Level, at least the issue with t states inside. I have a ther unlovely support of the bi. I think marijuanause is aad idea. My wife and i raised our kids successfully to never go near the stuff but we have to recognize prohibition laws have de far more harm. They spawned a violent underground economy that has had a major impact on crime. And paradoxically, made it easier for children to obtain marijuana and they could if it was actually legalized and legislated. So this measure, if its past in the senate, without help some of those issues western mark you have a es number of states that have passed Recreational Use of marijuana. Lets put it this way, radish farmers dont kill each other. It is the prohibition laws that have created that kind of violent undergroundeconomy. And we had the same experience trying to prohibit liquor in the 1930s. You can legislate against a product, you cant legislate against a demand and the result naturally is an economy of criminals move in to fill that vacuum. And you end upwith a great deal of violence. And crime as a result. Thats what legalization will stop. You mentioned your personal concerns over marijuana use, you dont use it, your family doesnt use it so how hard of a leap was it for you to get behind a measure like this . A Deputy Sheriff put it to me this way. He said i can take any two children from a local school at random. Give each a 20 bill, tell one to go by pot and the other to go buy booze the first one back every time will be the one i send to go by pot. They all know where to get it. The dealer depends on ignoring the law r and have no compunction. The kid i send to go buy booze will go to one liquor store after another and finally goget kicked out. That made a big impression on me. And i do think its very important, we can keep it out of the hands of children. The headline marijuanamoment. Net, the congress pledges to vote for Marijuana Legalization on the house for this month, that boat coming up today. House gambling in nineeastern. What has been the genel sense on this measure . I think most republicans are oppose legalization. But again, these are concerns over marijuana use. Ultimately that needs to be a decision madby every voter and i have enough trouble trying to run my own life without having to run everybody elses. There is a tax attached to this proposed measure how much is that tax and what would it be used for . Five percent of attacks, i am very concerned about overtaxing this product. If you overtax anything it will drive back underground and defeat the whole purpose of the mission. Should states, particularly the ones that have legalized marijuana on some level be delighted or concerned about the essential passage of this measure . I think allstate can support the passage of this measure. We restored to them the decisions over how toregulate their own state orders. Our guest is tom clintock, republican from california talking aboutnot marijuana measure thats coming up in the house today and other issues as ll a. The lines for republicans, 2027488000 one, democrats 2027488000 and independent and all others to goor 8002. Congressman mcclintock, i want to ask abt the apparent agreement over pendant relief, at least support from the House Speaker on a bipartisan measure that was introduced by senators in a number of members of the house on tuesday. At are your thoughts . The only genuine relief from the economic disruption of the lockdown is to end the lockdown. The lockdown cost less, you can see if you looat the state open which was locked down, over all the states that open have a lower vid morality mortality rate. Look at sweden, there was an order close businesses, they never closed their schools, their mortaly rate from covid is 160 per million less than that in the United States. Theyre about 5200 wer american deaths. Theytayed open. We closed down. And on top of that, we have to lk at the lives that have been caused by these lockdowns area increased suicide, cohol and drug abuse, mental violence. The deferred health screenings, general poverty rates. And in fact the United Nations this morning cited the economic devastation from these lockdowns will cost 130 million liveinto starvation. This nonsense has to stop. Let me ask you about an ancillary issue that, in a pandemic related to dealing with the First Amendment, the headline is the Washington PostSupreme Court sides with California Church protesting virus restrictions. They sided with the California Church protesting gavin neoms pandemic restrictionsboth indr Worship Services that a lower court should heed a decision by the Supreme Court justices last week blocking similar restrictions and the challenge was filed by the porous rock church and International Ministry which has churches across the state. Obviously i strongly support at decision. The First Amendment is sacred, thes no extension provision therefore whatever a public official decides to call an emgency read and that applies not only to the freedom liof peaceful assembly, freedom of speech and frankly , the implied freedom to go out your daily life without hurting anybody else thats a decision again that has to be left to individuals. The cdc by the way, their current best estimate is if youre under 5years old if you get covid your chancof recovery is 99. 98 peent. 40 perce of the people who get covid dont even know they havent. D even for the most vulnerable groups, those over 70 the recovery rate is 90 andhalf percent. I think we have got to reste the freedom was stripped from us by these unconstitutional edictsof governors like gavin newsom dr and governor cuomo, gretchen widmer. Theres a rogues gallery of such autocrats. Before we get the colors a quick headline. The fight form Legal Marijuana from gallup inches up to a new high of 68 percent. Lets hear from you not you are first caller in albany new york on the democrat line. Make sure you mute your volume please or you will be back, go ahead with your question. Good morning. I have to mment about marijuana. Your volu is too loud, youre going to ha to call back and turn down your volume. We will go to okeechobee florida and hear from the on the republican line. Good morning sir, ive got a question and a comment if you dont mind. My question is about the fda, our government. Those who okay tse drugs and the marijuana i have a comment to make on that. Im obviously against marijuana. My kids were growing up, theyre all adults now but over the years now iv noticed that marijuana is plant the good lord himself put on this earth and it doesnt harm anybody. Government just to your question to you, our government okay the fda okay, say i have one illness. Ive got