Inside Douglas County with U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz | Government shutdown in D.C.

Inside Douglas County, 1243. This is Inside Douglas County, a news radio 939 FM and 1240 KQEM. It's our daily in depth look at people and issues that are shaping the local area. Inside Douglas County is presented by concrete builder supply. Now inside Douglas County, a news radio 939 FM and 1240 KQEM. Afternoon. Thanks for being here in the Uplaw Valley Congressmen Clip Vence at joining us now. Congressmen, I know things happening back in where you are today. Thanks for getting across the way and getting on with us. Well, I'm sorry, I apologize for being late Kyle. When you're speaking with a senior member of Congress, despite repeated signals that I needed to get out of the room, it wasn't taking them. So anyway, I'm glad I'm with you now. So this does mean though that you're back in Washington, DC, correct? That is correct. That came back on Sunday. And can I give us an update to your perspective regarding the continuing shutdown of the federal government? Well, let me begin by saying it shouldn't be shutdown. We Republicans voted for keeping it open over four weeks ago and sent the bill over to the Senate. And it stalled out there because in order to pass anything in the Senate, you have to have 60 votes. And we Republicans only have 53. So a few Democrats joined us, but we need five more. So it shut down because of five Democrats out of the 40 that have that vote otherwise. They haven't joined us. It makes no sense because we voted to keep the government open and they're voting to close it. And why they would do this to people is beyond me. Now, very few Democrats, as you mentioned, have changed their votes. Do you see? Do you see a trend here? Do you think more will move that direction? Well, you think so with snap benefits in the this coming weekend with with the military as they manage to pay for the past month, but I doubt it looking forward with airlines running and all kinds of difficulty because people are calling in tick and not being able to run control towers. I mean, this is all on the Democrats. They need to be those five people need to change their votes to yes. And all of a sudden all of this goes back to normalize beyond me why they are holding the American people hostage. It makes no sense. Now, of course, the Democrats paint a bigger or rather a different picture. What do you think their their thoughts are? The their argument is that they're going to hold the government hostage in their own words. They're going to damage people because they want to use the shutdown as a continuing threat until those of us on the Republican side of the aisle agree to spend 1.5 trillion dollars and that they want spent in a certain way. They're the minority basically in this case, five people because that's what it would take to go ahead and reopen the government. But they're busy talking about the only thing they talk about. They don't mention the 1.5 trillion they've actually put in their continuing resolution. But they talk about is the extension of certain tax credits that were put in place during COVID and the idea was to drag down the cost of Oblomac 8 the ACA the so called affordable a care act. It should be called a non affordable care act, but they they want to continue those subsidies. They're proving by the way that it's most assuredly not affordable unless you have the government throw in literally hundreds of billions of dollars. But they they would make the argument that this is their chance to hold the American people hostage until the Republicans give them what they want. Now, we talked to somebody from one of the food banks this morning. We've got another email and press releases and a lot of concerns from the food banks about the SNAP benefit situation. 157,000 Oregonians, including many here in Douglas County, both the second and fourth congressional districts are recipients. I think the number I heard today was about 20% of the statewide number is here for Douglas County. A lot of concern about the wealth from frankly, a number of people coming in for help is already going up. These food banks are very worried about what's going to happen next week. What are your thoughts? The people who are on SNAP need to immediately contact Senator Murkley and Senator Wyden and say be part of the five Democrats in the Senate to vote for reopening the government and this instantly gets fixed. So why and the world people are looking at the Republicans when we already voted to open the government. This is a situation where they, the Democrats are basically saying we're going to hold the American people hostage, including all of those on food stamps or excuse me, SNAP until they get what they want. Well, what is that in the Kyle? But I was, if they said what we want you to, we want you to force the president to resign as opposed to just asking for just $1.5 trillion. So what is this kind of blackmail? Where's the into it? So we just basically have no say no gets five of the Democrats senators to step up and and join the all of the Republicans, I think except for one. So we need 50, 52 Republicans voting yes and get this thing passed. I mean, come on, come on. There's, this is terrible that people are going to be without SNAP benefits. It's bad news, but the answer is to have the Democrats senators step up. And we have two of them right here in our state, Senator Wyden, Senator Murkley, they're both voting no to keep the government shut down and basically rob people of food. It makes no sense. Now, why can't the federal government move some other funds to cover the SNAP benefits? We had that conversation actually just a couple of hours ago during a conference call and the chairman of the Agricultural Community GT Thompson explained that the money that's available in being held in reserve for SNAP is for emergency like hurricanes and tornadoes and other things. So if you spend it now, where are you going to get it later? And so the point is you don't spend your seed corn, this particular point and this in this crazy situation, particularly where it would take five Democrats senators to step up and vote in this. It makes no sense. And so the short answer is the money that they've scraped together to pay the military is one time occurrence because then you're out of money. And so the many of these things are not allowed under the law. So the proper solution is five Democrats senators, they just step up vote for a clean CR, which we passed. We Republicans passed four weeks ago. So this is all on the Democrats. You mentioned coming back to Washington DC. Have the other House members come back as well? Quite a few. I was I've been in my office most of the day, but I've been going around and meeting with various Republican Senate, excuse me, Congress, men and women and talking to them about different projects that we have ongoing legislation that we have pending. And so I haven't I don't have accounts of how many are here, but a bunch are. And is that perhaps a sign that maybe we're closer to the end on this? Well, you probably have to be in the need to be in the Senate to know the answer to that question. It's going to take five Democrat senators to step up and those conversations are ongoing as I understand and have been for all four weeks. But what's happening is the far left of the Democrat party is threatening anybody that happens to break ranks with a primary. And I think that's why you don't see those five stepping