Washington - In case you missed it, Congressman Rick W. Allen (GA-12) spoke with nearly 7,300 Georgians during his live telephone town hall on Tuesday evening.
Over the course of the one-hour call, Congressman Allen answered questions on a wide range of topics including workforce development, the Democrats' plan to expand the IRS, and economic issues such as inflation and our economy entering a recession.
Here are some highlights from the event:
On Democrats' call for 87,000 new IRS agents:
"These people are going to double the size of the IRS. And the reason they’re doing this is to bring in more revenue into the government to pay for this $400 billion that they’re going to put in California and other blue states to develop sustainable energy."
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"They’re raising taxes on Americans earning less than $400,000 per year. You can’t tell me we’re not going to have more inflation when they’re putting a tax on natural gas that right now is as high as it has been in my lifetime."
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"I don’t know what these people are thinking. But I will tell you this: the IRS is going to be looking at your bank accounts, it is going to be total harassment of our taxpayers. It is going to create havoc in the marketplace out there."
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On Biden forgiving $330 billion in student loans:
"It’s totally unfair to those people who paid in. But here's the problem: right now, our outstanding student loan debt is $1.6 trillion and what are you going to do going forward? These policies are unsustainable."
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"A lot of these students don’t even finish college. They borrow this money, they’re misled, and then all of a sudden, they go and find work doing something else. This program is like a lot of things in the federal government; it’s gotten totally out of hand. It needs to be fixed and that’s what we’re trying to do as we authorize the Higher Education Act."
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On securing the southern border:
"The cartels, this is not [just] illegal immigration; it is human trafficking and drug trafficking. The cartels are in business. They are making hundreds of billions of dollars. If I were president, the first thing I would do is declare the cartels as terrorist organizations."
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"The bottom line is our Secretary of Homeland Security testified before Congress and he said our border was secure. I mean, [he] completely lied to a committee of the United States Congress. What kind of people do we have running this country? It’s an abomination."
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On inflation:
"We could fix this so quick [by] unleashing our economy. The same thing we did - we went through the Congressional Review Act, we had record growth in small business, we had record wage growth and little to no inflation, because we had ample supply. We had an ample workforce and we had ample supply."
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Callers also had the option to answer survey questions on hot-button issues including inflation, illegal immigration, and the upcoming farm bill.
In a poll, respondents were asked to estimate the amount of extra money their household is spending monthly due to inflation. Of those polled:
- $50 or less: 0 percent
- $100 or more: 25 percent
- $200 or more: 25 percent
- $300 or more: 47 percent
Notably, 3 percent of respondents declined to say. Moreover, 93 percent of those polled said that Congress should work to eliminate unnecessary spending, while 96 percent of respondents indicated that the Biden administration should suspend its proposed climate regulations and deliver relief to our farmers
If you would like to sign up to participate in the next Telephone Town Hall, click here.
