We were able to chat with Congressman Steve King after his town hall in Sioux City at the Ho-Chunk Centre on Saturday. Here is some of what we discussed:
How he felt the town hall went:
I thought it went really good. You walk into a town hall meeting and you never know if there are people who have ginned up pushback, maybe bring some signs in, they want to protest and disrupt the town hall — none of that happened here in Sioux City.
Thanks to the Winnebagos for letting us have this room with this beautiful scenery out here looking across the landscape. But there wasn’t really any pushback from anywhere. It was mostly people that just want the country to function right. They want the rule of law, they want the opportunity to live their lives and succeed and make a living.
If you watched all the things that went on here and heard what was said, not only out of me but especially from the people that asked questions and made comments, you’d understand that this was a really good town hall meeting and I’m glad we came up here to do it.
Truthfully, I had a fella, I don’t know his name, I don’t remember seeing him before, but as he walked out of this meeting, he stopped me and he said, ‘I want to tell you that I have changed my opinion on you. You are not the person that’s characterized in the media. And I will support you, and I will vote for you.’ I was really gratified by that.
Public speaking eventually exposes your soul. That’s why I just want to stand up and tell the truth. I’m not concerned about what that looks to other people, I want them to see my soul. I think that might have been what he’s referencing.
Activities in Virginia and attacks on the Second Amendment:
First, as a preliminary, this was last Monday when they mapped the Second Amendment rally that brought thousands of people into Virginia to defend their Second Amendment rights, I’m watching what’s coming out on the internet, they arrested three people that fit the category that cause the Left to be concerned. They may be bad guys, I don’t know. Their violation was… they had taken the parts and built an AR-15 out of parts and had several thousand rounds of ammunition. Somehow when I read that, I just couldn’t get very concerned when I look around my family, my neighborhood and my church, and I think, who hasn’t done that to some degree or another. An AR-15 is a modern-day musket. So, that wouldn’t be any reason to lock anybody up in my opinion, especially when you have a specific constitutional right.
Of all the people that came in in Virginia, it was peaceful. There was no pushing, shoving, no demonstration really except in favor of our constitution and our Second Amendment rights. And we should remember that, with (Charlottesville), it might’ve been like that. We’ll never know because there were people who came to start the confrontation. This didn’t have that element to it. It was Second Amendment people. It reminded me of a Tea Party gathering. At one time, we had 40,000-60,000 people at the Capitol protesting against ObamaCare. When they left, that lawn was full of people, it was standing room only, it was jammed — I walked out across that grass looking for a piece of paper or a cigarette butt, there was zero litter there. They picked up everything. I’m going to guess that was the same way with the Second Amendment defenders in Virginia.
2020 Election and how it pertains to the Second Amendment:
I’m going to tie it to the pro-life agenda as well because if you lose a majority, it changed the entire debate. At the end of the last Congress, we were on the cusp of passing my heartbeat bill in the United States Congress. I think we could’ve gotten it done. I just couldn’t get leadership over the top to get that done. And then, we had lost the majority. Now, what has the debate turned into, not about saving lives of innocent unborn any more, it became the debate of can we kill a baby after they’re born. And that’s a serious debate. And, by the way, that argument was made by the Governor of Virginia, (Ralph) Northam.
Look what happens when you lose a majority and how the debate changes and how the agenda changes. In this election, if you elect the wrong President, some of them have said I’m going to come and take your guns. I expect that’s what they will try to do, especially if they hold the majority in the United States House of Representatives. These people hate our guns and they hate our free speech. They hate a lot of what’s in the Bill of Rights. They want to take our freedoms away so they can govern us from the top down.
Bernie Sanders… it’s possible he could be the nominee, and he’s an out-and-out socialist. I’m not making that up. I went over one night when he was in the House of Representatives. They told me Bernie’s a socialist. I said, ‘I don’t believe that.’ I never met one before that I knew of. And, so, maybe 1:30 in the morning — late votes — Bernie’s sitting over there. I go over and sit in the aisle next to him. ‘Hey, I’m Steve King from Iowa. How are you doing?’ ‘Yeah, I’m Bernie Sanders from Vermont.’ We talked a while and I got around to it, I said ‘they tell me that you’re a socialist, is that true?’ ‘Yes, I’m a socialist.’ He came right out and said so.
