CSPAN - Washington Journal Rep. Chuck Fleischmann R-TN

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 3, 2025 10:32-11:03 - CSPAN

30:57

Washington Journal Rep. Chuck Fleischmann R-TN

Participants

Appearances

mimi geerges

cspan 04:28

Callers

caller in west of the rockies

callers 00:08

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Order.
		That's great.
		And I'm all for that as a kind of independent.
		But I think the bigger issue is, like, forget, you know, I'm a federal worker.
		We're not going to, and I'm accepted, so I'm not, I'm working and I don't get paid.
		That's okay.
		But so the current CR that's on the Senate's desk that they can't pass is until sometime in mid-November, I think.
		And so how about just like, why is the House on recess or on vacation?
		Like, how about just get all that done?
		Like, sure, the government can be shut down for six weeks till November 17th, right?
		And then if that's the amount of time you think you need, Speaker Johnson, then just come back and on the 17th of November pass a full budget.
		I think that would be great.
		That's my opinion.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Rob.
		And that's it for this segment.
		Welcome back to Washington Journal.
		We're joined by Representative Chuck Fleischman.
		He's a Republican of Tennessee's 3rd District and also a member of the Appropriations and the Science, Space and Technology Committees.
		Representative, thanks for joining us.
		Welcome to the program.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		It's a pleasure to be here.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I wanted to get your thoughts on the government shutdown.
		It's the third day now and bring to your attention the poll that the Washington Post did of asking who they think is most to blame.
		And it came out 47% blaming President Trump and Republicans in Congress as compared to 30% Democrats in Congress.
		What are your thoughts on that?
unidentified		I've been in Congress now 15 years.
		This is my eighth term.
		I'm a chairman on the Appropriations Committee, as you properly allude to.
		I chair the Energy and Water Subcommittee.
		But I never lie to the American people and I never lie to my constituents.
		So I'm going to be abundantly clear to Republicans, to Democrats, to independents, to the people of this country.
		I am outraged at the Democratic Party for the farce, the lies that they have done in this government shutdown.
		And there's something when you serve, the truth about what is going on and the process to me is so critically, critically important.
		This is why we have such an erosion in public confidence.
		People get out and literally spread myth-screws.
		I've listened to some of the calls that you've gotten this morning.
		So today, I'm going to be absolutely straightforward, lay out the process with you, take any phone calls, but I will not lie about this.
		So we've got the truth.
		You've got policy.
		There's a time to be partisan.
		But let me be clear.
		The Democrats shut the government down.
		It's clear.
		It is factual.
		The House of Representatives passed a relatively clean continuing resolution.
		I'm glad to go into that.
		The fiscal year ended on September 30th.
		Long before that, we passed a continuing resolution to November 20th, which in effect allowed to continue to negotiate on appropriation bills.
		Some of your earlier callers were talking about Obamacare, this and that.
		This is appropriations.
		Most of the Affordable Care Act, 85% of it, is on the mandatory side.
		It's not even affected by appropriations.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Well, Congressman, let's focus on the truth.
		Sure.
		Let's talk about Obamacare and talk specifically about the extensions of those subsidies.
		And as you know, KFF is estimating that premiums, out-of-pocket premiums will go up by 75% if those subsidies aren't extended.
		Where do you stand on that point specifically?
unidentified		The way I stand on that point is extraneous.
		It has nothing to do with this.
		This is the farce put on by the Democratic Party to the American people.
		These are appropriation bills.
		These are the 12 bills that we pass every year or not if we fail and get into a shutdown or a continuing resolution.
		Any other extraneous things are irrelevant to this.
		The Democrats went out, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
		They've hurt their credibility, not only with the American people.
		This is going to linger on.
		I have to stress this after this, because even though I'm a very forgiving person, I cannot sit back and lie.
		When the Republicans shut the government down, please listen to me.
		In 2013, we were wrong.
		We should have never done that.
		We should have never shut the government down.
		What was that about?
		You said Obamacare, 85% of it was under mandatory spending.
		I remember sitting with my hands in my head saying, why did we do this?
		It hurt the country then.
		It was wrong then.
		Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries had a clean, continuing resolution that Democrats, three Democrats in the Senate, have joined.
