(upbeat music) - This is "Meet The Candidates" on WSIU.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

This episode, we're talking with Republican Mike Bost, the sitting representative for the 12th Congressional District in Illinois, which now covers 34 counties across Southern Illinois.

Representative, thanks for coming in.

- Jennifer thanks for having me in - As I mentioned, 34 counties now for your district.

- Right.

- Can you tell us a little bit about your path to the representative seat and how this change really impacts how you legislate?

- So, as everyone knows, I've represented the Illinois 12th.

This is still referred to as the Illinois 12th, but it was 11 and one third counties before.

The only area that we lost, was Madison County was taken away completely and then a section in the valley in St. Clair County.

But that population was so great, it took 24 new counties to pick that up.

And probably the best way to describe the district itself, is if we go from just, if we put St. Clare County in there, but then start at Monroe County and go all the way down the Mississippi River, come back the up the Ohio River, start up the Wabash River, and the Wabash turns away from the state of Illinois, no longer the state line go 12 miles north of that and everything in between, and that is it.

It's a lot of agriculture.

The three, the highest employers are, Scott Air Force Base is the highest employer.

In the old district, it was Scott Air Force SIU Carbondale, and then Ag.

Now it's Scott Air Force Base, Ag, SIU, Carbondale.

Because you have picked up so much farmland and so much property, and some great areas too but at population wise, it's a very rural area.

- You are a former state representative as well as now a current congressman.

What would be your number one priority if reelected?

- Well, let me tell you, the first thing we wanna do, is we want to control the budget.

We need to not allow 87,000 IRS agents to be hired.

The bright side of our constitution, is the house controls a purse.

If you're not paying 87,000 IRS agents, then we won't have this problem.

There's other places we could use that.

Also, when the infrastructure bill was passed, almost half of it is for a green new deal.

Things that are not actually infrastructure.

Redirecting that fund towards infrastructure, groves, bridges, redirecting towards locks, dams, inland ports, seaports, redirecting it towards airports, water and sewer lines, and also connectability for the internet.

Those are true infrastructure needs and we need to redirect that money and do that.

We also need to make sure that we're working on taking revenues and redirecting them in the VA where we had a whole lot of covid money and I'm ranking member on the VA, which means if we take the majority, I'll be chairman of the VA.

So we will need to be redirecting that to make sure we're providing the services for the veterans that we need.

Especially since we have passed several pieces of legislation now that have made it better for our veterans.

We just need to make sure it's done correctly.

- Sure, can you talk a little bit about your effectiveness as a lawmaker in terms of how you reach across the aisle, work within your own party?

- Sure, so whenever I was in the state legislature, I always tell people, "Some of my best friends were Democrats, some of my best friends were Republicans."

In Congress, that's a little tougher.

You can work real well with those people are on committees.

You just don't get to know everybody 'cause there's 435 of us.

So my accomplishments have been to work on the Mission Act for the VA. We also have worked in the VA specifically to speed up the appeals process where it used to take seven to 10 years for the appeals process.

We're now down to 18 months to two years to try to work through the appeals process.

Accomplishments that I've also worked on, are the Safety Act.

Many of our schools right now have through received through the Department of Justice because of safety Act, school safety grants.

And each is unique.

And that's the reason why we put it in place that way.

For instance, I got Lit Creek in the district and they're most important thing was to put a cell tower in so that the teachers could call 911 because before they couldn't even get out.

Other ones have safety doors, staffing all of these things.

So those are just a few items that we've been working on.

Also working across the aisle.

The VA is supposed to be a nonpartisan committee.

Unfortunately, during this administration, it's become a little bit partisan.

My hope is to straighten that out.

I've always been able to work across the aisle.

That doesn't mean that I don't hold the beliefs of my district, but the experience I have has taught me that conflict is inedible, combat is optional, and we need to make sure that we're doing that.

We're working together finding common ground.

