Palmer defends Iran 'war' in talk to 7 area chambers of commerce

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U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, who represents Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District, on Monday told business people from throughout his district that President Trump’s decision to take military action against Iran was justified, but Palmer also questioned some executive actions.

In remarks to seven area chambers of commerce, including the Vestavia Hills Area Chamber of Commerce, Palmer said the question to him isn’t why Trump took action.

“The question is why didn’t a previous president do it before they had ballistic missiles, before they had drone technology, before they had the capability to enrich uranium to the point that it became weapons grade and they’ve got over 900 pounds of weapon-grade uranium,” Palmer said.

Unclassified intelligence reports have indicated that Iran was within two weeks of having a bomb, Palmer said in his luncheon speech at the Pelham Civic Complex.

“What we’re trying to do here is save the world from a nuclear catastrophe, and I believe that’s where we were heading had they been able to develop those bombs,” Palmer said.

U.S. officials had previously thought the maximum range of Iran’s ballistic missiles was about 1,800 miles, but some recently hit an island in the Indian Ocean about 2,600 miles away, Palmer said. “With that kind of range, they could have reached Oslo, Norway,” he said. “I’m not a warmonger, but when it’s necessary, it’s necessary.”

Palmer said he does wish the president would stop saying the war will be done in a few weeks or within a particular timeline.

“When asked when it will be over, the response should be, ‘It’ll be over when it’s over,’” Palmer said. “We need to secure all of their uranium — all of their ability to produce it. And we need to destroy or remove all of their ballistic missile capabilities. When that’s done, it should be over, but pulling out before it’s over would be a huge mistake.”

Some people are complaining about how the military action has sent gas prices higher, but they need to remember that the national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline climbed as high as $5.15 under President Biden, Palmer said.

“He wasn’t trying to win a war against an existential threat to our country,” Palmer said. “He was fighting a war against fossil fuel – trying to force people into electric vehicles.”

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in 1978 was 65 cents, and adjusted for inflation, that would be the equivalent of $3.39 today, Palmer said. Just a few weeks before the “war” against Iran started, the average price per gallon was less than that, he said.

In his annual Washington update, Palmer also said he thinks the country is on the verge of a “constitutional crisis” because of actions by some activist judges and executive orders issued by presidents of both parties in recent times.

In regard to judges, Palmer said that once legislation is passed by Congress or other entities, the only question for the federal courts should be whether such action is constitutional.

“What we’ve got now is we’ve got superlegislators who are unelected who serve for life who are overturning laws that have to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to be overturned by them,” Palmer said. “They’re running out the clock on a lot of what the Trump administration is doing. … We really need judges that are non-partisan. We’ve got to quit getting radicals on either end in our courts. We just need people to call balls and strikes.”

On the other hand, there has been some overreach with executive orders by the executive branch of government as well, Palmer said.

“I don’t think we ought to be appropriating by executive order,” he said. “That is a responsibility of the legislative branch. I had a rather intense conversation with the speaker [of the U.S. House of Representatives] about this last week, and I’m going to continue to have intense conversations because there are some things too valuable to give up for short-term gain. Once you punch a hole in the vessel, everything is going to run out. That’s what worries me.”

While the setup of the U.S. government isn’t perfect and people in positions of power make mistakes, the constitution of the United States has worked for 200 years, Palmer said. The legislative process is designed to be very inefficient and very slow, he said.

“You don’t want efficiency in that regard because some really bag things could happen if you don’t have really thoughtful processes,” Palmer said.

“We’ve got to realize that everyone else who has taken office … raised their hand to uphold the constitution against all enemies, domestic and foreign,” Palmer said. “All enemies – and sometimes it’s us because we want to achieve an objective and we’re willing to shortcut some things, and eventually you shortcut so much you undermine the very foundations you’re operating on. I think we’ve got to get a handle on this.”

OTHER ISSUES

Palmer also talked about several other issues, including tax cuts, reduced spending, the price of prescription drugs and health care in general, the availability of critical minerals and rare earth elements, and the future of nuclear energy.

He said the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump in July of last year, made some tax cuts permanent. Congress also has reduced spending by $960 billion and is working to eliminate a lot of fraud that has existed in federal programs, he said. There was probably close to $1 trillion of fraud in the federal government, he said.

Palmer said he has been in talks with the White House in recent weeks about bringing down the price of prescription drugs and health care in general. One piece of legislation that he has sponsored would set up a health care marketplace that runs parallel to Obamacare. People who are in Obamacare and like it could keep it, but this new plan would give people more choices and be a little less expensive, he said.

If a doctor you want to use isn’t covered by your health insurance, other doctors would have to tell you what their charges would be, and if the doctor you want to use is less expensive, your insurance would have to cover it, he said.

“That’s going to create some competition. That’s going to bring down prices,” he said.

The proposed legislation also would set up a guaranteed benefits pool, pre-funded by the federal government, for people with pre-existing conditions. If someone has had cancer or a heart attack, their insurance company could put their policy in this guaranteed benefits pool, Palmer said. Ninety percent of their insurance premiums would go into the pool, and the other 10% would be held by their insurance company, he said. If that person gets really sick, the insurance company would pay the first $7,500 and 10% of the next $25,000, so the insurance company’s maximum exposure would be $10,000, and the rest would be paid by the guaranteed benefits pool at a Medicare rate, he said.

“Everybody is made whole. It allows the actuaries to know that there is a cap on the insurance company’s exposure,” Palmer said. “For a couple in their 40s with two kids, that would bring their premiums down by over $9,000 a year.”

Palmer said he’s also very concerned about the U.S. supply chain of critical minerals and rare earth elements.

“The United States is 100% reliant on foreign sources for refined rare elements,” Palmer said. “You can’t make anything without rare earth elements. You can’t make a car, a plane, a naval vessel. You can’t make a cellphone, a computer. You can’t make a control panel for a washing machine. Our military uses a rare earth element called antimony to harden lead so the lead is solid.”

The United States is getting 18% of its antimony from dead car batteries, and China is buying up every dead car battery they can possibly get, Palmer said.

There are currently nine major refineries for rare earth elements, he said. Eight of them are in China, and one is in Malaysia, Palmer said. The Trump administration started working on this as soon as he got into office this term and made it a high priority, he said. Since then, the United States is helping finance a new refinery in Australia, building one in Saudi Arabia and made investments in smaller capacity companies in the United States, he said.

Palmer said he has been working on this issue since 2020, when China cut off access to personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I started at looking at what else are we dependent on China for, and it’s stuff that keeps me up at night,” Palmer said. “They could literally collapse the economy of the western hemisphere.”

The United States also is in a race with China in regard to artificial intelligence and “whoever wins it will not be a superpower. They’ll be the superpower,” Palmer said.

A major problem for the United States is that we don’t have the baseload power to meet the demands of artificial intelligence, Palmer said. The only way he thinks the United States can meet demand is with small module nuclear reactors, he said.

There are 300 hydrocarbon power plants that have been shut down across the country, and the United States could put small module nuclear reactors on some of those and use the transmission lines that are still there, he said. A closed Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in Scottsboro is one of the potential sites, he said.

The United States government also is looking at building small module reactors on military bases for data centers, he said.

“That’s the direction we need to go,” Palmer said. “It’s one of the safest sources for energy and the cleanest that we’ll ever have.”

Palmer’s Washington update was organized by seven chambers of commerce in his district, including the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce, Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce, Homewood Chamber of Commerce, Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce, North Jefferson Chamber of Commerce, The Shelby County Chamber and Montevallo Chamber of Commerce.