		They will have to cave.
		You talk about polls and you talk about these other subsidies.
		We can sit down and talk through these things, negotiate through these things, but they are extraneous, completely outside the appropriations process.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Congressman Orange.
		You say it's extraneous, but the Democrats are saying that they have tried to get these extended.
		Republicans have refused, that this is the only chance they have to get them extended before open enrollment starts November 1st.
		What do you think of that?
		And if this came to a vote, would you vote to extend Obamacare subsidies?
unidentified		I will vote for a clean, continuing resolution.
		I'm an appropriator.
		That is my job.
		I chair the Energy and Water Subcommittee.
		I'm America's Energy Member of Congress.
		I work with Republicans, Democrats, Independents, members of the House, members of all administrations.
		I've worked with the Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump administrations on energy.
		That's what I do on appropriations.
		The saddest thing about all this, if I can impart something to your listeners, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, I'm going to stand on the truth.
		You've got to keep it clean and simple and on point.
		We've got to keep the government open.
		It's never a good idea to shut the government down.
		This is costing the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
		It put federal workers, it puts our troops in a very difficult position.
		By the way, guess who gets paid under the Constitution?
		Members of Congress.
		That's outrageous.
		That's why I stopped my pay.
		But in reality, we go through this farce.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So, Congressman, I guess we should take that as a no, that you would be against extending subsidies on Obamacare if you had to vote on that right now.
unidentified		I will take a look at what is proposed at that time.
		But once again, the Democrats needed an issue to bring into the argument that was extraneous and it's farcial.
		One thing I respect, I respect partisan politics.
		I respect debates over policy, where you stand, but I do not respect lying to the American people.
		That's what the Democrats have done, plain and simple on this.
		And Mimi, I've got to say this.
		You never play fast and loose with the American Republic.
		You keep the government open.
		Think about it this way.
		All across America, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, partisans, and nonpartisans go to work every day.
		They pay their taxes.
		They get around the water cooler.
		They may argue about their favorite sports teams or their favorite or not favorite president, but they get their job done.
		They don't shut down the business and then say, let's reopen it and let's hurt it.
		That's what the Democrats have done.
		They're proud of this shutdown.
		This is Chuck Schumer, who basically has been on record, time untold, he was right the last time.
		He kept it open.
		You keep it open and you talk.
		Doesn't mean that I'm right all the time or my party's right all the time, but you keep talking and working through these things.
		And we look at the big, beautiful bill.
		I've got to talk about this one last thing.
		Two things you never want to do is shut the government down or, God forbid, default on the national debt.
		Now, in the big, beautiful bill, we raised the national debt.
		The Democrats voted against that.
		So I could be difficult and say, well, they voted to default on our national debt.
		But candidly, I'm going to be honest.
		I get as many calls from Republicans that say, well, just shut it down.
		That is irresponsible to the American people.
		We've got to keep the full faith and credit of the United States strong, and we owe it to the American people, to the American Republic.
		It's a higher calling.
		It's beyond just being partisan or being a representative of your district.
		You've got to keep Mimi, the government open.
		It is so critically important to our country, to our workers, to our safety.
		God forbid something happened to our country in this time.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So, Congressman, in order to keep the government or to reopen the government, what points would you be willing to negotiate on?
unidentified		Or is it now completely for the justice right now for the clean CR that the House passed?
		And what did the Democrats want in there?
		They wanted additional security for members.
		Now, I don't take security from members, but I respect the fact that many Democrats and some Republicans want additional security in light of the horrible Charlie Kirk killing and the violence and the threats that are out there.
		I received those threats.
		But again, I will stand on the truth.
		That doesn't worry me personally.
		But if someone has a concern, there's money in this clean CR that was actually added to it for security for House, Senate, executive branch, and judiciary.
		So it's not exactly entirely clean, but the Democrats are holding that up.
