Hageman addresses tough topics in town hall

“I want to know what’s on your mind,” said U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) during her annual town hall Thursday in Powell.

During the event, she was asked a question about Chinese hacking of American infrastructure.

“I think that every decision that Joe Biden makes about the Chinese Communist Party is because of the work that his son did for the Chinese Communist Party,” she said.

Hageman added, “I think that every decision that he makes about Ukraine, is because of the work his son did for Ukraine.”

Speaking to an audience of about 200 people at The Commons, Hageman gave an opening statement and then answered questions ranging from land use and natural resources to immigration and border security. She also discussed the history of this congressional session and the difficulties of legislating while holding a very slim majority in only one house of Congress.

“A lot of our victories were not necessarily legislative,” she said.  As an example of a non-legislative victory she cited the blocking of a concept called natural asset companies, which she described as the brainchild of the Federal Trade Commission.

To her, the administrative procedure would have securitized and monetized all natural assets on public lands of the United States and on private lands with conservation easements.  Hageman said it was introduced with only 21 days’ notice and no publicity, and it would have allowed the United Nations to decide the value of U.S. assets and featured carbon capture

After quick action, it was withdrawn under congressional pressure on Jan 14.

She then mentioned a “huge win” this year in the form of a getting a bill out of committee that would “prohibit men from competing in women’s sports.”

Hageman was also proud of HR1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, calling it the “flagship bill.”  HR1 would direct the Department of Energy to “assess the supply of critical energy resources that are essential to the energy security of the United States, facilitate the development of strategies to strengthen the supply chains for those resources, develop substitutes and alternatives to those resources, and improve technology that reuses and recycles critical energy resources.”

Hageman also mentioned that it would prohibit the President from banning hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) without congressional approval.

About foreign policy, Hageman focused on the southern border and immigration.

“A year ago, I went to Yuma and called it a crisis,” she said. “This year I would call [the border] a catastrophe.”

She described Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s offer to help stop illegal immigration from his country as a $20-billion blackmail attempt.

In response to a question about the Endangered Species Act, Hageman cited efforts to protect wolves in Minnesota. She described the federal work on behalf of that state’s wolf population, estimated at 3,000 by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, as “…one of the most deplorable things I have ever seen that would allow an entire ecosystem to be destroyed for the benefit of a single species that is neither endangered nor threatened.”

Hageman said the only solution to many of the problems highlighted at the meeting lies in electoral victory this fall.