SFR is with Rep. Ken Buck

Click here for the audio version.

FG: We’re back. I’m pleased to say with another distinguished member of the House of Representatives. He is Congressman Ken Buck. He represents the people of the fourth congressional district of Colorado. He is no stranger to Washington, although I don’t think he prefers it to his own beautiful part of the country. He has served with distinction in various capacities here in Washington over the years and he is now a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. He is a member of the Subcommittee of the Judiciary of Immigration and Border Security, a subject we’re interested to talk with him about. Congressman let me first say, welcome. It is great to have you with us. Congratulations on still being the president of the freshman class and congratulations on your election to the Congress. It’s great to have you here.

KB: Thank you very much Frank. It’s great to be with you.

FG: We’ve been talking a bit about Iran and I thought it would be useful to share your insights about, well the deal that’s coming but more to the point, the nature of the party to the deal – the Iranian regime and whether in your estimation, this is a reliable partner for anything, let alone a multi-multi-billion dollar windfall in exchange for promises about their nuclear weapons program.

KB: Yes I think that recent history is very clear that Iran is our enemy. They continue to spout rhetoric that is insightful in in sighting their people to hate America, to hate our allies. In the Middle East, they have done everything they can to harm our young men and women who were bravely fighting in Iraq and frankly in other countries, they have spread terrorism throughout the world and very clearly do everything they can to undermine the United States’ interests. And for the United States to be engaged in negotiations with Iran in a way that would require us to trust them is just, I think, very short sided and really ignores their intentions in these negotiations.

FG: It’s interesting Congressman Buck I can’t think of another time and maybe there is another instance but this seems to be pretty extraordinary – where one nation has actually not just been describing us as their enemy but actually engaged in what can only be described as acts of war against us since 1979, when this regime came to power. And we don’t acknowledge that. We don’t even seem to recognize the true nature of their enmity and the extent to which they’re acting upon it. Can you think of another instance where this has been the case?

KB: I can’t and I will say that we have acknowledged for more than thirty years that they’re a state sponsor of terrorism and this year, this President decides to remove them from that list, in spite of their activities in Yemen and the Middle East and across the world. They haven’t walked away from Hezbollah or Hamas. They have doubled down on their terrorist activities and yet this President thinks it’s appropriate to ignore those activities for the purposes of promoting a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It’s amazing to me how short-sided this effort is.

FG: Yes well this is not going to be a non-proliferation treaty, that’s for sure. It’s not a treaty and it’s certainly not going to reduce proliferation. If anything, I think it’s going to increase proliferation. As you know Congressman, one of the places in which this is particularly worrying to me, as I was talking with one of your colleagues about earlier, Congressman Rob Bishop, is with respect to the ability to act on some of these threats of “Death to America” that the Iranians will be in a position to do when they get this nuclear weapon, namely attacking the electric grid with something called electromagnetic pulse.” One of your other colleagues, Congressman Trent Franks, has warned that this is something that they’ve doctrinally espoused now repeatedly. How concerned are you about the vulnerability of our grid and the necessity of protecting against this threat among others?

KB: I’m very concerned. I think that Iran does anything they can, whether it’s in the cyber security area or the threat that you just mentioned or in so many other less complex ways to undermine the United States’ interest, but I absolutely believe that if they had the capacity to inflict severe damage on the United States, they would take advantage of that as soon as they could.

FG: One of the reasons we’re so keen on protecting the grid is to make that less of a threat. Our guest is Congressman Ken Buck of the fourth congressional district of Colorado, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and I wanted to ask you about a matter that is of great concern these days, as a result of growing evidence of the really dangerous repercussions of the President’s unwillingness to enforce our immigration laws. Either with respect to border security or among other things with respect to prohibiting sanctuary cities, one of which is San Francisco. It has been much in the news as a result of a murder there last week. Congressman what are your thoughts on the state of our immigration and borders security policies and the failure to enforce the law?

KB: You know Frank, I was a prosecutor for twenty-five years. I started with the federal government, went to the U.S. Treasury Office and prosecuted, among other things, aggregated re-entry cases with illegal immigrants. Then I was elected as district attorney in Northern Colorado and I dealt with the issue from the local and the state side of the issue. I’m very concerned. This President has set a very clear message that he is not going to enforce parts of the immigration law, that he is not going try to influence or cajole or encourage communities like San Francisco to obey federal law and cooperate with federal authorities in this area and has really caused a mess. It’s not a mess that Congress can or should clean up – this is a situation where the laws are on the books and this President has not only refused to enforce those laws but undermine them by creating amnesty programs on his own, and he is acting in my view, terribly irresponsibly in this area.

FG: And worse in a way, is his assault on notably, the state of Arizona for having taken upon itself to enforce the laws in the absence of federal authorities doing so. This is obviously had a chilling effect on states around the country doing that job. Where do you think this leaves us at the moment? It certainly seems to me it’s serving as a magnet for still more of this kind of illegal immigration. Is this something we can do anything – you say Congress can’t do much about this, is there any option short of changing the President of course, that would result in the reaffirmation of the importance of respecting and enforcing the law?

KB: Well it’s interesting that we’ve had these two conversations because among other things, having an open border allows terrorists to come into this country as well as illegal immigrants that come into this country for other purposes – some of them for benign reasons – some of them are coming to work and some are coming here to sell drugs or do other things. So the problem is that if Congress acts and passes an immigration law, this President has demonstrated in the past that he will enforce those areas of that law that he likes and not enforce the areas of the law that he doesn’t agree with, and that really undermines the ability of Congress to develop a political consensus that we should move forward in some comprehensive way to change immigration law. When this President enforces immigration law, it will put Congress in a lot better position to actually develop new and more effective laws. And frankly – fund border security and other programs in a more vigorous way.

FG: Congressman, we are hard out of time, I know you’ve got to get back to your day job. We appreciate so much what your doing on Capitol Hill, glad to have you there and congratulations on remaining president of the freshman class. I hope you’ll join us again soon and I wish you the best luck going forward.