		So you said, what would I vote?
		I have voted for a clean, continuing resolution.
		Democrats have joined us, at least in the House, one, three in the Senate.
		I can't stress enough whether you agree or disagree with me on any other policies, keeping the government open with a clean, continuing resolution so that we can negotiate all 12 appropriation bills, keep it relevant, is what we need to do in November.
		Because if we don't do that, we're either going to get into another shutdown or, God forbid, fail again and have another continuing resolution.
		I think we ought to have a conversation that's up to you about what a continuing resolution is and is not.
		But we continue to fail as a Congress, as a country, every year when we don't pass a budget.
		We owe it to the American people to pass a budget.
		That's what I do.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And I'll just let our audience know, Representative Chuck Fleischman, a Republican of Tennessee, is with us.
		You can give us a call if you'd like to join the conversation.
		Lines are biparty.
		Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		Let's start with Steve.
		He's an Oak Ridge, Tennessee Democrat.
		I believe that's in your district, Congressman.
		Steve, you're on the.
unidentified		It is.
		Thank you.
		I bring $10 billion a year into the Great Oak Ridge Reservation, birthplace of the Manhattan Project, and clearly the best Department of Energy reservation in the country.
		And I love them all.
		I fund them all.
		Thank you.
		Steve, go ahead.
		Okay.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		First off, I would like to know, did you vote for the infrastructure bill?
		No, sir.
		Okay.
caller in west of the rockies ▲ ● ▼		So I travel from here to North Carolina a lot, and 640 around Knoxville was a death trap.
unidentified		After the infrastructure bill got passed, it all got repaid.
		There's bridges being replaced in Tennessee left and right.
		It was because of the infrastructure bill.
		But here's what I want to say to you, sir.
		I moved back here six and a half years ago.
		In the six and a half years I've been here, I have been lied to, cheated, and stolen from more than 45 years in North Carolina.
		I sold my truck.
		A guy did not let me put the amount of the sales on the title because he didn't want to pay taxes on it.
		I had a guy painted, pay me cash.
		I don't want to lose my SSI or my public housing.
		They're all Republicans.
		They're all Trump Republicans.
		I am leaving Tennessee Monday.
		I'm moving back to North Carolina.
		We're not this purple.
		And at least I have a chance of maybe my vote counting.
		I'm very disappointed in Tennessee.
		Thank you, sir.
		Well, I appreciate the gentleman's comments.
		If I may, maybe talk about what I do.
		And I think the gentleman's frustration is my district in my state, thank God, is Ruby Red.
		This is Donald Trump country, but this is Republican country and the like.
		But let me say this.
		I represent all of my constituents, Republicans, Democrats, people who vote, people who don't vote.
		And I am Tennessee's appropriator.
		The gentleman from Oak Ridge alluded to the fact that he did not have a good time in our great state.
		Tennessee is leading, candidly, in so many different areas.
		We're booming economically.
		We're the lowest tax state.
		I can't take credit for that.
		Why?
		Because I am the appropriator.
		But I will tell him this.
		In Oak Ridge, even the Democrats, not just Republicans, even the Democrats and the unions come out and support me.
		Why?
		I bring $10 billion with the dollars of federal investment into the greatest national lab in the country, Oak Ridge National Lab.
		The Y-12 National Security Facility, which is an NNSA facility under DOE, does a tremendous job.
		We're building the uranium processing facility.
		I lead nationally in environmental cleanup.
		I'm a Republican environmentalist.
		We clean up legacy sites in Oak Ridge, Savannah River, Paducah.
		That's what I do in the country.
		That's why even most of the, all the Republicans, but most of even the few Democrats who get elected support me in Oak Ridge.
		That's not the case in Chattanooga, and I understand that, but that's why I win with such large margins.
		I'm an appropriator.
		I work to help people, and I work to get things done, solutions.
		That's why I'm so upset with the Democrats playing fast and loose with the truth on this issue.
		It hurts me.
		Fundamentally, it hurts me that they would misrepresent this to the American people.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And this is Axio's headline.
		Department of Energy ends billions in clean energy awards after vote post.
		That's about $8 billion, Congressman, in energy contracts going to mostly blue states.
		Are you in support of that?
unidentified		Well, this is one of the problems.
		First of all, nothing in the third district of Tennessee was affected, but there was a project in Knoxville, Tennessee.
		And the second district of Tennessee, I mean, is red or more red than even my district.