Now, a percentage of college kids — not a majority yet, but too many of them — think that’s alright. They forget that it takes the people that will go to work every day and produce a good or a service that has a marketable value either here or abroad, that have the energy and the desire and the return on that investment, of their sweat equity, which means wages, to do this work. They think somehow money grows on trees or you print that and somehow you just assign that to people. That isn’t what happens. You have to have food, clothing and shelter. They don’t have any clue on that at all. There have always been utopians on this planet, it goes clear back into, well, Karl Marx. There’s a monument for him in Berlin in a park, by the way. And I wouldn’t want one of those in the United States, but those folks are trying to build one.
Trump speaking at March for Life:
I don’t know if I could overstate it. I don’t have to worry about overstating it. But, I look back at this, and I’ve spoken at that rally multiple times myself and I know what that feels like to look down that mall and see hundreds of thousands of people who are there to march and to pray for the lives of the innocent unborn. It is a very, very moving experience. We haven’t had a President give a speech down there before in all these years since 1973… No President, even though its two blocks away or something. This President, that I guess I got to introduce him into Iowa Jan. 24, 2015. He was seen then as a nonideological candidate. I think there’s some truth to that, and maybe even more than I realized. But Donald Trump is also one who absorbs the values of the rest of us. When people came forward and said we need to protect innocent unborn human life. He understood, if he didn’t understand it before then, he understood it as a candidate in Iowa. That became a plank in our platform and his platform. Then he went off to New Hampshire and South Carolina and the Presidency with those values and pledged to those values and he lived up to it by going down to the mall and giving that terrific pro-life speech that he gave. Now he set the standard for the next Presidents of the United States. This gives significant inertia to one day see Roe v. Wade overturned. And when we see the appointments to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, we don’t know exactly where they stand, I only asked that they be constitutionalists, because if you read by the Constitution and abide by the Constitution, you’re going to end up being pro-life.
We don’t know how many appointments are down the line. I am glad that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has recovered from cancer the way she has. The calendar turns and there will be a time when there are other appointments to the Supreme Court. It’s possible Donald Trump could get one or two more in the next term. If that happens, we’re likely to see Gorsuch 2.0, Kavanaugh 2.0. Now it becomes a 7-2 court and a 7-2 court hearing a heartbeat bill before it, I think comes down on the side of the Constitution and the side of life. That puts America in a great place again.
We’ve seen over 61 million, it’s actually closer to 62 million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade and I hear people tell me everyday, ‘I need labor,’ ‘open the borders,’ ‘bring me cheap foreign labor,’ ‘who’s going to do this work?’ Well, where are those 61.5 million babies and where are the other roughly 60 million babies that should’ve been born, except their mothers were aborted before they were born. This country is missing 100 million or so of the abortion generations. And it’s a tragedy and it’s a sin this nation is committing. We’re paying a price now. We need to fix it with all that we can to move things in the right direction.
On the national debt:
I’ve made this argument with Paul Ryan when he was the budget chair and then later on also, that I kept pressing we have to bring back a balanced budget. Finally, he brought a budget that balanced in 25 years. I looked at the graph on that on how we got there. First, it makes assumptions that we’re going to have increased revenue tied off to increase GDP growth, which may or may not be predictable. And, then, I said but as this chart goes up like this and back down, that looks to me like the lifecycle of the babyboomers. You’ve scheduled this thing out here so we get a balanced budget when the babyboomers are dead.
He looked at me, stunned and more or less you didn’t have to say that. It was a group meeting. I said, but it’s true. He goes, ‘yeah, it is true because it’s necessary, but we don’t have to say it.’ I look at my sons they are 40, 41, 42. They haven’t worked in a balanced budget since 2001 maybe. They’ll reach retirement under Paul Ryan’s schedule never having worked in an economy in America with a balanced budget and passed more and more of our debt on to my grandchildren and their future grandchildren. It’s immoral for us to do that. We’re the richest country in the history of the world in a prosperous time in history and we can’t figure out how to balance our budget. That’s a tragedy.
