Congressman Conaway on Trump

Congressman Mike Conaway (CD-11) offered the inside-the-Washington D.C. Beltway scoop on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Wednesda. He spoke at the monthly meeting of the San Angelo Area Texas A&M Club at Zentner’s Daughter Steakhouse, 1901 Knickerbocker Rd. About 50 people were present.

Before Iowa Caucuses, Trump asked to talk to the Ethanol Caucus in congress because he knew nothing about ethanol then. The reports coming out of that meeting were that “he was very businesslike, focused, asked good questions, and was just a normal business guy there,” Conaway said.

Then, a small group of congressional Republicans endorsed Trump in March after a meeting with the real estate mogul, Conaway said.

“They came out of their meeting saying the exact same thing. He wasn’t the monster ego, larger-than-life kind of personality we see on television,” Conaway said. Instead, after establishing himself with those meeting with him, he was “focused, business-like, asked good questions, a quick read, quick study and all of those attributes you need for a good president.”

Conaway endorsed Trump in May.

In June, Conaway met with Trump with the rest of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. About that meeting, Conaway said, “It was polite when he got there. But the longer he spoke, the more engaging he got. By the time he left, he had a standing ovation, cheering, and all kinds of good stuff.”

“We elect people to make decisions. You elect me to make them on your behalf. So really what we’re trying to figure out is how well does a leader make a decision?” Conaway said.

There are two reasons to support Trump, Conaway said.

First, Conaway believes Trump makes good decisions. Case in point, Conaway noted, were Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees and how Trump created the list.

Trump certainly wasn’t on first name basis with the list of potential justices, Conaway said. So the congressman admired how Trump went to the experts on the conservative side of the political divide that helped him make his list.

“Trump didn’t know who was a good pick and who wasn’t,” Conaway said. “Instead, he went and found the experts in the field to help him.” Conaway believes it’s a “really good” list of potential nominees.

The Trump campaign released 11 names of who would be potential Supreme Court Justices during a Trump presidency on May 18 (view them here).

Second, Conaway appreciates that Trump picked Mike Pence to be his running mate.

Conaway served six years with Pence in the House. “He’s a solid man of faith, and a really strong conservative,” Conaway said. Conaway also stressed that Pence has not only legislative experience but also he was a governor who made good decisions.

Conaway does have some reservations about the Trump campaign’s lack of discipline and some of the troubling things Trump said recently. But the Supreme Court overrules any hesitancy on his part to endorse the real estate mogul.

“I can see at least one Supreme Court vacancy in the next presidential term. We might even have three. And I want Donald Trump getting those nominees because while presidents come and go, and we’ll try to unwind Obamacare after the current president leaves. If a Supreme Court decision goes the wrong way, we may have to change the Constitution to fix that,” he warned about having a President Hillary Clinton appointing justices.

“The decisions they make may last forever. It’s too important to not have any more Sotomayors or Kagans driving the train forward,” he said.

On other issues:

Conaway is confident the Republicans will maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but he’s wary of the Republicans can keep control of the Senate. There are four Senate races to watch, he said. Among the vulnerable Republicans in the U.S. Senate, he said, were:

• Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois
• Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire
• Senator Rob Portman of Ohio
• Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin

There are 54 Republican senators giving the GOP a majority. “We only have four seats that we can play with [lose], and we’re defending 24,” Conaway said.

The Republicans do have one possibility of winning the seat vacated by retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D) in Nevada. Conaway said Republican Representative Joe Heck has a good chance of winning there.

The coup in Turkey against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a positive event for the U.S., Conaway said.

Conaway said the Turkish military has been a ballast historically for maintaining a secular government there. Following the purges of the military, time will tell if these events do not eventually create a “flat-out Muslim state,” or theocracy. And Turkey is a NATO ally, Conaway reminded the audience.

The Republican majority in the House published a policy agenda for the next four years. The initiatives include welfare reform, health care reform, and tax reform. Speaker Paul Ryan has a website describing the initiatives called “A Better Way.”

On Obamacare, Conaway recognized that premiums are unaffordable and likely to go up. Conaway said:

“The health care initiative that’s in our ‘A Better Way’ program will repeal Obamacare, and then here are the things it will do to address the cost issue:

"I don’t use the word ‘replace’ because ‘replace’ has the connotation that there is a federal government solution that replaces Obamacare without going to Single Payer health insurance. Republicans don’t have a program that does all that [replaces Obamacare] because quite frankly there isn’t one.

“But there are things we can do that can address each and every one of those items that’s included in health care [starting with] moving back to patient-centered care. We can try to increase competition in the market by allowing buying insurance across state lines, allowing small groups to get to together to form attractive risk pools. Insuring previous conditions? We’ll have to come to grips with that. And allowing children up to the age of 26 to stay on their parent’s insurance- I don’t know why that’s a government mandate; it should be up to the individual insurance companies. If they want to underwrite it and parents want to pay for it, I don’t know why we have an artificial requirement on that, of who gets to stay on my insurance policy.

“One thing I’m watching for is a big report coming Nov. 1 on how well Obamacare has worked or not. And it’s going to be awful. The president is moving heaven and earth to try to move the release date of that report to December, after the election, because he knows it’s going to look awful. Many of the exchanges are losing the companies participating because even with the failsafe pieces that are in there, they can’t stay in business and underwrite Obamacare policies. Dramatic increases in policy premiums across the board are coming.

“Before Obamacare, 85 percent of us were relatively okay with our health insurance. We now screwed all that up trying to get at that last 15 percent covered,” Conaway concluded.

On Iran, Conaway said, “It’s awful.”

Conaway lamented about what he defined as a $400 million ransom paid for the four prisoners recently released from Iran.

Conaway also had harsh words for Secretary of State John Kerry. “He is so detached from whatever is going on in the State Department that he had two independent groups working apart, and then all of a sudden they said they came together and no one had the vision to say, ‘Oh! Timeout. That’s going to look like a bribe!’”

And then the Iranians said they wouldn’t have release the prisoners without us giving them the money first, Conaway said.

Now, the price of an American prisoner is $100 million each, Conaway said. “And now they have caught and imprisoned three more Americans!”

Conaway said the Iranians are already violating the Iranian Nuclear Agreement and will soon have nuclear weapons. “And they’re testing ballistic missiles. They don’t need a ballistic missile to deliver the mail,” he said. “You deliver nuclear warheads with ballistic missiles.”

The Iranian national anthem has ‘death to America’ in it, Conaway warned.

Conaway noted that President Barrack Obama suffered target fixation and flew the ship into the target on the Iran deal.