Went to a local town hall meeting with Comgressman Matt Gaetz. About a hundred people were there at the small venue. While I didn’t get a chance to have my say with him, all of my questions ended up being answered, and many more of my suspicions were confirmed. Here are some of my notes from the meeting with some major paraphrasing for length:
Someone asked how we are going to fix social security, he said “we can’t, they stole all that money and it’s gone and they’re never going to give it back. If someone broke into your house ten years ago and stole stuff, what’s the likelihood of you getting it back? That’s what happened.”
He said Republicans in the Congress won’t help us with gun laws because the majority of them still think the 2A is all about burglars and hunting rather than overthrowing a tyrannical government. Said “they’re not going to give you the tools to get rid of them when they’ve given themselves more power than they’re supposed to have.”
He believes term limits, a mandatory balanced budget law and a “single item per bill” policy would solve a ton of problems, but that there is no way that anyone in Congress will support it. He said his discussions with members of Congress about these things are a large part of why he is unpopular.
He also said that if he doesn’t go on TV and radio all the time, that no one will ever pay attention to our area. Said that his Republican colleagues think he goes on TV too much, but he knows that he’s only going to be in office for a short time, and that if he doesn’t go on TV, no one will ever hear from NW Florida at all.
He sure does hate him some Paul Ryan. Took shots at him several times. Said that Paul Ryan did a lot of damage to Conservatives in the House. Said they couldn’t win on any issue with him, even if they had an advantage.
Also mentioned that the House continues to pass budget bills that have “defund Planned Parenthood” as the first line, and that when they send those bills to the Senate, the very FIRST thing the Senate does is remove that from the bill. Every time.
Said Pelosi is directly responsible for the shut down because she blocks all debate regarding the issues concerning the shut down and forces them to debate unrelated bills. Said last time she had them debating LEO training for Indian Reservations hours before the most recent shut down.
Said the FDA is most responsible for high drug prices in the US because top pharma executives rotate in and out of FDA management positions every few years, and then back to their pharma executive jobs, then back again, over and over.
After last night, I would definitely vote for him again, if I thought it mattered. It doesn’t sound like it does. “Our side” doesn’t have a party in DC. He said it’s not Democrats vs Republicans anymore. It’s “institutionalists vs reformers”, and the reformers are too small of a minority to make any progress at all, and don’t hold any leadership positions.
Said he got kicked off of one of the committees last year because of his push for a balanced budget bill.
Another thing he mentioned about the Florida legislature is nothing can get done because instead of the Republicans having the majority in the Senate, they actually don’t. He said the Democrats and all of the Miami-Dade area Republicans vote together and so the Republicans in Central, North and NW Florida can’t win. That’s why we keep losing the gun law fight. We can’t pass a single pro-gun bill in our Republican dominated Senate because the Republicans in South Florida won’t support it.
But I’ve been telling y’all that for last couple of years.
Also, from what Gaetz says, Florida seems to have gotten lucky with DeSantis. Sounds like he is going to be very good for us. Unfortunately, again, we have a garbage legislature.
Said that Rick Scott was hard to work with. Got blown off a lot by him and he wasn’t a good friend to Republican requests for Conservative policies. Said he refused a lot stuff Conservative legislators
asked of him.
Mentioned that the Florida state Supreme Court was extremely leftist before and were frequently overturned by the SCOTUS, and now he believes that since they were all recently replaced, we might have the most Conservative state SC in the country.
Mentioned that he is constantly reminding Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott and other Florida Republican officials that they’re always LOSING their elections up until the NW Florida votes come in, and then they win.
No comments:
Post a Comment