October 31, 2022 at 11:25 a.m.
Tiffany: Fundamental priority is to protect constitutional rights
To achieve prosperity, ensuring the rule of law is essential, congressman says
Tiffany: Fundamental priority is to protect constitutional rights
"I have to tell you that all those are important issues, but we have gotten to the fundamentals now, where the question is, are we going to have a First Amendment to the constitution?" Tiffany said in an interview with The Lakeland Times. "Are we going to have a Second Amendment to the constitution? Are we going to have simply a two-tiered system of justice?"
Tiffany, who is running for re-election in the seventh congressional district against Democratic challenger Richard Ausman, says those very basic questions about the future of American democracy are on the minds of the constituents he talks with, and he says that, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he is well positioned to be on the front lines of those battles.
"I believe the judiciary committee is going to be the most important committee, both in the House and in the Senate when there is a new Congress, because we are at the point where you have these Goliaths - Big Tech companies that have decided that they don't have to honor people's First Amendment rights to free speech," Tiffany said. "So it's really about the fundamentals of America."
In addition to free speech, Tiffany said, another fundamental under attack is public safety.
"You have prosecutors around the country saying, 'well, we're no longer going to prosecute crime,'" he said.
Tiffany pointed to the Waukesha trial in which a man is accused of killing six people and is also charged with 61 counts of recklessly endangering safety for driving into a Waukesha Christmas parade. At the time of the parade, defendant Darrell Brooks was out on just $1,000 cash bail in Milwaukee County after being charged with hitting and running over the mother of his child.
Tiffany points to that situation as a prime example of how law enforcement is not being backed up by prosecutors, and the congressman also called out Milwaukee County district attorney John Chisholm for the low bail and for what Tiffany says is his soft-on-crime approach.
"He said in 2007, 'I'm going to change how we go about prosecuting crime, and will some people get killed? Absolutely, but that doesn't mean that I'm wrong,'" Tiffany recalled Chisholm saying. "Well, people got killed and he still is prosecuting crime the way he has been for years, which has been costing innocent people their lives. So I think public safety, our constitutional rights, they are all under threat at this point."
In yet another example, Tiffany said the U.S. Department of Justice has used the Patriot Act against parents at school board meetings.
"This stuff is so fundamental, and if we're going to have prosperity in America once again, first of all we have to have the rule of law," he said.
Tiffany said the broadside attacks on the U.S. constitution by liberals is one of the reasons the House Judiciary Committee will be so important.
"We need to do our jobs in the next session of Congress, in particular in regards to oversight," he said. "It is one of our roles, it is one of most important roles I would say, and we need to make sure that we are fulfilling that obligation to the American people."
Inflation
When it comes to the economy and inflation, Tiffany says he is very concerned that the Federal Reserve may overshoot with the interest rate targets it has set.
"They could make the economy even worse if they overshoot with much higher interest rates," he said. "Now, should interest rates go higher? Possibly, but I think that there is a real danger that they may overdo it at this point in raising interest rates."
Ultimately, Tiffany said, people know what the problems are, including the causes of inflation and the cost of living, and he believes there are three primary things that can be accomplished at the federal level.
"One, stop the deficit spending," he said. "Stop the additional spending that has been going on and get back to a balanced budget."
Tiffany said he belongs to the Republican Study Committee, the only group in the current session of Congress that he says produced a legitimately detailed balanced budget.
"We would get to balance in seven years, and that's one of the first things that needs to happen," he said.
Tiffany recalled that, when he first entered the state Legislature in 2010, Wisconsin had a $3 billion budget deficit.
"I used to really emphasize this, and I said that it would take a series of budgets to make this [a balanced budget] happen, and that's exactly what happened over the course of 10 years," he said. "We made the tough decisions in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is in the best financial condition it has been in, in a long time. When you look at bond ratings, and the Rainy Day Fund and things like that, it's about as good as you can get. We need to do the same thing [on the federal level] and have a whole series of budgets that get to balance because that will restrict this runaway spending that is going on."
Number two, Tiffany said, is to reward work, not welfare.
"We have too many people sitting on the sidelines that have been incentivized to be on the sidelines," he said. "At the federal level, we've incentivized people to not work. Well, guess what? They don't work. And so we do need to incentivize work once again. That's a key component to this."
Tiffany says he has co-authored a bill with Rep. Gary Palmer from Alabama that deals with one aspect of worker shortages.
