Tom Tiffany says inflation is major concern for America

America is faced with record inflation, record high energy prices, and record illegal border crossing and Rep. Tom Tiffany said he is the person Wisconsin needs in representing the 7th Congressional District.

Tiffany, a Republican, is running for a second full term for the 7th Congressional District seat and is being challenged by Democrat Richard Ausman. He spoke to The Star News recently about his time representing the district in Washington, D.C. and why he feels he is the best candidate.

“America has been going in the wrong direction with Democrats in control and Biden as president,” Tiffany said.

“We on the Republican side have answers to those problems,” he said, noting that he hoped the Republicans would gain the majority so that they could get the country turned around.

One of the major things that Tiffany said needed to be addressed was getting control of inflation.

“The federal government has to stop deficit spending,” Tiffany said he has been working with a group of congressional colleagues to introduce a balanced budget.

Another area Tiffany said he is concerned with is the need to prosecute the fraud that he says is going on with the various government programs. He cited the recent Feeding Our Future fraud case which he said saw $250 million being stolen.

“This type of fraud is going on all over the country,” he said, noting the cost to taxpayers has been in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Tiffany said he saw the next step for turning the country around is to reduce the dependence on foreign energy. “We were energy independent a couple years ago,” he said, noting that at the time the price for gasoline, diesel, natural gas and propane were significantly lower.

“President Biden told us he would stifle use of fossil fuels,” Tiffany said, noting that the impact of that policy has been seen every day.

Tiffany said that in addition to becoming energy independent, the country needed to move toward economic independence. “We need to reward work, not welfare,” he said calling for an end to transfer payment programs. “It is time for once again those who are able bodied needing to work and not be on welfare,” he said.

He said doing these things would slow inflation. Tiffany also addressed attacks made by his opponent in the election in regard to Tiffany’s opposition of a bill that would cap the price of insulin for diabetic patients.

“It is implementing price controls,” Tiffany said. “Price controls don’t work.”

He said there are those who remember the 1970s when there were exploding energy prices and high inflation as a result of that. “Price controls is what led to some of that inflation and other things that were going wrong,” he said.

He said he insulin proposal does the same thing by putting in price controls, which he said will ultimately reduce the amount of insulin available.

He said he signed onto a bill that gets control of the price of insulin by producing more insulin. He said, more importantly they needed to get control of the middle men, the pharmacy benefit managers. A pharmacy benefit manager is a third-party administrator of prescription drug programs for commercial health plans, self-insured employer plans, Medicare Part D plans, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and state government employee plans.

Tiffany says the pharmacy benefit managers are between the manufacturers and the pharmacies and said the rebates from the manufacturers are flowing to the pharmacy benefit managers.

“They are not passing them onto the consumer,” he said.

He said he saw the same thing when he was in the state legislature and said it is one way to get control of high drug costs. He said the insulin act does not get control of the pharmacy benefit managers, something he said has to happen to get long term affordable insulin.

“Until we get control of that middle man, that is not going to happen,” he said. Tiffany emphasized that high prices for insulin and other drugs is not the fault of the local pharmacies. “They are doing the best they can,” he said, saying the fault lies with the pharmacy benefit managers.

Tiffany also said he supported drug reimportation as another way to help reduce drug prices for American consumers. “I believe it is time to allow drug reimportation,” he said.

Tiffany also answered to his opposition to the Honor Our Pact Act.

Tiffany said he supports a particular provision to get help to veterans exposed to chemicals from burn pits while serving in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.

“The leadership under [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, loaded it with additional spending that didn’t have anything to do with burn pits,” he said, adding he felt it would be another inflationary bill.

Tiffany criticized Pelosi for taking a bill like the Pact Act that addressed legitimate policy concerns and “loading it up with more spending.” Tiffany said he has three veterans serving on his staff, noting that they agreed with him in voting against the bill telling him that they did not serve the country to see it torn down by inflation. “The excessive spending is really harming our country,” Tiffany said.

“I would have voted for a burn pit bill if it had been clean and existing dollars been allocated from another program. I would have been glad to vote for that,” he said.

Tiffany also took aim at the infrastructure bill passed last year and noted that the federal government does not use dollars effectively. He gave the example of a Vilas County community wanting to pave a three-mile stretch of road. He said the rules attached with the federal funds would make it cost twice as much as other road projects in the town. “Federal money doesn’t go as far,” he said.

Tiffany said they need to make changes in Washington, D.C. such as in giving congressmen and their staffs more time to review legislation. “Seeing bills that are over 1,000 pages long and only being given 24 hours to review it. It is no way to legislate,” Tiffany said.

“We are simply not given enough time to read them,” Tiffany said. “That is something we need to change in the next Congress.”

Looking to international affairs, Tiffany said that America’s standing in the world has gone down. He criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. “We lost 12 troops in the willy nilly, pellmell withdrawal with no plan in place,” Tiffany said.

He said this has shown America to be week and emboldened Russian president Vladimir Putian to invade Ukraine. “We have seen the weakness of America over the past year and half. It does not serve the American people well. America is best when it is strong,” Tiffany said.

He said a step toward making America stronger will be to regain control of the southern border. “It is literally an invasion of America,” he said of the illegal immigration and condemned Biden and the Democratic leadership in Congress with refusing to do anything about it.

“To the people I represent, it doesn’t have to be this way. . . . If you send me back to Congress and I am in the majority, on the first day we will introduce legislation to get control of the southern border,” he said.