continues. host: joining us on the washington journal is representative earl blumenauer, longtime member of congress from oregon, democrat. he works on trade and fiscal issues among other things. congressman, we want to start with where we left off this morning and did you see what mitch mcconnell had to say yesterday about january 6? guest: i did. host: what is your reaction as a democrat? guest: i did indeed and it is a welcome response to have republican leadership repudiating this effort of denial. he was forthright. it is consistent with the concerns he had after the insurrection but i was pleased he came forward. two courageous republicans should not be penalized for telling the truth and standing up for the constitution and their principles. host: where were you january 6,

2021. guest: we had phased entry into the chamber because of covid protocol and i was scheduled to be on the floor. i was moving toward the floor when all of the madness occurred. i was able to go back to my office and be secure. it was very unsettling watching what happened outside my window. the chaos in the halls. i went out earlier that morning and walked the crowd. it was very obvious something awful's going to happen. it was unsettling and disturbing. host: you have been around in washington since your first election in 1996. what has changed for the worse up on capitol hill? guest: when i first came there was some real problems. we had newt gingrich leading a

charge and wanting to burn the place down and things were unpleasant. the first press conference i participated in was trying to return civility and that has been a constant challenge. but what has happened is we moved further and further into the extreme. the action on the outside coupled with people literally in denial, and we saw them encouraging the insurrection. as bad as it was earlier nothing like this has ever been approached. host: your hometown of portland, oregon saw protests last summer. what is your take on those? guest: it is brutal and we were caught between extremes. we had white supremacists who wanted to shake things up. we had some and archivists who tried to --

anarchist who wanted it for themselves. it was extraordinary difficult and it is taking a while to return to normal. it was a hard and unpleasant experience. host: so the city is not quite back to normal? guest: it is not. there are scars that linger and when you have the overlay of the covid crisis which has been extraordinarily disruptive, and then you have problems with homelessness. it is still a struggle to get our balance. host: earl blumenauer works on trade issues. he is chair of the trade subcommittee of the ways and means committee. we want to talk a little bit about trade. there is an article in the washington post that the u.s. trade deficit, record high in

2021, $859 billion. what is your take on that? guest: what that represents his people trying to reconnect with supply chains that have been dramatically disrupted. there are a number of goods that come overseas we have not had access to. what you are seeing here is an effort to do that. there are other disruptions that are going to take a wild. we continue to be strong in service says but i think this is an operation that is going to quiet a little bit going forward. the legislation we enacted getting tough on the chinese efforts to exploit the loopholes in our tax laws like the provision that allowed them to send two million packages a day

in the united states, not paying tariffs, not being inspected, getting under an artificial limit, our legislation would correct that. it is a step toward strengthening american business. host: are we to rely on china when it comes to manufactured products? guest: i think we have not been tough enough in dealing with china. the trump trade agreement was supposed to have a number of chinese actions, most notably not fulfilled, a promise to purchase american agricultural products. and we have not stopped them from stealing our intellectual property, cutting corners, forced labor. these are unnecessary advantages the chinese take advantage of and i think, as we did with our legislation, we should draw the line and enforce it. host: do you support president biden's diplomatic censure of the olympics? guest: yes.

host: the competes act, are you a supporter? it gives $52 billion to the u.s. semiconductor industry but what does it do and how, in your view, doesn't make u.s. manufacturing stronger? guest: we have an opportunity to strengthen the chip manufacturer and this is very important in oregon, one of the major businesses is intel. there are other companies involved. the united states being able to invest in helping us strengthen our supply chains for chips and technology is important. the rest of the country -- the rest of the world is doing it. the chinese have lavish support for theirs. we have balanced it by taking a stronger stand against the chinese practices they give them

an unfair advantage. they went into the wto 20 years ago. we still don't have a procurement agreement with them that allows the united states businesses to compete for business in china, even though chinese businesses can compete in the u.s. i think that is outrageous and we ought to enforce the provisions and not let them get away with it. host: politico this morning has an article about mask mandates. mask mandates, contact tracing going away and a lot of the blue states are getting rid of these mask mandates. do you support that? is it time? guest: i think we are reaching a point where it is time to relax it. americans have responded. in my state they were amazingly vigilant. we have had better performance than many other states to try and be sensitive to the needs of protecting their families and

