De Plane, De Plane! Statewide Townhall with Montana Congressman

De Plane! De Plane! Everybody wanted to talk about De Plane! Ha...

First, for our younger listeners and our young producer Caden- if you don't get the reference...check out the video below.

Yeah, we had a great statewide tele-townhall meeting on Tuesday morning with Montana's Western District Congressman Ryan Zinke (R-MT). A few minutes earlier he was on CNN talking about De Plane, so we had to have some fun with that. We also talked about grain prices, his efforts to protect public lands, an update on "one big beautiful bill", and we took several phone calls as we got them in from across the state.

What about the latest draft of "one big beautiful bill?" 

Congressman Zinke: "So there's a couple of deadlines that are coming up. One is a debt ceiling, because Congress is going to have to take action on the debt ceiling. And the second is the tax provisions that are due to expire on the 31st of December. But in my experience, Congress doesn't do much until we have to, but there's some provisions in the bill that I object to quite frankly."

What about Gallatin County Commissioners standing in the way of ICE as illegal aliens flooded the Gallatin Valley?

Congressman Zinke: "I talked to Tom Homan. I talked to the sheriff. The sheriff said, hey, we have a problem with beds. If we send illegal immigrants to to our beds, who's going to pay for them? So Tom Homan assured me that, look, I will pay whatever the county cost is, and I will ensure the county standards, not the federal standards, the county standards are adhered to...I'm highly disappointed the county commissioners are not doing what they're supposed to do is- protect the citizens. That's number one job- safety and citizens safety. So when you got bad characters going up and down the hill, there are many dealing drugs, child trafficking, sex trafficking- ask the sheriffs. You know, the sheriffs can go after these guys and hold them so ICE can pick them up. So I'm disappointed with the county commissioners not to adhere to their duty of making sure that the great, great city of Bozeman and Gallatin remains safe."

Full audio is below in the Montana Talks podcast.