Station:   KOA, 850AM

Show:      Mike Rosen Show

Guests:    Beauprez

Link:        http://www.850koa.com/media/podcast-mike-rosen-shows_rosen/

Date:       July 22, 2014

Topics:     Governor of Texas Rick Perry

Click Here for Audio

 

[The following represents notes and transcribed portions from this interview.  All portions, except where identified as transcribed sections, are paraphrased from the questions and responses between the host and the guest.]

HOST MIKE ROSEN:

• We have with us on the line right now, Texas governor Bill Perry.  [exasperated chuckle] Excuse me, Texas Governor Bill Perry.  And shortly after that, we’ll be talking to Bob Beauprez […]
• Governor Perry and perhaps soon-to-be-Governor Beauprez are involved in building alliances with other governors around the country.  Bill Owens was very good in this regard as well.  They are working with a coalition of like-minded governors, in particular Rocky Mountain west governors to push back against federal encroachment on issues that are properly state concerns.  And the irony here is, what’s clearly a federal concern — securing our borders, is something this administration is very lax about, fulfilling its responsibilities.  You are probably aware, that Governor Perry has ordered one thousand Guardsman to the Texas Mexican border to provide some much needed support in this area.  Governor Rick Perry is on the line right now.  Welcome.

GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, RICK PERRY

• Pleasure to be here
• And to get to help what I consider to be an individual who will really put Colorado back on track to be a place where people want to move to, and a job creation mecca, if you will, and that’s Bob Beauprez
  • He’s got a plan
  • He understands that when you:
    • Over-tax
    • Over-regulate
    • Over litigate
    • And you don’t focus on your job creation machine of public schools
    • You’re going to be headed in the wrong direction
  • And that’s the reason that a number of businesses have packed up and left Colorado, because they felt like
    • they weren’t welcome here
    • tax burden and regulatory climate makes it tougher to do business
  • Bob understands that
  • A former dairy farmer is a very principled and disciplined person
    • He’s gone on to be a very successful business man
    • Bringing that experience, and being hardworking, is what this state is looking for.

ROSEN:

• Another big issue in Colorado, is going to involve these initiatives being bankrolled by Jared Polis, a liberal Democrat from Boulder, to clamp down on fracking, which has been very successful in this state, and has added to the state’s huge economic growth relative to oil & gas production.  I know Texas is a big Oil & Gas state as well.  Have you had any similar attempts to over-regulate fracking in Texas
  • No, in fact Texas was one of the first states to take a proactive stance on the issue of Fracking and to making public the compounds and different types of fluids that were used in the fracking  process.  It is proven by scientific study after scientific study to be a safe and good way to open up these oil and gas reserves and particularly on the Natural Gas side, which Colorado has a substantial amount of.  And the by-product of that is, young people who previously had a minimum wage job, or no job, now have $100,000/year job in the oil and gas field.  That type of activity can occur in Colorado, but not if we let these special interests to come in here to stop a safe and economically powerful practice like hydraulic fracturing

ROSEN:

• Tell us what you’re doing regarding  the deployment of a thousand  Guardsmen on the border
  • Well the border with Texas and Mexico has not been secure for years
  • The discovery some two years ago that there were substantial number of these unaccompanied children coming across gave us great hesitation about what was going on in Central America
  • We wrote a letter to the president, saying, “Washington, you need to be aware of this, you need to address this” and
    • We got no response.
    • And earlier this year we saw those numbers explode
      • That’s been the real catalyst for a lot of coverage by the media
      • That’s a humanitarian crisis
      • And it’s being I think appropriately dealt with
      • But that’s not the big issue
  • The bigger issue is that 80+% of individuals who are using this distraction of the border patrol to these young minors who are being unaccompanied, coming in– flooding in, to that southern sector of the Texas Mexcian border and they’re  the drug cartels and other criminal elements are using that distraction to push a substantial amount of criminal activity
  • And so, I told the president some two weeks ago that they had to do their part to secure the border
    • And he said philosophically, he understood what I was talking about and why that made sense to him
    • But we got no action
  • So, yesterday, which was the culmination of us looking at this and making the decision that Texas was not going to dither, we were going to protect our citizens, and frankly, by doing this, protecting citizens all across the continental United States in securing that border
  • So a thousand National guard troops will go down to help the local law enforcement, the Texas Rangers, the Dept. of Public Safety, and the Border Patrol, giving them the added force multiplier to secure that border
  • Because that’s what Texans expect, what Americans expect
  • This is the Federal Government’s responsibility
    • Enumerated in the Constitution
    • That to secure this country’s safety
    • And this administration has been an absolute failure at it
  • So there’s only so much inactivity that you can expect before you have to step in to take care of your citizens’ safety
    • And that’s what we’ve done in Texas

ROSEN:

• So, if some of these illegals are able to cross the border and have not been apprehended by border patrol or anybody else, are they detaining these people and handing them over to US border control personnel?
  • That could be one of the roles that National Guard could have, in deterring individuals until law enforcement could come
  • They could also take up part of that role that border patrol has been forced into, and to administratively handling these young children
  • A lot of reports that 70% of the border patrol being distracted from their primary duty which is the enforcement of laws along that border, the security of that border to taking care of kids
  • So National Guard can help in that role too
  • So, but really, when you think about it, Mike, whether it’s a neighborhood watch
    • When you have cameras,
    • When you have uniformed officers
    • The criminal activity substantially is reduced
      • We’ve seen a decrease over the course of the last 3 weeks
      • When we surged our Texas Rangers and our Dept Pub Safety numbers into that southern sector of the Rio Grande
      • The addition of National Guard troops will be even more of a presence right on the border
      • And hopefully it will be sending a message down to Central America:
        • Don’t be sending your children up here
        • They’re not going to be crossing the border
        • They’re not going to be staying in the United States
        • Because frankly, the most humanitarian thing that we can do as a country, for these kids, is reunite them with their families