		But the reality is this is the danger of mistruths started by the Democrats, because what happens is you shut the government down.
		And what do you do constitutionally?
		Unfortunately, you shift that power, that ability to control a shutdown from the legislative branch.
		If we'd have kept it open, we'd have kept that power to the executive branch.
		When the government was shut down, when Democrats were in power, when Obama was there and when Biden was there, it gave the president, the executive branch, the ability to basically put the pain where they needed it, where they wanted to put the pain.
		I'm saying there shouldn't be any pain.
		I'm saying the legislature, the House and the Senate should do what the House did, pass that bill.
		And Mimi, I'm going to tell you this.
		Three Democrats joined all the Republicans in the Senate.
		They're going to have to cave because they're not standing on the truth.
		So were these canceled?
		Yes, they were.
		And do I support it?
		The reason I'm going to end up supporting it is because we ceded our authority to the executive branch.
		And God forbid, that's why we've got to get the government open.
		The Democrats in the Senate have an ability to vote to do that today.
		I hope and pray they do that for the good of the country.
		But if they don't, more cuts are going to be coming.
		And are we going to be stuck with them?
		Yes.
		And that's unfortunate.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's a post on X from Russ Vogt, director of OMB, who says $2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects, specifically the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project, have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting.
		More information to come soon from the Department of Transportation.
		And here's Jeremy, Washington, D.C., Independent Line.
		Hi, Jeremy.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'm a government employee and my retirement was just approved.
		But I do agree with the Speaker.
		This strategy of Chuck Schubert is going to hurt the core of the Democratic Party.
		He really does not know how to legislate, to be honest with you.
		I think it's really foolish because what's going to happen?
		You think President Trump is going to negotiate $1.3 trillion in spending when he's ready to cut more jobs and he's cutting all the infrastructure projects in blue states?
		The Democrats have lost their mind.
		They have.
		And why should my taxpayer dollars be going to support illegal immigrants?
		No way.
		I agree with the Speaker.
		I would tell the guest speaker that the Depositive Party should stand tough.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Congressman, any comment to that?
unidentified		Well, I thank the gentleman, but once again, I'm getting back to the fundamental truth.
		If we had shut the government down, and remember, Republicans have shut it down in the past.
		I think wrongly so.
		Democrats own the shutdown.
		They're proud of it.
		They've been hoping for this.
		It hurts the process.
		It hurts the Republic.
		It hurts the American people.
		Governmental shutdowns always cost more money to the American taxpayer when we reopen.
		It puts us at peril.
		Think about it.
		Our troops don't get paid.
		Our federal workers don't get paid.
		Many of them now have their jobs at risk because of that, because of a fundamental shift when it shuts down to the executive branch, whoever is in that executive branch.
		What I really think we really need to do is get the government open right away and then focus on what's relevant.
		The 12 appropriation bills in the House and in the Senate.
		We negotiate that, and then basically we get a budget for the country.
		Think about how many times we fail the country and don't get a budget for the American people.
		That's a bipartisan failure, okay?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Congressman.
unidentified		I'm a very partisan Republican, but I'm always going to call balls and strikes.
		The thing about this shutdown that has me outraged, and I rarely get angry, but I'm angry now because of the lies and the falsehoods.
		And then the Democrats, not all of them, are just piling on top of that and saying, well, it's about health care.
		It's about this or that.
		No, it's about keeping the government open with a clean, continuing resolution.
		You never shut it down.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And, Congressman, regarding those 12 appropriation bills, how come they haven't been done until now?
unidentified		It's an excellent question.
		Several have been passed.
		My bill has actually been passed on the House floor.
		Let me explain the process.
		An excellent question, Mimi.
		What happens?
		Some years, the House and the Senate do their jobs.
		Other years, they do not.
		Since I've been in Congress, most years, the House has done its job.
		And what that means is you pass all 12 appropriation bills in committee.
		The reason that some of them have not been passed, and mine did get passed, about six of the 12 have been passed.
		All of them have been passed in committee.
