Scalise Shares 2016 House Agenda With WWLTV
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La.) today appeared on set with WWLTV’s “Eyewitness Morning News” to discuss his priorities for 2016, which includes strengthening our national security, fighting the Administration’s radical regulations and reforming the flood insurance program.
Click here to watch his conversation with Eric Paulsen and Sally-Ann Roberts
Below are highlights from this morning’s interview:
On reforming the flood insurance program: “We are working on putting a coalition together, again, later this year so that we can address it, make some more reforms, make the program more solvent, and also try to encourage a private marketplace for flood insurance while not having a program that would force people to sell their own homes.”
On preventing a lapse in funding of the flood insurance program: “I don't want to see us wait until the midnight hour. So in 2016, when there is a very wide bipartisan majority in Congress that wants to get this fixed the right way…[last year] you saw large numbers of Republicans and Democrats coming together because it literally would have affected almost every state in the country. Clearly it would devastate South Louisiana.”
On lifting the ban on crude oil exports: “One of the things we were able to get done just a few months ago was to lift the ban on oil exports. You already see Louisiana benefit from that. So for decades, Congress had a law that blocked us from competing against OPEC. OPEC literally had the market cornered on selling oil internationally. So we finally removed that barrier.”
On Scalise’s Advocate op-ed fighting the Administration’s radical regulations: “A lot of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Gulf of Mexico is still closed to exploration where there are people that want to go out there and explore for oil. Some of these rules and regulations coming out, the latest well control rule by the Department of Interior that would make it very difficult to drill in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't make any sense. It hurts safety and we are trying to get the Department to reverse that rule…those kinds of regulations are jeopardizing America's national security and hurting Louisiana's economy.”
On the President’s Second Amendment Overreach and lack of a strategy to defeat ISIS: “If you want to do something, go after ISIS. The shootings in San Bernardino, our own experts tell us that it was terrorist related tied to ISIS. Yet the President hasn't laid out a strategy to defeat them…the President's reaction is to try to take away and limit the rights of law-abiding gun owners. It's not the answer. The President himself acknowledges what he's proposing wouldn't even solve the problem. But the President can't change the Second Amendment in the Constitution. He can't just write some new law on paper and then just do it. So, we are going to fight anything he tries to do and ultimately he's not going to be successful…he ought to be focused on the real problem, come up with a real strategy.”