Tennessee’s 1st District U.S. House Rep. Diana Harshbarger held a town hall style event in Greeneville on Wednesday morning.
Greene County is in Tennessee’s 1st U.S. House District.
Titled “Coffee With Your Congresswoman,” the event gave local constituents an opportunity to hear Harshbarger speak and ask her questions.
A large crowd filled the Lyceum at the Niswonger Campus of Walters State Community College for the event.
At one point, Harshbarger asked those in the crowd to raise their hand if they lived in Tennessee now, but had moved to the state from somewhere else. Nearly every person seated in the auditorium raised their hand to signify that they had moved to Tennessee from elsewhere.
Harshbarger told the crowd that she had signed articles of impeachment against U.S President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. Matthew Graves.
“I swear I’ve signed anything that anybody would put in front of me,” Harshbarger said of signing the documents.
Harshbarger said that she would continue to support the impeachments, although she said that she is not sure that enough Republicans would support an impeachment in the House of Representatives.
“Do we have the numbers to impeach him (Biden)? I don’t even know that we would. That’s a sad, sad state of affairs right there,” Harshbarger said.
She said she believed that Biden was “compromised” because of legal, banking and tax issues with his son Hunter Biden.
Harshbarger said that the Department of Justice was “weaponized.”
“We have a weaponized Department of Justice or should I say department of injustice,” Harshbarger said. She claimed that a third of the Department of Justice “would never do their job for a Republican president.”
She said she would like every employee in the Department of Justice to be fired if a Republican president were to take office and for the employees to reapply.
She also said that she would like the “top 30% of the Pentagon” to be “kicked to the curb.”
Harshbarger said that recent criminal indictments against former president Donald Trump for attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and for mishandling of sensitive government documents was “persecution through prosecution.”
“Why would I send money somewhere when we need to utilize what we have here and make the United States’ citizens first. They should be first. It should be America first. That’s the whole policy. If we put that in place we wouldn’t have an issue,” Harshbarger said. “I understand the difficulty in Ukraine, I absolutely do, but you can’t keep pouring bad money after good or good money after bad or whatever you want to say. The buck has to stop somewhere and it has to stop with Congress members on how they’re going to utilize the funds that we do have.”
When it comes to things locally, Harshbarger said citizens should reach out to her office if they need help with a federal issue.
Harshbarger said that “there’s a lot things coming down the pipe with the budget” that will help people in Greene County.
She called the charges of Special Counsel Jack Smith against Trump “hoaxes.”
She claimed that there was a “deep state” in the country that was responsible for the indictments and for having trial dates set before the 2024 federal elections.
“They think we’re crazy. They think we’re stupid,” Harshbarger said. “I’m telling you, when you pull that blanket back and you look down and you see that there truly is a deep state, now I want to take a roto-rooter and just keep digging until I get down to the root. I’m afraid I’ll hit China before I get there.”
Harshbarger also addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed women the right to an abortion nationwide for nearly 50 years. She said the issue of abortion was a problem for Republicans running in 2022’s midterm elections.
“What did the Supreme Court overturn? Roe v. Wade. And there was such a riot, even in the midterms we thought we were going to have a red wave. We didn’t, did we. I kept telling them, ‘they are going to use abortion as a tool,’” Harshbarger said. “This is what’s happened over the 50 years that was in place. Young women have been taught it’s their Constitutional right. It never was their Constitutional right, but they believe it because they’ve been told that over and over and over.”
Harshbarger said she felt that the court made the right decision in overturning the decision.
Looming decisions on fiscal appropriations bills that could trigger a government shutdown were also mentioned by Harshbarger.
Congress and the Executive branch have until the end of September, which is the end of the federal fiscal year, to pass bills to fund the federal government for the next fiscal year. If funding bills are not passed, the federal government will shut down.
The House passed the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs measure, but it has not been approved by the Senate. There are currently 12 appropriations bills that must be passed.
Harshbarger is now a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative group in the House of Representatives, which recently released a statement that expressed that the bloc of representatives would not support any spending measures that did not meet their demands or a continuing funding resolution to avert a government shutdown that does not address border security, the “weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI” and “the Left’s cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon.”
“If you read something bad about me coming up that I’m an obstructionist or I’m this or I’m that, it’s probably true,” Harshbarger said. “There’s about 30 of us that are going to toe the rope, and we’re going to say ‘no more.’ You can’t continue to spend like you’re spending. You should never have an open border.”
Harshbarger said Congress holds the “purse strings” for the federal government and that a government shutdown may be an option exercised.
“You know, we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to give the money to anybody. We don’t. We don’t have to fund the government at all,” Harshbarger said.
Harshbarger said that she wants to slow spending and that she and others in the House did not want to harm the people they serve but that “somebody has to draw the line at one point in time.”
On the issue of aiding Ukraine, Harshbarger said that she would like to see domestic issues, such as inflation, addressed first.
“Why would I send money somewhere when we need to utilize what we have here and make the United States’ citizens first. They should be first. It should be America first. That’s the whole policy. If we put that in place we wouldn’t have an issue,” Harshbarger said. “I understand the difficulty in Ukraine, I absolutely do, but you can’t keep pouring bad money after good or good money after bad or whatever you want to say. The buck has to stop somewhere and it has to stop with Congress members on how they’re going to utilize the funds that we do have.”
When it comes to things locally, Harshbarger said citizens should reach out to her office if they need help with a federal issue.
Harshbarger said that “there’s a lot things coming down the pipe with the budget” that will help people in Greene County.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://harshbarger.house.gov/media/in-the-news/rep-diana-harshbarger-holds-town-hall-greeneville