaker 4: That mystery pile of beef, it's probably it's certainly.
Speaker 5: Going to say USDA on it. So the average.
Speaker 4: Consumer is going to think that the mystery pile, the
Speaker 4: mystery meat is from the USA, but the USDA label
Speaker 4: does not imply that. And the other thing is it
Speaker 4: may say product of the USA. Just because they grounded
Speaker 4: up in the United.
Speaker 2: States, process processed in the United States does not mean
Speaker 2: that that meat was grown here.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 4: So this is something there are some various bills on
Speaker 4: this in the Senate. In the House, I'm looking at
Speaker 4: drafting my own bill to reinstitute country of origin labeling.
Speaker 4: And you know, the libertarian argument here is buyer beware
Speaker 4: and if you know, if the consumers want to buy
Speaker 4: the mystery meat, let them buy the mission. But but
Speaker 4: I'm a constitutionalist here, and we have the authority Congress
Speaker 4: does to regulate trade when it comes across the border.
Speaker 4: And I think you know, even the Founders endowed Congress
Speaker 4: with the ability to set standards for weights and measures.
Speaker 4: That's in Article one, Section eight, the Directive toward Congress.
Speaker 4: You know, so that a pound weighs a pound whether
Speaker 4: you're buying it in Kentucky or Ohio.
Speaker 5: So this falls under.
Speaker 4: Both of those categories, the ability for Congress to set
Speaker 4: standards and also the ability to regulate commerce with other countries.
Speaker 4: And it's really no extra imposition to put that on
Speaker 4: the label. There are some who would say it is,
Speaker 4: but the.
Speaker 5: Consumers have the right to know we do.
Speaker 2: And there's something that I always look at for and
Speaker 2: I've noticed that quite often you will see, at least
Speaker 2: in so far as seafood is concerned. You'll see country
Speaker 2: of origin on seafood. Like, I do not want to
Speaker 2: buy farm raised shrimp from Vietnam or China or Malaysia
Speaker 2: or wherever the hell it comes from. I want Gulf
Speaker 2: of Fill in the Black Mexico, United States wild caught
Speaker 2: shrimp and you can find it.
Speaker 5: You want to know why.
Speaker 1: That is why because the seafood lobby is not as
Speaker 1: powerful as the meat processing lobby, and so you still
Speaker 1: have to label the country of origin on seafood for poultry,
Speaker 1: and there's not a whole.
Speaker 5: Lot of post processing.
Speaker 4: On seafood, so you know, you can generally eat it
Speaker 4: as eat it or sell it as it came out
Speaker 4: of the ocean a lot of times. And so you
Speaker 4: don't have that same oligarchy that controls the seafood industry
Speaker 4: that you do in the beef and pork industry.
Speaker 5: Oh that is it's just to still have to label it.
Speaker 2: So if they had more money and could pay off
Speaker 2: lobbyists and congress people elected officials, then I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to know where my shrimp came from. That's really
Speaker 2: what this comes down to.
Speaker 5: That is what it comes down to.
Speaker 2: Brother always telling it like it is, Congress and Messi,
Speaker 2: let's pause. We'll bring you back because I do want
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about tariffs and a couple
Speaker 2: other topics that I know you're usually fair game for
Speaker 2: pretty much anything. Let's pause, and let me take nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty five KERCD Talk Station Brian Thomas with Congressman Thomas
Speaker 2: mass Always a wonderful thing to having Congress Massi on
Speaker 2: the program. Always even made better because Judge of Poultana follows,
Speaker 2: and we'll be talking with Judge of Platano on tariffs.
Speaker 2: And he points out in his column that these tariffs
Speaker 2: were implemented or asserted by Donald Trump pursued to the
Speaker 2: International Economic Emergency Powers Act of nineteen seventy seven, which
Speaker 2: permits the President to impose tariffs on goods coming from
Speaker 2: outside the US in the case of economic emergency. And
Speaker 2: he initially cited the fentanyl crisis with regard to the
Speaker 2: twenty five percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And I
Speaker 2: think we can easily agree that fentanyl is a bit
Speaker 2: of a crisis. But moving over, apparently that had broader
Speaker 2: implications than originally intended, and so he cited this economic
Speaker 2: imbalance this trade deficit we have with so many countries,
Speaker 2: as the predicate the emergency to trigger them, but we
Speaker 2: apparently have been experiencing a trade imbalanced since nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: which according to the judge anyway, and I suppose people
Speaker 2: are free to have their own conclusions on it. This
Speaker 2: isn't a sudden or unexpected event. Ergo, it's not an emergency.
Speaker 2: And I know some of the Democrats are trying to
Speaker 2: advance legislation to block the tariffs, nullifying the emergency authority.
Speaker 2: Trump sided to an Act of Tariffs by Representatives Meeks
Speaker 2: and Larson and Neil, all Democrats. Where is Congressman Massey
Speaker 2: on this?
Speaker 4: This is great And by the way, everything you said
Speaker 4: is correct. So the President declared a national emergency in
Speaker 4: order to invoke these tariffs. Now, under the National Emergencies Act,
Speaker 4: there's an expedited way to bring a vote to the
Speaker 4: floor to countermand the president's declaration of an emergency. If
Speaker 4: Congress says, no, you know what, this is not an emergency,
Speaker 4: We're going to have a vote on it. And the
Speaker 4: way you do it doesn't even require the Speaker of
Speaker 4: the House's permission. And so what the Democrats are trying
Speaker 4: to do. Now here's where the nefariot stuff happens. Because
Speaker 4: I was in the center of the sausage factory last Congress.
Speaker 4: I served on the Rules Committee where they.
Speaker 5: I think they're skirting the law.
Speaker 4: The law says, if the President declares the national emergency,
Speaker 4: then anybody in Congress can bring a bill to the
Speaker 4: floor undoing the national emergency without Speaker's permission. But what
Speaker 4: they do is in the Rules Committee they insert a
Speaker 4: little bit of text in one of these big resolutions
Speaker 4: that says, oh, by the way, that National Emergency Act
Speaker 4: thing that this Congressman is trying to bring to the floor,
Speaker 4: it's not his resolution isn't in the right order, and
Speaker 4: so we're going to turn it off using this procedural
Speaker 4: slide of hand. And then my colleagues they vote for
Speaker 4: this rule, let's say, the rule that brings the big
Speaker 4: beautiful bill to the floor. Well, inside of that, they've
Speaker 4: get this provision to turn off the National Emergencies Act
Speaker 4: privileges for whoever's trying to bring the bill to the floor,
Speaker 4: so they can stop the bill from coming to the floor,
Speaker 4: even though the law says the bill needs to come
Speaker 4: to the floor. They can use a rule, this procedural
Speaker 4: resolution in Congress to stop a vote on that bill.
Speaker 4: They have done this once already, and I was the
Speaker 4: only Republican to vote against that procedural resolution. I may
Speaker 4: have been one of ten who actually knew it was.
Speaker 4: Inside of that procedural r they were turning off privileges
Speaker 4: under the National Emergencies Act. So they've already once stopped
Speaker 4: a vote on the emergency that enables the tariffs. They've
Speaker 4: already once stopped it, and that was about three weeks ago,
Speaker 4: and I think they'll do the same thing again.
Speaker 5: They use the Rules Committee to do this.
Speaker 4: Last Congress, I served on the Rules Committee, and before
Speaker 4: I got on the Rules Committee, I said, if you
Speaker 4: pull this crap on anything, whether it's War Powers Act
Speaker 4: they do it on War Powers Act too, or anything,
Speaker 4: I will blow the whistle and I will vote no
Speaker 4: in the Rules Committee. And so they never did it.
Speaker 4: They didn't pull these tricks for the two years I
Speaker 4: was on the Rules Committee. But they're back to their
Speaker 4: old ways.
Speaker 2: So I guess where do you see this going? I mean,
Speaker 2: regardless of what whether you're in favor of the East tariffs,
Speaker 2: do you think they're gonna go dood or do economic damage?
Speaker 3: Will they get away with it? In this case, they're
Speaker 3: going to.
Speaker 5: Get away with it.
Speaker 4: And what's more, there will be no vote. You know,
Speaker 4: at least in the Senate, they voted on this because
Speaker 4: they don't have a rules committe. In the Senate, they
Speaker 4: actually followed the National Emergency Act.
Speaker 5: Law in the Senate.
Speaker 4: In the House, they're going to get away with turning
Speaker 4: it off and not even having a vote because Republicans
Speaker 4: reflexibly vote for these procedural resolutions, and we're in the majority,
Speaker 4: and I may be the only one that votes against
Speaker 4: it unless I can wake up some of my colleagues.
Speaker 4: And by the way, my vote doesn't indicate whether I'm
Speaker 4: for or against the tariffs, when my vote says, bring
Speaker 4: it to the floor as the law requires, and let's
Speaker 4: vote on it. And so now I can give you
Speaker 4: my view on tariffs. For the first one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty years of this country, we were the whole country
Speaker 4: was funded with tariffs because we didn't have an income tax.
Speaker 4: And if you wanted to replace the income tax, like
Speaker 4: get rid of it and replace it with tariffs, I'm
Speaker 4: all in, Like I would rather have a sales tax
Speaker 4: on stuff coming from China or Canada to fund this
Speaker 4: government than to have a tax on everybody's labor in
Speaker 4: this country.
