For those who view Washington, D.C., through the same rosecolored lenses that naive Sen. Jefferson Smith did in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin provided a stark and sobering contrast last Wednesday when he convened a community meeting intended to update his constituency about his work in the nation’s capital and “the issues they care about most.”

During the hour-long session at J&D Steakhouse in downtown Sallisaw, Mullin shared the secret of what would be required for reining in the national debt and agreeing to a balanced budget, touched on a basketful of hot-button topics that polarize the political landscape, revealed what is at the heart of the Russo-Ukrainian War (as well as other international flashpoints), applied Constitutional restrictions in confronting frustrating social issues, dispensed the obligatory Republican election rhetoric in which he shuddered at the thought of a Kamala Harris presidential victory and even had time to address a healthy dose of conspiracy theories.

He did all that in an hour? To be sure, being a U.S. Senator requires an abundance of expediency to accomplish as much as possible in a short amount of time.

Political division

Mullin admits that in 2016 when he was a representative for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District, he was on the verge of leaving political office. But Sen. Jim Inhofe convinced him not to quit, telling Mullin “it’s gonna get better.”

“I’m still waiting for it to get better, because it honestly gets worse,” Mullin told the three dozen constituents who attended Wednesday’s meeting. “There’s about as much contention on the House side and on the Senate side that I’ve ever seen it. It’s really bad. We’re as far apart as we’ve ever been as parties.”

When it comes to governing, Mullin believes Republicans and Democrats actually agree on 90% of the issues they face, with the remaining 10% being social issues.

“Social issues are what we get so fired up about, because social issues become personal. Leave the crazy ones on the edges out of this thing — what I mean by the crazies, the AOCs of the world — you can’t argue with crazy. If you talk to people, even on the Democrat side, most people will agree on basic stuff of infrastructure, investment in the military and getting a strong economy,” Mullin said. “We may not agree on exactly how to get there, but the need to resolve is all the same. We want the strongest economy, we need to invest heavily in infrastructure and our military should be the baddest and greatest in the world. Period. We just have different opinions on how we reach those goals, but the end result’s the same. “The 10%, though, is what is weighing down Washington, D.C., and polarizing us. When it becomes personal, because of the social questions and the social issues, people get fired up more than they do about anything else. They get more fired up on social stuff than they do actually their wallet, which is backwards to me. But it doesn’t work that way. For us, as a country, we have to get past that or we’re going to absolutely destroy ourselves.”

National debt

Mullin then drilled down on the federal budget, national debt, continuing resolutions, furloughs, government shutdowns, federal funding, balancing the budget and illegal immigrants.

“If the election turns out to where Republicans win the White House, we win the Senate, increase our majority in the House, then more than likely we’ll probably go into a shutdown. If the Democrats win the White House, we win the Senate and we lose or just barely hold on to the House, we’ll probably do another short-term CR, continuing resolution,” which Mullin says is just more of the same, stagnating the process.

Emphasizing the burden of a budget that’s “running at a $3 trillion deficit,” Mullin pointed out that “we’re paying more right now on interest on our national debt than we are investing in our military. It’s the first time we’ve ever done that.”

The national debt first eclipsed the $1 trillion mark at the end of the 1982 fiscal year when Ronald Reagan was president, and doubled by 1986. When George H.W. Bush was in office, the national debt hit $3 trillion in 1990 and $4 trillion in 1992. Bill Clinton experienced a $5 trillion debt in 1996, then the deficit grew to $10 trillion by 2008 when George W. Bush was president. By the end of the 2017 fiscal year when Donald Trump was in office, the national debt hit $20 trillion, and increased to almost $28 trillion before his term was up. By the close of the 2023 fiscal year, the deficit was $33 trillion.

Balancing the budget Mullin explained that 72% of the national budget is mandatory spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., while 28% is for appropriations, which is discretionary spending. Of that, an additional 17% is spent on national defense, which leaves 11% for remaining appropriations.