one illness, ive got high Blood Pressure so ive got a hh Blood Pressure problem and it is given the medication, the fda okays but by the time the fda is done with you instead of curing your blood d pressure which it might dyou might have a heart problem. You might have a kidney problem, you might even have death. All kinds of stuff goes along but our government pushes all this garbage and so they cure one thing they get back 10 more. Ey get their sidekicks and the next thing you know, were taking two handfuls of pills to cover the one pl that we started to take in the first place what are you going to do about the fda . And thank you very much for letting me on here. The great Milton Friedman speculated the fda is claiming far more lives by reaucratic rates and improving vital drugs then have sav lives by stopping the release of bad drugs. The uk has just begun releasing that stations fair use several weeks ahead of the United States because of our bureaucracy and what we also should note is that this administraon cut through enormous amounts of red tape in order to get us to this point. Once again, too much government tends to produce far more problems than it solves. I think the lady is right but quite often government is not thesolution to our problems. The government is the problem. I am delighted to listen to the governnts advice on any range of subjects of personal choice. As we talked a Labor Department coming up with their Monthly Employment numbers. Congressman, for november the Unemployment Rate 6. 7 percent with employers adding 245,000 jobs in november. Your thoughts on where things are with the economy in terms of the jobsissue. Obviously our economy is springing back but its got a long way to go. Less than a year ago twe had the lowest Unemployment Rate in 50 years. The income gap was narrower. Wages were going back the lowest at any time in thepast 40 years. The poverty rate was at its lowest point since 1959. And then we took a wrecking ball to the economy and closed down businesses across millions of jobs, the latest numbers i saw were about 4 Million People unemployed directly because. Covid didnt call that damage, governmentaused that damage see one democrat line iiron river michigan. Good morning. Tom, thanks for taking my call. Bill, ive talked about this subject another ti with you and id like to ask t, all through the 80s we used this system ere you 0dont draft on the backseat of the car, it creates the draft and now we take their land and children, handed to the drunks, push off the black and brown peopleright through the ties and then when they get tohe cities we get to steal thr votes. I want to know how many elections have been won by republicans because we took 100,000 potheads votes i wantou to explain that, how do you get, i just watched the republicans vote on this bill and not one single republican voted forit i want you to explain this to me , how do you take kechildren awaywhen they dont do nothing, throw people in jail for pot and have been out in the street the next morning. Host randy, youre breaking up there ngressman mcclintock, what is your response . There is plenty of evidence that it does causeeurologic neurogical damage that lessons in the best way to do it is to greenlight alcohol. Post go the just of the legislature propose the legislation you will debate on on the floor today to moore act uld remove marijuana from the controlled substances act thereby decriminaling it, right . Guest correct. Host michael is next in brooklyn, new york on the independent line. Caller my question is in two parts. The first i believe you mentioned a 5 tax on marijuana sales. Is that on top of state taxes . Guest a federal excise yetax, yes. Caller i guess the next would be with the passage of this bill coincides with mass amnesty for people who are in prison on charges related to marijuana . Guest as a matter of fact its in the transportation bill. Caller you also mentione and my still on . Host you are on, go ahead greatly loshim. we will go to wisconsin and ths is roy from the republican line. Caller yes, thank you. I would like to say that im a disabled veteran who was serving in bosnia when i got a long illness that has progressed to the point where i wasold i was terminal. I had 20 lung pacity given a couple of years to le and i was seeing sev different specialist taking 13 different medications when one of my doctors here in wisconsin suggested that i try cannabis therapy. Y. Since ive gone on the cannabis therapy about 18 months its been, my lung capaci has gone from 27 back up to 43 and im 100 off all apollo the pharmaceuticals but i was in the newspaper in wisconsin whi led to the Police Coming to my hse and arresting me and trying to take my kidway and everything just for trying to stay alive. There some way that the va is going to be able to srt prescribing it so i dont have to be a felon . Guest thats a good question. I dot know the answerhe to that but people ought to be able to make their own decisions. They have the ability to giv patientst theest advice ey have. The folks here in washington who seems so intent on trying to rue everybody elses lives nd to run their own post the nextid as david in atlanta, georgia, democrats line. Caller yes, good morning. There were a lot of things i was hearing this morning and i have a few comments. Id like to say good morning to mr. Mcclintock and thank you for taking a stand even though the republicans and a lot of other people in your party are not. You have made mention of the underground economy that would be created by yet you didnt speak of the prisons that are making money off of the individuals that are being for marijuana or for Law Enforcement marijuana arrests comparatively are easier than other drug arrests because most marijuana arrests are not violence. Some of the other things that i think is a problem is that marijuana and how it is looked at for research and stuff like that should not be in the hands of the dea. Never should have been in the hands of the dea. It should have been in the hands of the food and drug administration. One of the other things that really got me is our country always says theres no research buter in israel they have been researching this plant since 1968 and we have taken other data from other countries on Different Things by yet week cant get these people, they are proven and shown that a human beings dna theres a cannabanoid thats only there for cannabis so its been in the humann body. Host i lost you there, david badia put a number of things on the table here. Congressman mcclintock would you like to address any of them . The points are well taken. He broader points both good and bad as we have researched the. The bottom line is it was perfectly legal until 1937 when we got to these rigid prohibition l laws that all the trouble started. When laws have utterly failed to achieve their desired goal and at the same time created a great deal of additional problems and that case is long overdue. Host you tched on this issueut i wanted to read the comments of an editorial by kevin saeb in the cofounder of smart approaches to marijuana. He said no state present better example of the failure of legalization then califora. So air one industry is conning to ask bing chen due to its failure to compete with the illicitgo market for governor gavin nsom has resorted to sending in the National Guard combat extensive legal Cartel Running a traffic organizatio of suburban housing developments. Its if the threat of stronger underground markets and increase crimein is enough to be the way forward. 