CRESCENT People: Congressman Jeff Duncan Recalls Visiting the Troops and How South Carolina’s Congressional “Fab Four” Handled Voting to Increase the Debt Ceiling
You spent some time very recently in the climate that’s much warmer than where we are right now…
And it wasn’t the Caribbean. It was over in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq visiting with our troops and understanding the situation over there in the theatre.
We’ve got our Iraq troop drawn-down. They want to be out of Iraq based on the President’s order by the end of the year. And I’ll say the military is performing that very, very well because that’s the order from the Commander-In-Chief. Do they think we should be leaving Iraq? They won’t give you an answer on that because they feel like that’s counter to the order they were given. But, when we met with the Iraqis themselves and we met with their defense forces and their border and intelligence people, they’ll tell you they don’t want to see a void.
They are trying to ramp up their manpower and their processes to fill that void as American troops pull out. I believe, personally, that President Obama said when he was campaigning, that we would be out of Iraq in his first term and he’s going to make sure that happens. Win, lose or draw, he’s going to make sure that happens. So we’re going to watch that very closely.
I wanted to make sure I understood the situation. I may have to vote on something in the near future about Iraq. Visited the troops in Kandahar in Afghanistan and looked at their mission, the things they’re enduring every day, the things they’re doing every day. A drawn mission that supports their efforts down there. Visit with the Ambassador and General Allen who is the theatre commander there in Afghanistan. Trying to understand their mission and some of the challenges they have.
And then I had the opportunity to go to Pakistan.
And while I was in Pakistan, I sat down with the president of Pakistan which, for me as a freshman Congressman from South Carolina, to have an opportunity to sit across from a world leader and ask him some tough questions was quite an honor. And here’s what I asked him because I was there with a total of 5 congressmen, 4 other congressmen, and they had asked questions about the border and the Taliban and the IEDs and Peshawar and the frontier. So, by the time it got to me, I asked him about religious freedom. I asked him about tolerance for the persecuted Christians. Lessening of blasphemy laws in Pakistan.
It is a Muslin country, but we do have Christians over there who are being persecuted. We had an assassination of a guy in the Spring. We’ve got a girl who is in jail now. I think she has been in jail for five years for blasphemy. It’s religious persecution toward Christians, so I had the opportunity ask him about that. I had the opportunity to say, “We believe in our First Amendment rights and one of those is freedom of religion, and America would love to see Pakistan allow more tolerance toward other religions and allow more religious freedom.” And he gave a very polished political answer that he, too, believed in religious freedom and Pakistan under his leadership is moving toward more openness and more tolerance of other religions. I didn’t get a chance to but I wanted to say, “What about Ms. Bebe who’s been in jail for a while for blasphemy? Based on what you said, are you going to release her?” I didn’t get a chance to go that far. but to sit there and look him in the eye and ask him about that was quite an honor for me.
You have never made your faith a secret. How has that played a role in your decision to run initially for offices in the state and then kick it up to federal level?
That really goes back to December of 2001 when my wife and I… I was asked to consider running. I went home and talked with her about it. We had a good laugh about anyone wanting me to run for the State House, and then we made the decision we would pray about it. And so, through that Christmas, through that wintertime period, December and January, we prayed about it and there was more and more confirmation.
I really believe you get confirmation from the Lord through prayer, circumstances, and the Word. The circumstances were definitely there and more and more people came out of the woodwork to encourage me to run for office. So we felt like that was confirmation. And I just had an inner peace about it being the right thing to do at that time. We won. I served for eight years, and then when I made the decision to run for Congress, the same thing happened. We always try to seek guidance from above, so I came out with a peace.
You know, I was a state representative for eight years, and I was going to have to give that up because I could only run for one office at a time. Did I want to do that and take a gamble in a race that you were going to see six or seven other people jump into? I just had a peace that I was a winner either way.
God put on my heart that I either win and go to Congress and serve my country or I didn’t win, I go home, I go back to work. I’m a father. I have three sons. I’d be home there more for my boys and experience life in a more, I guess, laid back fashion than I was experiencing serving in Columbia. So I really felt at peace about it. I always have. And then I’ve been in Washington eleven months now, and we’ve had a lot of challenges. We’ve had challenges on spending issues and trying to cut. We’ve had a debt ceiling increase and…
I’ll tell you a quick story.
We went over. It was a Thursday evening about 6:15. They said they were going to call votes about 6:30 on the debt ceiling increase, on whether we were going to allow the nation’s borrowing ability to go from the $14.3 trillion up to $16.7 trillion, a $2.4 trillion increase in our borrowing ability. You know what Washington’s going to do. If they have the ability borrow they money, they’re going to borrow it all.
I was going to vote “No”. I just didn’t feel good about allowing the country to borrow more money, and I signaled that very early, so I think leadership was very certain that I was a “No.” So I go over to the Capitol for that vote at 6:30, and I get over there and I find out from some of the floor staff that they didn’t have the votes and they were going to postpone the vote. I said, “I walked all the way over here from my office.” I said to myself, “I think I’m going to go to the chapel and pray about this.” Because I was struggling with it. Whether it was the right thing to do.
