(lively music) (electronic beepings) (graphic whooshing) (lively music) (lively music continuing) - Welcome to "Meet The Candidates" ahead of the March 19th Illinois Primary.

I'm Jak Tichenor.

We're joined by Republican Congressman Mike Bost of Murphysboro.

He's being challenged by former state senator in 2022, gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey of Xenia for the Republican nomination for the 12th Congressional District in Illinois.

Congressman, thanks for joining us.

- Jak, thanks for having me on.

Appreciate it.

- The 12th District is now the largest district in the state of Illinois with over like 5,000 square miles.

It includes all of southern Illinois, parts of eastern Illinois and southeastern Illinois.

You've been in Congress since 2015.

Before that, you were a longtime member of the Illinois House of Representatives.

What makes you the most qualified person to run for the Republican nomination in this district?

- Well, I'm glad you asked that and here's why.

So, I want to let everyone know that, you know, my opponent at early on said, "Well, it's time for a change."

Well, that would be the case if I was old, if I was not competent.

But here's the situation where we're really at in the Illinois 12th.

The Illinois 12th is, as you mentioned, the bottom 34 counties are 1/3rd of the state's landmass in the state of Illinois.

And it is probably, no, it is, one of the most conservative districts that's ever been drawn for the state.

But whenever it comes to why me, Mike Bost, should be and continue to be retained as your member of Congress, is the years of experience.

This is my fifth term.

Also with that, the Illinois 12th, the largest employer is Scott Air Force Base.

And the second is agriculture.

Well, when you come to Congress, you have to work to try to get those committees that are right for your district.

And normally, you have one committee, and in my case, I have three.

I have a transportation infrastructure committee, and I've been a member of that and have been since I got there.

An AG committee.

I've been a member of that except for the short time I was taken off right after I became the spokesman for the VA committee.

I'm on the VA committee still but more than that, I'm chairman of the VA committee.

And this is why that's important for the Illinois 12th District and also the state of Illinois and the nation as a whole.

You don't get on to be chairman of the whole committee.

Quite often, you get subcommittee chairs.

The last time a member south of Springfield was chairman of a full committee, it was 42 years ago.

So maybe that will let the voters know and understand what that means and how important it is.

But not only that, being chairman of the VA committee gives you an advantage.

Because the advantage would be this, every district in this United States and in our territories have veterans.

And those veterans have needs and have issues.

And when the members of Congress that represent them have to try to deal with those issues, it is our committee that they reach out to, my staff or myself, and we're able to help them with those problems, those concerns and those needs to the best of our ability.

And what that does, it gives an opportunity for us to develop, me personally, to develop those relationships that when issues come up non-veteran related, I can actually go to that member, those members, join in a coalition with them to advance a cause that is vitally important for the nation, for the state of Illinois or for the Illinois 12th District.

It allows you to develop those friendships because you can do it on a level where you're truly trying to help your constituency and theirs.

And that being a chairman, also gives you the opportunity to understand where the other chairs are at, and what issues are being moved forward, where the concerns are.

You're in some inner meetings that other people aren't in as new members.

It takes a little while to get to know how to do the job in Congress.

I thought, with my years of experience as a state representative, that I would be able to walk in and automatically go and just get it figured out right away.

The first year, year and a half, it's known as drinking from the fire hose.

And that's because you're getting such a large wealth of information, and knowing and understanding how to move that information.

- As you look at the situation right now where things sit, you mentioned Veterans Affairs there quite extensively, what do you think the biggest issue is facing voters here in the 12th District and how would you approach it?

- Well, first off, there's gonna be a bunch of other issues besides it, but it's so sad that the most important issue that polls or in communication, when you're out on the street, is the immigration issue and the loss of the control of our southern border.

Whether it's the fentanyl overdoses, it is the overcrowding of our schools with new immigrants coming in undocumented, but yet our laws say we have to educate them and the over-cost and overruns of supplying both housing and other issues for the immigrations, that's the biggest issue.

Now the economy is still a big issue, Jak, it's vitally important and people are still trying to make ends meet.

And, you know, whether in the state of Illinois because of the recent laws passed, the gun issues, those are, you know, many people get confused on the federal, but the federal, it's a constitutional issue, unfortunately.

Trying to deal with that.

But the list go on and on.

But the biggest problem we have as far as the top issue is border.

But you need to be able to not only deal with that, but deal with every other issue out there.

The Illinois 12 District come with some very unique issues in itself.

I said I'm on transportation infrastructure.

Well, remember, transportation infrastructure deals with our levees, our locks and dams, all of those things.

I am so blessed to have the most inland navigable waterways in any district in the United States.

