Reps in the News: Gallagher Calls for Regulation of Bump Stocks

Congressman Mike Gallagher

Last week Representatives Gallagher, Kinzinger and McSally, all Republican veterans serving in Congress, called for a restriction on the gun modifier that was used during the mass murder in Las Vegas. “Bump stocks,” the accessory used by the attacker, were legalized by the Obama Administration in 2010. In the wake of the shooting, the three representatives co-authored a letter requesting that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) revisit and regulate these devices, as they do with automatic weapons. Rep. Gallagher released the following statement on the issue:  “In the military we spend months and sometimes years training to use automatic weapons. They were never intended for widespread civilian use; they are heavily regulated and incredibly difficult to obtain – and that is how it should be. Though we still need a full account of what happened in Las Vegas, the chilling audio reveals a rate of fire more in line with my time in Iraq than a Wisconsin shooting range. It sounded like an automatic weapon but it wasn’t, we were hearing standard civilian rifles that had been modified to act like automatic weapons. I believe an item like a bump-stock that can turn a rifle into an automatic should be subject to the same restrictions as an automatic weapon.”

Source:  Gallagher press release

Senator Tammy Baldwin

Sen. Baldwin released the following statement on the Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Resolution voted on in the Senate on Oct. 19:  “I believe Wisconsin families need a tax break and that’s what I’m working for. But this budget resolution paves the way for a partisan tax proposal that favors big corporations and gives a majority of the tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent. I just don’t think it’s right to make Wisconsin’s hardworking middle class families pay for it by blowing a hole in the deficit and cutting Medicare and Medicaid.”

Baldwin offered an amendment to prohibit the Republican tax plan to cut taxes for the top one percent and big corporations from increasing the deficit. She also cosponsored additional amendments to the budget resolution:  Senator Heitkamp’s amendment to prohibit taxes from being raised on Americans making less than $250,000 a year, Senator Donnelly’s amendment to prevent companies that have outsourced jobs from benefiting from tax breaks and Senator Nelson’s amendment to reverse the $473 billion in cuts to Medicare in the Republican budget.

Source:  Baldwin press release

Senator Ron Johnson

During an appearance on MSNBC’s Meet The Press Daily, Sen. Johnson explained why he is seeking reforms to increase access to affordable health care in exchange for funding insurance cost-sharing reductions (CSRs). “The bottom line is the insurance companies will get paid either way,” Johnson said. “The fix is already in. They either get the cost-sharing reductions, or they will get increased premiums and the American taxpayer will be out…another $194 billion. So I think it’s a legitimate point of view on the part of Republicans to really resist trying to fund these unsustainable markets. That’s a legitimate point of view, but the reality is, if we don’t fund these cost-sharing reductions, premiums would increase and people that are working hard, those individuals that don’t get subsidies (will face unaffordable premium increases).”

Source:  Johnson press release

President Donald Trump

President Trump engaged in another feud Tuesday with Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican who has turned into one of the president’s chief critics. The latest exchange came hours before the president was set to attend a GOP policy lunch on tax reform.

“Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts,” Trump tweeted, apparently in response to an interview Corker participated in earlier Tuesday on Good Morning America.

“Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!” he added.

The Tennessee Republican hit back on Twitter, writing:  “Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff.”

The president wrote on Twitter later Tuesday morning, “Isn’t it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn’t get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!”

It was not the first time Trump had claimed that Corker, who is retiring from the Senate in 2018, chose not to run again only because the president wouldn’t endorse him. Corker’s office has explicitly denied Trump’s statements.

Corker, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said Tuesday that on foreign policy Trump should “leave it to the professionals for a while.”

He also advocated a hands-off approach from the president on tax reform.

“What I hope is going to happen is the president will leave this effort, if you will, to the tax-writing committees, let them do their work, and not begin taking things off the table that ought to be debated in these committees at the proper time,” Corker said.

Source:  Businessinsider.com