U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) held a telephone town hall on Thursday, engaging with more than twenty thousand Oklahomans across the state. During the event, Mullin discussed recent legislative developments, trade policy, fiscal matters, and military installations in Oklahoma.
Mullin spoke about the impact of President Trump’s trade agreements. “The trade deals are coming in. I mean, it seems like the President and the White House is announcing, I mean, exaggerated here, but it seems like every day they’re announcing a trade deal. And that’s good because it creates momentum, and most people are going to come into play… People want to do business with the United States. We’re a more stable country. We obviously have a stronger economy, and our dollar is the currency of the world…”
Addressing fiscal policy and national debt reduction efforts, Mullin highlighted a recent federal surplus. “In June, for the first time in years, the Treasurer actually saw a surplus of $25 billion, that’s the first time that’s happened in years. Instead of us going in debt, we actually had a surplus. That extra cash was then spent on the actual debt… We’re also looking at instead of selling oil leases on public property, like we normally do, we’re going to actually do revenue sharing, and the revenue sharing off of that, which is what most countries do, because the people of the United States own that oil and gas. And so instead of just selling the drilling rights to it and allowing somebody to receive full profits to it, we would start doing profit sharing, which is what we should have been doing years ago, but because of President Trump’s leadership and being a businessman, he said ‘Why don’t we fix this problem?’ So we’re going through that process to where those resources that we have—the natural resources—which we’re one of the richest countries in the world in natural resources… The profit sharing would go directly to paying down the national debt too.”
He also discussed Oklahoma’s military infrastructure: “We have to make them a priority and that’s our whole goal. Thank goodness for the relationships that I’ve been able to build especially with this administration. We’ve been able to get people down there see where investments are needed not just at Ft. Sill but also in McAlester also Altus also in Enid and also at Tinker because we have quite an establishment. We have the ability to fight wars in Oklahoma because of what we have.”
“I mean we have the ability to make munitions. We have the ability to deploy. We have planes to deliver and refuel. And we have ability to train pilots. And that’s something—and those are mission sets—not every state can have,” Mullin added.
On gun rights legislation concerning nationwide concealed carry laws Mullin said: “You know constitutional carry—we try to do that every single year. It gets stopped almost every single year. I think at some point we’ll eventually win this and I think we’re going to win this in courts… when you got a court that actually is looking… when you have judges that are actually looking at Constitutional value of it not political value… so I believe at some point we’re going get a court case that will actually restore rights Second Amendment had sought out and I support 100% on.”
The telephone town hall allowed constituents from across Oklahoma an opportunity to hear updates directly from their senator on issues including economic growth initiatives related to trade deals as well as ongoing support for local military bases.
