Banks Addresses Rotary, Talks Jobs And The Wall
WARSAW — The Warsaw Rotary Club welcomed Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Banks to its regular meeting Friday, Aug. 3. There was no shortage of national political topics and hot-button issues to keep the group occupied during the Columbia City native’s speech and the question and answer session that followed.
For Banks, who is home on recess, serving in Washington D.C. in the current political climate is anything but uneventful.
Banks began by addressing the job market and quoted the Wall Street Journal, saying “This is the first time in recorded American history that we have more open jobs in this country than we have job seekers. That’s the sign of a robust, healthy and growing economy.”
Banks said the state of the job market presents new challenges that involve the needs of employers seeking to fill vacant slots. “The attraction of labor and talent is what they struggle with the most,” he said. If the caveats of a recent farm bill passed by Congress get the desired effect, Banks said it could help with the shortage of job candidates. Banks said the law included work requirements for a percentage of Medicaid recipients considered to be able-bodied. “That would be a large influx into the labor pool who are not in there already,” he said.
Banks, without coming right out and saying it, alluded to the galvanizing effect that the current presidential administration is having on the country. In true party form, he pointed out the good news.
“With everything else that President Trump will go down in history for — and there will be a lot, there will be a lot of interesting history about this president — while I will never, ever compare Donald Trump to Ronald Reagan, I will say that what this president has done to rebuild the American military is as Reaganesque as anything else that he has done,” said Banks.
Banks made parallels between the former real estate mogul and the ex-actor in terms of tax cuts and returning budget attention to the military. “This president has done both in a very short window of time,” said Banks, saying that prior to President Donald Trump’s election, the U.S. military had experienced an approximate 20 percent reduction. “This president has restored that and more,” said Banks.
Banks said that both parties have been making inroads on behalf of veterans, including the passing of about two dozen bills designed to benefit current and former military personnel.
Banks fielded a question about the proposed wall, President Trump’s pet project that has both sides of the political fence taking widely opposing and adversarial positions.
“This is not just about the illegal immigration,” said Banks. “It’s about the tremendous and substantial illegal drug flow that northeastern Indiana suffers from because of the sheer amount of drugs that pass over the Mexican border. It’s also a national security issue.”
Rotary member Mark Lewinski took issue with not only members of Congress, but also the media, stating “I sit back and watch what’s going on amongst all of you and the press,” said Lewinski. “The press doesn’t get it right 90 percent of the time.” Banks interrupted Lewinski on behalf of local media attending the event by saying “present company excluded?” Lewinski replied “whatever.”
Lewinski’s beef involves his wife, who hails from Vietnam. According to Lewinski, pursuing her legal citizenship involved massive bureaucratic red tape and annoying governmental redundancies that made the process, which he says continues today, a daunting endeavor. Lewinski said he gets frustrated with people trying to enter the country illegally when he has had such a negative experience trying to deal with the proper immigration channels. “It’s really tough to sit back, as a guy who’s served his country more than one time, and I can’t get help,” he said. “But, to watch all this nonsense and it’s really not as broken as you all think it is. It’s got the rules there if people would just enforce them and follow them.”