By Stan Welch
Congressman Jeff Duncan, of the Third District, speaking in an exclusive interview with The Journal, predicted not just the defeat of President Obama in November, but defeat by such a margin that Republican candidate Mitt Romney will have a clear mandate to change the country’s direction.
Speaking on the morning after Romney’s strong performance in the first presidential debate, Duncan expressed confidence that Romney will win by a double digit margin. “I think it will be a new day for America after November 6. There is a tremendous unrest across the country, and I believe the silent majority of Americans intend to make themselves heard.”
Congressman Duncan said that such a result will lead to a turning away from the so called “fiscal cliff” that threatens if the Bush era tax cuts are allowed to expire in January. Duncan says they will be, but for a good reason. “I don’t think the Congress, and certainly not the House, wants to put that matter in the hands of a lame duck Congress. Lame ducks can be very unpredictable because they are completely unaccountable.”
Duncan said that as long as Congress acts before the first quarterly tax reporting deadline, the situation can be salvaged. He sees sequestration, or the automatic cutting of the military budget by hundreds of billions of dollars, as much more serious. “The House has passed bills that would address these issues, but the Senate refuses to even take them up.”
He also points out that the issue of raising the debt ceiling again will come up early next year. “I would like to see President Romney allow the ceiling to be raised by perhaps two hundred billion dollars, and tell the Congress ‘Now, when I see some real progress towards cutting spending, we can talk again.’ But just raising the ceiling by another trillion all at once makes no sense. The Congress has no incentive to cut spending when you do that. We saw proof of that during the Obama administration.”
One reason for Duncan’s optimism about the outcome of the election is the administration’s handling of the recent death in Libya of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. President Obama originally blamed the violence on a video made by an American citizen which portrayed Mohammed as a pedophile and a womanizer, describing it as spontaneous.
Both President Obama and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice blamed the video and apologized for it. Days later, they were forced to backtrack and admit that the attacks, which came on the eleventh anniversary of September 11, had been organized and planned.
Congressman Duncan stated that the House intended to conduct hearings, regardless of the election results. “Secretary Clinton is very unlikely to produce any results from her investigation between now and November 6. But the questions remain and they have to be answered. Why did the administration mislead the American people? What did they have to hide? Did this happen because they missed important signals, or ignore them?”
Duncan also decried the administration’s handling of the border security issue, which he says played a part in the recent death of a border patrol agent. He recently returned from that very stretch of the border, and said it is mountainous and rugged terrain. He said it looked as if the slain agent was on patrol on horseback when he was ambushed.
“The administration is simply not putting the manpower into the job. While I was there, briefly, there were four drug busts at one border crossing. The scary part is that those who are coming here to harm us aren’t carrying drugs, and they tend to make it through. This is a national security matter and it has to be handled that way.”
Since this interview, officials of the federal employees union which border patrols are members of, have stated that the incident may be from friendly fire.