others by using the mask mandate and getting vaccinated. the crisis we have is largely one of unvaccinated people who do not respect the mask mandate. those that do have a much lower rate of infection and hospitalization. it largely ran its course with the variant. people have done a good job of observing it and i think it is appropriate to start relaxing it. host: congressman blumenauer, a lot of the political talks have been about the strength of the republicans in the coming midterms. article in the hill this morning about senate democrats that says, senate democrats shift strategy after progressive agenda falters. what is the talk in your caucus? guest: i think it is important to be able to deal with the realities in the senate. having a massive sweeping

proposal is not in the cards. being able to take the items that are very important and very popular and focus on them is a reasonable countermeasure. the good news is what we are proposing is widely supported by the american public. dealing with early childhood education, what we have already done with infrastructure, being able to go forward, being able to deal with the environmental provisions that are broadly popular with the public. if we are able to take some of these individual elements and move it forward, some is better than nothing. it is already the most sweeping set of enactments we have ever seen and it is working. we had this last year the largest increase in employment in any administration in history. almost half a million new jobs last month.

these programs are working. they are popular. i think it is appropriate to be more targeted so it adjusts to the realities in the senate. host: we put a lot of topics on the table. let's take some calls. david is in madison heights, michigan on the democrat line. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. i am surprised as a democrat you let me call in. and the last three days you have republicans calling in only. since the beginning of the year that was your eighth republican call in only and only one democrat and no independent. i just want to say to the congressman, great job, keep up the great work. we need to get rid of these republicans that are nothing but a stain on america. you had a caller with the gop

only calling in and a woman caller said it was not trump supporters that breached and broke into our capitol. really? come on. keep up the good work. let's get rid of these republicans left and right and change your name to foxspan. host: that was david in madison heights, michigan. we will not make you respond. guest: let me say, i was there. i was out in the crowd. those who were not protesters -- those were insurrectionists and it was definitely a trump crowd. that has been validated by some of the republican leadership who were on the ground and responded. host: next call is donald, democrat in burlington, new jersey. what would you like to say to congressman blumenauer? caller: good morning.

i cannot even begin to imagine what it must've been like in the capitol that day. i am calling because i feel there is a lot of hate right now going on in congress, the senate, and especially fans of certain television network, fox. that's because it is no longer about facts, it is about opinions. these people just read the teleprompter and they believe every word they say. because of that people have started to get more and more hateful and they don't want to cooperate. if you listen to the call they say, we have to get rid of pelosi, we have to get rid of who ever. we need to work together. as far as masks are concerned they work. a republican called yesterday and said they work. that is all i have to say. please stop watching fox. guest: i think your caller is right and opportunities to work together. that is one of the reasons i am

encouraged about being able to take the more popular elements that have been advanced with the president's agenda and deal with them on an individual basis. there are a wide range of areas they don't have to be fiercely partisan divided. you will have nancy mace here, republican from south carolina, who i am working with on cannabis legalization. this is an area that does not have to be partisan. we can come together with reform. there are a host of things that i hope we can focus more intently on things we agree on, like standing up to china. these are areas where if we are spending more time working together, we can move around this and not be focused on the extreme and allowed. host: adam kinzinger was quoted saying he was fearful of a civil war in america. do you agree? guest: there are some who i think are fomenting that and

adam's experience, i can see what he would say that. he has been treated shabbily by the republicans and on the receiving end of vitriol that is unimaginable. i worked with him on a variety of things like dealing with immigrants, iraqi and afghan immigrants whose lives were at risk because they worked with us. i found him to be thoughtful and independent. i do not think we are on the verge of civil war but this is not a good time in our country. why i want us to find things we can work together on to have some progress and change the course. host: congressman, has redistricting lent itself to more extreme elements in both parties? guest: the way it has been pursued too often is that it definitely caters to the more extreme voices. when you have districts that have been drawn to be entirely republican or entirely

democratic with extreme gerrymandering it tends to squeeze out folks in the middle and promote the loudest voices. what we have seen in the republican party designed to embrace the trumpian elements. very thoughtful republicans. i don't always agree with them but i appreciate who they are and how they put somebody like tom rice as a target. my word, it is really unsettling what has happened to drive these people out of the republican party. host: roy is a republican in georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. i just have a question. after the 2016 election there were several democratic congressman that challenged the election and it was allowed to run its course because they did

not have a senator to go along with their challenge. biden did not entertain it. this time there were several congressmen willing to come forward to challenge the election. in addition to that they had several senators there were going to support it. the difference between 2016 and 2020 is it did not run its course because of the suppose it insurrection. but trump had told all the people who would listen to him go to the capitol and encourage your congressman to do the right thing. that is when everything fell apart. they did not want the challenge to go forward. they were people in there to try to interfere with that and there were people from antifa and black lives matter that started that. and there were policemen that did not try to stop it.