"There are about a half-a-million people in America that retired at the age of 62 and some of them want to get back in the workforce, but they don't do it because they get penalized - they lose some of their Social Security benefits if they make too much money," he said. "We want to lift that cap so that there is no Social Security penalty, especially with some seniors getting hit with inflation. It's eating up their pensions and their Social Security, and they don't want a diminished standard of living, so they would like to work more but they get penalized on the Social Security side. Remove the Social Security penalty and I think we would see more people work."
Social Security and Medicare are fundamental benefits that need to be protected, Tiffany said.
"I believe those benefits, both Social Security and Medicare, are guaranteed," he said. "People paid into them and they should receive them. The more important thing at this point is, we have to stop creating new programs. Social Security and Medicare are fundamental programs that Americans have come to count on since they were created decades ago. If we are going to protect those, the most important thing we can do is not create new programs that are going to jeopardize Social Security and Medicare by making commitments we can't keep. Let's keep our commitment to Social Security and Medicare and not create all kinds of new programs that discourage people from working and that the federal government cannot afford to fund."
The third key, Tiffany said, is energy independence.
"There's no reason for us to be dependent on foreign countries," he said. "No reason for Joe Biden to go beg Saudi Arabia. No reason for them to try to get a 30-day delay in the announcement of the production cuts by Saudi Arabia to push it past the election. You don't have to go talk to any other country. All you have to do is ask the good people of America and they will produce the energy that we need."
Fiscal responsibility, rewarding work over welfare, energy independence - do those three things, Tiffany said, and the economy will turn around quickly: "All it takes is the will to do it."
As for begging for oil from Saudi Arabia, Tiffany said there needs to be an investigation into Saudi Arabia's claim that Biden asked the Saudis to delay the announcement of a cut in oil production until after the mid-term elections.
"I sent a letter to speaker Nancy Pelosi and said there should be an investigation of this," he said. "I believe there should be an investigation of this because, were they attempting to get an in-kind contribution from the Saudis by urging them to delay this? And, by the way, the Saudis made their answer very clear. They told President Biden, 'we're not going to cut just a million barrels a day, we're going to cut 2 million barrels a day.' They basically told President Biden to pound sand."
Ukraine war
Tiffany says the United States should prioritize America's needs over more massive funding for the war in Ukraine.
"Congress needs to stop funding this and take care of our needs at home," he said. "We're sitting on a $30-trillion debt, and we're going to send billions more over to another country. Is it really in our interests to be there?"
Tiffany says he has great empathy for the Ukrainians, and he also says Vladimir Putin is a "very bad guy."
"There is no doubt about it," he said. "He has me on his sanctions list. The Kremlin has me on Russia's sanctions list, but is it in our interest? Here's the great fear. We have fought two world wars in the last 100 years over on European soil. Do Americans really want to get in [conflict] over Europe. Is that our duty to do that? At this point, I don't believe so."
Tiffany lamented the lack of a U.S. call for diplomacy to end the war.
"The only world leader that we hear that from seems to be Elon Musk," he said. "I think there's certainly something to be said there that we should be working toward having a diplomatic resolution."
And just why should we be interested in a diplomatic resolution?
"I believe the ultimate reason is because you have a country in Russia that has the ultimate weapon in nuclear missiles, and we don't want to end there," Tiffany said. "We do not want to end up there because once a nuke is shot off, you've got World War III. It will happen."
Tiffany said it should be in our best interest to bring down the temperature, much as other countries, including the United States, often urge Israel to bring down the temperature in their relations with the Palestinians.
"Well why wouldn't we be consistent with that and say, 'let's bring down the temperature here,'" he said. "For some reason, the Biden administration takes a much different approach than when they deal with Taiwan-Chinese relations, with Israel and its neighboring Arab countries and in particular Iran. They take this much different approach that they want to be so much more aggressive toward Russia. Is that the best thing to do with a nuclear-armed Russia? I don't know that that is the best approach."
Another concern Tiffany has is with the Democrats' ongoing obsession with labeling Donald Trump a Russian agent, with an apparent hangover effect on foreign policy,
"It concerns me also that, it seems like this is always the case with Democrat leadership in Washington, D.C., it goes back to Donald Trump," he said. "It almost seems like a part of this is that we - the Democrats - told the American people that Trump was a Russian agent, and it's like they won't even give up on it with it being revealed that President Trump had nothing to do with the Russians. In fact, if anybody did things that weakened the Russians, it was Donald Trump by having energy independence."
Putin is making far more money on oil under Joe Biden, Tiffany said, which is significant because oil is one of their few exports of value.
Immigration
Tiffany says we essentially live in a borderless country with Biden as president.
