Yesterday, I stopped by the KTHV studio in Little Rock to visit with anchor Matt Turner.  We had a broad discussion on veterans’ issues, the farm bill, debris in the Little Maumelle River and the struggles the Razorbacks have faced in the early weeks of football season.

Among the highlights:

On the misinformation about his role in authoring the Veterans Jobs Corps Bill: “Half-truths are whole lies. I had a bill I had helped write with Senator [Mark] Begich of Alaska, a Democrat friend who is also on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee.  We introduced it.  They [The Senate Democratic leadership] took part of our bill, changed the wording, stuck it into bill and then said we had co-authored that [new] bill when the reality was neither he nor I had ever seen the [new] bill until it was actually introduced.”

On the need to put our veterans back to work: “We can’t do enough for our veterans. Veterans unemployment is very, very high now… …we are committed to bringing it down.  I think that we will eventually get this bill [the Veterans Jobs Corps Bill] passed… …and we have actually passed two other bills in this area in this Congress.”

On the farm bill reauthorization: “We’ve got to get this right. It’s about regional agriculture. It’s not about Democrats and Republicans… …in southern agriculture we irrigate a lot. We are concerned about getting safety nets in that protect that. Some of the other states… …they don’t irrigate as much. They are concerned about another form of crop insurance… …with planning you have to be able to go to the bank and the bank has to know what the rules are going to be in the future or you are not going to get a loan, so it is a huge deal, something we’ve got to get settled.”

Watch the interview in its entirety here