- I wanna clarify, just in case people are watching, maybe confuse the Safety Act that you're referencing, is the Federal Safety Act.

- [Matt] That is correct.

- Not the one that's causing controversy.

- Not the bad one.

- In the state of Illinois.

- No, no.

Yeah, that's not one I would've supported, right.

- Understood, the economy is recovering somewhat from the Covid pandemic, but people are still dealing a lot with the high cost of inflation, rising prices.

How would you help bring those prices down and help families stretch their dollar more?

- Great, so let me tell you where we're at right now, 8.3% inflation rate.

We haven't had that in 40 years, and we didn't actually have it 40 years ago.

It wasn't even that high, we're actually higher, but that's caused by the gas prices.

And let me tell you what 8.5 means.

8.5 means that you lose one month's salary in what your dollars can buy.

We have to change that.

How do we change it?

One, we go down the path and I've already sponsoring legislation to try to reinstate the Keystone Pipeline to make sure that our oil production goes back online the where it was 24 months ago.

We want to make sure that we put in place legislation that allows for the open pursuit of our energy all in.

That doesn't mean I don't agree with solar.

It's not that I don't agree with wind, but we have to have an all in energy policy.

That's what we haven't done over the last 24 months.

We need to correct that.

One of the bills that's out there that I am touting that we wanna make sure and send a clear message.

Remember the strategic oil reserves are specifically put there for what?

In case we get into an emergency situation.

Usually that would be war, okay?

Unfortunately, for political purposes where we had the highest strategic oil reserve to try to bring energy rates down, the president tap those, what my bill would do, is if the department of energy is requested by the president for non-emergency reasons to tap the emergency oil reserve, it would automatically free up the permitting process offshore and in our national areas where we were doing it before, because we have to generate the energy that allows us to be independent from other nations, and we need to get also the supply chain straightened out and make sure that we're onshoring our products.

We're too indebted, we're too reliant on China with too many things.

Our auto chips have proved that.

- A lot of it comes down to jobs and I know that that's been a big priority of yours over the years.

How would you increase job retention and job creation in this area?

- So we have been doing a whole lot of this working with our employers.

One thing you need to, first off, a lot of it has to do unfortunately, with what the state of Illinois's laws are.

So let's look at at the national point, what we're doing.

One is we're actually working with companies to do, to find out what their problems are on why they were offshore.

Now we're bringing them back, we're bringing them back during the former administration, and a lot of those policies have changed.

One policy that did not change that I'm really glad, and that was the 232, which is through the Thomas Commission, the administration and the former administration put in place.

This administration has kept it in place.

And that is things like where you're dumping, now, dumping means you're flooding the market.

China floods the market in the steel industry, and by doing that, what they do is, they then knock the market off its game and our companies then go out, for instance, Granite City Steel several years ago had lost 3000 jobs.

They came back, now unfortunately they're moving to Arkansas after we had got them back.

But they are still staying in the United States.

We've got to make sure that we use tools like this to encourage entrepreneurs and business that's already out there to either expand and or create new products that move it forward.

We can't let it be done in other countries and be in a disadvantage.

And that's where we have to make sure that working through the Commerce Commission, we get those things done and that creates the jobs.

- You touched on this a little bit earlier, but I wanna go into it as well.

One of the biggest drivers of the economy in this region for many, many years, was the coal industry, natural gas and oil production.

But there is this push toward renewable energy.

How do you strike the balance between the economy that existed here in the past, but also prepare for a cleaner and greener future?

- Two things, one is we need to first off, really watch the science.

We have in this state and in this matter of fact this district, and everybody can argue though it's not, but it is, the Prairie State Energy is the cleanest coal burning power plant in the world.

It produces steam and only steam.

It collects all the carbons, it collects everything like that and uses it in concrete.

Those are the things that we need to make sure of but does that mean we just say, "No, only coal and do that?"

Natural gas is the cleanest burning product that we can have and unfortunately, people need to understand that as well.

