Gallagher grilled by SCHS seniors

Students ask for answers on vaccine mandates, Build Back Better, tribal sovereignty
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher found himself under scrutiny Jan. 6 at Shawano Community High School as he visited the school to talk with the Class of 2022 and talk one-on-one with one of its members who will be going to the U.S. Naval Academy in the fall.

Jackson Smits was appointed to the academy by Gallagher, who had been in the U.S Marine Corps before he decided to run for public office. Gallagher sat down with Smits for a closed-door session to talk about the academy, but before that, he talked civics with the senior class.

One of the first questions Gallagher fielded addressed remarks he had made on Fox Business News regarding the harmful effects of virtual learning and masking during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he was asked why he wasn’t pushing for vaccine mandates. Gallagher said that he didn’t feel it was the federal government’s role to impose mandates, noting that he and his wife have both been vaccinated, and that he is pro-vaccine.

“As a constitutional matter, with the exception of the U.S. military, it is unconstitutional for the president and the federal government to impose a vaccine mandate,” he said. “Joe Biden, as a candidate, said the same thing.”

Gallagher added that there is Supreme Court case history that the states have the authority to impose mandates on vaccines and other matters. He said it should be up to state and local governments to decide if they’re going to require vaccines for people to move about in public.

“In more concentrated urban areas, you can make a better case of it,” Gallagher said. “In rural areas, I don’t see the need for it.”

He conceded that the vaccines reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, but they don’t stop the spread of variants like omicron and delta.

One student recalled when Gallagher visited Shawano Community Middle School five years ago, and when asked what the biggest problem in the United States was, he said it was the national debt. Gallagher said it’s still the biggest problem today, but the dysfunction in Congress in addressing the issue was a key reason that it remains a huge issue.

“The problem has gotten dramatically worse in the last four years, where we’re now at $24-$28 trillion in debt, depending on how you look at it,” Gallagher said. “At some point, we’re going to have to pay back that debt. If you look at governments throughout history, the message is clear. Governments that can’t keep their fiscal house in order tend to collapse.”

He added that the United States is passing on a huge obligation to the seniors sitting in the auditorium and their children. Only by making hard choices can the debt be brought down, according to Gallagher.

The congressman also expressed his opposition to the Build Back Better plan being pushed by Biden, claiming it has a lot of divisive issues and only serves to increase the debt.

“There’s a massive expansion of the role of the federal government in the health care system, a lot of counterproductive climate policies that won’t help us win the race for clean technology moving forward, and just the creation of massive new federal bureaucracy at a time when we spent $2 trillion recently and $6 trillion total fighting COVID-19,” Gallagher said, noting that the federal government just spent $2 trillion on a bipartisan infrastructure bill. “I fear this is going to make inflation worse and not solve our underlying problems.”

Gallagher was asked to give his own solutions on dealing with climate change, to which he replied that the country should do more to address natural gas and its role in reducing emissions. He also recommended more be done to incorporate hydro and solar energy, but he also recommended looking at nuclear energy.

Another student pointed out that the Shawano area is on the border of the Menominee Reservation and asked Gallagher about his stance on the federal government and how it should respect tribal sovereignty. He replied that the federal government should not do anything that infringes on the tribes’ rights to handle their own affairs.

“We have to honor those treaties, and I don’t support any efforts to abrogate them,” Gallagher said. “As a result, we have a unique arrangement. Sometimes we have to simultaneously respect tribal sovereignty as much as possible to respect those treaties while also making sure we have a productive relationship with the tribal government, the federal government and the state government.”

Gallagher pointed to the Oneida Casino shooting in May 2021 as an example of that. While tribal police took the lead on the investigation, he said, the tribe worked closely with state and county law enforcement.

“The reason I have a good relationship with the tribes is because I’m very deferential to their sovereignty,” Gallagher said, noting that Native American tribes have led the way on clean water issues.

However, there was one other question that Gallagher had to answer before leaving — what his favorite pizza is at Gallagher’s Pizza in Green Bay, a company that’s part of the family. He said he preferred something simple like thin crust pepperoni before launching an attack on pineapple.

“Don’t put pineapple on your pizza,” Gallagher said. “It’s sacrilegious.”


lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com