Duncan speaks to current issues at First Monday meeting

By Stan Welch
US Congressman Jeff Duncan, speaking to the First Monday group, on the eve of the general election, didn’t specifically ask for the votes of those in the conservative, though unaffiliated, group. He faces Democratic opposition in the person of Mary Geren.
Instead, he spent about twenty minutes firing up his base by taking Democrats to task on a number of issues.
He began by stressing the importance of the midterm elections, while conceding that every pending election becomes ‘the most important election in decades’. “But this is a very important election because the majority in the House of Representatives is at stake. There has been a high number of Republican retirements, many of them in districts that are trending Democratic. Does anyone really want to see Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House?”
He also stressed that the burgeoning investigation into the Democrats’ role in the Russian collusion investigation, which he called a farce, would die on the vine if the Democrats attained control of the House.
“Adam Schiff (D-CA) has fought any inquiry into the questions surrounding falsified FISA documents, and the forged Steele dossier that were used to initiate the collusion investigation. Imagine if his party controlled the House. Any investigation into the deep state and how deep it really is might never be known. Make no mistake. The deep state is real. The most significant collusion in Washington is between the Democrats and various federal agencies.”
He also touted the gains made by the economy under President Trump, whom he supported during the presidential election in 2016. “ The tax reforms the House passed and the reduction of regulations has fired the economy like nothing else in recent memory. The President’s repatriation of revenues, allowing companies placing their revenues offshore or overseas to return those revenues to this country at a much lower tax rate than in the previous administration, has had a tremendous impact. More than 400 billion dollars has come back to this country that I know of myself. That money is usually reinvested to grow businesses and create jobs. There are currently more than seven million jobs that need workers. Employment is at historic highs for blacks, women, Hispanics, just across the board. Why in the world would we want to turn that economy over to the Democrats?”
“When I first went to Washington, our national debt was $14.5 trillion dollars. That trillion, with a T. It’s now $22 trillion. Two thirds of our government spending is required by law. Such programs as welfare, Medicare, Medicaid account for two thirds of the government spending. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. We reduced taxes and the resulting growth more than compensated for the lower rates. Curiously, not a single solitary Democrat voted for those tax cuts. Not one. Imagine that.”
Duncan also discussed Trump’s somewhat controversial use of tariffs to negotiate better trade deals for America. “The jury on tariffs is still out as far as I’m concerned. I’m more of a free trade advocate, but it’s hard to argue with the results. President Trump is a negotiator and he uses those tools effectively. The fact is we have been in a trade war all my life. We just weren’t shooting back. I know this much for sure. When Donald Trump wakes up in the morning, he wakes up thinking about you, the American people. He really is all about America first.”
Duncan could not escape without sharing his insider’s view of the border issue, and especially the question of how to handle the approaching caravan from Central America. His first point was that what he called misused and misinterpreted asylum laws require the supplicants to seek asylum at the first international border they reach. In the case of this caravan, that was the southern border of Mexico. “This horde not only ignored that requirement, when Mexico offered them asylum, they refused it. They are coming to this country because they want the benefits of our social programs.”
President Trump has deployed between seven and ten thousand troops to the border, and they are constructing barriers. Duncan supports building a wall along that border, although he realizes that the various types of terrain preclude an unbroken barrier. “We should build what we can, and put our human and electronic resources in the areas we can’t wall off. The border is a national security issue, and why the Democrats refuse to see it that way baffles me.”