Ethics Freedom and Sequester | Mike Conaway

Ethics Freedom and Sequester | Mike Conaway

Transcript:

Announcer 0:00
Welcome to American Dreams keys to success with your host, Alan Olsen.

Alan 0:05
I’m here today with Congressman Mike Conway. And, Mike, enjoy having you here on today’s show.

Mike 0:13
Well, that’s it for me here. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Alan 0:16
So a little background, I guess, kind of introducing the listeners to your unique background used to work with George Bush

Unknown Speaker 0:24
did George and I were business partners in the oil business for five years. And in middle of Texas, great experience. He’s a terrific guy. I wish I’d been partners with him in the baseball team at a made a lot more money. But now he’s he’s a terrific guy and a good warm human being. You’re what you see is what you get. And he’s done a lot of subterfuge there. He’s a straightforward guy and a terrific boss.

Alan 0:51
So you’ve you entered Congress in which year

Mike 0:53
2005 2005 Starting my filter,

Alan 0:57
and what role are you currently playing?

Unknown Speaker 1:00
Well, I’ve got wear several hats. One, Chairman of ethics committee, the House Ethics Committee, which is a full committee. I’m also subcommittee chairman of the largest Subcommittee on House House Agriculture Committee, the Jura farm commodities and risk management subcommittee. So I cheer that Chief Deputy Whip on the Whip team and a Deputy Whip, as well as I’ve got a couple of other roles. But those are the main ones that run

Alan 1:28
what, what would you say is the most essential quality in leadership today?

Unknown Speaker 1:34
Strong integrity, and just being able to have a have a vision for where you want to go and strength of purpose to to know that you’re doing the right thing, and then be able to stick with that. I think the country is just screaming for leadership today. We’re hungry for it. And we’re not getting it, quite frankly, from the White House. And obviously, that’s the most important leader we have in this country is the pres. United States and and he should be since he doesn’t face reelection again, he really ought to be focused more on leading this country where we ought to go as opposed to worrying about the 2014 election.

Alan 2:08
As head of the ethics committee, how do you see that Tegrity is enforced?

Unknown Speaker 2:12
Well, it’s a complaint driven system, much like the State Board of Accountancy is here in California in other places. So we deal with the complaints that come up, we can generate those complaints ourselves, the ethics committee can, or we can get them from other members of the House. And it’s a slow, tedious process, as are all judicial like processes, you want to protect the innocent, you want to make sure that everyone has due process. And that due process is lengthy and time consuming. You know, the court of public opinion, which most of us get judged on is almost instantaneous. There are no defense lawyers, and there are no standards for evidence. So you’ve got the court of public opinion running. And at the same time, we’re trying to run an ethics investigation that has to give up your proper due diligence and those kinds of things to the to the accused and into the function, make the complaint so that it works. The committee is the only 5050 Split committee in Congress. So the ranking member and I have to agree on most everything to make something move forward. And in the votes have to be you have to have at least one person from the other party vote to move a investigation forward. So you can’t have a partisan witch hunt, so to speak. And I’m quite proud of what we did last two years before I became chairman, in that every vote was unanimous on the committee to move all the investigations to take all the actions that we were taking. And so it works. But it’s a slow, agonizingly slow. But it’s important that we protect the innocent as well as give the the accused a you a fair day,

Alan 3:40
shaded citizens be concerned with what’s happening in the world.

Mike 3:43
Well, yes, short answer. Whether you want to narrow that down a little bit less what’s going on

Alan 3:50
is bad. You see currently what what’s going on within the government within I’m going to narrow this back down to the Constitution. Yeah.

Mike 3:59
Let me answer it this way. Just to kind of set the backdrop in the stage for the conversation we currently have if you project the promises of the financial promises that we made to each other with Security, Medicare, interest on the national debt, all of those things that we’ve committed to now just basically promises to each other, over the next 75 years, what that costs you then discount that to today’s present value is $71 trillion of present value of future promises that we’ve made to each other. It’s not sustainable and affordable. I mean, you’d need $71 trillion in the bank today to be able to pay that off and the proper basis so it’s unsustainable and in that audit concern every single American now it doesn’t, because it doesn’t touch our quiet lives. People all over America got up today they are trying to go to work get kids off to school what a mistake. They gotta find a doctor’s appointment in the car Woodstock because a battery’s dead on life. But this pending fiscal wreck that that many of us see doesn’t touch Our daily quiet lives. And as we learn everyday July to March 1, march 1, it’ll start March 1, sequester sequence stretch, right when that kicks in. Now, it won’t happen immediately because some of the furloughing and the layoffs. And those days will begin to build over time. But beginning March 1, or sequestration kicks in, and at that point time, there will be quite lives disrupted, and hopefully the American people get sick of why is this happening? And what’s the result? And what are Republicans trying to get done with this force cut to the to the

Alan 5:31
budget make, I need to take a quick break, we’ll be right back after the semesters. And when we get back, I want to talk more about the sequestering coming to grips.

