EXCLUSIVE: Reps. Mike Collins, William Timmons, and Rick Allen talk DOGE, SCOTUS, and golf ahead of Master's Week

THE LOWDOWN:

• This week is Master’s Week, and a trio of southern Republican congressmen met up to discuss some of their favorite golfers, in addition to what is coming next with reconciliation.

• Reps. Mike Collins (R., Ga.), Rick Allen (R., Ga.), and William Timmons (R., S.C.) joined the latest episode of the Republican Study Committee (RSC)’s Right to the Point podcast.

• Collins threw his hat behind two-time jacket winner Scottie Scheffler while Allen put his money on North Irish golf legend Rory McIlroy to win the tournament.

This week is Master’s Week, and a trio of southern Republican congressmen met up to discuss some of their favorite golfers, in addition to what is coming next with reconciliation. The lawmakers also shared their thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and a whole lot more, in the latest episode of the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Right to the Point podcast.

In the latest episode of Right to the Point, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter, Reps. Mike Collins (R., Ga.), Rick Allen (R., Ga.), and William Timmons (R., S.C.) spoke at length about the latest issues of the day, and about who some of their favorite golfers are.

Below are highlights from the latest episode of the Republican Study Committee’s Right to the Point podcast, lightly edited for clarity. All episodes of the podcast can be found here.

Immigration:

Rep. William Timmons:

• “We haven't even spent any money yet. We got our border security money coming in the reconciliation bill. So even without $1 of additional spending, President Trump has been able to secure the border. For four years, Joe Biden let in 15 million plus people and said that he couldn't do anything without Congress giving him something. We have not given the president one tool yet — we're going to — but the fact that President Biden could say what he said for four years with a straight face is just shocking.”

• “[Tom Homan is] incredibly talented, he really is. I've had a number of meetings with him, and I've just always been very impressed at his depth of knowledge and his breadth of understanding of this issue. There's not a better person for the job.”

• “The theory [of immigration for Democrats] is you're going to bring in people, you're going to get them hooked on government benefits, and then you're going to give them the ability to vote. And we're putting stop to all that. If you want to become an American citizen, you got to come through the front door, you’ve got to do all the things you're supposed to do. You don't you don't get to jump the line and cheat and commit crimes.”

• “Realize they're extremely sophisticated. For the last four years, the Biden administration has basically allowed [cartels] to generate billions and billions of dollars off of the growing tragedy in the United States. This is human trafficking, drug trafficking, sex trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died because of it, and they've gotten rich. So we need to use every tool in our toolbox, and the Mexican government can't do anything about it. The Mexican government has no control over the cartels, and they want our help.”

Rep. Rick Allen:

• “America, your border is secure.”

• “One of the best RSC meetings that I was at was when we had Tom Homan in to talk about immigration and he said ‘hey, I'm gonna get this job done, and we're gonna get these bad people out of this country.’ That was a great meeting. I very much appreciate him coming out of retirement and doing this country a tremendous service.”

• “With regards to sanctuary cities, immigration is a federal issue, okay, it's not a state issue. It's a federal issue. Some states have had to deal with illegal immigration because the Biden administration was so inept, and it was intentional. The DOGE Committee has found that it was intentional, and that actually they were flying people in strategic areas. They wanted to drop these immigrants to try to change the political status of a state.”

• “As far as the drone attacks, I signed on to Dan Crenshaw, AMF declaration of war on the cartels. These are bad people who have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. We should declare war on them and rid the face of the earth of these terrible people.”

Rep. Mike Collins:

• “If you want to look at just how badly they have destroyed the fabric of America, you don't have to look into anything other than some of our tribal lands, our Indian reservations that have been overrun and are being run by these drug cartels, and they've set them up for sex trafficking, all sorts of crime: trafficking, drugs, and narcotics. There's not one American who has not been impacted by an overdose death in this country, not one American, who has a friend or family friend or member of your family, who hasn’t been impacted by this, and that is tragic. We're going to put a stop to it.”

DOGE:

Rep. Mike Collins:

• “I can look out my window and HHS, Health and Human Service, building that is right behind me, and it gets dark here in the winter time around 4:30 in the afternoon, and I can tell you, I've taken several pictures. You turn around, you look, and the lights are on, and two complete floors in that building are empty. The only thing in there is stuff that's been scattered around the floor, where the people that are there working have gone through and found something they liked and took it. We've got approximately 25 percent of these buildings that are occupied.”

