Indiana Senator discusses trade, citizenship inquiry in exclusive interview

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – In an interview with ABC 57, Indiana Senator Todd Young touched on a number of topics, including oversight on organ donations, international trade and the citizenship question on the U.S. census.

While discussing organ transplants, Young said he wants to reduce patient deaths that are caused by waiting lists.

Young has introduced legislation that would reform the national organ donation system.

According to transplant advocates, there needs to be more oversight of the 58 non-profit organizations across the country providing organs for recipients.

They say that federal funding would make it easier to collect and deliver organs to those in need.

"Unfortunately these organizations have operated in complete darkness with absolutely no oversight, many times spending their money unwisely and scandalously and not receiving the same sort of scrutiny and oversight that other areas of our government receive," said Young.

Another point of discussion was including the citizenship question in the U.S. census, which Young said should be required.

"It makes sense to understand what the citizenship status of people are,” said Young. “They think that this should be included in the census especially when we have a lot of the democratic presidential candidates talking about allowing illegal immigrants or undocumented persons to receive federal benefits."

Critics of the measure say it will discourage people from filling out the forms, leading to inaccurate population counts and consequently impacting federal funding.

Moreover, this all comes after President Trump announced that he would pursue other means of gathering citizenship information.

Senator Young also gave his thoughts on China while defending President Trump’s trade policies.

"They've been preventing so many of our ag producers and our manufacturers and others from doing business with China,” said Young. “They've been dumping their goods into the United States. I have to credit our ag community for hanging on as long as they have especially during this time when they're experiencing adverse weather conditions."

Corn and soybean crops are behind due to heavily rainy conditions this year.

At the G20 summit in Japan in June, Trump said that China would buy large amounts of agricultural goods from the U.S., but so far that has not materialized.