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Apple pie baseball and now here’s all American, Alan Olsen.

Alan 6:14
Welcome back. I’m here today with Congressman Conaway. And before the break, we’re talking about what’s going on in Congress, or Washington DC right now with the upcoming sequestering? Sure, and how it will affect your lives. And I want to pick up on this now, I’m reading in the paper today that Obama, President Obama has the upper hand, what’s this all about upper hand?

Mike 6:35
Well, I’m not sure he does. The sequester, it relates to the Budget Control Act of 2011. As a part of that, the President insisted that we insert a sequester mechanism to to enforce the spending cuts that that were agreed to, we agreed to a $1.2 trillion increase the debt ceiling, but a company that had to be a $1.2 trillion reduction of the deficit. And if the super committee could work, which they wound up not being able to work, then sequestration kicked in and automatic across the board cuts were to be implemented. And this was the President’s idea. And so I’m not sure where the upper hand thing comes from.

Alan 7:08
I heard that it was his his role to put the questions his

Mike 7:11
idea and and he’s got the upper hand in the sense that he has to implement it officer management budgets charged with the implementation of the sequester. This question is a 10 year number that 1.2 trillion over 10 years. The The idea was to get the 1.2 trillion off of 100% of the budget, sequester pause at 1.2 out of a much, much narrower band sequestration, I mean, discretionary spending, plus a little bit on the on the mandatory side, but it’s it’s a mess. The numbers are not as dramatic as you would think, though the sequestration for fiscal 2013, which the Senate insisted B instead of starting April Skooby. January one, the Senate assisted that being kicked in March one. So we got seven months in which to get a year’s worth of cuts. And so you’ve exacerbated the issue a little bit. So about $85 billion total, and the total spending is running right down at $1.04 trillion. So it’s something less than a 10% cut. And even if you annualize it from the from the seven months, it’s still not a disaster. That should be

Alan 8:17
would you agree, though, there’s a lot of fat that can be Kenosha spending.

Mike 8:21
Absolutely. But once you’ve seen the President, there was an example Is he done with the department that he’s communicated to all the executive branch agencies send out the worst scariest stories you can as to what the impact sequestration will have? And so in as it relates to House Agriculture, I mean, the Department of Agriculture, Secretary Vilsack has said he’s going to furlough the meat inspectors. Well, you can’t sell meat in this country unless it’s been inspected. So what he’s arguing is that inspecting meat is less important than some of the other things that that USDA is doing. So you’ll see these stories this coming week. And then during March, I suspect the President will scour the country looking for families and others who’ve been impacted negatively by sequestration. And he’ll have them in front of the cameras and trying to persuade the American people to try to bully Congress or bully the house into unwinding the sequestration that it’s not gonna get unwound, that it can be substituted, we can find better, rational, more thoughtful cuts to spending, and is substitute those for the across the board cuts across the board courts, cuts are mindless, they’re very thoughtful. They leave 90% of the bad programs, the fancy talking about the waste in place, they cut 10% off the good programs, you shouldn’t cut it also, it’s not the best way to run a government. But we are so frustrated with this president this Senate and not wanting to deal with spending at all, that we’re willing to let these bad cuts go into effect just to get their attention to try to drag them to the table. The only the president the Senate,

Alan 9:46
when you think about this, why do you think it’s important for society to live within its means which you seem to have got? Well, we have

Mike 9:55
for the last four years and there’s plenty of blame to go around. This is not a Republican record. Credit. It’s all of us we are all complicit in the $71 trillion and unfunded promises the 616, almost $17 trillion. Now, in hard debt. What that says is we’ve had an inability to take care of today’s problems with today’s resources is much, far, much easier to take care of today’s resources with tomorrow’s today’s problems with tomorrow’s resource, ie the $17 trillion we bought just to fund our normal operations which no business or family whatever right, you know, do in any kind of a scale it over a long period of time.

Alan 10:31
I got to slip when at the question. The statutory pay raise is 2013. Why did you vote to eliminate the statutory pay adjustment for the federal government? We’re gonna

Mike 10:41
have a trillion dollars in deficits and the President’s pandering he he’s a master at this, by the way. He said this, he announced that pay raise it was for all federal employees. It wasn’t just members of Congress, but it was all federal employees. The media immediately went to the fact that I’m a racist to the senators and congressmen, our foes lit up. People were so mad at me they thought I had done it. I had nothing to do with I didn’t lobby for that pay raise. It’s 800 bucks, you know, nice chunk of change. I agree. But we didn’t lobby for it. But the President knew if he made that if he did it, the backlash would be against Congress for being a part of it. And he did the pay raise. So now’s the time to raise pay raises. If you’re gonna get

Alan 11:21
sued. We need to take a quick break. We’ll be right back after.

