The Newsom Disaster | Rep. Kevin Kiley

Transcript:

Rebecca Weber: California has long been the testing ground for radical leftist policies including open borders, bloated government spending, and mandates that chip away at your personal freedom. But what if I told you that someone has a plan to news improve California once and for all? Joining me today is someone who has been on the front lines of this fight, Congressman Kevin Now he is leading the charge to end California’s disastrous sanctuary state.

Those policies and he’s going to work to stop reckless spending on high speed rail and restore common sense with voter I. D., parental rights, and real solutions for homelessness and water storage. In short, he’s making Gavin Newsom the ultimate lame duck. Congressman Kiley, welcome to Better for America.

It’s great to have you with me today.

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Thanks so much for having me.

Rebecca Weber: Well, thank you, Congressman. Now, you’ve been leading the charge to really noose improve California, as you put it. That’s no small task given the state’s current leadership. What are the core pillars of your plan and how will they shift power back to law abiding citizens?

Instead, instead of the bureaucrats who are really push,  pushing this, these failed policies, which we’ve, we’ve been watching.

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Yeah, great question. Cause that’s really what this is all about is returning power to the people of California, Newsom

and his enablers, California supermajority. And so I’m a federal representative of the United States,  congressmen.  but,  there are a lot of ways,  in which,  the Biden administration actually enabled Gavin Newsom. And so what we’re seeking to do now is roll that back and disable Newsom’s.

Absolutely. Disruptive policies. So you mentioned one, the sanctuary state that is directly interfering with federal immigration enforcement. So I’ve introduced legislation to end the sanctuary state or the free health care for illegal immigrants that we just learned is costing  California taxpayers 9. 8 billion every single year.

Actually, that figure is likely to grow. I’ve introduced legislation. To stop that immediately, the high speed rail, which is one of the if not the worst public infrastructure nightmare in U. S. History. It has right now a 100 billion funding shortfall. They’re not even going to finish the first segment.

They say now until after 2033, let alone the whole thing, which is even the New York Times said isn’t going to be built this century. I’ve introduced legislation to stop high speed rail make it ineligible for further federal funding. All of these EV mandates, mandates for electric vehicles, and trains, and buses, and  you know, everything else, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, we’re rolling all of those back because those rely on specific permission granted by the federal government.

We’re also using the initiative process in California. So we already passed a voter initiative to make crime illegal again, to have there be actual consequences for stealing. and for open drug use. And we’re looking right now,  at an initiative that would require voter ID in California elections.

Rebecca Weber: You know, this sounds like a lot of great common sense and with over 156, 000 AMAC members in California, they stand with you.

I mean, these are basic,  you know, we want to keep Americans safe.  we, we want to make sure that every legal American citizen is voting,  and we see these, many of your solutions as really, um, part of putting the American people first. So we thank you so much for your focus there and your efforts,  and you know, we’ve watched these California wildfires and,  this crisis is really exciting.

Exposing so many failures in California’s leadership. We saw President Trump confront both Governor Gavin Newsom and the Mayor Karen Bass over response times, the disaster recovery. From your perspective, what has gone wrong with wildfire management? And what do you think, what, what steps, what concrete steps should be taken to fix this so we don’t see this kind of, occurs again?

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Yeah, well, maybe the better question is what hasn’t gone. You know, California’s approach to fire prevention and water policy has been utterly devoid of common sense. We have 20 million acres of overgrown forest in our state, and you have all of these crazy policies. Laws, regulations that interfere with basic forest management practices.

They say you,  you know, they stop you from upgrading,  metal poles for power lines that have been there for a hundred years. They stop you from clearing basic vegetation and trees from right up against power lines. And so it’s turned our, our forests and our other,  areas of vegetation,  into total tinderboxes.

And that’s why we keep seeing these events, these catastrophic events happen year after year. In California. And by the way, when you have a wildfire, it’s the worst possible thing that could happen for the environment. You look at 2020 to take one example for the wildfires that year in California, the fires themselves resulted in a release of emissions that was twice as high as all of the emissions that were saved through all of these regulations we have in California.

For the previous 16 years combined. And then you pile on top of that the fact that we haven’t built new water storage in decades, that we have crazy policies that send our water straight to the ocean, all the while we have a drought emergency and tell people you can’t water your lawn, or you have to take a five minute shower, or you have to do a whole lot of other things that we shouldn’t be doing.

In the United States of America. And then what do you know when we really needed the water to fight these fires in Los Angeles, the fire hydrants were empty, the reservoir was empty,  and the, unfortunately so many people on LA paid a very high price for it.

Rebecca Weber: They sure did. And President Trump, he agrees with you.

He agrees that this is all based on mismanagement and it’s not only impacting, you know, this wildfire crisis, but harming farmers. We watch Newsom insist that those claims aren’t true. Now, based on your experience and knowing the people of California, are people waking up to Newsom’s terrible policies and recognizing that he contributed to making,  you know, These route conditions even worse.

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Absolutely. Newsome in recent polls has had literally the lowest approval rating of any governor in the entire country, which is saying something when he has a pretty Democrat state to work with. President Trump right now has a much higher approval rating than Newsome when you baseline it against him.

It’s the partisanship of the U. S. versus California. It’s something like 30 points,  higher,  for Trump over Newsom. But not only that, when you look at the last election in California, we had this initiative that rolled back some of the disastrous,  soft on crime policies that have led to anarchy in major cities in California.

