Sen. Barrasso quizzed by Worland history students

WORLAND – When the Worland High School AP history II class went to Washington, D.C. the last week of March, they were unable to speak with United States Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), United States Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) or United States Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) due to scheduling conflicts. So Barrasso decided to visit the students in their classroom Monday.

"I wanted to be here so you have a chance to ask questions that didn't get answered when you were in Washington, D.C. because you didn't have me or Mike or Liz there in Washington when you were there," Barrasso said.

Most of the students had their questions prepared ahead of time but were hesitant to ask them. One student finally got the ball rolling asking Barrasso his thoughts on public lands being handled by the states instead of by the federal government. Barrasso explained to the students that most of the states don't know the issues with public lands because not many states have them. "There are only like 13 public lands states in the United States. It's interesting that a lot of states don't even know, they don't because it doesn't affect them. Nobody east of the Mississippi deals with it and even some of the Dakotas and Missouri, they have no knowledge of it. So it's an issue that doesn't get a lot of traction in Washington because there is not a majority of people who are impacted by it. So it's a harder argument to make.

"Now Cynthia Lummis who was our congresswoman when Donald Trump was elected president he invited her to interview to be the secretary of the interior and she said, 'what can I take when I visit President Trump?' He's not going to read a whole book, so she took one piece of paper, which was the map of the United States with all the public land in red for him to go over. Because he was not familiar, he was from New York, smart guy but not fully familiar with concepts of public land and how it all works. What she did was explain to the president and go over what public lands was all about. But it's that level of education that's my job, Liz Cheney and Mike Enzi's to try to promote in Congress, which is an uphill fight when a huge percent of them have no idea what we are talking about," Barrasso said.

"I think local decisions, local control whether it has to do with education, whether it has to do with lands, water, air, all of those issues I would rather have those decisions made closer to home," he added.

Another student asked Barrasso's view on the North and South Korea peace talks. Barrasso stated that at this point we don't know for sure what is going to happen but that the problems with North Korea were part of a bigger picture partially created by the last administration. "I don't know how much you follow all the things that are happening in world affairs but in addition to the committee I chair on environment and public works, I'm on the foreign relations committee. With regard to North Korea, I'm going to take you back to Syria. What happened in Syria is, we knew that Mossad was using chemical weapons on his people. President Obama said if you use chemical weapons, that's a red line in the sand and we are not going to permit it. So he used more chemical weapons. If you are the United States, the most powerful nation in the world and you draw a red line and you do nothing, it's not just Syria that sees it, the world sees it, North Korea sees it, Russia sees it, everybody sees it and they say, 'they are not going to do anything, we can do whatever we want.' So Putin took Crimea and made incursions into east Ukraine, North Korea increased testing of nuclear weaponry and the rockets as well. So you see this kind of macho man world around, people saying I can do anything because Obama is a push over.

"Now fast forward, we have a new president, Syria uses chemical weapons again, this was a year ago, not this past time, we moved a ship into the Mediterranean, 58 missiles, pinpoint accuracy, boom nailed them in Syria. Whoa this guy is for real, that made people stop doing some things. It made North Korea think differently. It made Putin think differently. If you want to use deterrents, if you are the strongest nation in the world and you want to deter somebody, you have to have the capacity to deter them. The United States, the best military in the world has always had that capacity. Then you have to have a commitment to use it, Donald Trump has a commitment to use it, Barack Obama did not. And you have to communicate your commitment to use it and it's kind of a multiplication and if any of those is zero, you have zero deterrents. So Obama said he was going to do it, 'go past the red line, I'm going to do it.' He had the capacity but he was not committed to do it. Capacity times zero times zero deterrents. Now they use chemical weapons again, this was a week and a half ago.

"A week and a half ago they used chemical weapons again, Trump said, 'I'm coming.' Russia said, 'we have our defense and missiles now in place; we are going to shoot down anything and block whatever comes in.' We moved the same boat to the same location, the same two ships in the Mediterranean; they are all looking over there at the Mediterranean, we hit them from the Persian Gulf, we hit them from the Red Sea, we hit them from a submarine and we hit them from overhead with planes from France, England and the United States. One hundred eight dead point accurate hits. We will see how long it takes before they use chemical weapons again but what we see is that Putin, they didn't shoot anything against our stuff and North Korea is saying wait a second, we better talk with the South Koreans and better say we are not going to use any nuclear weapons, stop testing and not do these things. So we will see, I mean we don't know yet what's going to happen. They know we have the capacity, we have a president who's willing to use it and he's telling them that he will use it. That's a bigger answer to your question about North Korea but none of this stuff is in isolation, it's the whole package and when we speak, Teddy Roosevelt used to say, speak softly and carry a big stick. President Trump is different, he speaks clearly and he carries a big stick. He doesn't speak softly, all presidents are different. He is very clear in his communication," Barrasso explained.

When asked about all the disrespect seen in Washington, D.C, on street signs, etc. Barrasso used a phrase from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former senator from New York: defining deviancy down. "It's kind of this downward spiral that we are seeing, you saw it at the White House correspondence dinner the other night where they had these comedians who were supposed to be funny but were just mean. That doesn't help anything. It does seem to be a disrespect of institutions. It seems to be very different now and not to the benefit of all of us. We want to work together, it's an important thing."

Barrasso fielded many other questions including the question of how he felt President Trump was doing. He stated that he felt that the president has gotten a lot accomplished so far, such as lower taxes and getting rid of regulations. He explained how President Trump stated that for every new regulation that he wanted to get rid of two. "He's actually gotten rid of 22 for every one; regulations which made it a lot harder for us in Wyoming, ranchers, farmers and energy production. So people in Wyoming feel a positiveness and confidence that we didn't have during the last administration because we felt like we were under siege and being punished with expensive regulations. With regulations there should be a cost and a benefit and you want the benefit to outweigh the cost but the costs are real and the benefits of so many things the previous administration did just seemed the cost was very high and the benefits were theoretical. He's really unleashed energy, if you really want to spur the economy, you want to unleash energy. We have such an abundance of energy here in Wyoming and in the United States; natural gas, oil, we are the No. 1 uranium producer for nuclear power, we have the wind, solar, we have it all and we need it all. People want what we have. Obama was saying no leave it in the ground. Trump's saying yeah buy it from us. The other part is the judges and Supreme Court justices. By those standards he's getting a lot accomplished," Barrasso said.