That doesn't mean we don't continue to produce and encourage the use of solar panels and wind.

Now we have to make sure, unfortunately, what we're discovering with wind now as we give the offsets for tax incentives to build the windmills, we're not doing the tax incentive to take them down or trying to figure out what to do with them after they have lived their life.

And we're into that point now, California has a tremendous amount of that in the area between Yucca Valley and Palm Springs.

And we were actually out visiting that and as all of those start to wear out, we've gotta figure out something there because they come with a waste product too, okay?

And the solar panels, the one thing we wanna make sure, is that we use those and where we put our solar farms, is in brown fields.

The big fear I have right now in this district, and I'm working with the Farm Bureau on this and others, people are getting offered big dollars to take farmland out of production.

We can't afford to do that.

So these are the type areas that we're gonna have to work on and balance.

- The 12th congressional district also includes areas like the Shawnee National Forest, state and federal recreation areas.

How do you work to preserve and protect those areas and in some cases, expand them to build a greener future?

- Yeah, let me explain working with and remember the USDA or the Forestry Service, is under the Ag Committee, which I've been a part of though I'm not on the Ag committee now.

Our staff keeps a constant breast because of our district the way it is.

The proper handling of our forest is something that we make, need to make sure we do.

And what we have here is in the Shawnee Forest, is the smallest forest in the United States.

It's still a big forest, but it's the smallest forest in the United States.

We have to make sure working with the, for US forestry Service that not only do we take care of that land, but we allow it to do what it's really good to do and that is have recreation.

We have to make sure that if we have horse trails, that they're done in the right way.

If we have the all trained vehicles, they have to be done in a sensible way.

Balancing that and also with what our investments are at Crab Orchard Lake as well as Rin Lake and matter of fact Rin Lake, we just celebrated an anniversary there because we need to remember why each of the lakes that we're working with, that either the Forestry Services involved with or the Army Corps of Engineers.

We have to make sure that the lakes that are water supplies are protected and the rules are followed.

Too many people sometimes want to build right up to the water's edge.

Lake Springfield discovered they can't do that.

It causes pollution in the lake to the level that you can't keep the clean water supply.

We have to make sure that we protect both Rin Lake and Carlisle Lake and Kincaid Lake.

- Sure, sticking with that same topic.

Your district, as you mentioned before, is bordered by two major rivers.

The Wabash could be considered a mid-major maybe in its classification.

How do you protect those waterways but also protect those who have land on the sides of those waterways and reinstall levies or reinforce them.

- Right, we have to make sure that we make the investment.

One thing that was for sure that we worked in with the infrastructure bill, we wanted make sure that we knew and understood that those levies and the investment in those levies, is how it's important.

I've dealt with those levies for years, whether it's a state rep, was an accounting board member, and now on the federal level, and remember this, you're right in the fact of those waterways.

Actually Illinois 12th has the most navigable waterways of any state, any district in the nation.

Because why?

I've got the Mississippi, I have the Ohio, and I have the Cascadia.

All of those are navigable waterways.

Now they're used for recreation, but they are vitally important to the transportation of goods throughout this nation.

It's not just corn and soybeans either.

It is everything from lime products.

Also now as we're working on to try to get the port down in Alexander County where right now with the supply chain, you see the offloading of the ships on the East coast and the west coast.

What we could do now with the new boats that are being created that can move the containers, we can have container ships, cargo ships that can come up the Mississippi because they have such a low draft and be offloaded right in the central of the united, part of the United States, right at Carro.

That's what we're trying to strive for.

That's why it's important to make sure those waterways work.

We've also gotta make sure where places like Lynn Small levy that blew and that course of that river is trying to change.

As much as people wanna say, it's not a navigation problem and it really is, the coast guard realizes my job has been to argue with the Army Corps to make them understand it, to explain to them when a barge is parked in somebody's field, that's a navigational problem.

So these are the type things you learn as being a member and then you develop those abilities to work with those agencies and understand why you've gotta work with them.

- Let's move to education.

The pandemic has exposed a lot of disparities when it comes to education funding.

What would you do to make sure at the federal level that schools in your district have the resources that they need?

- Well, one thing we need to do is, no matter whether it's the Republicans in charge or Democrats in charge, you want to make sure that you give the locals the control they need, send the money back to the states, have their state boards of education and the local boards of education be the guiding factor, because how you provide education in deep southern Illinois, is different than how you might provide it in New York City.

How you provide education in Anna Illinois, could be completely different than what you have in East St. Louis.

Same thing, we have to understand local control.

That's the local government.

Allow the local government to exist.

There's certain guidelines you gotta put in.

You have to make sure there are certain standards that are reached.

We have to also understand that the diversity of our education system has changed in a lot of ways.

One, that the jobs that we need to pursue.

So many times we were encouraging higher education to get a four year degree.

We are now diversifying because what we realize is, we need welders and we need mechanics and we need all of these others and we need to make sure that we make that investment and we do it as young as possible so that people can, so that we can have the employment that we need to compete in a worldwide market.

And the only way we do that, is for making sure we're providing the education money we need.

- That dovetails right into the next question I had, which takes us into higher education.

- [Matt] You bet.

- Too often you're hearing about families and students who are leaving a four year institution with an astronomical amount of debt.

How would you help provide higher education to those students and families, but keep the cost lower and more manageable?

- Well, it's not by providing free education, let me tell you that, because free education's not free.

Matter of fact, if you're here at SIU and you ask a professor, "Will you work for free educating these students that are in coming into your class?"

That's probably not going to happen.

So we have to come up with ways to make sure that we can provide education, but make it affordable.

We've gotta make sure that we make the investment but understand this, we've got to, well, one thing is, from my VA side, we wanna make sure that those veterans get the education that they need.

And through the pay grants and also through the GI Bill.

the GI Bill, we continue to improve.

Understand, I have a unique situation.

I was so lucky that in the Marine Corps, whenever I was there, that the GI bill, the old GI bill had went away just before I went in and the new GI bill came about just after I got out.

However, I was lucky enough to be from the state of Illinois where if you serve in the state of Illinois, serve and come back to the state of Illinois, you get the grant to allow you for a waiver of your tuition.

We'd got to look at unique ways to make sure we're providing for education, but we also make sure that the education they're getting, is something that they can pay for in the future.

Right now, you can spend way tremendous amount of money on getting a degree in social work and never make it enough to pay off that degree.

So we've gotta look for unique ways on providing that education, whether it's more at home study, pandemic did provide that, our universities have to adjust in that manner too.

- You bring up the pandemic and that changed a lot of the ways that people look at public health.

How would you make sure that your district, that the region is better able to handle public health emergencies in the future?

- Right, well, let me tell you that one is we did learn a lot from the pandemic.

We learned that telemedicine works.

We've got to make sure that when we pay for through Medicaid or Medicare, or VA, that we understand that telemedicine is a way to provide the services and that the providers should be able to be reimbursed.

That's one issue we're dealing with in the VA. Also, making sure that our veterans have those services available to them without having to travel hours to get to the service.

So this is all, it has dovetailed into a case where there are certain services that you definitely want to see in person.

We gotta trust our medical providers to say which ones those are, and also the patients themselves to make those decisions.

Hey, I just really need to talk to the doctor.

Can I do it on a Zoom call?

That'll be great, or do I need to come in?

Now there's new technology and we're using it in the VA. You can actually, and it's so wonderful that we're making these investments.

You can actually set in front of the screen and talk to your doctor and your vitals are being picked up on the screen.

Your vitals are being picked up on the screen.

Your blood pressure, your heart rate, all of those things.

So the new technology, making them sure that we're making those investments will only better the opportunity in rural communities for us to provide healthcare.

- Another healthcare issue that has popped up over the last several months, is the overturning of Roe versus Wade.

