Palmer: US must learn from fiscal, border mistakes to keep from destroying future

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The United States must learn from its mistakes with federal finances and border control or face a rough future, Congressman Gary Palmer told a group of six chambers of commerce gathered Thursday in Hoover.

“This country has made some horrible mistakes,” said the Republican from Hoover who represents Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District. “We can either let those mistakes destroy our future or let those mistakes inform our future so we can be a better people and a better country for it.”

One of the biggest mistakes the government has made is overspending and getting into too much debt, Palmer said.

“We have literally gotten ourselves in a position where our debt is a national security issue,” he said.

In the first two years of the Biden administration, the country added more than $10 trillion in spending, pushing the interest on the national debt to more than $1 trillion, Palmer said. That overspending and high debt has led to inflation, and the cost of living is impacting families in a negative way, he said.

He recently learned that 35% of the people who get free groceries from the Central Alabama Food Bank are senior citizens, he said.

“It’s gotten to the point they can’t afford household utilities, medicine and food, so they have to to go to the food bank to get help,” he said.

The solution to that problem starts with government spending, he said. “We’ve got to get that under control. We’ve got to address our debt.”

He served on the House Budget Committee for his first two terms in office and currently is working with the current Budget Committee chairman on a plan to balance the budget in 10 years without gimmicks, he said.

Two ways to help with the national debt would be reduce “improper payments” from the federal government and increase tax collections (not tax rates), Palmer said.

This year, the government had $250 billion to $300 billion in improper payments, $30 billion of which is related to Medicaid, he said. Also, the government is only successfully collecting 10% to 15% of the amount of taxes owed, which means that $5.4 trillion is going uncollected each year, he said.

If collections could be improved, the government wouldn’t have to borrow as much, he said.

ENERGY PRODUCTION

Another way to improve the nation’s finances would be to change the nation’s energy policies and work with other governments and private investors to improve the energy infrastructure in South America, Latin America, the Caribbean and emerging economies in Africa.

“Energy is the single most inflationary part of the entire economy,” Palmer said. “Everything you come in contact with has an energy source.”

The United States is an energy superpower, leading the world in energy production, but there are more opportunities of which the country can take advantage, Palmer said.

If the United States were to work with other countries to improve their energy infrastructure, that would create opportunities for manufacturing there, and the United States could sell natural gas to those manufacturers, he said.

China started really building up its energy infrastructure in the late 1980s and between 1990 and 2020 raised more than 25% of its population from poverty to the middle class and increased the average life span in China by eight years, he said.

If the United States could help countries in Latin America, South America, Africa and the Caribbean do the same thing, that would help improve the quality of life for people in those countries and give the United States a market for its natural gas, he said.

Also, the United States needs to beef up its extraction of natural gas and critical minerals, Palmer said. Now, the United States is dependent on China for 80% of the critical minerals that are needed to make things like batteries, microchips and semiconductors, he said. If the country gets in bad relations with China and gets its supply cut off, “we could really be up the creek,” he said.

Also, if the United States could ramp up its production of critical minerals, that would help the economy, he said.

Further, prior to 2015, the United States had a self-imposed ban on exporting crude oil, Palmer said. That ban is gone, but President Biden has put a pause on oil and gas exploration, offshore drilling and construction of natural gas facilities, he said. He cited some estimates that if the United States started exporting crude oil, it could generate $1.3 trillion in new government revenues over 15 years.

BORDER CRISIS

A lack of control of people entering the country also has turned into a crisis, Palmer said. The United States knows of 1.2 million people who entered the country illegally in the past three years, and there are estimates of 600,000 to 700,000 more people who have slipped in undetected, Palmer said.

More than 340 illegal immigrants who have been caught have known ties to terrorist organizations, Palmer aid. “This is a national security threat that we have to address.”

Also, Palmer cited U.S. border patrol statistics that showed dramatic increases in the number of illegal immigrants convicted of murder or manslaughter in the United States. That number has risen from 11 convictions from 2017-20 to more than 160 convictions since 2021, he said. Also, the number of illegal immigrants convicted of sexual assault in the United States has increased from 431 from 2017-20 to 1,210 since 2021, he said.

“Our communities are no longer safe,” Palmer said.

It’s something that people of all political parties should be concerned about, and it’s going to take a groundswell of outrage from the American public to get it to stop, he said.

“There’s a desperate need for people to understand the responsibility we all have for our future,” he said.

Palmer’s “Washington update” was given to members of the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce, The Shelby County Chamber, Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce, Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce, Gardendale Chamber of Commerce and Montevallo Chamber of Commerce in a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham — The Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover.