U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper started his speech in McComb Wednesday with a couple of jokes and concluded with a question-and-answer session on serious issues, ranging from domestic to international.
In between, the Republican representative of Mississippi’s Third District touched on what he said are some positive things at the nation’s capitol that don’t get much coverage in the news.
Such as: He’s a member of a group of 35 House members who frequently meet together between votes to pray.
He told of teaming with Rep. Peter Welch, a liberal Democrat from Vermont, to co-sponsor a bill defunding an agency that was paying for political conventions and directing the money to the National Institute of Health for childhood cancer research. The bill was named for Gabriella Miller, a 10-year-old who died of the disease.
He said he and Welch don’t agree on much, but they have a cordial relationship and were able to work together on this bill in a non-partisan way.
At the beginning of his speech, Harper said he had an announcement: “I will not be a candidate for president” in 2016.
Later he quipped that Congress is so unpopular that on a plane ride home when asked his occupation by a fellow passenger, “I told him I was a lawyer.”
Harper, in fact, was a practicing attorney before being elected to Congress in 2008.
Now in his fourth term, Harper serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
He discussed what he called an ongoing classic constitutional battle over separation of power at the federal level, with government agencies enacting and enforcing rules “never intended” by the original laws establishing the agencies and the laws they are to enforce.
In many instances the membership of Congress turns over much faster than the bureaucrats at the agencies, he said. “We’re gone before we figure out where the bodies are buried” but some agency employees stay on for decades.
“Every program in Washington is somebody’s program,” Harper said. He told of a constituent in Jackson advocating federal spending reductions and then complaining about his Social Security cost of living not being increased enough.
On other subjects, Harper:
• Criticized banking regulations enacted after 2008 Wall Street scandals as being burdensome and unnecessary for small banks in Mississippi.
• Noted that infrastructure issues are a national problem. He said fuel tax revenue, used to fund highways, is down because of vehicle fuel economy, but he stopped short of endorsing an increased federal gasoline tax. Rather, he said, the government should start capitalizing on reaping benefits from resources on federal land, such as the mining of rare earth metals currently imported from China.
• Said that recent infighting among House Republicans has been counterproductive, and that Speaker John Boehner’s Republican critics are not making the party stronger. He said Republicans who ran against Boehner for speaker in January should have put up their names for the nomination when GOP members met in private the prior November.
• Said he’s leery of negotiations with Iran and thinks the U.S. should be protective of Israel, holding to the Biblical view that the Jews are “God’s chosen people.”
• Said that Sharia law, practiced by devout Muslims, is incompatible with American values.
• Said that with the uncertainties in the Muslim world, as well as relations with Russia and China, the U.S. must maintain a strong military.