ROSEN:

•  Since the border fence is incomplete, at best, are these people who are crossing illegally just wading across the Rio Grande where there is no fence?
  • Well, the issue– cuz a lot of people don’t understand the vastness of that Texas border.
    • There is strategic fencing in the Metropolitan areas that has a very important role
    • What we’re seeing though, is that Coyotes are using jet skis and rafts, they’re coming across in a lot of various and asundry [sic] ways
    • In that sector of the Rio Grande, the river is big enough and wide enough that you’re obviously not going to be walking across it…  In places way far north, you can walk across, at certain times of year
• One of the requests I made to the president that he was not responsive to, was the use of drones, allowing the FAA to allow drones
  • Using those aviation assets to look at wide stretches of the border from up in an aviation platform
    • Important, because:
      • Then you can see the patterns of movements that are going on
      • You can see the activities
      • And very quickly move a team in and apprehend make arrests

ROSEN:

• I know you have to make a plane, so we’ll let you go.  Thanks
  • Mike, thanks, and God speed, and look forward to seeing and hearing from you in the very near future as well.

ROSEN:

• Glowing introduction of Bob Beauprez […] Texas Governor Rick Perry talking about what he’s doing about the border.  And also about a pro-growth agenda involving like-minded western governors.  Bobby Jindal (not so much a western governor, from Louisiana, but he was in town for the Western Conservative Summit and Bob Beauprez had a chance to meet with him there, Bob, always good to talk to you.

FORMER CONGRESSMAN, FORMER AND CURRENT GOP GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, BOB BEAUPREZ:

• Nice to be speaking with you, Mike. Thank you

ROSEN:

• What was your reaction to what Governor Perry had to say

BEAUPREZ:

• Well, we had a great time today,
• We had a good luncheon here
• And then he and I had an opportunity to visit at some length
• And not surprisingly, the results he’s had in Texas with a very robust economy over the last decade
  • Leading the nation, really, in job growth
  • We’re shared some of our thinking
  • And we found we’re on very similar pages
    • You keep taxes low
    • You trust in people
      • Not continuing to grow government
      • And government regulation
      • And you kind of turn the genius of people loose and good things happen
      • You liberate them
      • And it’s an old  tried and true formula
      • You get government out of the way
      • And guess what, jobs flourish
• We have been losing some of that in Colorado
• By some measures, Steve Latt and Art Moore to be specific, Colorado’s Economic outlook, our economic opportuntiy has fallen from 2 four years ago to 22 now
• And states like Texas have been more than happy to take that opportunity away from us
  • I don’t have anything against Rick Perry or the state of Texas
  • But I’d like a whole lot of that opportunity back

ROSEN:

• When you look at chronic unemployment, when you look at underemployment, when you look at balancing the federal budget, and starting to at least reduce the national debt substantially as a percent of the Gross Domestic Product — what all of those problems have in common is the only solution for those problems is increasing the rate of economic growth and job creation, from its paltry levels of the last several years.

BEAUPREZ:

• Precisely, Mike
• WE should be at full employment
  • I mean, by just about anybody’s measurement, the Denver Post has documented this, real unemployment in Colorado right now is about 9.5%
  • When you include all of the people who have just thrown up their hands and walked away from the workforce
    • And that’s just way too high
    • That’s about 6 points higher than Colorado typically is when we talk about full employment
  • We are 100s of thousands of jobs short of where we ought to be
  • and instead of growing at 1 or 2 or 3 % per year..
    • or as the first quarter of this year, nationally, it was actually negative growth — minus 2.9%
    • we ought to be growing at a sustained level of 4.5 or 5%
    • and then we could be paying some bills
    • then maybe we wouldn’t be talking about being middle of the pack or a nation in decline
    • we’d be that envy of the world again
    • that’s where I want to take Colorado
  • I know that’s where Rick Perry has wanted to take Texas
    • And he’s put together a formula and a plan to do just exactly that
    • So it can be done
    • I want to do it here

ROSEN:

• What’s your take on Jared Polis’ underwriting this attempt to put some initiatives on the ballot that would clamp down  fracking  in Colorado?

BEAUPREZ:

• “extreme” would be too kind of a word
• Approximately a third of all the high rise office buildings in Downtown Denver are occupied by energy companies
  • If you want to see see-through buildings again
  • This would do it
  • It would be an enormous impact on not only our energy sector
  • Mike, let me give you an example of what else happens.
    • I was in Grand Junction recently
    • I guy teaches music lessons in his basement
    • He said when the energy jobs left
    • He had 30 of his students go with them — with their families
    • He lost $30,000
    • [..]
    • The trickle down, if you will — the ripple effect of energy is enormous
    • You know, we’re trying to chase the goose that laid the golden eggs, out of our state right no
    • And it’s not only wrong
    • It will be enormously and perpetually destructive if we allow this to happen

ROSEN:

• Well, Bob, we’re still trying to get a confirmation from Governor Hickenlooper.  We’ve invited him to come into the studio and have a head to head debate with you, I know you’ve already said that you’d be happy to do that.  His people haven’t decided whether or not they want to go ahead with it.  So, I’ll certainly let you know if that’s to be.

BEAUPREZ:

• [silence]

ROSEN:

• Bob, thanks for being with us, appreciate it as always, good luck to you!

BEAUPREZ:

• Thank you, Mike!
• It’s always a pleasure
• Thank you.