I have, remember, I have what's just south of St. Louis, all the way down to Mississippi, all that is the Ohio River that goes up the other side of the state until it's no longer the border.

And then I have the Kaskaskia River.

Based on that, because of transportation infrastructure, we have unique problems dealing with the rivers, whether it's low water, high water, levees, locks and dams.

And that ties into the other committee, which is the AG committee, because that's how we move those row crops, whether it's soybean, corn or whatever.

- Well, let's go back to immigration for a moment.

Senate Democrats and Republicans put together a comprehensive plan on the migrant situation on the southern border a few weeks ago.

But Speaker Johnson and the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, rejected that plan.

- Yeah, but so did I.

- [Jak] What was wrong with it and what would you do differently?

- The biggest problem, very simple.

One, we already had H.R.2 over there, which should have been the base for the negotiation.

Many Republicans, although there were a few Republicans joined in with Chuck Schumer to put this together.

And I'm sorry that they did because they should have went ahead and picked up H.R.2 which has been there 11 months now, which deals with the state in Mexico, stop, catch and release, actually starting to put the wall back together, trying to truly control the border in that way.

It also gave enough agents.

Now, the problem with the bill that they were proposing is, there was a threshold of 5,000 a day that had to be made before the trigger could kick in.

5,000 a day is not controlling the border.

It's allowing a continuation of the problem, (chuckling) and even before we can start working on it.

Now, let me tell you that I really believe that we need to make sure that the Senate comes over with a true bipartisan bill that allows for the House to be involved in negotiation.

Remember, this was all negotiated in the Senate before the House ever even got a chance to be involved.

And Jak, I've been around here long enough, no one understand that if a true bipartisan is coming out, it's gonna be bipartisan and bicameral.

They never reached across the rotunda to come to the House Republicans that are in control in the House to actually start and do those negotiations.

They took a few members, very well-respecting and well-meaning Republican senators, but many Republican senators over there didn't agree with it either.

- What about the, one more question on immigration.

- [Mike] Okay!

- And that has to deal with those who are covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.

They're also known as the Dreamers.

What should their pathway to citizenship be, since a lot of those folks have been here most of their lives.

- Right, well, let me tell you, we have tried to work to see different pathways, bills and things like that.

But until we get the bleeding stopped, it's gonna be very difficult to deal with that.

And we're gonna have a whole lot of people to deal with if we do not get the border stopped.

You can't start treating the patient until you stop the bleeding.

And the bad thing is, once we get our border under control, get a wall in place, get control of what's coming across, both, and believe me, it's not just the southern border, but that's the primary problem, once we do that, then we've gotta go back in and figure out how many of these have come into the interior.

As far as the DACA, we've been trying to deal with them for years.

The problem is, where do you set the line?

And if the first act, and this is the problem here.

If your first act to come into a nation and wanting to be part of this United States, and I want to say this, thank God we're in a country that people are wanting to get in, not wanting to get out.

So I'm always happy that that's the case.

But you're kind of saying you're wanting to come in and enjoy the fruits of being an American citizen.

America is a nation of laws.

But if your first act was to disobey the law... Now remember, when you bring up DACA too, don't get... DACAs and Dreamers are two different categories.

DACA are those that were carried across by their... No.

Reverse that.

Dreamers are those that were carried across by the parents at such a young age that they didn't know any better.

And then, so that yes, they violated the law, but the question is, (sigh) they were minors, okay?

But if their parents, they're wanting to be included in that DACA too.

And that's a real problem because the first thing they did was violate the laws of this United States to come in.

That's why we have to make sure that we put enough agents and get ICE back working they're supposed to do.

Because I'm gonna tell you, I understand the concern that somebody might have for wanting to have their citizenship and wanting to be here, but unfortunately, there are a whole pile of them that are here that we don't know whether they're terrorists, we don't know which countries they come from.

The amount of people we've had come across from China is unbelievable.

Whenever I was down at the border on the third, we know that there's like 160 different countries that have come across that border, which is a true violation of the international law.

Which is actually, you're only supposed to, if you're seeking asylum, you can only seek asylum with the first free nation.

Well, if they're coming through Mexico, that's a free nation.

And that's why the Stay in Mexico policy has to be enforced onto the Mexican government.

- One other issue, of course, the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade, leaving it up to the states now to deal with the abortion issue.

Majority of Democrats in Springfield have worked to protect abortion rights in the General Assembly, but many congressional Republicans are pressing for a federal ban on abortion.

Where do you stand on that?

- I'm pro-life, I've always been pro-life.

Right now, the Supreme Court has decided, and I think right, to turn it back over to the states.