Announcer 11:26
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Unknown Speaker 11:42
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Announcer 11:50
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apple pie baseball. And now here’s all American, Alan Olsen. Welcome back.

Alan 12:01
And here today with Congress kinda way from Texas. And we’ve been visiting with him on Congress and the upcoming sequestering, but I won’t turn the page here. I want to get it to gun control. Sure. Texas guns, I mean, tell me what your What’s your stance

Mike 12:21
on the issue of gun violence and who’s not against gun violence, we all are. But it’s not inanimate objects that are the issue. It’s mental health. And the folks who would pick up a gun and do what these mass murderers have done, the fella in Connecticut had to be deranged, he had to be crazy. And I’m not a CPA, I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. And so maybe using those terms in artfully, but only a deranged, crazy person does what this fella did, he had all the laws in place to say don’t do those. It’s like, it’s a lot of kill your mother, it’s against the law, steal her guns, it’s everything he did. That was against the law already. So it’s really not inanimate objects. The most of the focus is on scary looking weapons. It has nothing to do with the actions or the other the way these weapons shoot, they’re still single shot weapons, high capacity magazines, it’s, you know, it’s easy to understand, but it’s not the Second Amendment, the emphasis on the Second Amendment, which I think is hopefully a part of what we’re talking about, is not a place for hunting. It’s not a place for target practice or gun collecting. Even it’s in place because our founding fathers knew that an armed citizenry is less easy to enslave, than an unarmed citizenry. And it’s just as simple as that. Now, that sounds a bit crazy, that that you would worry about a tyrannical government doing something to you that you didn’t want done, or we didn’t fit with under the Constitution. But the second amendments there on purpose, and it protects us. It protects it. It’s one of those pillars on which our freedoms and foundations rest. And without it, we are not nearly as free or as safe. As with it now, yes, there’s irresponsible use of guns, I got that. But I’m unwilling at this point to restrict the law abiding citizens ability to own weapons and firearms, just because there are a few people out there that are misusing them. And and we’re not addressing the mental health issue, which is much harder. It’s far easier to think you can can can deal with an inanimate object that it has to deal with a real issue, which is mental health. It’s a state based problem, the resources applied to that. And all those kinds of things and privacy issues associated with the heart I got that. But that’s the that’s where the real issue with gun violence is concerned. And they saw our Second Amendment is important, right. And I’m, I’m unwilling to, to try to impinge on because out of some sense of false sense of safety and into to take away that right, that our founding fathers it would have never occurred to them in their right minds, to disarm in front of the king. And quite frankly, their opposition to the king would look as crazy as our opposition to to this government today. But it’s, it’s simply that I don’t want to sound like a crazy, reserved kind of person, but that’s the truth. I mean, just quietly say, Second Amendment is there is is to protect us not only there’s violence in our homes and In persons but also against a government that would do something that we that doesn’t fit within our Constitution. You know,

Alan 15:05
I don’t think and or any other president compare. There’s been more executive orders issued. Right. And so the President issues executive order as a separate type of gun control. How does Congress respond to that?

Mike 15:17
Well, we don’t respond very well, because the house in the Senate as a legislative counterbalance to the executive is only effective in concert, the house has no unilateral authority. And so whether it’s using the power of the purse or other ways to get at these executive orders, unless we can get the Senate and Harry Reid to go along with it, which so far been pretty hard to do. Because he’s in league with this president, they’re shoulder to shoulder and all these issues. Were not very effective, we’ll have to rely on the judiciary, quite frankly, to protect us. Because if he goes overreaches with an executive order, then there’ll be lawsuits across this country failed to push back on that, in that point in time, we’re stuck with relying on the Judiciary because of the lack of getting the Senate to agree on this stuff, because we’re not going to buck the president on anything. Certainly not something as important as gun control.

Alan 16:03
You know, I’m gonna go back to your role as CPA going into Congress. How would you define ethics, when you’re looking at your own the Ethics Committee? Well,