up. And notice I said the far left because that's exactly what's happening. The Senator Schumer, leader Schumer and others are worried about a primary coming at them. If they if they if they failed to just keep sitting here letting people go hungry and letting the military not get paid and letting our air systems become more and more dangerous. Sounds like more and more people as sort of politics insider. I've gotten fairly tired of this and some of the national polling. Do you think this may ultimately backfire maybe on both parties? Well, I can't imagine if people haven't taken the time to study it that they would do anything other than backfire on both parties. But that's why I'm so happy to be on your radio show and be able to say look, we passed a clean CR four weeks ago. There's no surprises in it. It keeps the government open and keeps all the things that people have that are so essential like snap benefits and like our military and like air traffic controllers and like the border security paid. And so for for anybody to say that it's the republicans fall, what would they say that we Republicans came in and hand over 1.5 trillion to the Democrats? I mean, what what are they going to ask for next? This isn't the first this isn't the first time that they'll play this card. If we came into them now, they'll just the CR only goes until the 21st of November. And what what happens on the 22nd? We start over. So this is one of those situations where the Democrats have made a play. They basically said, this is what we want and we're going to make people suffer until we get it. And that's not how democracy is supposed to work. And so for them to be doing this is a reprehensible and extremely damaging, extremely damaging to an awful lot of people and come this weekend on awful lot more. Do you feel like this may go on through that date in November? That would be almost another month. Which I'm sorry, which date in November, are you talking about? Oh, you mentioned that the expiration of the clean CR. Well, the clean is not the 21st. I anticipate that it could, it could, but what would end up happening is as we've discussed it in our Republican conferences, we would bring either an amended CR or a new CR to the floor and pass it once again with a new date. And probably the date would be close to the end of the year. But the point is, if you give in to extortionary efforts such as the Democrats are engaging in, what are they going to ask for it next? That's why I said, if they get their 1.5 trillion, why wouldn't they ask for something else? Another crazy thing like the resignation of President Trump carried to his extreme. I'm making that up. They haven't asked for that. What I'm trying to say is that if you give in to someone that's holding a hostage, what does it end? And as you've been talking to other members of Congress, I don't know if you've had too many opportunities for conversations across the aisle since you've gotten back. But do you feel like a lot of at least the GOP is pretty much sharing what you've been sharing with us? I would say 99% is there's a few exceptions. Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying otherwise, but I'm going to say that she is a party of one at this point. So right now, everything's stalled out to talk about what you have been able to work on during this period of time. Well, my team and I made a list of the last couple of days or lists of all of the things that we have going right now. Of course, we're working on what might be the types of conversations that would occur after the government reopens in the healthcare space because there's lots of room for improvement in the healthcare space. And I mean it, whether we would focus on insurance or whether we would focus on the 50 billion dollars that we've included in our bill that the Democrats for whatever reason want to repeal the 50 billion that we go to rural hospitals is beyond me why they want to do that. But in their 1.5 trillion dollar repeal that they're asking for right now is a 50 billion that's supposed to go to rural hospitals. So we've been working on discussing those kinds of issues. I've been working on many different energy related issues because as I've mentioned in previous conversations in Oregon, we are extraordinarily close to having rolling blackouts. And that is because of some of the crazy energy policies that Salem has passed banning natural gas and banning other types of imported electricity generated by coal. These kinds of things have left Oregon in dire straits when it comes to energy. So I've been working on that issue. In fact, that was the meeting I was having when I was late for our discussion this afternoon. What's your level of concern? I mean, it sounds it's like it's pretty much near the top on this potential blackout situation. Well, so what's up when it's been the way it's been explained to me is that if we have another cold snap like we had two years ago, we are, we very likely will not have the ability to provide power to everybody at the same time. So we just have to hope that we don't end up with really, really cold weather, the so-called polar vortex. If that happens again, then we could literally end up with rolling blackouts depending upon how much water we have in the Columbia. If we have a drought, then we don't have enough water in the Columbia to generate power, then we're going to end up without enough of it. And this again takes us back to the fact that the Democrats' majority in Salem has banned the use of natural gas. And thus the readily available energy that we have, we can't seem to somehow build any of that kind of generation in Oregon. It makes absolutely no sense. And now what's happened is we have people wondering how in the world are going to pay their electric bills because the cost of electricity is going through the roof. And part of it is because you can't get any more natural gas. It's crazy. It's crazy, Kyle. But what's happening is many of these policies that are ill-fought out, ill-conceived and then passed are coming home to roost. And it's taking the form of higher and higher and higher electric electricity bills. About 30 seconds left, Congressman. What else would you like to share with folks in your district? Well, obviously there's been a great deal of concern expressed over on the eastern half of my district, or the eastern half of Oregon over the president's remarks regarding cattle and his attempt to drive down cattle prices. As you might imagine, that's been received very poorly, very poorly by anybody in the cattle business because it's taken the price of live cattle that people rely upon in many parts of this district to pay their bills, taking it down by 40 to 50 cents a pound. We're going to have to get better. Congressman, we're going to have to stop there a lot of time. Congressman Cliff Benz from Washington, D.C., thanks for being on with us for the update. Thank you, Kyle. 1259 News Radio, 939 FM in 1240, KQEM. You've been listening to Inside Douglas County on News Radio, 939 FM and 1240, KQEM. A daily look at the people and issues that are shaping Douglas County. It's presented by Concrete Builder Supply. The show will be available as a podcast in just a few minutes at 541radio.com, so share it around. And let others who weren't listening live know about today's show. Inside Douglas County is a public affairs presentation of Brook Communications. Stay connected with local news and information. 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