ICYMI: Congressman Allen Holds
Telephone Town Hall

WASHINGTON – Congressman Rick W. Allen (GA-12) held a telephone town hall Tuesday night to answer questions from residents of Georgia's 12th District. Congressman Allen gave an update on Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats’ impeachment charade, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the current situation with Iran, and more. For those who were unable to participate in the call, here are some of the highlights:

Glenn from Guyton asked about prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare.

Congressman Allen: “I am an original cosponsor of H.R. 19. This is a bill to get drug prices under control—to fix some of these problems with the departments within the government.

“What we need to do is encourage innovation. These new medicines—and I know some of them are expensive—but they’re saving tremendous dollars. They’re curing a lot of diseases because of some real breakthroughs, and we don’t need to do anything to stop innovation. But what we need to do is to promote the more low cost options for patients… We do need to cap the cost of insulin for seniors in the Medicare Part D Program. We need to increase transparency and remove the uncertainty at the pharmacy counter. We need to cut the cost of drug administration including cancer treatment for Medicare beneficiaries, and we want to cut that in half. We want to stop subsidizing other developed countries’ healthcare through stronger trade agreements.”

Channing from Baxley asked about protecting the Second Amendment.

Congressman Allen: “The bottom line is—the Second Amendment—nobody’s going to touch that.

“What we need to do is support our law enforcement. Our law enforcement knows what’s going on. Each sheriff knows what’s going on in their county, and it’s their job to keep us safe. They know who the bad people are.”

Edward from Statesboro asked what Congress is doing to address spending.

Congressman Allen: “Yes sir, it’s going to have to stop. It cannot continue in this way, and you talked about the family—what the family owes. If you remove eight zeros from what the government spends, and what it takes in, and then what it has on the credit card, it looks like this: we’re taking in about $39,000 a year, we’re spending $45,000 a year, and as you said, we’ve got $180,000 of credit card debt we’re paying interest on. No family wants to be in a position like that. In fact, no family can really sleep at night in a position like that.

“I am a member of the Republican Study Committee. It’s the largest conservative organization in this Congress. I was a part of the committee that looked at every item in the budget. We are the only group—and like I said, we’re the largest caucus in this Congress—we are the only group that actually produced a budget that balances in less than ten years, this year. We produced one last year, and the last budget that got produced and approved was in my first term, and it hadn’t been done in ten years prior to that.”

Virgil from Augusta asked what Congress is doing to address illegal immigration.

Congressman Allen: “Yes sir, I’ll be happy to answer that. Right now, we’re building a wall. Now, granted, it’s not going as fast as the President and I want it to go because, well, we can’t get the funding. We’re having to find funds through the government. The President has certain ways he can allocate monies to build this wall. The problem with our immigration laws is if you touch this ground in this country, you have rights—either refugee rights or asylum rights. It gives you the opportunity—and I’m just telling you, I didn’t vote for this law, okay—this is how old our immigration laws are: it was 1986 the last time we visited our immigration law, under President Reagan.”

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