Warren Davidson on NPR with Rachel Martin

RACHEL MARTIN: Alright well lawmakers wait to see if Mark Zuckerburg will come to
Capitol Hill to testify. They’ve got a whole lot reading to do. The House plans to vote today on a
1.3 Trillion dollar spending package, the whole thing is about 2,000 pages long. There is again a
sense of urgency, if they don’t pass by Friday at midnight, the government shuts down again. No
really wants that to happen which is why the bill is a bipartisan compromise. It does include
money for border security, one and half billion dollars, but that is way less than what President
Trump had wanted. There is a huge bump in spending for the military which Republicans also
wanted. Democrats got $3 billion dollars for programs to fight opioid addiction, they also got a
change that will allow the Center’s for Disease Control to study gun violence. In a tweet
President Trump indicated his support for this bill, but some lawmakers do not like the price tag.
Among them, Ohio Congressman Warren Davidson, he’s a member of the conservative House
Freedom Caucus and he joins me in our studios. Congressman, thanks for being back on the
show.

CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: Good Morning, Rachel.

RACHEL MARTIN: This morning you tweeted the following out, “The old army saying, the
beatings will continue until moral improves,” seems like a flawed political strategy, I will vote
no.” Explain.

CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: Well the status quo is we spend more money than we have and
this really goes in the wrong direction. Republicans would be united if this were a Democrat bill
or if Hillary Clinton were president and supporting it. Republicans would be united in opposition
to a plan that would say we’re going to spend twenty percent that we’ve been spending. The
cause of the funding our military is urgent, frankly the cause of funding the opioid crisis is
bipartisan, not a Democrat objective, and it is urgent. There are lots of good wins in this bill, the
price tag is too big, and frankly we campaigned on “you should read the bills before you pass
the bills” and this falls short of that promise.

RACHEL MARTIN: So you are calling out your own party for being hypocritical here?

CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: It’s inconsistent with what we said we were going to do on a

lot fronts.
RACHEL MARTIN: Although you voted for the Republican tax cuts, which was a very large
tax cut, 1.5 trillion dollars that’s going to raise the deficit. How’s that different?

CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: According to the CBO it raises the deficit, the reality is if you
believe it grows the economy at 2.6% or better, it is not a deficit bill, it is a revenue producing
bill. This spending plan spends all of the money that we would hope to obtain from a pro-growth
tax reform. If you look at the economy today, the reality is it’s far exceeding. The CBO projects
the economy is going to grow a 1.9%, the economy is clearly growing at faster than 1.9%. The
CBO has the old expectations, the old Obama economy, that 1.5% was the new normal. It’s just
wrong to expect that economy is going to keep drawing at 3%, but the economy is doing that and
we’re performing well. We could be going in the right direction paying our debt down, and
instead we’re spending all the money and more.

RACHEL MARTIN: Democrats we were reportedly willing to put more money toward border
security, which is something the Republicans had wanted, if there was an agreement on DACA.
That wasn’t included in this final measure. Was that something you would have been willing to
negotiate on?

CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: The House is still willing to negotiate on DACA, we have a

bill commonly known as the Goodlatte Bill, it spans our conference pretty well. It offers the four
pillars that the President said that he needed. He focuses on the wall broadly, it focuses on
border security, I think the Democrats really want to make it about a wall, but the reality is the
$30 billion dollars in that plan is largely spent for changing the terms and conditions under
which ICE operates. A lot of other structural changes to actually secure the border. Chain
migration. Merit based migration. More of in terms of how you deal with this population of
DACA folks. People want to have a solution, but they want the solution to start with securing the
border.

RACHEL MARTIN: In the seconds we have remaining, are there things that you like in this
bill?
CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: Absolutely, there are some wins, starting with funding our
military at the appropriate levels. We have some real readiness challenges. There are a lot other
wins. There’s a tax reform bill that’s important for our district, with co-ops that was created out
of the tax bill, so this corrects some of the problems in the tax bill. There are good wins, it could
have been worse, and that’s one of the common sayings here, “We gotta vote for this, or we’ll
get stuck with something worse”.
RACHEL MARTIN: And you say that it could have been worse, but you’re still going to vote
no.
CONGRESSMAN DAVIDSON: I will vote no.

RACHEL MARTIN: Congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio, thanks for your time this
morning.