“So now you’re talking about balancing the budget off 11% of our budget. Zero chance you can do that,” he said, determining that the only way to balance the budget is “with a divided government.”

“Republicans aren’t gonna do it by ourselves. Zero chance. Why? Because you’re guaranteed to lose the next election, because you’re gonna be blamed for throwing out the baby with the bath water, and pushing Granny over the cliff,” Mullin said. “Because you’re getting into Social Security, you’re getting into Medicare, you’re getting into Medicaid, payments back to the states.

“The only way you’re gonna go do it is both sides gotta be involved in it. That means you’ve got a divided government. You gotta have one chamber as Republican, one chamber as Democrat, or you gotta have both chambers as one party and the White House as a different party. You gotta have a divided government, that way we’ll all be in on it. It’s gonna take Republicans and Democrats both working [together]. One party will not make this decision itself. It is absolutely political suicide. Republicans or Democrats, neither one, will have the willpower or the discipline enough to do it by themselves. There’s a lot more people elected on both sides that’s more interested in their job than they are interested in the service,” Mullin said.

Know that doesn’t seem to help, however. The political climate is such that accomplishing something is low on the list of priorities.

“We’re not gonna do it, we’re just not. Congress isn’t gonna do it without it being forced on us. And it’s gonna be forced on us. At the rate we’re going right now, it’s gonna be forced on us sooner than later,” Mullin said.

Threat of insolvency And if balancing the budget or being smothered by an unfathomable national debt isn’t enough, what about the solvency of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

“We’re supposed to be solvent in Social Security and Medicaid until 2032 to 2035. But right now, it could be as quick as four years from now,” Mullin said, pointing to immigrants who receive benefits as the problem. “The next administration, regardless of who it is, is gonna be forced to deal with this. And Congress is gonna be forced to deal with this. Unless we see a huge increase in the workforce — which we’re not seeing that, we’re seeing an opposite turn — that starts paying more into it or we start taking people off, or both. That’s the only way that this thing doesn’t become insolvent in four to five years from now.”

War in Ukraine

Turning to the international scene, Mullin narrowed the focus of the Russo-Ukrainian War to rare-earth minerals, which are vital to the production and use of electronics, electric vehicles, satellites, aircraft, lithium batteries and uranium for nuclear fuel.

He said there are five known rare-earth mineral deposits in the world:

• Afghanistan, which has 1.4 million metric tons of rare-earth elements that are not being tapped, a resource estimated to be worth up to $3 trillion.

• China, which has two and also controls a source in Africa

• Ukraine, “which is estimated to be the fourth largest — could be actually the largest,” and is valued at $3.2 trillion, but “we feel like it’s actually probably twice that size, it’s not been mined.”

Mullin says the U.S. has the first right of refusal to the Ukrainian mine, and that without that, he says China and Russia control the world’s supply of the rare- earth minerals, which are used “in everything that you do today.”

In addition, Mullin says Ukraine has the second largest natural gas supply in Europe. So if Ukraine falls to Russia, Russia will “control rare-earth minerals for that entire region and the world, they’ll control the gas supply to all of Europe, which if you control the energy, you control the economy.”

And if that’s not enough, he also said 25% of all the food supply in the entire region, including Africa, comes from Ukraine. “So now Russia controls the food supply, the energy and rare-earth minerals. You wanna know why [Ukraine] is important to us? Those three things. That’s what the fight’s about.”

Middle East turmoil

Elsewhere, Iran is “aggressively trying to take over the Middle East, Russia trying to take over Europe and China trying to take over Asia — that’s the Axis of Evil.” Mullin said Israel is the only buffer in the Middle East because of its alliance with the U.S., and Iran has an alliance with Turkey. “We’re gonna be forced into a fight there, too.”

But Mullin says Iran was not always a threat.

“Iran was very quiet during Trump’s administration” because Iran “believed what he said.”

