Q&A with Oklahoma's District 1 Congressman Jim Bridenstine

Oklahoma's freshman Republican District 1 Congressman Jim Bridenstine sat down with the staff of the Tulsa Business & Legal News for a Q & A session on Wednesday in which he discussed ongoing efforts in Washington on issues affecting the business climate of Tulsa and the state. Specifically, he weighed in on Obamacare, banking regulations, immigration reform, and the monetary system.

What's the most significant issue affecting the local and regional business climate of Tulsa?

Well, I can tell you, touring around the 1st District as I have, high on everybody's minds is Obamacare. And the rules and the regulations that are being

promulgated regularly-hundreds of pages, and nobody knows when they're going to be coming, nobody knows what the next rule is going to be, how it's going to be different than the previous rule, and it creates a lot of uncertainty.

We have businesses in town that are considering laying off employees, we have businesses in town that are trying to get them below 30 hours a week, so that they'll be part-time. The compliance requirements change, depending on how many employees you have that are full time.

So, we have a lot of uncertainty from Obamacare, and employers, overwhelmingly, are dissatisfied with that law. And that's not just from the Republicans. We've talked to many business owners that are very strong Democrats, and they're not interested in changing their political affiliation. They just want to see Obamacare repealed. So, I think that's probably one of the biggest issues that I've been dealing with.

How realistic would it be, at this point, to repeal Obamacare?

That's a good question.

Can it be repealed?

Not immediately.

Here's where you get the point where you can't repeal it: with the expansion of Medicaid and the state exchanges where everybody's going to receive subsidies in the state exchanges, depending on how much money you make and how many dependents you have, and the expansion of Medicaid where people are going to be, in essence, receiving health care without cost, you're in essence creating an entire constituency of dependency, and that constituency of dependency-it's not the safety net, we're talking about dependency that goes into the middle class, because everybody is getting subsidies for the health insurance that they want, or that they don't want, but they're being forced to have. And so once all those subsidies go into place, with the expansion of Medicaid and the state exchanges, and that's when it becomes darn-near-impossible to repeal. Ronald Reagan said, "The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government program." And once you create that constituency of dependency, you can't repeal it.

Do you think it's politically achievable to ever appeal it, at this point?

This is my philosophy-this is the Jim Bridenstine philosophy: if we can tie the repeal of Obamacare to the debt limit increase, or we can tie the defunding of Obamacare to the continuing resolution (to increase the debt limit), the logical compromise would be-not that the Democrats are going to give up on Obamacare, but they might be willing to delay it for a year or two. That's the logical compromise. Because everybody understands that Obamacare, once fully implemented, is going to be an extremely painful process where you're going to have premiums spike, you're going to have people's health care coverage get dropped from their employers, and you're going to have people that aren't willing to buy the comprehensive coverage that Obama is going to require them to buy, because it's just too expensive. And the exchanges, in many states-they're not set up, they're not ready. It's going to be a very difficult transition, and I think everybody knows that. Nobody knows that better than businesses, and they're trying their hardest to figure out how to deal with it, and they don't know what the rules are from one day to the next and we have businesses run by Democrats, saying, "This is going to put us under."

So, we're making converts.

What's best for Oklahoma for federal immigration reform?

Number one-I believe it starts with border security... Border security is a critical element.

The second thing that's important is, we have to make sure we're not rewarding people for having broken our laws. The third thing is, we have to reform our legal immigration system. I believe we are a nation of immigrants. That's who we are. Our population isn't growing as fast as it should, and we need immigrants to help bolster our resources, from a human resource perspective. But, those immigrants need to come here legally. We need to have a robust legal immigration system that takes the pressure off the border.

With regard to federal gun laws, does it seem possible that much else outside of background checks will be further regulated?

I don't think so. When you look at outlawing certain types of weapons or certain types of magazines-these are ideas that I don't think will get past the filibuster in the Senate. And I have heard the Speaker that we're not even going to take it up for a vote in the House if the Senate can't pass it. So, I don't think there's any chance these kinds of limitations on the Second Amendment are going to occur.

I'm an advocate of the Second Amendment.

What is your overall stance on gun control?

I believe that the right to keep and bear arms shouldn't be infringed. That's what the founders intended... I'm not going to be supporting any law that infringes on that right.

Do you think that any type of law heading down that path is just a slippery slope?

I wouldn't say it's a slippery slope. I'd say it's a violation of the Second Amendment.

Do you think regulations on how many rounds in a magazines and that type of minutiae is a violation of the Second Amendment?

I absolutely do. It says "shall not be infringed," and that is an infringement on our right to keep and bear arms.

Is that to say that private citizens should have fully automatic assault weapons?

I think where you draw the line is, what does, say, the police force have? Obviously, you have to draw the line at some point, and obviously the Tulsa Police are not going to be flying F-18s, but I think if the police are authorized to have the weapons, the citizens should, too. I'm saying that if the police need a certain type of weapon to protect us, then citizens should have that same right, too.

You're saying that if the threat from the criminal element is such that police need that weapon to protect against, then private citizens should have that same right to protect themselves against it.

Absolutely.

You've talked about overregulation already, but with specific regard to the banking industry, do you think it's overregulated?

There is no doubt, we have an issue. This is where the laws at the federal level don't necessarily work at the local level because the banks in New York and L.A. aren't the same as the banks in Oklahoma.

We have a strong community banking system, and the regulations that apply to the big banks-the small banks, they don't have the capacity to hire an entire team of compliance officers to deal with the federal regulations, and stay in business at the same time.

What banking regulations need to go?

I'd love to see the repeal of Dodd-Frank. There's a whole lot in there. The Consumer Financial Protection Board is specifically ominous for the banking industry here in Oklahoma, the way they prevent banks from giving loans. And that is hurting economic growth in Oklahoma. If a small business can't get a loan, then you can't employ people.

What issues do you want to raise that we didn't ask about?

We need to be talking about the monetary system, and not a lot of Republicans are talking about it; not a lot of Democrats are talking about it. When you have trillion dollar deficits, and you have to print bonds and sell bonds to fund those trillion dollar deficits, that works, unless people aren't buying those bonds. And in order to keep those interest rates down on those bonds, what we're doing right now-the federal reserve is creating money, they're taking that newly-created money and they're buying those newly created bonds, and that's how we're funding these trillion dollar deficits. When you print money to buy the bonds, you drive the price of the bond up. The coupon stays the same, so the interest rate is lower than it otherwise would be, and those low interest rates are reflected throughout the markets.

So, there are seniors on fixed incomes... who are having to come out of retirement or delay retirement because they can't get sufficient return on their bonds to warrant being able to retire at the same standard of living. So, seniors on fixed incomes are getting squeezed on the income side because of these artificially low interest rates that are really created by trillion dollar deficits and the Fed printing money that buys the bonds that fund the government.

The point is this-the president's policies are adversely affecting the very people he purports to want to help the most, and this is a message we absolutely have to get across. Trillion dollar deficits are not stimulating the economy any more. (They) are hurting the U.S. dollar, artificially keeping interest rates low, preventing investment in America, hurting the middle income folks, the lower income folks, the poor, and seniors on fixed incomes. It's bad policy.

I'm not saying we need a strong dollar. We need a stable dollar.

It starts with Congress having a trillion dollar deficit. Congress has got to get a hold of the trillion dollar deficit. And it's not about revenue. The president always talks about revenue. We have more revenue that we've ever had in American history... We need to control spending