		I can't speak for the United States Senate as to what they've been able to do or not do.
		I can only talk about the work that's on our plate.
		The reality is we have not had enough votes to get some of those bills passed.
		Candidly, we lose all Democratic votes.
		Now, Democrats will say, look, we've been told by our leadership we cannot vote for an appropriations bill that you pass, even though it's good, even though we put community projects in there for them and for us.
		And I understand it on one level.
		I respect that.
		But sometimes we don't have the Republican votes.
		Our more conservative friends to the right, many of them will not vote for appropriation bills.
		That's not me, but I respect the fact that they've been elected in their districts.
		So when certain members say they won't vote for that, bottom line, we didn't have the votes to get them all passed in the House or the Senate, but we will be able to take those bills, those 12 bills, those that are passed like mine and the ones that are not, conference them with the United States Senate, and then guess what?
		It's going to take 60 votes in the Senate.
		We know that to pass a budget.
		What you'll see ultimately is Republicans and Democrats come together and basically vote to pass a budget probably in November or whenever that vote comes.
		We cannot pass a budget in this country with just Republican votes because we need 60 votes in the Senate.
		Let me point to the 60 votes that we need to reopen the government right now.
		That's why we're stuck.
		So when Democrats mean me say, oh, well, Republicans have the House, the Senate, and the White House, that's true.
		But we don't have the majority in the Senate.
		We don't have 60 votes in the Senate.
		We have a majority of 53.
		55 have voted yes.
		We need five more votes, get it to closure, and then we're done.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And here's Dave, a Republican in Auburn, New York.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Dave, you're on with Congressman Chuck Fleischman.
unidentified		Yeah, hello.
		I was just trying to figure out what I could add to this conversation to make any sense.
		But my thing is I've been watching this process for decades.
		It seems the shutdowns are so predictable.
		And they argue back and forth about where the spending should go, who should spend on what.
		Never seems to resolve itself.
		So I just think we're going to see more inflation in all of this process because that's just the way it seems to work.
		We get more gap, more inflation, and no resolution to this.
		So I would like to see one last thing about this.
		One of the guys that founding father, Dr. Jefferson, the wise and frugal government.
		I'd like to refer back to that and hopefully we'll be able to go down that road again.
		But we don't seem to be going that way.
		So I'll just kind of leave that.
		That's my contribution to this conversation, not much, but thank you very much.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Congressman, a quick response to that?
unidentified		Yes, Mimi, maybe we should take a historical look as to how we got here, how that process is flawed.
		If we look at how the process is flawed and not get into a partisan fight over this, in the 70s, we as a nation changed the way that we budget, and that process has not worked.
		Overwhelmingly, it has failed like 90% of the time.
		And what it basically does, in my view, under the Constitution, Congress, meaning the House and the Senate, should be basically doing the budgetary work.
		But we passed a law in, I believe, 1973 or 1974, post-Watergate, that basically set up the way that we do our federal budget with the executive branch, the legislative branch, and how it plays out.
		And it's played out as a disaster.
		Many times we don't get a budget.
		Other times we get a continuing resolution.
		And when we're talking about continuing resolution, when I talk to my constituents and the like, I don't like D.C. dialect.
		I can speak D.C. dialect with anybody.
		You get the most liberal Democrat or the most conservative Republican, they can only speak DC dialect.
		It's kind of sad.
		But the American people want straight talk and honest talk.
		The reality is the budget process is flawed.
		We should go back and address that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Congressman, I just want to fit in a call from Tennessee, Dunlap, Tennessee, Republican.
		Ron, good morning.
		and you're on with Congressman Fleischmann.
		Ron, are you there?
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
		It's refreshing to have someone that's a straight talker on there.
		You know, we get gaslighted constantly with these Washington Post polls, the compost.
		You know, it's this is my take on it.
		They want to pass $1.5 trillion in spending so they can blow up the Trump economy that's coming because the tariffs are bringing in business.
		The people don't want to pay the tariffs, so they're going to invest in America.
		The jobs will be coming.
		And they want to blow this up because if they fail, they're going to be shown to be such failures, they're scared to death and they're running.
