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Rep. Babin hosts town hall meeting
The Bay Area Citizen
By Y.C. Orozco

Nine counties in a diverse district.

That’s how Congressman Brian Babin described the constituency he represents.

The congressman (District 36) hosted a town hall meeting at the campus of UH-Clear Lake on Wednesday evening where he highlighted his reasons for seeking public office, and touched on several key issues impacting the local region and driving national debate.

Babin, a dentist who practiced for 38 years both in the private sector and U.S. military, stressed that he was not a career politician, and had sought public office to affect change in what he characterized as a political climate of government over-spending, lack of border control, bloated national debt and a disengaged foreign policy.

“I’ve had my career, I’m not looking for a career, but I felt very strongly that our country was heading in a direction that I was very apprehensive about,” he said. “We seem to be diminishing around the world.”

With four offices in the region, Deer Park being the main office, Babin said his priority was to serve and stay focused on his district’s values, not Washington’s or that of interest groups.

“In addition to being in Washington, I’m out in this district constantly when we’re not in session, talking to people, folks who are job creators, individuals with concerns…trying to figure out what our wants and desires are,” he said. “My constituents come before anything else.”

Babin’s cited his ’12 priorities’ for serving his district.

“We have 12 grandchildren, those are my 12 reasons for running: that is it pure and simple,” he said. “I want my grandkids – ranging in age four weeks to nine years old – I want them to have the same opportunities that our older generations have enjoyed.”

Babin also talked about the importance of ‘reining in’ the disproportion of power among the branches of government and wanting to ‘restore’ freedoms and liberties, ‘shrink the size and scope’ of federal government, lower national debt, cut taxes and spending, building a healthier economy and creating jobs.

“We’re spending money we don’t have on programs in many cases simply don’t work,” he said.

In a statement directed at the current administration, the congressman spoke of the need to return to the rule of law.

“We can’t have a country that is run by a president that just simply writes out executive orders and establishes a new law that he wanted to have pass, but the congress wouldn’t pass it,” he said.

Babin also spoke of his efforts in initiating a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, citing that while there were ‘”problems in our health care industry” in ensuring that people get health care they need “we were promised we could keep our doctors and insurance policies, and neither one of those have turned out to be true”.

Babin also cited his co-sponsorship of a bill to repeal Obama’s amnesty plan, a bill that “didn’t have the votes to make it stick.”

Babin was appointed to serve on the transportation and infrastructure committee as well as science, space and technology, both critically important, he said, to the region and its economy.

He explained how the ports of Houston, Orange, Beaumont, Cedar Bayou and Baytown, miles and miles of pipeline, and the largest petrochemical industrial complex in the U.S. place the region in a national context while those industries, along with seafood, rice and agriculture and cattle – distinguish the district as one of the most diverse in the country, he said.

“That’s jobs, and that’s why this area is the engine that drives the economy of our nation,” Babin said. “I’m very humbled and proud and privileged to have been elected by the good people of southeast Texas and District 36 to represent you in Washington.”