I wish our state had a different view on that.

I do believe very strongly that life begins at conception, always have.

It is a situation that even the, a lot of people will say, I've had women come up to me and go, "Well, if you were a woman, you'd understand."

Well, to tell you the truth, the women in my life, my wife, my childrens, my daughters and my granddaughters, they all are very, very strong pro-life, so much that, you know, we take people who have unexpected pregnancies in our life, we brought them into our home to try to help in that aspect.

But, the situation where the Supreme Court has made the ruling on what was originally Roe versus Wade, to return it back to the states, it is an a medical issue.

And the states are there.

Now as far as the federal government, I would support what comes before us, but right now, it is left in the states' hands.

- You were a state lawmaker for a number of years and familiar with the budget-making process when it comes to K through 12 education and all that goes along with that.

- [Mike] You bet.

- A lot of schools in the southernmost part of the state are still catching up when it comes to per pupil spending, when it comes to other districts that are wealthier, say Naperville, DuPage County, places like that.

- [Mike] Right.

- Although most of the education funding comes from local sources and the state, what's the federal government's role in that, in trying to improve outcomes for kids?

- If the federal government requires certain standards, then they should put the money back.

And I've always thought that.

Then they should put the money to do that.

Now the question is how that money is distributed.

The state of Illinois, and Jak, you and I have had a lot of conversations on this, they use the school aid formula.

Believe me, in my time in the state legislature, the school aid formula should work to equalize if you allow the budget or if you allow the formula to drive the budget.

But the state of Illinois has never done that.

The budget drives the school aid formula, which means many of the school districts come up short based on the fact that the school aids formula wasn't fully funded at the level it needs to be to make that happen.

However, the way Illinois spends money, they've got to figure out their other problems as well.

But my statement as far as where the federal government is concerned is, is that education is a state level.

If we push certain legislation through the Federal Board of Education, we should make sure that we write the check along to those states to fund what it is we're requiring it to do.

And a lot bigger problem that is going to, and it's gonna fall back on another subject we had, a lot bigger problem right now is the fact that the amount of people that have come across the border that are school children that must be educated according to our laws, to the same level as our children, are not only sucking the resources, but also a lot of our smaller school districts, it is sucking the ability to educate at the speed in which our children need to be educated away from.

Because when a teacher has to deal with someone, a student that English is not their primary language, that means that school district has to go out and find someone who's bilingual, and those teachers are not always available.

And many of our schools have multiple languages in there.

- You mentioned earlier that agriculture is one of the largest employers, of course, in the state of Illinois, in the Midwest.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans have been going head to head on negotiating a new Farm Bill in the past few days.

- You bet.

- But they are still far apart on issues like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP.

They're also apart on what environmental regulations should be a part of this and how much to spend on it.

What would you do with the Farm Bill if it was up to you?

- Well, I'm on that AG committee and here's what we're working on.

Now what people don't understand is, is that, the SNAP program is actually 80% of the Farm Bill.

Now the real argument about the SNAP program was cured when Kevin McCarthy negotiated with the administration on the spending cap.

And what he did was he was able to get a commitment from the administration, without the Farm Bill, the work requirements are still going to be in place.

So that's a good thing.

So let me explain where we're at with the Farm Bill.

The Farm Bill got slowed down because of the motion made by the eight, well one Republican, and then an eight vote joined with him with the Democrats to throw Kevin McCarthy out.

Which took us three weeks to get the new speaker.

I like both Kevin McCarthy and I like Johnson, I think both of them are good.

But the problem is, you switch speakers, it's not just three weeks out.

We're 11 weeks behind trying to get things done.

So that took away- - So where was- - A lot of our, oh, go ahead.

- No, you go ahead.

Finish it.

Finish the thought.

- That took away a lot of our time to work on the Farm Bill.

But here's where we're at on the Farm Bill right now.

The Farm Bill itself, it's supposed to be done every four years.

We did a CR that expand in the other CR, that actually makes it to where this Farm Bill will work the way it had for the last four years, until September of this year.

It was supposed to have been passed September of last year.

So, what it's going to do is, we're going to be working on that by the end of the spring in the House and go over to the Senate.

What we also are looking is a clawback on money not used from the last COVID bill to roll over into Title I, which basically will increase your base for, Title I has to do with the crop insurance and the safety net, which hasn't had an inflationary account built up.

And that's why we had to try to find that money to direct it towards that side.

The other issue that's out there that we're looking at is, what we've discovered on the SNAP program, the distribution of food that through the SNAP program it's been done in a very old style.

