Republicans discuss impact of rising inflation, NATO weaknesses at American security conference

FIRST ON FOX: Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Dan Bishop of North Carolina, as well as Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, spoke about the consequences of record-high inflation and NATO weaknesses during the “Up from Chaos” conference hosted by American Moment, a conservative nonprofit, and The American Conservative magazine.

The Republicans expressed their constituents’ concerns about paying higher prices in the grocery store and in the gas pump, as well as President Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and NATO’s purpose three decades after the end of the Cold War.

Inflation

“My constituents are feeling the maleffects of inflation. The price of food and the price of fuel is going up. It’s permanent. It’s not going to go back down, and I’m worried that it’s going to get worse,” Massie told Fox News Digital in an interview at the conference Thursday.

“I’m worried that Joe Biden may try to push through this Democratic congress another stimulus package or COVID packages, and Americans can’t afford another one of those COVID packages.”

Vance, the Senate candidate from Ohio and author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” similarly told Fox News Digital that inflation is one issue he hears “most about on the campaign trail.”

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“Inflation is very bad. It’s one of the things I hear most about on the campaign trail. The way that I think about it is: you’ve got a lot of grandparents in Ohio, who, like my grandparents, took care of me. They’re taking care of grandkids they weren’t expecting to take care of because the opioid problem is raging in Ohio, they’re living on a fixed income, and now, inflation is making it harder for them to put food on the table for their grandkids,” he said.

“And that, at the end of the day… middle-class people in Ohio are finding it harder to pay for basic things, and that is a huge, huge tragedy. And unfortunately, it’s one of those things that’s forced by very bad policy from the Biden administration.”

Vance also suggested that President Biden’s $5.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2023 — which would raise taxes by $2.5 trillion, largely be borne by Wall Street and the top sliver of U.S. households — would make inflation worse.

“One of the reasons we have an inflation problem is because we’re spending money that we don’t have,” he said. “And so, if you say we’re not going to tax middle-class people, but then you propose a budget that causes inflation to go up by 10%, well, you are taxing middle-class people. You’re just doing it through inflation.”

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., said that while the “American people are greatly sympathetic to the people of Ukraine,” their “lives are being turned upside-down by crisis after crisis,” including the border crisis and inflation.

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“[G]as prices are $4 or $5 in some places and likely to get up into $6, $7, $8. We are crippling American energy production. Just terrible decisions on every front, and the American people are ready to make a change,” he said.

NATO

Wednesday’s conference featured speeches from several Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., as well as panelists from various Washington, D.C., publications and think tanks, centered around American security as it relates to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speakers and panelists discussed a wide range of subjects from U.S. sanctions against Russia; the mainstream media’s reaction to Russia’s invasion; U.S. border security; and the purpose of NATO after the Cold War.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental, military-political alliance between the United States, Canada and a number of European countries. NATO was founded after World War II in 1949 in an effort to protect NATO countries against threats from Russia — then the Soviet Union.

Ukraine is not part of NATO, which plays no formal role in Russia’s war with Ukraine, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy has called on NATO officials to enact a no-fly zone over his country to stop Russian missile attacks. Most NATO officials have thus far denied those requests, citing concerns of a third world war against Russia.

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Some panelists argued that NATO is not serving its purpose to defend the West from Russian aggression and has instead provoked Russia as NATO allies expand further East.

“I don’t want to suggest that NATO is weak or should be weak or that we should abandon it in any way. But the way for it to be strengthened is for Europe to know that defending the integrity of Europe is primarily a European responsibility,” Bishop told Fox News Digital.

Bishop and Vance pointed to former President Trump’s demands that NATO countries commit to putting 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) toward NATO defense.

“One way in which [Trump] really affected American thinking was about the NATO alliance and what should happen to it. The NATO alliance is very important to Western security, but Europe needs to be responsible financially for itself and, frankly, ought to be a very leading force in NATO rather than be dependent upon the United States,” Bishop said.

Vance said that while the United States is “still a global power,” but that could change if the government keeps “making very bad decisions, especially here at home.”

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“Part of being a global power is having a safe and strong country at home. Right now, we don’t have either, and so, eventually that global power starts to fade,” he said. “I think about Donald Trump, who went to NATO and said, ‘If you guys want to have an effective alliance, you need to keep your end of the bargain,’ versus Biden…sometimes is babying NATO into weakness. … If it’s going to be an alliance, the allies have to keep their end of the bargain.”

Massie argued that the United States “should immediately reverse our policy of expanding NATO to every country that we can.”

“Even if NATO were relevant and had a place in a post-Cold War era, it wouldn’t make sense to include smaller countries that really don’t benefit us in a mutual defense agreement,” he said.