Brain Trust - Gregg Harper

Congressman Gregg Harper came on the Matt Friedeman Show today to talk about the debt-ceiling and other congressional issues.


Have things settled down a bit up there?

I don't know if things are ever going to settle down. It's one of those things, no one's every happy.

The Cut, Cap, and Balance bill we had two weeks ago was the preferred bill.

This is something that nobody's going to claim  we scored a touchdown here, but I think we did pick up a solid first down.

The thing that is good in this is that it's going to require everyone to vote on a balanced budget amendment before the end of this year.

You're not going to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment.  But will it put the heat on those who vote against it?

I think it's going to have that effect whether it's planned or not.

The frustration is that we control one-half of one-third of the government.

We've outflanked them. We're going to need reinforcements.

When do we come to the time when we can do some of these things that are necessary? Does there ever come a time when we stand our ground until we gut what we want?

I think there are certainly times when that's going to be the case.

I considered what I believed to be very good economists and others...If we had defaulted, maybe ultimately we would have gotten more than we got here.

Right now we're paying interest on the publicly held debt about $259 million a year...that number may become $350-400 million a year.

That was to me a very concerning factor there.

Matt, I've got to tell you the mentality out there is frustrating.

As a society we've got an entitlement society in many ways.

We've really gotten way off base over the years.

Are we over-selling this debt-ceiling deal?

I don't know anybody who's doing a victory lap over this thing.

If you've got an aircraft carrier going at full speed, you can't stop it on a dime and turn it around.

Whether you want to call it spending cuts or rate cuts, it's a step in the right direction.

That's going to take a little time.

If you cut spending and get people back to work, that gap is going to close.

Does there ever come a time when we just take a stand, regardless of political consequences?

We don't have enough money to pay what we're obligated to pay.

It's frustrating.

People say we've gotta get along, but this is a war, and we've gotta stay in the fight as you talk about so brilliantly.

You realize that is we didn't have a Republican-controlled congress, there would have been no cuts.

When the Super-Committee comes to a impasse, what's going to happen? Because Defense will be cut.

It troubles a lot of us that there are going to be cuts in Defense.

Here's the thing. If they can't come to an agreement...there would be across the board cuts in just about everything you can imagine, except for Social Security.

There are a lot of programs that are their pet projects that are duplicate projects.

The state of California got a billion dollars of that (stimulus) money to pay unemployment benefits.

The president's birthday today. What would you get him for his birthday?

I would probably give him some treasury bonds.

David Wu has resigned of a sex scandal. How big of a problem is that?

I'd just as soon talk about anything else or get a root canal.

There is no joy whether it's a Democrat or Republican.

You've got to hug your wife and kids and stay close to Jesus.