MORE FROM RISCH

Here are additional remarks by U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, from a Q&A after his Feb. 21 speech in Boise as part of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce's CEO Speaker Series. These comments are condensed from a transcript prepared by chamber PR Director Caroline Merritt.

INTEREST RATES: TREPIDATION

Q: Senator, interest rates are starting to come up. The fed governors yesterday said they're not sure whether they should rise or not. Is there talk about how the federal government will handle this debt if interest rates were to increase and what that will do to the facts you gave us earlier?

A: There isn't any talk about what to do about it, but there's a lot of trepidations to what happens. When you got $3.8 trillion of debt, how would you like to get .00001 percent on that? Just a tiny little tick in it is going to cause serious problems as we pay the interest on the national debt every day.

The good thing about American borrowing is it's really the only place in the world that has a long history that you always get paid back. Going in the future, I don't know. They talk about the rating agencies. I was walking out of the Capitol and someone said, "Senator, aren't you concerned? You know, the rating agencies say that they may downgrade the rating of the United States." You've got to be kidding me. These are the rating agencies that said that the bonds they put together in the housing crisis were triple-A bonds?

Secondly, if you knew what I know about the finances of the United States of America, would you rate them a triple-A? The people who loan us money don't care a bit about what the rating agency says. That doesn't affect the interest rate one bit. What actually happens does affect the interest rate quite a bit.

USAID SPENDING KEEPS MILLIONS ALIVE

Q: What's the talk on the Foreign Relations Committee about what to do with Egypt?

A: Okay, now we're talking about something I actually understand. First of all, Vicki and I went to Egypt, when was that? We were on a CODEL, I should have called the Guinness Book of World Records. The only guy to go to Cairo and not visit the pyramids. Now, Vicki did, while I was in meetings, she got to see the pyramids, but Egypt is an incredibly important country that people don't understand. One-fourth of the population of Arabs live in the country of Egypt. It's been the cornerstone of the Arab world for eons. They have the most intriguing government. When I was there I met with Mubarak and with Mubarak's son which, at that time, was the heir apparent, and the longer you're there, you're just fascinated by this because Egypt has two governments. They have a secular government consisting of a president and a parliament and all that who do these good little things, and then they have a military government. They actually have two governments, and they get along. Now, how do they get along? They've divvied by the economy. The military, they run the water, and they run this, and they run that and the secular government, they run the food, and they run all these other things, so they're all getting the money, so you have two very different governments and they've gotten along well for a considerable amount of time and of course along came the Arab Spring. And along came what we Americans always wanted and that is democracy in an election. Well, you know, that's all good and well as long as our people win, but remember what happened when they did that in Gaza? Hamas won. And now it's turning out that you've got the Muslim brotherhood whose won in Egypt. And it is a dicey situation there. Our military and their military have a good relationship. One of the great success stories in the Middle East is the peace line along the east side of the Sinai Peninsula. You know, you never hear, you hear about all of the turmoil in the Middle East, but for 35 years, the border between Israel and Egypt has been peaceful. It's been peaceful because you have a multilateral force there. They aren't really a force, as much as they are peacemakers that both sides want. The Israelis want them, the Egyptians want them, and they are heavily supported by the Egyptian military, and that's why people were concerned when Egypt fell because you do have a Islamic radical fundamentalist movement in Egypt that could have really caused problems on that border, but it did not and the military's managed to hold there.

The biggest criticism the government gets is the fact that we're sending $2 billion of aid there every year, but it is mostly military and, as a result of that, keeps the relationship with the military. What most people don't understand is, how many ever heard of USAID? They're part of the State Department. USAID is a enterprise operated by the State Department and it feeds millions and millions and millions of people around the world. Anytime you get to feeling guilty of not doing your share or humanity, think about USAID. If USAID stopped tomorrow. If they money spent by USAID stopped tomorrow, there would be literally, literally tens of millions of people dead within days because you feed them. So anytime you get to feeling a little guilty about not doing your fair share, all you've got to do is go out and watch. And I'll tell you how we do it. We don't even do it by saying, look, here's the food, isn't America wonderful? We don't even do that. You go to Gaza, and Hamas will not allow American food to come in there that's stamped "Made in USA." Every bag of wheat that we send, or corn, or whatever, has USA written on it about this big across the bag. That's what USAID does. Hamas won't let that into the Gaza. And so what do they do? They change it. It's ours, but we are so concerned, as humanitarians, that people in Gaza, even though they hate us, are going to die, that we allow them to change containers so the food can go in there. So anytime you get to feeling like you're not doing your part, just get on the Internet and Google USAID and see what kind of food is being delivered all around the world and that comes back to Egypt. In Egypt, most people survive only because every day, they can get in line and get bread from the Egyptian government. The Egyptian government hands out bread every day and there's long, long lines of mostly women who have to make the household and they hand them bread and that grain, that bread being handed out, was grown in the U.S.A. and paid for by United States taxpayers.

