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Sen. Blunt on impeachment process, his role and Trump’s approach

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Over the weekend, another whistleblower emerged who reportedly can corroborate the first account of President Trump’s conversation with the new Ukrainian president. President Trump is under an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House to determine if he withheld aid to that country in return for intelligence information on his political rival, former Vice-President Joe Biden.

Missouri’s U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the Intelligence Committee, is also investigating the call to the Ukrainian President.

“I’m on the committee that’s supposed to look at all the things we can find and try to help come to conclusions with all of the information, rather than come to conclusions and then try to find the information that supports those conclusions.”

Senator Roy Blunt, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, said it doesn’t matter if there is another informant because “we’ve all seen the transcripts now so we can all back up what the whistleblower said as it relates to the transcript. I think the Speaker chose a fairly narrow topic here to move forward on, not very confusing. One way or another you’re going to decide is what the president says he said an impeachable problem or not.”

He told CBS’s Margaret Brennan Trump’s talk about asking other countries besides Ukraine to investigate Biden should not be taken seriously:  “I don’t know what the president was thinking,” Blunt said, “but I do know he loves to bait the press and he does that almost every day.”

Missourinet spoke with Sen. Blunt before the weekend talk show blitz.

He said that learning that the president knew Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the call and that the U.S. Attorney General was also talking to foreign leaders about their questions is actually reassuring, as opposed to critics who fear the cabinet members were doing the president’s personal bidding.

Blunt says Speaker Pelosi has set up a narrow case to decide, and he expects the Democrat majority in the House will move quickly to impeach.

He does expect to hear from the initial whistleblower, “at some point in what appears to be a closed opportunity.”

“And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the firsthand information, if there is firsthand information, isn’t something that our committee hears and should hear. I do know that the Inspector General would have looked at some of this information earlier and I look forward to seeing and hearing some of the things the Inspector General may have already heard,” he told Missourinet.

While Blunt supports the law protecting government whistleblowers, he questioned why those with firsthand knowledge did not come forward first.

“If this is such an important issue, where were the people that told the whistleblower—why weren’t they the whistleblower?” he asked.

Missourinet asked Sen. Blunt if Trump’s handling of the impeachment probe was helping or hurting the situation.

At that point, Blunt said he had not been asked or offered any talking points.

“They’ll have to decide how they deal with this. They’ve gone through almost two years of the Mueller investigation so they’ve got a lot more experience trying to fight these things they believe are unfair than anybody else does and I don’t have any advice for them as to how they should do their job. I just have a sense of how I should do mine, which is quickly try to get the information put together so that we can look at it, then based on the facts in front of us, make whatever recommendations the intelligence committee decides need to be made.”

MoDOT prepared for major backups when I-70 Rocheport work begins (AUDIO)

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State transportation officials will hold an informational meeting Thursday afternoon in mid-Missouri’s Rocheport about the upcoming massive I-70 bridge rehabilitation project.

Crews make repairs on the aging I-70 Rocheport bridge (2018 file photo courtesy of MoDOT’s Sally Oxenhandler}

Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) project manager Melissa Wilbers says three to eight-hour backups are possible, when the project starts in the spring.

“And we have actually seen those types of delays in our inspection that we had done earlier this year,” Wilbers says.

Wilbers tells Missourinet there were nine-mile backups on the bridge this summer, when MoDOT did expansion joint replacement work.

MoDOT says the 59-year-old bridge is in poor condition.

Wilbers says the current plan is to begin construction in the spring, with an expected completion date in late 2020. She says the planned $18 million rehabilitation will extend the bridge’s life for another 10 to 15 years.

“Driving surface sealing, expansion joint replacement, some painting, structural steel repairs and some substructure repairs as well,” says Wilbers.

MoDOT will hold today’s meeting from 4-6 at Rocheport’s Les Bourgeois. It’s an open house, which means there will not be a formal presentation.

Displays will be set up, and MoDOT representatives will be available to answer your questions.

Meantime, MoDOT says more than 12 million vehicles cross that bridge annually, including three million trucks. Wilbers says MoDOT is still hopeful of receiving a $176 million federal grant.

“We applied for the federal INFRA grant in March earlier this year, and we are waiting on word from the federal government whether we are going to receive those funds or not,” Wilbers says.

INFRA stands for a federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant.

If the grant goes through, Wilbers tells Missourinet MoDOT would build a new bridge instead of the rehabilitation project, which means the old bridge would be used while a new one is built.

That would prevent the massive I-70 backups.

Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, tells Missourinet he’s hopeful about the grant. Schatz says U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt is working to obtain the federal grant funding.

Missourians rejected a proposed ten-cent gasoline tax increase in November. Missouri’s 17-cent gasoline tax has remained the same since 1996.

