Blake Moore says there's a 'sincere lack of trust' between parties in DC
by Bridger Beal-Cvetko ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Rep. Blake Moore cites deep distrust among Congress members hindering legislative progress.
- Moore highlights popular issues like immigration reform stalling due to partisan mistrust.
- He said incentives reward performance, not legislation, in Congress.
SALT LAKE CITY — Falling institutional trust has been well documented as Americans have steadily shown less faith in politicians, government institutions and the media.
It's not just regular Americans who feel distrustful, according to Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, who said members of Congress have grown deeply distrustful of one another, and it's making it hard to accomplish anything in Washington.
Moore said that lack of distrust is in part to blame for seemingly popular issues or bills being unaddressed by Congress. Moore spoke Thursday to a crowd of University of Utah students at the Sutherland Institute's annual Congressional Series.
"There's a sincere lack of trust between ... whoever's in the majority and whoever's in the minority that the effort would be sincere," he said when asked how he would translate popular support into legislation.
Moore was talking about his bill, initially proposed by the conservative-leaning Sutherland Institute, that would test a program for replacing welfare programs with a single payment. The bill is aimed at reducing so-called "benefit cliffs," when a small increase in income leads to a dramatic decrease in social program benefits.
But the distrust between parties is holding up a wider array of popular proposals, the congressman said.
"There's plenty of polling out there that says things would be more popular — immigration reform, really solving our debt, stuff like that, that actually polls really well, that we can't get ourselves to," he said. "I don't believe that either side is truly seeing that we are sincere about this. Republicans are willing to let there be more money spent on these programs and not cut it off so quickly, but I don't think my Democrat colleagues really trust that."
"That's the emotion of the place right now," he added, "and I'm sure this now is not the only time it's been like that."
'Too much to gain by vitriol'
Moore spent much of his time Thursday addressing the growing national debt —something he has been concerned about since taking office. The congressman believes Americans are concerned and want Congress to address it, but he said the incentives reward performance, not substance.
Congress might be better able to solve the debt problem if 435 Americans were chosen at random to serve, he joked.
"There's far too much to gain by vitriol, by the attention you get for very toxic attitudes back there on both sides of the aisle," Moore said of Washington.
Members of Congress are also overly focused on reelection rather than tackling hard issues, he said.
"People are terrified of their primaries," he said.
Moore on Trump Jr.
Moore was also asked if he agreed with Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, who has called for an investigation into Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden as part of a probe into the business and personal dealings of relatives of presidents. Curtis had previously criticized a wedding after-party for Trump Jr. in the Bahamas in May that was paid for by a Russian oligarch. The president did not attend the wedding, and he later said his oldest son had repaid the oligarch.
"Maybe one of the most tone-deaf things I've ever seen to take money from a Russian oligarch for a wedding," Moore said.
However, he differentiated between the wedding party — "an ethical decision" — and Hunter Biden having pleaded guilty to tax charges — "a criminal penalty." But he agreed with Curtis' calls for subpoenaing both men.
"It's just tone deaf and it's just not the type of stuff that we need to be dealing with right now," he said of Trump Jr.'s wedding party. "I appreciate they gave the money back, but why in the world is there not somebody advising them, like, 'This is going to be a bad look, if nothing else, other than highly, highly unethical.'"
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.