Arrington frustrated with Senate colleagues, still hopeful for health care, tax reform legislation

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (TX)

Aug. 06--U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington is in his district for a monthlong recess.

In between a farm bill listening session in San Angelo on Tuesday and tour of Dyess Air Force Base with the House Armed Services Committee chairman on Thursday in Abilene, the Lubbock Republican sat down with A-J Media at his downtown Lubbock office. In the interview, Arrington said he still believes the Republicans in Congress can, and should, repeal Obamacare, discussed the push for tax reform at the cost of entitlement funding, and said he is still confident President Donald Trump will deliver on his campaign initiatives.

Below is a transcript of the congressman's conversation with A-J Media:

What kind of pressure are you feeling to pass major legislation?

It's a two-house Congress. It doesn't matter how well-functioning the House of Representatives is -- of which I am a member. I mean, we have produced over 160 bills that we've passed out of the House, which is more than any House in a Congress since (President) Harry Truman. On top of that we have passed some things that we initiated in the House that ended up on the president's desk that are now law. Most of those are big regulatory repeal bills.

The other piece of what we have done, and it is a silver lining in the cloud of frustration that I feel, is we've been able to work in a bipartisan way to move legislation on veterans affairs reform -- accountability for VA employees, streamlining disability claims, and then choice. That's the positive side.

Am I frustrated? Absolutely. We still have things we can do in the House side and I don't think the American people appreciate or believe that we've earned the opportunity to leave and go back into the district. There's a frustration, which I share, about not delivering as a Republican majority on all that we've said in the seven months that we've had. Most of that is on the Senate, but you know what, Congress is Congress. While we've done some things that my district and constituents care a lot about, the biggest part of that agenda has stalled in the Senate. (Obamacare repeal) is not just about relief on our middle- and working-class families in terms of the cost of care, and a rescue for the demise of the current health care system, it's also the domino that has to fall for major tax reform. But I think the Senate can come back and take another bite of the apple.

So major tax reform can't get done without Obamacare repeal?

I will tell you we can do tax reform, and we will do tax reform. It's a much more realistic and an easier proposition to deliver on tax reform than it is on health care reform. We started with the most complicated and the most emotionally charged. Whether we get bold tax reform depends on our ability to do health care reform.

Without passing health care, is tax reform possible without adding to the deficit?

I prefer deficit neutral. You don't have to, but I think with $20 trillion in debt it's not responsible to have anything other than a budget-neutral tax reform plan. You can simplify the code, you can streamline things, you can make IRS more customer friendly, but no, I don't think we can have bold tax reform I'd like to see without savings on the entitlement reform that is Medicaid.

Didn't the health care debate prove that it's so much harder to take entitlements away than it is to give? I mean, is tax reform just round two now?

You just described the biggest problem our country faces. I think fundamentally restructuring health care is more difficult. You described the problem that I think is driving the greatest threat to our country, which is national debt. We all want to give things, nobody wants to take things away. It's the number one threat to the future of this country, so you don't kick the can down the road because you couldn't get health care. Look, we were one vote away from getting (health care reform) to conference. I still believe we'll get health care done, but we're not waiting in the House for them to do that. We're getting budgets out, we're passing appropriation bills and we're initiating tax reform.

How do you explain cutting $200 billion in funds like Medicare and Social Security?

That $200 billion in mandatory spending cuts, it is welfare to work reforms, it is removing policies allowing double-dipping into like Social Security, disability and unemployment insurance. That saves billions of dollars. We have one fix to people who get the refundable part of child tax credits -- we're just requiring that you have a Social Security number. That saves $20 billion. Here's another one for you: $140 billion a year is the amount of money that we spend in improper payments, and 90 percent of that is overpayments, paying you more than you should get from your entitlement program. Or paying people that are dead or people that have moved off.

It's a lot of things that if you add up, they're very reasonable common-sense things that will save money. I wish we could do twice as much. The process is still going; we may get more. $200 billion is just the base of it. It's up for debate. I want to push for more. I'm satisfied that at least as the floor it's more than we've cut in 20 years.

Won't the talking point be that you're taking money from the poor so the wealthy can pay less?

I don't see it as that at all. Here's the thing, the best thing you can do for the working poor and the middle class is to, number one, reform welfare programs so that they can use what they need when they need it the most, but give them an incentive to move up and out of it. Because we've trapped generations in welfare because of our programs that have disincentivized work. The second thing is they need opportunity. There's too much regulatory burden for the small- and medium-size businesses, and corporations, to reinvest and to grow. You've got to give them a reason to grow.

We're not talking about tax breaks for businesses and no tax reduction for families and individuals and working- and middle-class people -- it's across the board. I wouldn't do something that I didn't feel like was going to give our middle-class and working-class families a break. But we've got the highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world. We're losing companies, we're losing trillions of dollars in capital. That means less opportunity for middle- and working-class families.

Are you frustrated with members of your party?

That'd be an understatement for my colleagues in the Senate. I'm going to be very transparent, I think it will be a colossal failure if we don't repeal Obamacare and begin the process of reforming health care so there's a real market, real competition and cost comes down. That's the goal -- cost for care comes down. There's lots of disagreement on the policy trajectory, but I don't want any more government controlled, top-down health care. No one is going to argue the current system isn't failing.

One school of thought is to just tweak the current system, but I am not interested in shoveling more good money at bad and perpetuating a failed health care system. I'm not interested in that. I'm not taking off the table the bi-partisan effort, because if that's all I have, I'm not gonna fold my arms and sit in the corner like a baby. I'm gonna go and try to solve the problem. The current reality is the Senate can take another bite of the apple as a Republican conference. If we can't then we can't just let the whole thing collapse on our brothers and sisters in this country. We'll be forced to work in a bipartisan way.

Listen, the repeal of Obamacare is to say no more government control, no more mandates. But in terms of repairing and reforming the system, most of that is going to require bipartisan efforts anyway.

Does Congress still have faith in the president?

Yeah, I do. You know, I don't think that anybody in Congress can blame the president for the Senate's failure to pass something. Congress was elected apart from the president, we made our promises independent of the president, and we produce results independent of the president. Could the president help? Yes. I think the president did help on the House side. He campaigned on this very thing.

Do you still give him an A+, which you did after 90 days?

I think the president has executed in spite of a lot of headwinds from the national media and in spite of some of the chaos swirling around him. I think he has been his own worst enemy sometimes, that's just an honest statement. But I also think there's a lot of forces that want him to fail -- they oppose his agenda just like they oppose my agenda.

It's an establishment culture in the media and in politics and he doesn't play by those rules. That's why they elected him. He was elected to turn Washington upside down. Does that mean everything he's done has been productive and necessary? No, I think there's been unproductive and unnecessary things. We have such an awesome, historic opportunity. I support the president. I support his agenda. I wish we'd all just focus on driving that agenda.

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