Click here to listen to Brian Hauswirth’s full interview with MoDOT project manager Melissa Wilbers, which was recorded on July 17, 2019:

Copyright © 2019 · Missourinet

Blunt’s U.S. Senate committee approves emergency border funding bill

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A U.S. Senate committee has passed a $4.5 billion emergency border funding bill to care for kids crossing the southern border illegally and without their parents. The full U.S. Senate is expected to debate the bipartisan legislation next week. Missouri U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, who chairs the committee, says the funding problem must be solved soon.

“We have to take care of these kids,” says Blunt during a GOP press conference. “We are out of appropriated money to do it.”

Blunt, a Republican, says the measure does not include funding for additional wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. He says the money would be used to care for the unaccompanied kids, process the children arriving, expand the number of detention beds and worker overtime.

“At some point very quickly, we will be basically asking the contractors, groups like Lutheran Family Services and Catholic Families Services, to just do this for free and at some point in the future we’ll pay you. That obviously doesn’t work,” says Blunt.

Whether the U.S. House will go along with the deal is unknown.

Copyright © 2019 · Missourinet

Missouri flood aid package stalls in Congress, but Blunt expects eventual passage

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Legislation that would promise flood recovery assistance to northwest Missouri is hung up in Congress. Yet, Missouri U.S. Senator Roy Blunt does expect Congress to approve it, eventually.

Sen. Roy Blunt (Photo courtesy of KFEQ in St. Joseph)

“There will be a disaster aid bill and hopefully we get all the politics wrung out of this and get down to the real need that people expect the government to be able to respond to,” Blunt tells Missourinet affiliate KFEQ in St. Joseph.

Blunt says he’s frustrated, but likely not as frustrated as others in Congress.

“We’re probably not in as difficult of position as states that had a disaster late last year or even earlier this year,” he says. “We’re going to get in the disaster package when there is one. I wish we were in already but there’s a chance by the time we get in that package we’ll have a greater sense of actual damage done.”

Blunt says damage assessments in Missouri lag behind assessments completed in Nebraska and Iowa. He and other farm state senators are working to amend the package to cover the loss of stored grain.

“That’s not really covered under any package,” says Blunt. “You have all tens of thousands of dollars worth of grain lost sometimes in just one bin.”

A partisan fight in the Senate has stalled progress on the bill. Blunt, a Republican, claims Senate Democrats have held up approval, because they argue the federal government hasn’t done enough to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria in 2017.

By Brent Martin of Missourinet affiliate KFEQ in St. Joseph

Blunt and McCaskill disappointed over federal agencies self-imposed missed deadline on flood project (AUDIO)

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Senator Blunt (R)  and Senator McCaskill (D) are frustrated and disappointed over the missed March 15 deadline by three government agencies. The federal agencies failed to meet their own deadline to report on the progress on the St. Johns Bayou- a Southeast Missouri flood control project.

Senator McCaskill says delay is not an option. “They are telling us now that they will have a decision on the environmental impact study in the next 7 to 10 days,” McCaskill said. “Everyone is aware that both of us are beyond upset at the way this has been handled.”

Senator Blunt agrees. He says its a case of the government arguing with the government about things that should easily be worked out and they have failed to do so. “This project deserves to be out for public comment on the environmental impact study. The draft study should have been completed months ago,” Blunt said.

McCaskill is calling the government mishandling ridiculous and unacceptable. Blunt says it’s an unreasonable way for the Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency to act and wants to block the EPA administrator’s nomination. Blunt says he hopes the agencies will come around sooner rather than later to get progress made on the flood project.

AUDIO: Mary Farucci reports. (1:04)

 

Sen. Blunt addresses state lawmakers about budget plan, prioritizing money and programs (AUDIO)

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U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R) talks to state lawmakers about passing a budget plan, and giving federal programs back to local governments.

Senator Blunt has a few words for Washington: he says planning is not “what it ought to be,” money spent should be prioritized, and local governments should be in charge of education programs.

Blunt says he and U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill both voted to pass a federal budget plan and says it’s a problem when you don’t have a budget because when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. He says one way money should be prioritized is by taking advantage of the form of government that we have.

“One way to prioritize it is to get back to the fundamentals of this unique system that we have in America that not many other people have,” he said. “The Constitutional system is unique but also the federal system is unique.”

Blunt says it’s important to get back to the question of when someone says, “this is a problem that needs to be solved,” the first question that should be asked is, “Is this really a problem that only the government can solve?”

He says the closer you put the people who solve a problem to the problem, the more likely you are going to see that problem solved with common sense. Blunt said he would be in favor of having Washington take back some programs they have created, such as Medicaid and give education programs back to the state so local governments could run it.

He adds that the state would have better solutions if more federal programs were governed by local governments.

 

 

AUDIO: Mary Farucci reports. (1:00)