December 19, 2025 • 35 mins
-
Border Security
- Illegal immigration reportedly dropped by 99%.
- $100 billion invested in border security infrastructure (wall, technology, personnel).
- Claimed economic benefits: reduced housing costs and rents due to deportations.
-
Working Families Tax Cut (formerly “One Big Beautiful Bill”)
- Permanent extension and expansion of Trump-era tax cuts.
- Specific provisions:
- No taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security benefits (effective 2026).
- Framed as the most conservative legislative victory in U.S. history.
-
Military & National Security
- $150 billion invested in rebuilding the military.
- $24.5 billion allocated to the Coast Guard (over 200% of its annual budget).
- Emphasis on Arctic ice cutters to counter China and Russia.
-
Technology & Infrastructure
- Auctioning 800 MHz of federal spectrum to private sector (expected $100 billion revenue).
- Air traffic control modernization ($12.5 billion investment).
- Rotor Act: mandates ADS-B technology for all aircraft to prevent collisions.
-
Education & Social Policy
- School Choice Expansion: Tax credits for donations to scholarship organizations.
- Trump Accounts: Investment accounts for every child in America, seeded with $1,000 and allowing $5,000 annual contributions, invested in S&P 500.
-
Space Exploration
- $10 billion investment in NASA and commercial space programs.
- Goal: U.S. to return to the Moon by 2028, ahead of China.
-
Regulatory Rollbacks
- Elimination of CAFE standards (fuel economy rules), framed as lowering car costs and improving safety.
-
Online Safety
- Take It Down Act: Criminalizes non-consensual intimate imagery and deepfake pornography; mandates immediate removal by platforms.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome in as verdict with Centater Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
with you and Senator This is one of those fun
shows we get to do towards the end of the year,
and that's talking about the GOP open up a canawoop
bay on the Democrats, especially in the Senate. We had
big wins for the American people that are going to
have a real impact, especially on a lot of Americans
(00:22):
millions in twenty twenty six from many of the laws
that were passed are actually enacted on a scale one
to ten. How excite are you about the results from
this year?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Thirty seven?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thirty seven? Okay, I like that.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Look this year, it is not an exaggeration to say
we had historic victories in the Senate. We had victories
at a order of magnitude we've never seen. And so
this show, we're just going to walk through all of
the victories we've won in the Senate. I'll tell you,
in my thirteen years in the Senate, I have never
(00:55):
had a year like this, with so many major victories,
with so many accomplishments that are lasting and transformational. And
and and look we came in and started the year
with President Trump being sworn in and the Trump administration
hit the ground running with with a head of steam.
(01:16):
But the Senate, and the Senate is now, Congress is
out now for Christmas. We'll come back after New Year's.
What we accomplished this year is transformation. All right. Let's
start with the border. We came in. The border was
wide open, the worst illegal immigration in history. We now
(01:36):
have a president and an administration that will follow the law.
Illegal border crossings dropped more than ninety nine percent.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
That is static, incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Tom Holman at the White House this week was talking
about he's worked under I think it's five six presidents.
Crazy and he's like, I've never seen something like this
where we have like zero illegal immigration because we secured
it and we said you're not going to get away
with it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And if you look legislatively, by far, legislatively, the biggest
accomplishment was the Reconciliation Bill that President Trump signed on
July fourth. It's interesting that used to be called the
one big beautiful bill. You will now see just about
every Senator referring to it as the working Family's tax cut.
(02:21):
Same bill, and there's a reason, which is they did
a bunch of polling and the Working Family Tax Cut
polls about forty points better than the one big beautiful bill,
and so it happens to be a major tax cut
for working family. So the working Family's tax cut is
an accurate name. But you're going to notice everyone calling
it the working Family's tax cut. Now that legislation, in
(02:45):
this no hyperbole, has more conservative victories in it than
any bill that's ever passed into law, I believe in
the history of the Republic. Let's break it down.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I'll just say, what are the big ones for you?
Because there's some in there that there's been this quote frustration.
I think a lot of this is the left in
the media trying to drum up that Donald Trump's not
getting it done for you.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
He forgot about you.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So much of what people need to understand is the
passing of this bill means the enacting of the bill
in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, many of the provisions go into effect in twenty
twenty six. You're gonna start seeing the real benefits in
the economy kicking in in force in twenty twenty six.
All right, Look, the Working Family's tax cut, the biggest
element of it was extending and making permanent the Trump
tax cuts. If we had not done that in two
weeks on January first, there would have been a four
(03:39):
trillion dollar tax increase that would have been crippling to
the economy. So making those tax cuts permanent is enormously important.
We also made them bigger, so we passed no taxes
on tips. That was my legislation. By the way, people
will start seeing the benefits of that next year. So
if you're a waiter, if you're a waitress, if you're
a bartender, if you work in a nail salon, if
(04:01):
you're a taxicab driver, that the millions of Americans who
rely on tips are going to see real, meaningful tax relief.
We've also got no tax on overtime, millions of Americans
who earn a significant portion of their income on overtime
that's now tax free. No tax on Social Security for
the millions of seniors at home relying on Social Security.
(04:24):
All three of those are going to effect in twenty
twenty six. All three of those are going to provide
really meaningful relief. What else do we have? You look
at the investments that we have over one hundred billion
dollars in secure in the border. So Trump is enforcing
the law that was critical that produced the immediate drop.
