During a town hall on Tuesday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) was asked about how the Democrats can stop DOGE from gaining access to federal agencies and unilaterally blocking congressionally appropriated funding.
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00:01I'm ready for you.
00:03Oh, okay.
00:06This is Leslie Novak.
00:07Most people, if you've worked around Natchez, you know me.
00:11My question is, how do I word this?
00:16The United States, as United States citizens,
00:19one thing that our country has that you don't find all over the world
00:24is the value of life.
00:26And while, yes, it seems very scary that China has,
00:32we're putting such great tariffs on China,
00:35that does seem scary because it does mean for a certain amount of time things go up.
00:41But if you live here in Natchez,
00:44I know that several of y'all own a small business.
00:48And China selling everything to us so cheap
00:53cuts down on our people being able to make something.
01:00Like when you need a birthday shirt for an event,
01:03you can go on Etsy now and get them, with whatever image you want,
01:07three bucks a piece.
01:08So that cuts out our home small businesses.
01:11And I speak to you as an American citizen,
01:14not a Republican to a Democrat or a Democrat to a Democrat.
01:18As a United States citizen,
01:21don't you think that all of the greatest leaps that have happened in our country,
01:27before that leap got to happen and we got to the good,
01:31there was a strain.
01:32But I feel like as an American citizen,
01:35don't you think we should stand against children over in China
01:40working all day for a bowl of rice
01:43so that we get our iPhone $800 cheaper?
01:47As an American citizen, don't you think that that matters too,
01:52of how we treat others?
01:54Well, look, if you talk about human rights as a public policy,
02:02then there are a lot of countries around the world
02:06who don't treat their people right.
02:09This country is one of those countries that didn't treat its citizens right.
02:15But in time, we worked it out.
02:17So I don't want to put a bar on China
02:25that in many instances we didn't do here in our country.
02:31But I want to work on that.
02:33But you can't put a tariff on China
02:36and think it's going to hurt China.
02:39Because it's not.
02:40I tell you, the Chinese government runs the companies.
02:44And so if we are trying to help small business,
02:50I have always voted for the Small Business Administration.
02:56I have always voted for incentives for people to go into business.
03:01I've always voted for tax credits
03:03to incentivize people to come and look to this area.
03:09But it's not a level playing field.
03:11So I can't punish China with a tariff
03:14because they're just going to do less for the Chinese people
03:19and still send the T-shirts here, the caps here, and everything else.
03:24That's not good public policy.
03:27Good public policy is I've got to get you in a room
03:30and we've got to talk this thing out.
03:33And over time, we can work it out.
03:35But a tariff is going to only penalize the people that people say they want to help.
03:47Our farmers.
03:50If we put a tariff on Mexico,
03:53then our farmers in Mississippi and Louisiana
03:56are the ones that are going to get hurt.
03:59Because Mexico is going to put a tariff on everything they send here
04:04and it's going to cost more.
04:06So I encourage us to look at the bigger picture
04:11and not try to make it just a simplistic picture
04:17because it's much larger than that.
04:19And the other thing about small businesses
04:22is every time I've tried to create incentives
04:27so that small business can get a piece of the federal contract,
04:31the Republican administration goes against it.
04:35And so I can't even help the small business to say,
04:40look, 10%, 20% of this contract got to go to small business.
04:44No, the American way is we just need to let everybody compete.
04:49That small business is not going to get it
04:51because you don't have the capacity to compete.
04:54So small business, I want you to compete against your equals
04:59and not compete against the big boys
05:02because you're going to lose every time.
05:04And this administration has done away with all those programs.
05:09So you don't have to worry about small business
05:11because they won't survive
05:12because there's no incentives for that to happen.
05:16I hope this president changes his mind,
05:20but I'm not optimistic given what I see occur.
05:24I'll continue to vote for those incentives for small businesses
05:28because we don't have level playing fields.
05:32Other businesses have access to capital
05:35that small businesses don't.
05:38And so I'll continue to work for that.
05:41But if there are small businesses
05:44who can take advantage of the current program,
05:48my office will be more than happy to work with you.
05:50Hey, Mr. Congressman, thanks for being here.
05:58I'm over here behind you.
06:00Oh, okay.
06:01I want to thank you for being here, first of all, for coming down.
06:05I'm a citizen of Adams County.
06:07I did vote for you.
06:08And first of all, I want to thank you for what you did with the post office for me.
06:13I called your office and you took care of that.
06:15And second of all, I want to thank you for reinstating Jackie Malsall, which is my friend.
06:19But she always fussing at me.
06:21We're always giving it to her, but she's good people.
06:24She's good people.
06:26But you asked a lot of my questions about Social Security that I came in for, I was concerned about.