At the federal level, should there be legislation that would outlaw abortion at the national level?

- No, the supreme court got it right.

They returned it to the states.

They also need to understand that the states have those rights.

Now, in the state of Illinois, we have abortion up to the time of birth.

We also, those abortions are free.

So I think the state of Illinois has to deal with an issue, and that is, do they want to pay with their tax dollars?

Do we as citizens of the state of Illinois want to pay for abortions through their tax dollars for all the states around us as well?

That's something the state of Illinois has to worry about.

What I do disagree with, is the VA has violating at this time a 1992 law that says the VA cannot provide abortions.

Now they are arguing and they're gonna be facing lawsuits over the fact that they are providing abortions and already providing abortions illegally.

Violation of the 92 law.

They claim that there was another law in 2006 that gave the authority to the secretary of VA to set standards to provide healthcare.

If it would've been specific to abortion, it would've said specifically to abortion.

It did not override that.

And I think that's gotta be panned out in the courts.

Right now, there has been and always has been for many, many years, the Hyde amendment.

The Hyde amendment says that taxpayer burn funded abortions cannot be done unless rape, incest, and life of the mother.

Understand what it says, rape, incest, life of the mother.

How the VA is getting around it, is they're claiming that they tried to argue before our committee that it was Roe Wade.

No, it says rape, incest, life and health of the mother.

Then you ask what is the health of the mother?

And that goes into a whole different realm.

And so by the time it's said and done, they're almost as wanting to provide abortions even to the level that the state of Illinois does, even in violation of both the 92 law and Hyde amendment.

- Let's move on to violence, specifically gun violence, which continues to be a problem.

How do you balance combating crime with respecting the second amendment?

- Well, here's what you do.

You make sure that you enforce the laws that you have.

You had mentioned earlier in our conversation about Illinois's Safe Act.

See, that in itself is a problem that will cause more violent crime and then not the prosecution of the criminals to the level that they need to be prosecuted.

We need to enforce our existing laws.

Let me tell you that the state of Illinois is the best example.

More people killed in the city of Chicago every year than most cities in the world.

But yet, the gun laws have always been in place there.

It isn't the people that are, and I can guarantee you that most of those crimes are not committed when somebody with a (indistinct) are a concealed carry permit.

But not only that, we're also having the problem with the violence against our police officers.

A whole lot of that has to do with the rhetoric that was spread out there about defunding police and making, I'm gonna tell you, my job, I guarantee you, is to support our police officers.

Make sure, that doesn't mean there's gonna be, that we support bad cops because who's the roughest on bad cops?

Good cops.

And that's exactly what we want to do, is allow that to make sure that good cops stay on the beat.

Right now in the state of Illinois, I'm afraid we're gonna lose several.

And it doesn't matter if it's Republican sheriff or Democrat sheriff, Republican officer, Democrat officer.

They all know the dangers of what's going on.

So it is a balancing act but the Second Amendment is in our constitution, and it is there for a reason.

It is not and will not, and if the people want to try to change it, they can.

It won't be with my vote.

- Just a short amount of time that we have remaining, less than a minute.

How would you increase broadband access for people in your district?

- It's fantastic.

And let me tell you that I am so happy because there's new technology that I installed in my house because I couldn't get it.

And we are making sure that we're making the investments on the tax breaks to these companies that are providing the new technology.

It was line of sight.

Now, the new technology is actually going a little further than that.

That's what helped me receive it 'cause I'm at the end of the line.

And let me tell you, we've gotta make sure we make that investment because our actual landlines are wearing out and the people are using them are fewer and fewer and fewer.

We have to make sure that the states make that investment as well as the federal government.

- Representative Mike Bost, thank you for your time.

- Thank you Jennifer.

- And thank you for joining us on "Meet the Candidates" here on WSIU.

You can find all of our episodes by going to WSIU.org and find us on our YouTube channel.

I'm Jennifer Fuller, thanks for joining us.

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