Mullin blames the Biden administration for the current threat, claiming that “it will take us decades to recover, to get the credibility around the world again.”

“And God forbid we have a Harris administration, then we run into another four years of appeasement instead of peace through strength. People in the Middle East — really, around the world — they respect one thing, and it’s strength. We’re in a very volatile world that we find ourselves in. I mean extremely volatile.”

“You hear every election that this is the most critical election we’ve ever had in our lifetime. And people say ‘I mean it.’ This time I really do mean it. It’s that bad,” Mullin said.

Legislating morality?

When Mullin opened the floor for questions, state Rep. Jim Olsen asked about solutions to social issues, such as same-sex marriage, abortion and gender identity. Mullin pointed out that none of that is in the Constitution, so morality can’t be legislated.

“Social issues start at home, that’s where it starts. It starts in our communities. If we wanna take back our country from the social issues, we start taking back our communities, we start taking back our schools, we start taking back our city councils,” Mullin said.

“Washington, D.C., is not going to solve these social issues. No way, no how are we ever gonna do it. It wasn’t designed for a legislative body to do that. That may not be popular among y’all, but somebody argue differently. Somebody read the Constitution and tell me different what my role is.”

‘We messed up’

When Joe Biden ended his re-election bid on July 21 and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor, an election without dynamics suddenly became very interesting.

“Harris changed the election,” Mullin said. “I think we messed up by having the debate so early. We gave them an opportunity to get rid of [Biden]. As soon as the debate was over, I said, ‘We messed up. They’re gonna kick him out. Now the election is gonna change.’

“The best thing they could have done was put Harris up. And there’s a reason why she’s not at any public-speaking engagements,” Mullin said, taking an opportunity to squelch Democratic enthusiasm. “Everything is very, very, very structured.

“Biden was a puppet for the progressive movement. She IS the progressive movement. So as soon as this honeymoon phase is over, when the DNC is done, now she has to start doing things.”

When asked about Harris running mate Tim Walz, Mullin said “he’s not as bad as [Harris], but he’s pretty progressive. She’s the worst.” Then he admitted, “I think the election is gonna be tighter than what we like. It’s not a gimme. It’s not a layup.”

Cue the conspiracies And no community meeting would be complete without indulging some conspiracies, fantasies and far-right talking points. That’s when Mullin fielded a complex question to which he was unable to provide a definitive answer.

“We still have questions about the 2020 election that haven’t been answered, we got the Afghan withdrawal, we’ve got influence peddling with Joe, we got open borders, we got spy balloons flying over, we got fentanyl crisis, we got coke in the White House, we got lawfare (using law as a weapon), we got $80 billion left in Afghanistan, we got the No. 3 at DOJ helping New York prosecutors, we got corrupt judges and DAs, we got aid being withheld from Israel, we got the coverup of Joe’s mental illness problems, we got Trump being shot, we got a coup on Joe, we got Hamas-conscious Democrats vandalizing everything,” one attendee said, setting the table for a query. “My question is, when is somebody gonna be accountable? The only two people that’s been held accountable is that [Secret Service director Kimberly] Cheatle, because she resigned, and then you’ve got Joe because there was a coup pulled on him, throwed away 14 million votes from voters. Nothing’s being done.”

While Mullin engaged in the discussion, the question proved more rhetorical.

Home sweet home

Despite contentious questions that could not be answered at the meeting, as well as Mullin’s unvarnished explanations of how government works — or doesn’t — the Senator from Westville enjoys opportunities to return to Oklahoma.

“As I travel around the world, there’s still no other place I’d rather be in than home. There’s no other country I’d rather live in. As bad as things are, we’re still better than everybody else. The foundation may be cracking, but it’s not broken. We can repair that. We can do a lot of things, if we choose to do the work. We’re all in this fight. We need to be more determined than ever to get our ship righted back up and moving in the right direction,” Mullin said in closing.