Senator Roy Blunt on “This Week”
U.S. Senator Roy Blunt toured the Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri last Friday.
The Republican Senator agreed to visit with us for “This Week.” I start this conversation by asking him what he thinks is needed to help Missourians recover from the recent flooding.
This is a transcript of the interview that aired New Year’s Day:
Senator Roy Blunt: Well, the immediate relief right now is a few days of sunshine and, and fortunately we’re getting that so were going to get this back under control in a way that gets us in a place quickly where we can see what people need to get their lives back in order. Generally, people have the kind of insurance coverage and other coverage they need but the government needs to be sure you have access to the hospital you need to go to the school your kids need to go to next week. Be sure we get our transportation system back where it is working and I’ll be looking to see what we can do to be sure that the core and local officials and federal officials are doing everything possible to get people back in their homes back to work back to school the things that families need.
Joey Parker: Keeping people healthy is important…you pushed for a two billion dollar increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health. Three hundred fifty million of that included for Alzheimer’s research. Why is that so important to you?
Senator Roy Blunt: Well you know one research is something the federal government can do and can do in an effective way. Then National Institute of Health has been really good at not only the research they do but also finding places in the state like the University of Missouri right here in Columbia, or Washington University finding places all over the country that can really take a targeted approach to big problems. Things like Alzheimer’s, cancer, we know so much less than we would like to know but we have so much more capacity than we used to have. I would say probably three big reasons to look at Alzheimer’s, and cancer, and brain function and what we can do about that. One of those would just be the impact you will have if you can find solutions for obviously the individuals, their families involved. Two would be the benefit to taxpayers long term you know, Joey, estimate is by 2050 we will be spending one trillion dollars a year of Medicare money on Alzheimer’s patients alone if we don’t help find some way to prevent that from happening or postpone. If you could postpone Alzheimer’s for five years or seven years for every person that gets it not only would that impact their life in a dramatic way you also reduce the cost of all the things that come with Alzheimer’s. Then the third reason for that kind of health research is were about to see a big revolution in how we provide health care and the jobs related to that, the medical technology field related to that. The country that does the research is most likely to be the country where most of those good jobs occur. So, they’re lots of reasons to look for this and what we did for the first time since two thousand and three was increase a budget that almost everyone supports but until I became chairman of this committee this year nobody had figured it out how to make it a priority.
Joey Parker: Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder is very critical of the real ID act. Do you still support it?
Senator Roy Blunt: I do. I have talked to Lieutenant Governor about it since he made those comments and I think what we need to be sure we are doing is looking to be sure that Homeland Security and the federal agencies that are responsible for implementing that act are doing it in a reasonable way. Real ID was designed so that particularly the divers license would really be invalidated of certification for people who are illegally in the country, and not only illegally say they are who they say they are. (Of) The 9/11 attackers, nineteen of them had about sixty drivers licenses between them. It’s too easy to get a drivers license. Too easy to manipulate that licenses so that you can come up with one that is a real licenses and maybe even issued by a state government. And just being sure that those standards are being met. I mean the drivers license is how you get into a federal building how you get into a nuclear facility even get on a military base. It’s the principal form of ID in the country. One good example of the Real ID Act requires if you’re here on a visa and you are here on a six month work visa you don’t need to be issued a six year drivers licenses. Having people have the kind of identification they need helps verify whether people are legally in the country or not but more importantly it helps verify whether they should have the kind of access that that identification creates for most of us to the facilities that you use your drivers license to go into.
Joey Parker: You don’t think that is going to be a problem if people start showing up to the airport and the ID does not work?
Senator Roy Blunt: Yes that will be a big problem. It will be a big problem but it is the law it is the federal law. So, what we need to do is work to be sure that any needless obstacles need to comply with the law are eliminated. You don’t want Kansans to be able to get on an airplane and Missourians not able to get on an airplane. A whole bunch of states have figured out how to comply here. I would also say that many of the people to be concerned with ID are the first people in line to be concerned about securing the border are people not being in the country legally. That’s what Real ID is really designed to prevent.