Rep. William Timmons:

• “I'm actually on the DOGE Subcommittee, and we had this hearing at the Voice of America building, which is only probably three blocks from here. And this building is worth an enormous amount of money, and it's been empty; we're probably going to sell it. It was a perfect example of what the federal government should be doing: if we have unused federal property three blocks from the Capitol, it's very reasonable to sell it, because right now we're spending money to maintain it. Nobody's using it. And so now Congress has authorized, and the president is going to sell it, probably in the next two or three years. It's probably four or five acres of land three blocks from the Capitol. I bet it'll sell for tens of millions of dollars, and they're going to put up, probably, apartments there, and those apartments are then going to turn around and pay taxes. So we're going to take something that is a loss on our federal taxpayers, and turn it into a gain. And that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about those subcommittee and it is exciting.”

• “A private company could never get away with what this federal government's getting away with. They’d be fired by the board immediately. We’ve got these agency headquarters that are 25 percent occupied. It's costing taxpayers ten billion a year. This is just ridiculous. There are all of these D.C. buildings that we're going to sell and redevelop. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's the D.C. Representative, said ‘you can't do that.’ And I've just corrected her. I said, ‘ma'am, President Biden said he was going to make everybody go back to work, because D.C. businesses were suffering from the remote policies.’ When these buildings are redeveloped, you're going to have incredible economic opportunities, and D.C. is going to thrive and become safe because more people are going to be living here.”

• “We're freeing the bureaucrats to go and be productive members of the economy. It's just fantastic.”

Rep. Rick Allen:

• “What's really distasteful about the backlash from DOGE is that people are demonizing someone who is not only the wealthiest person in the world, but probably one of the smartest people in the world, who runs public companies. If you're a public company, you answer to the shareholders, and you have to deal with the government. Why shouldn't the government be run like a public company? I believe the taxpayers are shareholders in their government, okay? And they should have some say so as to how this government is run.”

• “They're destroying property over this; of course we're reducing the federal workforce. But y'all, we got 7 million jobs open in this country. We need to fill those jobs to grow this economy.”

• “What was interesting too, was when President Trump said you're coming back to work, you're going to be in the office or you're going to be fired, that people like Jamie Dimon and other corporate executives looked at their operations, and they said the same thing. They said we're not working from home anymore. COVID is over. You're coming back to the office. So all of the big public companies have said, no more this. America is going back to work.”

Reconciliation:

Rep. Rick Allen:

• “The Republican Study Committee is going to be a huge part of getting this big, beautiful bill across the finish line.”

Supreme Court:

Rep. Rick Allen:

• “If President Trump had not won that first term, we would not have the Supreme Court, and if we didn't have the Supreme Court, this country would look very different right now. That's exactly so we have that to be very thankful for in that in that first term of President Trump's, and then, of course, now we get to actually benefit from constitutional judges through this second term, and that that's critical.”

Rep. William Timmons:

• “The president is able to continue doing what he should be doing [on immigration]. But more importantly, future injunctive requests for injunctive relief have to go to places where liberals aren't gonna be able to judge shop, and that's a very important development in their ruling.”

• “The Court is ideologically six to three, but the ruling was five to four. Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a very interesting dissenting opinion, so I'd read that, if you were inclined, it's kind of shocking.”

Golf:

Rep. Rick Allen:

• “Rory McIlroy is someone who’s in good form. He's figured out how to win with his big game, which I think was the greatest asset that Tiger Woods had. I don't do well on my B game. If I'm not hitting the ball the way I want to hit the ball, I lose interest. But these guys have figured out a way to grind it out and win golf tournaments, because they've got that much talent.”

• “My putt number is going to be 8756.”

Rep. Mike Collins:

• “As far as past champions go, I have to go with Scottie Scheffler. I mean, the guy got arrested, still came out. You’ve got to give it to Scottie man.”

Rep. Rick Allen:

• “We had a hurricane that came through our district, all 24 counties. The Augusta National wrote a $5 million check...now, there are still blue tarps over some houses, and I'm assuming they're having negotiation problems with their insurance company, but for the most part, Augusta is beautiful, and you would never know that it was absolutely devastated just a few months ago.”