And we believe we can save as much as $30 billion by revamping that program, to redial and make sure that we're getting the food levels either higher or lower into each area based on population and based on need.

So that one, we don't have as much waste; and two, we can redirect that stuff and save that much money in the way we're directing.

So we're working on the Farm Bill at this time.

We're gonna continue to do that.

- Coal used to be king in Illinois with over 10,000 miners at one time being employed.

After the Clean Air Act of 1990, most of those jobs went away.

What is Congress' role in trying to develop sources of new renewable energy for the state of Illinois and the nation?

- Well, let me tell you, you've always known me as an all-in guy.

I think we walked away from coal too fast.

I still think that there's, obviously, we still have some coal miners working.

And we have the cleanest coal burning fire plant in the United States, in my district.

In the world, in my district!

And so, you can't just rip the base load off the grid.

They also stopped, you know, they tried to say that natural gas is this polluter and you gotta pull it.

The problem is, and we've seen it with Texas, even if you go to solar and wind, what you're gonna have is, the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

So what we need to do is make sure we're making an all-in investment.

We need to keep the power grids working or we're gonna see in the state of Illinois, particularly, the concern I believe that we're gonna have with their laws that they have passed, we're gonna see rolling brownouts and blackouts.

Now, that's just not me saying that.

That's the experts saying that.

And the power grid in this United States, there's actually three power grids.

There's Texas, there's the east of the Great Divide and there's west of the Great Divide.

And so we need to make sure that we have the resources necessary.

Look, I'm all for it, if you want to do solar and wind.

But one thing we're doing is we're having to tax supplement them.

And the most important thing I believe is making sure that we don't take prime farmland out of production by using solar and using wind.

We have to be very careful with these brown fields.

- Couple of foreign policy questions before we go.

We've got about four and a half more minutes.

The continued military and financial support for the state of Israel is driving wedges between Americans on the situation with the Palestinian civilian casualties and, of course what happened with the October Hamas terrorist attacks.

What is the United States going to do at the end of the day when it comes to brokering a peace agreement in the Middle East?

- You've got to make sure you allow Israel to do what Israel needs to do.

They had an attack, that if you do it percentage-wise, was bigger than what we had at 9/11.

We should allow Israel, who is our greatest ally, to pursue Hamas, to make sure that they have conquered them where they will never rise to power again.

They cannot free up Gaza to have a government run by Hamas.

Never could they trust that.

There will always, and should always be, a presence of someone giving oversight in Gaza.

Because especially if Hamas is allowed to survive.

And Hamas should not be allowed to survive.

We should support our allies in that.

Once we get there, then we can be involved with a peace negotiation that is safe for Israel and the Gaza residents as well, minus Hamas and any other terrorist group.

- One more on foreign policy.

Ukraine, of course, is desperate for continued American military and financially to try to drive the Russians out, but some of your congressional Republican colleagues are questioning how long the United States can keep that up.

And what is your view on the situation with Ukraine and how do you feel about continued military and financial support?

- So here's what we've done.

So the first two bills for Ukraine, I supported.

But then our studies showed that the leadership in Ukraine was maybe not as responsible as we would like whenever we are directing their money, that money to go to beans, bullets and Band-Aids.

And so what we end up have to do is, if we're going to move forward with more support for them, especially if my vote's gonna be on it, it has to be that we will have oversight and control of the money and flow of that money so that we can make sure it is being delivered towards the mission, which is to keeping Ukraine safe.

Ukraine, get them through this war.

Have Russia go back under the original borders, to quit their invasion.

To send a clear message to Russia, to China and to ever anyone else who would be aggressive against a free nation for whatever reason that might be.

I believe that that investment, like I said, with those oversight provisions must be made.

Because if we allow Ukraine to fall, I guarantee you Taiwan will be next.

And these are the big issues that are out there and that's why it's vitally important that whoever your member of Congress is, isn't doing an on-job training, and instead of having the experience they need to understand how these issues are playing out.

- What about continued support for NATO?

Former President Trump has called that into question many times most recently.

- Yeah, and let me say this quickly.

I know we're short on time but I will say this.

Having other members of NATO pay their fair share is not wrong.

They need to get a clear message.

I think they got it from the former president.

Now NATO had a reason why they're there.

We need to make sure that NATO does that mission.

And there are many articles in the NATO agreement that we need to uphold.

But having making sure, and sometimes that has to be with a pretty firm hand, that those NATO countries that haven't been paying their fair share, are paying their fair share, is vitally important.

- Congressman Mike Bost, thanks so much for taking the time to join us on "Meet The Candidates."

- Thanks, Jak.

- [Jak] We appreciate it.

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