10 until loss of life will. Host if there is a market its because of the reason is s heavily taxed. As i said earlier i you overtax it you will drive it underground which feats the entire purpose of the bill. Yodontwe have these kinds of problems wre these products are legalized and treated unifmly. Canada shoulbe treated no differently than any other product and it should be taxed athe same rate and that takes the profit out of the illegal. Host well hear from ginger in pinehurst, North Carolina on the independent line. Caller good morning bill, good mning representative mcclain. , how are you . Uest good. Caller first of all id like to second what the gentleman from georgia sd putting the dea in charge of scheduling cannabis is like puttingnh a fox in charge ofhe henhouse. Should have never been in the hands of the Enforcement Agency as opposed to a drug regatory agency. And i do have one question for representative mcclain talk mcclintock and that is where the passage of the moo act as anything more tn a symboc gesture given that senator mcconnl has made it crystal cleathat he does not ring any bells to the floor of the house which he doe not agree and h is on record as categorically opposed to any marijna reform. Guest even when they are controlled by the same party they tend to disagree. Thats safeguarding the system itself. s up to the other to propose alternatives and act on that and both sides ultately get together inim agreement. I think its importante this bil does pass out. I will say that its rather sappointing the only smallbusiness the house seems to be interested in is the cannabis business when we have countless Small Businesses and close by these devastating mark downst areas. Host ets hear from jack in rancho mirage, California Republican line. Caller my son is a marine and my otheron is a Police Officer and my son went undercover across the border to find out about this drug and anyway what happened is my son for some reason was discovered that he was undercover. They executed him tse darn cartel and passive we are goi to haveere in United States. Those carl are going to take over our country. Not only that but they extorted mes soon as they found out my son was dead they knew who i was and they extortede for over 50,000. It was supposedo be hushhush. If i make at washington d. C. Involved in a demanded after i sent them the 50,000 they demanded more money or adapter that when washington come i get so upset about this. Washington immediately sent my n back. Im hoping it was my son that they did sendack ache as those cartel are going to take over ourr country. They took over the latin country and i hope and pray for you people. Im 82 years old and im sure glad im going to be dead soon because this was vy hard to understand. Hot springs has farms full of marijuana plants. Host congressman mcclintock would legalizatio help us fight the cartels . Guest i believe that it does. The cartels get their power from the same way that al capone got his power, prohibition. If its illegal you are going to have an element of getting involved because their entireti success depends upon breaking the law and ignoring theng law. The products are regulated and legalized butake thatllicit process out of the market and take away the power of the violent parties weather was al capone in the 1930s with the prohibition about the hall or the cartel today and prohibition of marijuana. Host before we wrap up i wanted to redo it tweaked by President Trump and ask your thoughts in his efforts to contest a bota number of states produces whistleblowers reveal that usps is responsible for tampering with hundreds of thousands ofou ballots. Longtime democrat stronghold got rid of National Numbers and social in swing states during and bore delivery of the ballots. Welldocumented evidence. Congressman mcclintock the house will vote on those electors, will count the electors vote in the 117th congress. What do you think is ahead . Guest it will be the 117th congress in january, yeah you are correct. The ballots will be ct december 14 by thet electoral college. All of the challenges including some that have very serious i was ju looking at the evidence submitd in the nevada court yesterday documenting 10 of these people who voted in the election, 2000 nonresidents that voted in that election, evidence of 40,0 duplicate votes being cast i nevada. We have a system of justice pretty well designed to way that fends determining whats cherlin what is not. I am quite content to all that processte to unfold. We have both the judicial process to hear these issues as well as an administrative process conducting audits and recounts in the region and ultimately those issues will be decided before the electoral college. Host congressman Tom Mcclintock from california thanks for joining us this morning on washington journal. My pleasure, thanks for having me. Yuri are in this moment after electing the first black president in 2008 and the president responded by the vitriol the tea party and im elected donald trump. We are at a crossroads. Who are we going to be . At the heart of it all theres always been this moral question, who do we take ourselves to be . At morning and thank you all for being here today. Todays hearing comes at a perilous time for the 2020 census. Last month they were traveling press reports indicating career officials at the Census Bureau warned the trumpmp administratin about significant that will delay the delivery of census data until late january or early february. After these reports became public the director of the census issued a Public Statement nfirming the problems were found but he provided no details. These developments were particularly troubling because they were not reported to ournt committee. We