TAX REFORM: 'I'LL BE SURPRISED' IF IT PASSES

Q: Senator, last fall, prior to the election, the talk in Washington, D.C. was that tax reform was going to be number one priority in 2013. Has that changed and, whether it has or not, would it even be helpful?

A: What hasn't changed is the dialogue. But whether something gets done or not, I guess I'll be surprised if it goes. Again, this is fundamental. When you talk about tax reform, what do you want to do? Well, the Democrats want tax reform so that on the positive side, they can actually get rid of this and rid of that through deductions so they can get more money to spend. On the Republicans side, they want to do that, get rid of loopholes and what have you, but make it neutral, so that we don't have more money coming in to the federal government. But this is the problem with taxation in America today. This is so simple. And you never hear this in Washington D.C.: "What is the purpose of taxation?" Why do we need taxes? Well, the government sits around and says, well, let's see, we need to defend our country, we need to do this, we need to do that, how much do we need, we need so and so much, okay, let's go out and levy a tax and we will get that and we will use these taxes to do what we need to do. They don't use taxes for that anymore. Every conversation you have about taxes is, they want to use taxes as a social engineering tool. It's to punish for certain activity and to make an incentive for other activity and what has that resulted in? It's resulted in a tax code that's this high with so many loopholes and so many deductions and so many penalties in it, it takes a computer to understand it as a human being can't understand it. And so, that's what tax reform needs to go back to. It needs to go back to very simple determination of, how much do we need, and where are we going to collect it from. But the minute you do that, they say, you know what, Americans are buying those incandescent light bulbs. So we're going to levy a tax, they're too stupid to know what kind of light bulbs to buy, so we're going to levy a tax on incandescent light bulbs. I hear it every single day. It's the same way with energy. We don't want you, they're dying to tax oil and coal because they don't want you using oil and coal, they want you using the sun and they want to use wind and what have you, so they use this tax, they use these subsidies, I mean, somebody help me out here in the energy business, if you use coal, if you use nuclear, if you use ____ water, if you use even diesel, I mean six cents a kilowatt hour. What happens if you use solar, or you use wind energy to generate a kilowatt, what is it? Twenty-two cents. Now, who thinks that twenty-two cent power can compete with six-cent power? Ah, but there's a solution for that. You subsidize the other power and the playing field is level. And you tax higher the coal, so that the coal has to pay more and people will use, I mean it's just. So I don't know. Before they get around to doing tax reform, they need to get around and say, looks, we're going to give up using this as a social engineering tool. We don't want to use coal. Let's stop them from using coal. Pass a law that says you can't generate electricity with coal. But stop this nonsense of using the tax code as a social engineering tool. It's an outrage. Don't get me started.

BENGHAZI AND FAST-FURIOUS

Q: Senator, you sit on the Intelligence Committee.

A: I can't talk about it!

Q: Is there any in the Obama administration that will be held accountable for Benghazi and Fast and Furious?

A: Maybe. And that's probably as far as I can go. The Benghazi thing was a real tragedy. Fast and Furious was substantially more than just gross negligence. I mean, Fast and Furious was reckless conduct by individuals that caused people to lose their lives. That's probably about as far as I can go.

IMMIGRATION REFORM: BADLY NEEDED

Q: What's your view on immigration reform?

A: I wish we had a few more minutes, but, briefly, immigration reform is desperately needed. There's about four points to immigration reform. We could easily, easily reach a consensus on two of the four points. The third one, which is border control, we have a little harder time reaching a consensus on, but could probably get it done. But the fourth part of it is what tears us apart and that is, what do you do about people who are here illegally, somewhere between ten and twenty million people. Ronald Reagan had the answer to it, he said, fine, we'll just legalize it. Look, it's over, it's done, problem solved. Well, the next day, the problem started again and we're up to between 10 and 20. And, again, that ought to be resolved last. We ought to, first of all, talk about worker immigration for work force reform because we desperately need immigration for both the top and the bottom end of the scale. I mean, almost everybody in America agrees with that. But it really boils down to into talking about how do we handle those that are here and there's people who are very emotional on both sides, but there's going to be a lot of conversation about it. They couldn't get it done last time. They did it two years before I was there, about six or seven years ago. I don't know, I can't predict how it's going to come out. I think there'll be a legitimate run at it. The problem is, the problem I described for you about the financial condition of the country is really sucking the oxygen out of the air every minutes of every day and we go from crisis to crisis to crisis and as soon as that crisis is over we've got to start talking about how we're going to resolve it on such and such day and we're heading for that when we get back. We've got the CR [continuing resolution] going to expire, we've got the sequestration happening up and a couple of other things. So, they're talked about, and these are all things that we should be doing back there, but because of the distraction, and really, the seriousness of the financial situation, you know.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LIBERALS GONE?

God bless you all. Again, thank you for letting me do this. I know you're not going to agree with me, some of you, on not much of anything, but hopefully, some. I'm going to run again in two years, so you'll get your opportunity to send someone else back there, if you want a liberal - well, I was going to say liberal, but there are no liberals in Washington, D.C. Everybody's either a progressive or a moderate. The liberals are all gone. I don't know what happened. God bless you. Thank you for having me.