I wanted to pray for the leaders, and so I’m walking over to the chapel which is right off the Rotunda in the center of the building, and I’ve got to go from the House chamber through the old House chamber which is now known as Statuary Hall and through a little hallway where the old exterior wall of the Capitol was. Then, right by the hallway that goes down to the Speaker’s office suite in the Capitol and then in the Rotunda, well, being such a significant issue, all the reporters are camped out in Statuary Hall and in the hallway leading to the Speaker’s office and there must be a hundred.
So I’m walking over there. There is no way to get there from where I amwithout going through that throng of reporters, so I’m walking through there, and they see me. And they probably couldn’t have recognized my name or called my name but they knew I was a Congressman based on where I was coming from and how I was dressed and that sort of thing. They probably knew I was from South Carolina or some of them did. They come over and they stick microphones and tape recorders in my face. They say, “Congressman, are you going to a meeting with the Speaker.” I said, “No, I’m not.” They said, “No, really. We just saw Joe Wilson go in there. We feel like the South Carolina delegation is being called to the Speaker’s office. You’re really going to a meeting with the Speaker, right?” I said, ”No. I’m not. I’m actually going to the chapel to pray about this.” “Oh, you’re thinking about changing your vote.” “No, I’m a pretty solid ‘No.’ I’m going to pray for them that maybe they’ll change their vote. I’m going to lift up the Speaker. I’m going to lift up the President. I’m going to lift up Harry Reid and the others involved in this negotiating process, so, if you’ll excuse me…”
So I walked on through and they kind of follow me through the Rotunda and kind of looked where I was going. To this day, I don’t think they believed I was going to the chapel. A) I don’t think they knew there was a chapel and B) they thought I was skirting them to get to the Speaker’s office.
So I go in the chapel, sit down and my phone buzzes about the time I get in there. And it’s Mick Mulvaney, Congressman Mulvaney. He’s sent me a text message that says, “Duncan, where are you?” He’d done the same thing, come to the Capitol to vote. They cancelled votes and (I thought) he probably wanted to go get something to eat, if I know Mick. “We’re over here, let’s go grab a bite to eat and talk about this.” Well, he said “Duncan, where are you?” I sent him a text back and I said, “I’m in the chapel praying.” He said, “Hold on, I’ll be right there.”
So Congressman Mulvaney comes over and on the way, he runs into Tim Scott from Charleston, and he brings Tim along with him. Well, keep in mind, they’ve got to go through this same throng of reports, and I know now that the reporters really felt like the whole South Carolina delegation was getting called to the principal’s office or the Speaker’s office. They come around, and I hear them trying to get in the door. I get up and open it, and when I open the door, those two gentlemen are standing there, and there are two or three reporters who have followed them around to a “Members Only” area to see where they were going. I don’t think they believed there was a chapel. So we open the door, and they come in.
The reporters are sticking their heads in, and I said, “Y’all come on in.”
There’s a beautiful stained glass in the chapel, if you’ve never been there. It’s got Washington kneeling, the way his men said he prayed all the time about his decisions, and he’s kneeling in the stained glass and it says, “Psalms 16:1 Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.”
That’s where our national motto comes from that’s under attack now, “In God We Trust.”
Anyway, it’s a beautiful piece of stained glass. So I cut it on so they can see it. They take a few pictures, these reporters did, and we say, “Excuse me.” We push them out and close the door and we sit there and we’re talking about this issue, the three of us.
We’re praying together about this, and then I get a text message on my phone from my wife. She said, “Are y’all in the chapel praying?” I said, “Yeah, but how do you know?” She said, “It just reported across Fox News that the South Carolina delegation was in the chapel praying about this.” I said, “Wow.” It only took minutes, minutes, OK. So I said, “Yeah, I’ll call you back.”
So we’re sitting there and Mick Mulvaney says, “Guys, I’m going to look up some scripture.” He reaches over, there’s a prayer bench, he grabs a Bible off that. He flips over to Proverbs 22:7. He said, “This isn’t what I thought this verse was. I remember the scripture reference, but I thought it was something else, but look what it is.” And the second part of that verse says, “The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender.” And we’re in there talking and praying about raising the debt ceiling. Increasing the borrowing ability of the nation, and the scripture says, “the borrower will be servant to the lender.”
I said, “Guys, I’m done. I’m cooked. You can stick a fork in me. That’s confirmation from God that we don’t need to raise the debt ceiling of this country because the borrower is servant to the lender, and God’s telling us right here that we need to be very, very careful borrowing money.” I said, “That just confirms me up that I’m a ‘No.’” So we left there and went to a meeting with the Speaker and, as it turned out, we all voted “No.” It was the right thing to do.