		It's like a Hail Mary Pass for them.
		And yeah, I get so irritated listening to that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Ron.
		And here's Joanne, Harvey, Illinois, Democrat.
		Good morning, Joanne.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just want just to say a couple of things.
		The Congressman has so far that I've seen has told one truth, and that is that the Republicans ceded their authority to the executive branch, which is what they have done.
		They're letting Donald Trump do whatever he wants to do.
		They're sitting back and just okaying whatever he does.
		If he's telling the truth, he would tell that the trillion dollar budget that they passed in the last time when Donald Trump was president was that they passed this budget that was only in favor of billionaires.
		That's why we're trillions of dollars in debt right now because of those tax cuts that were given to the billionaires.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Joanne, we're running out of time, so I'm going to have Congressman Fleischman with a quick response.
unidentified		Ma'am, I wish I could tell you that you were wrong about everything.
		Here's the situation: the reason we're $36 trillion in debt is the mandatory side of our spending equation is out of control.
		When we talk about being an appropriator, and I'm an appropriator, 75% of our federal budget is not even appropriated.
		It automatically happens.
		That's what's driving our deficits, the mandatory spending programs.
		Only about 20 to 25% of the budget that we're talking about now is covered by appropriations.
		And so I promise you this: I have not told a lie.
		I will not tell a lie.
		I don't need to tell a lie.
		I win with 70% of the vote in my district.
		I look Republicans, Democrats.
		I want to see our country get to a better place.
		I practiced law for 24 years, made a lot of money.
		My retirement has basically been spent working towards trying to get our great republic back on track, fiscally, morally, and so that we could do something that, unlike in that call when you accused me of telling only one thing truth, I want to get to a point where my dad was an Eisenhower Republican.
		My mother was a New Deal Democrat.
		The reality is I'm a Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump Republican, but let's try to get credibility back so that we can respect our elected leaders, so that elected leaders tell the truth.
		You can disagree with my vote on things, but please, I will always tell the truth.
		I want Democrats and Republicans to tell the American people the truth because we have so eroded the faith in our elected leaders.
		And I want to see more people, younger people, older people, men, women, all coming to the process and wanting to serve our great republic again.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		That's Representative Chuck Fleischman representing Tennessee's 3rd District, which covers Chattanooga, Cleveland, Oak Ridge, and Kingston.
		Thanks so much for joining us today.
unidentified		Amy, thank you.
		It's a pleasure.
		Thank you for the show.
		And a live look inside Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol as we wait for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to speak on this third day of the federal government shutdown.
		Many members of the press here, but no visitors or tourists as the Capitol Visitor Center is closed due to the funding lapse.
		While we wait for Republican leaders to come to the microphone, we'll show a discussion on the impact of the shutdown from our own Washington Journal.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Real quick, remind us about the partnership and what your mission is.
unidentified		Thank you.
		We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to better government and a stronger democracy.
		We've been at this for over 24 years and largely focused on making the federal government work better.
		Now our work has expanded to state and local government as well.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I want to read to you a Truth Social post by President Trump who said this.
		I have a meeting today with Russ Vogt, he of Project 2025 fame, to determine which of the many Democrat agencies, most of which are a political scam, he recommends to be cut and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.
		I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.
		They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to quietly and quickly make America great again.
		Your reaction to that.
unidentified		So many different things to be said here.
		I think the most important is that unfortunately we have a president who no longer subscribes to the bipartisan concept that our government is there for the public good and instead has been in an ongoing war on the notion of a government for the people and is changing it to a government for himself.
		And the effort to make partisan every activity of our government is an example of that.
		We don't have Democrat or Republican agencies.

▲