Mike 16:15
House Ethics, we have a code of conduct that’s statutorily in place that is, describes how members are supposed to go, you’ve got your own personal codes that we have to rely on, we’ve got laws and rules and regulations that affect the way we raise money, the way that money gets spent, all those kinds of things. And so the ethics are doing your best to comply not only with the letter of these actions, these rules and regulations, but also the spirit of it. You know, you can’t write rules, regulations, and laws so detailed, that a crafty person who wants to get around them, can’t find a way to try to get around them. So it’s mainly the right attitude towards I want to do this job, right, I want to do it in a uprights worthy basis. And I’m going to I’m going to go to comply with the spirit of one of these rules, in addition to working to, to comply very specifically with the letter as well. So it’s, it’s an attitude of, I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep the robot obey the rules. And I’m gonna try to sense that everybody on my team obeys the rules, and we work at it. Now. If you have inadvertent mistakes, tax returns get filed from time to time have a mistake in it. Did you breach your code of ethics? No, you just made a mistake. And so you get to fix it, take care of it and over? Well, maybe not that one. That intention intent is is a big problem in that regard, as well. So you’re part of our problem is that we’ve blown every breach of conduct or the rules into a biblical proportions, there’s, there’s no gradation in terms of mistakes. If you file, you make a mistake, in your honest mistake in your financial disclosure, that gets counted in the press as bad as if you had taken a bribe at the same kind of the same penalties on every single thing. And that really shouldn’t be the case. So we’re working to try to hold can’t hold members accountable. It’s hard to do your sittings judge whether your peers and but it’s important work, I spent seven and a half years on the state board of accountancy at Texas. So I’ve got some background and, and holding peers accountable for either behavioral issues or technical compliance. As you and I worked up, you worked on tax returns and audits and those kinds of things. So I’ve got some background that I brought to this job in the house of an exact same kind of scenario,

Alan 18:32
it’s getting harder to enforce the ethics out there.

Mike 18:35
No, because it’s a voluntary compliance, ruin your most all members want to do the right thing want to comply, you’ll have a few that get off the reservation. Jesse Jackson, as an example, just pled guilty to stealing money from his campaign accounts. So those are the exceptions. Rather, the rules. Most everybody that we deal with are good hearted. Their intent is to be the rules, and they just get caught up in something and they’re certainly willing to make amends and fix it. But there’s the bad apple and they get all the press, they get all and they take the rest of the 435 rooms of the house, sell ourselves to all of our good folks. But the few bad apples paint the rest of us

Alan 19:10
what’s the difference between an ethical dilemma and a moral dilemma?

Mike 19:16
I don’t know that there is a difference. Our founding fathers knew that only a moral people could self govern. A moral people and a moral people could self govern. And so we as a society are being less and less moral, as we develop as we move forward. And as a result, you’re seeing all these abuses, all these frauds, all these cheating and stealing and the things that are going on in society. That is not evidence of a moral society. And as those morale is that morality continues to deteriorate as the path we’re on. It will be a real strain is whether or not we can self govern, under the ways that our Founding Fathers, what is it that democracies and Republic last about 250 years were to 37. I’ve been telling high school students last year during the campaign Is that when they are adults 1520 years from now when they are adults and the leading edge of running companies running not for profits running, being in government, those kinds of stuff. Our country would be an uncharted territory with respect to the longevity of a republic and then whether or not we can hold, it’s gonna be up to them. And only a moral people can hold this government together and we are not on a path that says it will last much longer.

Alan 20:22
Congressman Conaway, we appreciate you joining us on today’s show. It’s good to be with you. Thanks for having me on. We’ll be right back after these messages.

Announcer 20:30
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About Mike Conaway

Serving in his fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Mike Conaway has earned the reputation as “a voice of reason” in Washington. Mike represents the 11th Congressional District of Texas consisting of 36 counties in Central and West Texas including Midland, Odessa and San Angelo.

Mike’s background as a CPA has given him the credibility to be a vocal proponent in reducing the national debt. Mike believes it is time for Congress to make “tough choices” and has authored “No New Programs” legislation to change the House rules on spending to require that the creation of any new federal program be joined with the elimination of an existing federal program of equal or greater cost. Mike has also advocated for a simpler and fairer tax system in Congress and has sponsored legislation that would bring more accountability in government funding. Mike demonstrated leadership in numerous policy areas and currently serves as a Deputy Republican Whip in the 112th Congress.

Mike currently serves on the House Agriculture, Intelligence, Armed Services, and Ethics Committees. As a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, he supports the goals of the Global War against Islamic Jihadist and our young men and women in the armed forces. He understands the sacrifices that are being made by our troops and their families.

On the Agriculture Committee, Mike serves as Subcommittee Chairman of the General Farm Commodities and Risk Management, working to protect the interests of rural America and the American farmer.

A native Texan, Mike grew up in Odessa and graduated from Odessa Permian High School in 1966 after playing on Permian’s first state championship football team. He earned a BBA degree in Accounting from Texas A & M University-Commerce in 1970. After serving in the Army at Fort Hood, Mike resumed his career with Price Waterhouse & Co. he returned to the Permian Basin with Price Waterhouse and settled in Midland where he later worked with George W. Bush as the Chief Financial Officer for Bush Exploration. Mike developed a lasting friendship with President Bush as together they learned what it takes to run a business. An ordained deacon in the Baptist Church, Mike and Suzanne have four children and seven grandchildren.