U.S. Congressman Frank Lucas made a quick stop in Watonga Thursday afternoon. At a town hall with about 30 residents, Lucas talked about weather and politics and a little about the politics of weather.
One of the moves in the federal sphere he is excited about is moving NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – out from under the Commerce Department. He said the move will free the weather-predicting office from political pressures, such as leaning one way or another on climate change, a bias that could advance the agenda of one or the other political party. Lucas also talked a good bit about the war in Ukraine. His concern is that Vladimir Putin is trying to rebuild the old USSR. He and other colleagues are concerned, he said, that this could be similar to the 1930s. “If he can run over the Ukraine, who’s next?” he wondered. That same idea is rumbling around Europe and even neutral nations are clamoring to join NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – so that they may be protected from an aggressive Russia. His thoughts, for the short term at least, is that both nations involved in the war will have exhausted themselves and available resources, leading to a stalemate, at least for the time being. But the bad actors in Lucas’ book aren’t confined to Russia. China’s neighbors are also afraid. He outlined how nations that want to build infrastructure aid China without meaning to. The countries borrow the money for airports or seaports, rail lines and other infrastructure. But the payments are so high the countries can never pay the note off, and China forecloses. Except in this instance, Lucas said, they they send in teams to run the facilities, gaining a toehold where previously they had none.
“It is the most devious imperialism in history,” he said, calling the plan ‘brilliant.’ Lucas believes the two greatest threats to America, its people and Constitution are the national debt and the Chinese Communist Party.
He believes Congress has to get a grip on the national debt and set spending targets. “Raising the debt ceiling is just covering the hot checks the government has written,” he quipped. He also touched on climate change. “It is not our fault,” he said. “Climate change is a problem caused by China and India.” He added that all the modifications the United States could make to its policies on pollution wouldn’t begin to move the needle when faced with the huge amounts of pollution dumped into the environment by those two nations.
Following his general comments, interspersed with stories about how dry it is around his district, Lucas took a few open questions and spent some time talking to the residents who had turned out for his visit.