06:32I worked all my life.
06:34I put in Social Security about 41 years.
06:37And I got disabled while I can't work.
06:40So that money belongs to me.
06:41That's my money.
06:42I put that money in there.
06:44So my question to you is, Doge, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump going into the Social Security office,
06:55getting our information, doing God knows what with it.
06:58Is it Democrats?
07:00Are you leading it, doing anything in the court to stop us from doing that?
07:04Yes.
07:04Yes, we are in court trying to prevent them from doing it, but they're still doing it.
07:11We also, look, the reality is the only way we can really fix this problem is with elections next year.
07:22Next November, you can either start putting some people in office who are sensitive to the issue of Social Security, sensitive to that.
07:33Now, the only other reason is we've got to go to court.
07:38And we are winning in court.
07:42It just takes time.
07:43And, again, they're trying to make it as complicated as possible because they want to impeach the judges.
07:52They say they're not going to follow it.
07:54Elon Musk is not elected.
07:57You know, now he's supposed to, under his status, be gone in June.
08:01And we'll see whether or not that happens.
08:05I think he will be.
08:07But we'll just, it remains to be seen.
08:10I appreciate all your work, and that's that retirement and disability program that I talked about.
08:18You shouldn't have to sweat that.
08:20And I promise you, as long as I'm here, I'll fight for all the programs that keep us, as a people, healthy and alive.
08:32It's so important.
08:34You know, you can't be, number one, being a Grinch.
08:38You know, you've got to say, I want to make a difference.
08:43And so that's what we are trying to do.
08:45And we'll continue to do it.
08:47Sure, it costs money to take care of people.
08:50But, you know, if we can send folk to the moon, bring them back, you know, we ought to make sure that they're not hungry,
08:57that if there's health care, there's health care available.
09:00You know, those are some of the basic essentials that a democracy like ours ought to do.
09:08USAID.
09:08Now, folks say, well, why are we feeding people in Africa?
09:13Why are we feeding people in all those foreign countries?
09:16Well, if we don't feed them, somebody else is going to feed them.
09:22And those folks are our enemies.
09:26And if I'm a hungry country and you offer me food, I'm going to start listening to you.
09:33And so it's to our political advantage to use butter as diplomacy in working with those countries.
09:43So what's happened is this administration saw who was getting the food and they, oh, no, we're going to cut it out.
09:52But they missed something that was so important.
09:55They forgot who was raising the food, all right?
09:59The rice from USAID that feed hungry people all around the world comes from Louisiana and Mississippi.
10:10So now they're saying, oh, we didn't intend to hurt y'all, but you're the rice farmers.
10:18So now the rice farmers are coming to my office saying, you need to help us.
10:25I said, oh, what you mean?
10:28He said, well, you know that USAID budget.
10:31Our money is off in there.
10:35Catfish research.
10:37This district is a second leading producer of catfish in the country.
10:47The research is done in Stoneville right out from Leland, Mississippi.
10:53The research for catfish is in the USAID budget.
11:00And Mississippi State gets a lot of that money to help rid the research.
11:05And so now I have people coming to the office saying, we got to save that USAID money.
11:13You know, you know, I said, well, I'm with you.
11:17He said, but you got to raise your voice.
11:19You know, coming, telling me, pastor's like preaching to the choir, right?
11:26You need to tell some of them folk that's out there in the street that this is a good budget
11:31because it takes care of not just hungry people, but it feeds farmers, it feeds students,
11:39it feeds business people, everything.
11:42And so I'm convinced that there's a shot that we might be able to say that.
11:48Because believe me, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are going to provide food to those countries
11:58because they are our enemies.
12:01And if we let our enemies start feeding our allies, that means our influence gets smaller and smaller
12:09around the world.
12:10And so that's why we got to be more than just the arrogant Americans.
12:16We got to look at people and say it's all about us.
12:20And when I hear our president say he doesn't like people and all that kind of thing,
12:25that is not who we are.
12:27You know, we are a better country than that.
12:30And so when you start making public policy based on who you like and who you don't like,
12:36we're in trouble, you know.
12:41You know, a lot of you heard that Willie Lynch theory.
12:45You know, you keep folk divided.
12:48You know, the left-hand people don't like the right-hand people.
12:51The short people don't like the tall people.
12:54You know, all that kind of stuff.
12:56That keeps us divided as a country.
12:58And so normally a president's role in a democracy is to provide leadership and stability for that term in office.
13:12Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, you have to provide that.
13:16And we're not getting that, in my opinion, at this point.
13:19And that's why people are so upset with what they see going on, because they say, I know we're better than that.
13:30You know?
13:30So, so...