Speaker 5: But that's not the proposal.
Speaker 3: No, it's not there.
Speaker 4: He's adding a tariff in addition to the income tax.
Speaker 5: And what's more is it's not.
Speaker 4: A broad based tariff. This is this is my other
Speaker 4: pet peeve. When you go in and you say, oh,
Speaker 4: we need to tear if the steel industry, or we
Speaker 4: need to tear if I don't know, the clothing industry.
Speaker 3: Or the widget industry. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: The problem is the government doesn't know which widgets you
Speaker 4: should be buying more of or less of, or what
Speaker 4: the price of those widgets should be. But when they
Speaker 4: go in individually and assigned tariffs on different widgets, then
Speaker 4: they're playing, you know, like they're better than the free market.
Speaker 4: It doesn't work that way. And that's and here's what's more.
Speaker 4: It creates an industry of lobbyists. Has got done talking
Speaker 4: about the meat packing industry lobbyists. It creates an industry
Speaker 4: of lobbyists who come to Congress and ask for exemptions
Speaker 4: for their particular industry or their particular company.
Speaker 2: Going back to the seafood industry not having as much
Speaker 2: money as the beef and pork industry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is and I and so then it
Speaker 4: starts wasting our time in Congress because there's another group
Speaker 4: of lobbyists who evolve that come and try to get
Speaker 4: these exemptions from these terraffs for their industry. And they'll
Speaker 4: be also over at the White House lobbying the President. Hey,
Speaker 4: don't teariff our thing. Our widget does you know needs
Speaker 4: to get into the country without a tariff on it.
Speaker 4: So we'll see how this all settles out. I honestly
Speaker 4: think you know, some people are saying that the stock
Speaker 4: market getting fidgety right now, in the bond market and
Speaker 4: all that that's due to the terraffs. I think it's
Speaker 4: due to the fact that the uncertainty of the tariffs
Speaker 4: that the president can wake up on one side of
Speaker 4: the bed and say we need to tear iff this
Speaker 4: this morning, and then tomorrow you can wake up on
Speaker 4: the other side of the bed and say we need
Speaker 4: to tear iff that this today. Yeah, if there was
Speaker 4: certainty behind it, I think they wouldn't have to price
Speaker 4: the uncertainty in the market.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But you saw that the other day, there was this
Speaker 2: rumor going around that he was going to withdraw these
Speaker 2: tariffs that he had said he was going to impose,
Speaker 2: and the market went back up. And then he said no, no,
Speaker 2: where did that rumor come from, and the market went
Speaker 2: back down again. So there is a huge amount of
Speaker 2: uncertainty built into all this, and obviously uncertainty creates fidgety
Speaker 2: markets and a concerned populace. Congress from Thomas Messy, your honor,
Speaker 2: Judge Ennenponto is listen, listening right now, send it awave
Speaker 2: out to you, and I'll go ahead, just real quickly.
Speaker 4: ARCA one, section eight says Congress should be doing this,
Speaker 4: not the President, and that would give you more certainty.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess in closing the International Economic Emergency Powers Act,
Speaker 2: much like the War's Power Act, I guess a lot
Speaker 2: of people can make an argument that that's not constitutional,
Speaker 2: because we do have the provision for a declaration of
Speaker 2: war and the Congress does have the power of the purse.
Speaker 3: Right correct, there you are.
Speaker 4: Whether it's constitutional or not, it is the law, and
Speaker 4: the Rules Committee is circumventing the law by saying these
Speaker 4: are not the droids you're looking for. They're saying this
Speaker 4: is not a war powers resolution, or this is not
Speaker 4: an emergency National Emergency Act resolution, and so we're going
Speaker 4: to turn it off and it's not coming to the floor.
Speaker 5: I think that's skirting the law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really do. Well. Could end up in the courts.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but you know what.
Speaker 2: I love you, Congressome Massy for explaining this to us
Speaker 2: and revealing the sausage making process and the shenanigans that
Speaker 2: go on each and every day in Congress.
Speaker 3: God bless you, sir.
Speaker 2: I appreciate your willingness to come on the program and
Speaker 2: speak truth to powers I always say. And waiting in
Speaker 2: the wings, I know you're a fan. Judge Ennita Politano,
Speaker 2: Congressom Massy, best of health, my friend will talk real soon.
Speaker 5: All right, we left you and the judge as well,
Speaker 5: so we'll talk.
Speaker 3: To you soon. Eight twenty nine. Here fifty five krs.
Speaker 3: The Detoxication Judge of POLYTONU is up. Next, fifty five
Speaker 3: KRC the talk station