"Our United States government, as a result of the actions of the Biden administration, is running perhaps the largest human trafficking operation in the history of the world," he said. "And they are complicit with the Mexican cartels and the United Nations via the IOM (International Organization for Migration) in making this happen. They are the three major players - IOM, the United Nations, the Mexican cartels - and our government is complicit in this massive human trafficking operation that's going on."
Four million people have come into the country since January of 2021, Tiffany said, when the congressman says Biden essentially declared open borders with his catch-and-release border policy.
"So there are huge concerns on three fronts," he says. "One is terrorism and national security. The border patrol has told us that we have had more people come in that have terror backgrounds than ever here in our country. Second is the drugs that are coming in, and in particular fentanyl."
Tiffany said fentanyl poisonings are now at a record in America and it is directly linked to having open borders.
"I can't believe that Democrats, on just that issue alone, with all of us having friends, neighbors, acquaintances one way or another that we know have died of fentanyl poisonings in America, which the Department of Health Services in Wisconsin now lists as a public health emergency, won't do anything about it," he says. "By the way, those fentanyl overdoses are frankly not overdoses any longer; they are simply fentanyl poisonings."
Tiffany says the third big border issue is the human trafficking.
"You have 53 people that are fried in the back of a semi-trailer outside of San Antonio that are being trafficked into America and we expect to be viewed as a country that respects human rights?" he asked. "They entice them to the border, and then they get trafficked in as a result of the open borders policy of the United States government and it is enriching the Mexican cartels."
Tiffany said the cartels charge $3,000 to $10,000 per person for everybody who gets trafficked into the country.
"And you don't get into America across the Rio Grande or Arizona without paying the Mexican cartels, and it is obscene what is going on here in America and I just can't believe they won't do something about this with the problems that are there," he said.
But Tiffany says the solutions are very simple.
"They just take the political will to do it," he says. "Resume 'Remain in Mexico.' Complete the wall. Stop catch and release. You will have it under control within months if we just adopt those policies."
Tax policy, abortion, guns and more
First and foremost, Tiffany says U.S. tax rates should not be higher than those of other first world countries.
"That's the first thing, make sure our tax rates are competitive," he says.
But the congressman says he is open to tax increases on large corporations that do not respect the constitutional rights of Americans.
"For the first time in my lifetime or in my political career, I do not rule out [tax increases] - for example, in regard to the Big Tech companies, if they are going to deny people their First Amendment rights to free speech, should we perhaps use the tax code to tax them at higher levels?" he asks.
Overall, Tiffany says it's important to be competitive.
"As far as individual taxes, I believe in compressing tax rates and getting as close to a flat tax as we can to make sure that we are being competitive," he says.
On abortion, Tiffany says he agrees with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham that a national floor should be set beyond which abortion would be prohibited.
"I actually agree with Sen. Graham's bill that we should set a floor in regards to abortion because at 15 weeks a baby has a heartbeat," he says. "They have fingerprints. We save babies, with the advancements in medical technology, beyond 20 weeks on a regular basis. The medical technology that we have developed since Roe v. Wade was put in place really show that it is a human being. I would support a 15-week floor like Sen Graham has introduced."
Tiffany says he has not seen other provisions in the Graham bill so he could not say that he could support that specific bill but on the basic question of prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks, he would consider supporting that concept.
"If you believe that's a child, I believe that we should protect that life," he says.
During his time in the House, Tiffany says he has heard all sorts of outlandish, draconian proposals designed to take away Second Amendment rights, such as a 1,000-percent tax on ammunition, as well as red flag laws that Tiffany says presumes one is guilty until proven innocent.
"When we take the House, we will put a dead stop on infringements on people' s Second Amendment rights," he said.
The bottom line in this election is that people know what the problems are and it's all about solutions now, Tiffany says.
"The American people want to know what we as Republicans are going to bring as solutions," he said. "We know how to deal with inflation, for instance. Stop the federal spending, balance the budget, reward work, not welfare. Let's get back to energy independence. Do those things and we will get the economy coming back fairly quickly."
And, similarly, the solutions are not complicated on most issues, Tiffany says.
"It's just a matter of having the political will to do it," he says.
That said, Tiffany said this election does present a fundamental issue that is at stake in America, and that is the First Amendment.
"When you look at what happened with the Biden administration in league with the Big Tech companies throttling the messages that conservatives wanted to put out, we have to deal with that now and make sure people's fundamental rights of political speech are protected, whether it is before a school board, whether it is dealing with the FBI or the social media companies," he said. "We have to protect fundamental constitutional rights as we go forward."
Richard Moore is the author of "Dark State" and can be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.
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