they were successful in stopping the challenge to the election. host: we got the point i think. congressman? guest: your caller is flat out wrong. this was not antifa and black lives matter. i was there, i saw them. it is clear there was an unlawful effort to stop the election. the claims that have been made and litigated by trump supporters of irregularities, there is i think 62 legal challenges. they were all dismissed except for one on a minor case. there is no question joe biden won the election and there is no question the procedure that followed was open, transparent and fair. host: michael, beacon, new york, democrat. caller: how are you doing? i have a comment and a question.

the january 6 committee is doing a fantastic job. they are exposing the coup the trump led. the biggest problem we have is that fox, they don't report this. how are we going to get the truth to america? because until this country lives with truth we will always be divided. in this non-truth coming from the republican party does not stop. how do we get the truth exposed to the people? they are not getting the truth. they are getting lies. host: thank you. congressman? guest: that is indeed a challenge and fox news is one of the most extreme examples.

it is interesting that people who get their information from fox news actually know less about what is going on in the world and people who do not listen to the news, there are alternatives. i think c-span provides a service both in terms of what has happened in congress and allowing opportunities like this for people to air their views, but you have public broadcasting. npr, pbs, there are a number of local news outlets. people can get the information if they want it. part of the problem is what happened with social media that has taken an outsized influence and it is distorting. but what is happening, for example, with the investigation on capitol hill. it is very thorough. it is slow going. it is not exciting theater but we are finding out about the extraordinary steps donald trump

took to try to overturn the election, right down to the fact he is violating the law by the material he takes out of the white house illegally. but things are coming out. the truth is going to come forward. the committee is doing a good job. there are a few republicans that are dismissive and quite critical of what is going on. i think it is going to build between now and the election but the record will be clear for people who have any sort of independent judgment. that is not everybody, but it is enough i think to make a difference in terms of a reset both in terms of politics and public policy. in the end i think the american public will support a reasonable approach, hold trump and his

accolades accountable, and be able to move on for what is good for america. host: covers men bloom in our, the house yesterday passed another resolution -- congressman blumenauer, the house yesterday passed another resolution. will the appropriations bill return? guest: yes and i will say there has been significant progress toward a spending bill that would be reset to the new level of funding rather than freezing in the past. continuing resolutions are awful in terms of restricting what can be done. for example, we passed a major infrastructure bill on a bipartisan basis which would put $550 billion to rebuild and renew america, everything from roads and bridges to broadband. but until we get the new budget

top line numbers approved we cannot get access to it. but there is remarkable progress that is being made. by credit rosa delauro in the house and republican colleagues who are working hard to get that. my every indication is there is progress that has been made because america needs to have access to this money according to the higher levels of spending and we are getting close to it. i hope we reach a point where we actually do the budget process without having to resort to these continuing resolutions which are very disruptive. host: last call for the congressman comes from paul in fulsome, louisiana, independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you doing? host: good morning. go ahead. caller: i would love to have a deep discussion with this

representative. but i would like to ask you one question. i sat automation to chemical plants, refineries, the energy sector. let's just get -- you say you have these great agendas that the people want and you cannot get through congress because of republicans. that is such nonsense. i want to ask you an intelligent question and see if i can get an intelligent answer. i know about 2000 engineers that have called on the last 20 years. there is not one who says with these electric cars that biden is doing and basically cutting our own throats with the energy sector, not doing throats with y sector. and all these pipelines being

shut down. what is your question -- host: what is your question? caller: how do you charge your electric car? with what? guest: this is a very good question. what we are seeing now is an explosion of renewable energy. it is now cheaper to have wind and solar than coal. there are opportunities now with the battery technology, wind and solar that we are able to meet the nation's energy supply over the next 10 years with less reliance on fossil fuels that's poisoning the planet's atmosphere and leading to global warming. louisiana is the worst example of being pounded by climate change. they are losing their shoreline. they have had extreme weather events. louisiana needs a reset.

and i hope that within these policies we will be able to invest in alternative energy and environmental restoration and broadband that louisiana needs desperately. host: for those meeting you for the first time, how long have you been wearing the bicycle? guest: i started a bicycle program and i have been advertising this now for over 25 years and congress. every day, a giveaway thousands of them -- every year, i give away thousands. host: the longtime democrat from announcer: “washington journal" continues. host: joining us is representative nancy mace, you first termer from south carolina, a republican. you just went through a second covid diagnosis, didn't you? guest: