U.S. Congressman David Kustoff was in Jackson during a swing through rural West Tennessee on Monday, April 22, and he spoke at the Old Hickory Rotary Club meeting at the DoubleTree Hotel.
The crowd was larger than usual with some looking forward to hearing more from the Congressman after the U.S. House of Representatives had four important votes two days earlier on Saturday.
Kustoff explained the legislative process for the votes to the group before explaining his votes on each of them.
“Speaker Mike Johnson decided to take these four separate votes and any that passed would be packaged together and sent to the Senate in one vote,” Kustoff said. “So they’re expected to vote on it [Tuesday or Wednesday].”
Editor’s note: The Senate passed the bill on Tuesday.
The first vote Kustoff addressed was the one he felt was the easiest for him, and that was whether or not to send funding to Israel in their conflict with Hamas and Iran.
“The world has changed a lot since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, and the 1,200 Jewish people killed that day is the largest number of Jews killed in one incident since the Holocaust,” Kustoff said. “Hamas is just a proxy for Iran on the Israeli border, and Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
“So we need to support Israel as much as we can because they want to destroy Israel, but if they do, they’re coming after us next.”
The next vote wasn’t as simple as the Israel vote, and that was whether or not to continue sending funding to Ukraine in their war with Russia.
“There are people on both sides of the issue nationwide and in this district,” Kustoff said. “But from everyone we have in the region we’ve spoken with, including former British Prime Minister David Cameron who came and spoke to the Republican Study Committee that I’m on, if Putin were to win in Ukraine, he won’t stop there.
“He’ll continue to look to expand Russia’s influence by taking over more countries, and we can’t have that growing risk to the entire world in Europe,” Kustoff said.
The next vote was about helping Taiwan.
“It’s not a question of if China will invade Taiwan, but when,” Kustoff said. “And during the pandemic when we dealt with supply chain issues that will hopefully be the worst we’ll deal with in our lifetimes, we found out how important electronic chips are to many products from cars to any electronics in your house to communications devices.
“The majority of the world’s chips are made in Taiwan, so yes we do have an interest in ensuring the security and safety of Taiwan.”
The fourth vote was about Tiktok, the social media application that’s totally under Chinese ownership.
“Tiktok is a media company, and we’ve had no other media company in this country under foreign rule, so we don’t need this one under foreign rule either,” Kustoff said.
Kustoff addressed the Southern border issue and the fentanyl crisis, which he said the two are linked. He said the House has passed the Secure the Border Act, but they’re waiting on the next stop in passing it.
“The Speaker puts gives the most important issues we deal with the HR numbers 1-10, and this is HR02,” Kustoff said. “So this is important and it’s passed for us, and now we’re waiting on [New York Senator] Chuck Schumer to call on a vote for it in the Senate, and we believe that if he did today, we have enough votes on this to pass this in both houses.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