It was this initiative called Prop 36. I said it was the initiative to make crime illegal again. In California, pretty novel concept, right? Gavin Newsom fought that initiative each and every step of the way. He even tried to get it removed from the ballot. Yet at the end of the day, we defeated Newsom overwhelmingly.

The initiative passed with almost 70 percent of the vote. It passed in every single California county. It even passed in Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris’s San Francisco, and it was this sweeping repudiation of Newsom In our political class. And we’re seeing that manifest itself in many different ways now.

So absolutely there is an emergent coalition for common sense in California. And I think that,  you know, president Trump sees that as well, as he said, when he came to Los Angeles on the fourth full day of his presidency, there can be no golden age without the golden state.

Rebecca Weber: I love that. Yeah. I mean, clearly governor Newsom is suffering from Trump derangement syndrome because for a man whose, whose primary job is to look after his constituents and the great people of California, for him to put illegals above and before American citizens and, and to really,  spend wasteful, wasteful spending and not look out for.

For Californians is really just such a shame. So we pray that the American people are waking up because we need real change in leadership to see that state,  be all that it can be. And,  sir, you’re leading the charge there. You’ve introduced the Safe Home Act to help homeowners strengthen their properties against wildfires with so many Californians really frustrated by the state’s lack of prevention efforts.

How does your bill offer a real solution and what challenges do you foresee in getting it passed?

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Well, my bill at least gives folks the ability to help themselves and to protect themselves by saying that if you take measures to protect your own property, if you clear out trees that might pose a fire risk, if you harden the materials in your home, then you should get a tax credit for that, you should get some tax relief, because the reality is that unfortunately you have people who have been taking these  measures paying it out of their own pockets.

And then the insurance companies don’t give them any credit for that. And so they’ve seen their insurance coverage get pulled. This is happening to millions of people in California. And then they’re forced onto what’s called the California Fair Plan, or the state’s insurer of last resort, which provides pretty threadbare coverage at a very high cost.

Sometimes you’re paying four times as much, five times as much as you were paying before. And it’s a crisis that is totally spun out of control. And Gavin Newsom and the political class in California, Just sat there as it spun out of control. As a matter of fact, they caused it to spin out of control because of the reckless policies, the negligent policies that led to these wildfires and created the fire risk.

So at the very least, what my bill says is we’re going to give folks a little bit of relief where we can. We’re going to say that you’re proactively taking measures to protect your property. We’re going to give you a tax credit for that.

Rebecca Weber: Really smart. And we thank you for that. You also recently posted that incredibly California is spending even more in health care.

You just mentioned this a few moments ago, that health care for illegal immigrants exceeding 9 billion. Can you share a little bit more about your legislation that would reduce that number to zero?

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Yeah, it’s called the No Medicaid for Illegal Immigrants Act. In California, we call Medicaid, Medi Cal, but it’s the same program and California has already well over a third of its population on Medicaid and Gavin Newsom and the legislature decided to say let’s open that up to every single person who’s here in the country in the state illegally. Now there are only six states in America that provide any form of Medicaid.  to illegal immigrants, but California is the only state that provides Medicaid to every illegal immigrant, and they told us that this is only going to cost, you know, 3 billion, then 4 billion, then 6 billion.

And yesterday,  or a couple days ago, I think it was, there was a hearing at the state capitol where the Newsom administration admitted for this fiscal year, the actual cost is more like 9. 8 billion, and that’ll become more probably next year. So it’s no wonder,  that when you look at the actual numbers of illegal border crossings,  during the latter stage of the Biden administration.

California’s San Diego sector was the number one sector for illegal border crossings in the entire country. That has not traditionally been true. It hasn’t happened since the 1990s, that California had the most illegal border crossings. But the policies of Gavin Newsom, with the sanctuary state, with his free healthcare,  for everyone here illegally, with a completely lax,  you know, reinforcement at the border, has caused the crisis to become worse in California than anywhere.

Rebecca Weber: Sir, before we let you run,  there’s a satirical petition that’s gaining traction on social media. It’s really proposing that Denmark purchase California. And this I think is in response to,  president Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring Greenland.  the campaign,  dubbed demarcification. I think it’s garnered over 200, 000 signatures.

But it,  suggests that Denmark could bring cultural elements to Hollywood.  what say you?

Rep. Kevin Kiley: Well, that’s, I hadn’t seen that and that’s,  that’s amusing.  but,  you know, I think that,  don’t give up on California. We have,  this movement of,  patriots, of parents, of folks who love our state, were born and raised here,  and who are staying and fighting.

And I think that we’re seeing major momentum as a matter of fact,  in voter registration,  Republicans have now beat Democrats five times. In a row in California, as I mentioned, we passed prop 36. We saw gains in the state legislature in both the house and the Senate. In the last election, we saw rogue district attorneys thrown out of office in Los Angeles and Oakland and San Francisco.

So there’s something happening in California. And now with the opportunities that we have in Washington, DC, with the levers that we have to work with working with the administration, I think that there’s more hope for California than there’s been in a very long time.

Rebecca Weber: Well, Congressman Colley, we thank you.

You’ve got a lot of great common sense. You’re doing such good work. And we really thank you for joining us today and sharing your insights. There are so many challenges, but great opportunities facing California and our nation. So your perspective really gives us a lot to think about. And we surely appreciate your leadership on these important issues.

Rep. Kevin Kiley: You bet. Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Weber: Well, we’ll be watching your work in Congress and we really do look forward to seeing how these policies unfold. AMAC is in strong support,  and we look forward to working with you. Thank you so much for your time and we hope to have you back with us again soon.

Rep. Kevin Kiley: I look forward to it.