(04:46):
And now we provided the funding to build the wall,
to put in technology, to hire border patrol, to hire ice,
to invest in law enforcement. All of that is designed
to make these massive improvements stick. That is, as a conservative,
there's never been a hundred billion dollar investment in securing
the border. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I was speaking yesterday to a realature group. They asked
me to come and speak, and they said to me,
they never could have imagined that securing the border would
have such a positive impact as they've described it for
American families. They said they were witnessing over the last
basically four and a half years, the age of first
(05:30):
time home buyers had skyrocketed, where home ownership was unattainable
for families, young families in their thirties. It was now
getting to be forty before people were getting the first
time home buyer. Rent had gotten out of control. And
they said they can't wait for twenty twenty six because
they are seeing now with two million plus deportations, people
(05:51):
have stopped coming across the border illegally. They believe it's
going to be a great year for American families. And
first time home buyers because now you're not having to
heat with so many illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, and we covered that on Wednesday's pod that the
new data came out that showed rents dropped significantly, and
they dropped significantly because the President has deported two million
people who are here illegally. Those people are now not
buying homes, they're not running apartments and supply and demand.
That means that it drives down the cost of a home.
(06:22):
It drives down the cost of rent for Americans.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, it really does. It's incredible. And that's just one
of those massive victories. And it's not just that. It's
also the national security part of this. I mean, really,
do you hear home prices and national security really to
one simple issue that's something that you'd been fighting so
hard on to another victory.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Well, and in the Working Families Tax Cut, we invested
one hundred and fifty billion dollars in rebuilding the military
so we can stand up to our adversaries, so we
can stand up to China and the other enemies we
have across the globe. And the way it works in
the Senate is when you're drafting that bill, each committee
chairman drafts whatever is in their jurisdiction. So I am
(07:03):
the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
That committee covers about forty percent of the US economy.
What that means is that everything within that jurisdiction I wrote.
I had the lead pen and wrote. So, for example,
one thing that is in the Commerce jurisdiction is the
Coast Guard. So we invested twenty four and a half
(07:27):
billion dollars in the Coast Guard. Now, to give you
a sense of how important that is, how significant that is.
What what do you think the annual budget of the
Coastguard is?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I honestly have no clue.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It's between eleven and twelve billion. Okay, So we invested
more than two hundred percent the annual budget of the
Coastguard into the Coast Guard. I mean, I mean it is.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
His store were purposely and deliberately underfunded by the Left
and the Biden administration because they didn't want them to
be able to do this job.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Well, look, it was what we were investing in. Let
me tell you what we invested. It was specifically in capital,
so rebuilding infrastructure, building new ships, building new helicopters, and
a massive portion of it is polar ice cutters, So
polar ice cutters in the Arctic. We're getting our asses
kicked by China and by Russia, and we don't have
(08:18):
the capability right now to build Arctic ice cutters. Well,
we've invested billions in building new ice cutters. And the
beauty of it is that's bringing shipbuilding back to the
United States. One company, Davies, announced a billion and a
half dollars investment in a shipyard in Galveston, Texas to
build those ships. Let us compete with China, but also
(08:39):
bringing manufacturing capacity back to the United States.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Operation Overlord the D Day Beaches.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You and I share a passion for history, so I
hope you'll join me next spring on the d DA
Beaches in Normandy. That's right, the invasion that sealed Hitler's doom,
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patch of sand. With ten days in Europe, luxury hotels
and fully escorted by America's leading expert on France and
(09:06):
the D Day Invasion can chase fifty seven fifty seven
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(09:30):
rating with the BBB all your sight seeing in Paris.
To dial pound two fifty say the keyword Conservative Tours.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
You'll have the option to receive.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
A one time auto dialed text message from my Heartmedia Center.
There was so much a focus on the economy and
this last year and the wins, but there were some
really big wins within that. One of them deals with
the airwaves, and it deals with national security, It deals
with people and what you can have access to explain
(09:59):
this big win because it didn't get as much media
attention as it probably should have.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, look, as you know, my number one priority is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
There are lots of major wins this year that we
passed into law that are impacting job creation, that are
creating more high paying jobs in Texas and all across
the country. One of the big ones is spectrum. Now,
what is spectrum? Electromagnetic spectrum is how everything communicates, how
(10:26):
our cell phones work, how Wi Fi works, how TV
and broadcasts and everything goes out over spectrum. The largest
holder of spectrum in the United States is the United
States government. United States government has massive quantities of spectrum
that it owns that are not available to the private sector.
I wrote into the Working Families Tax cut a mandate
(10:48):
that the federal government auction off eight hundred megahertz a
spectrum to the private sector. Now, now what does that mean.
That means that in the coming years that is going
to generate over one hundred billion dollars for the US government.
I mean, the spectrum is incredibly valuable. That's real money
that goes directly to the US Treasury. Now, why will
(11:12):
it generate over one hundred billion dollars? Because that spectrum
is incredibly valuable. Number one, it's it's it's valuable for
our phones. It's valuable to beat China in the race
for five G and then beat China and the race
for six G. And you've got to have the spectrum
to invest in that. What that means is you're going
to see You're gonna see the big phone companies. You're
(11:33):
going to see AT and T and Verizon and Sprint
investing tens of billions of dollars into new capacity to
use that spectrum. All of that means more jobs. That
means more people setting up towers, more people building that innovation.
It also it supercharges the tech world, much of the
(11:53):
AI world. Winning the race for AI having that spectrum
available means the private they can compete for all sorts
of different uses for using that spectrum. And I'll tell
you that was not an easy battle, because most of
that spectrum that the government holds is either the Department
of War or the intelligence agencies have them and they
(12:14):
don't like to give them up. We won that fight.
That will generate thousands and thousands of that will produce
thousands and thousands of new jobs. Another big win in
the Working Family Tax cut is air traffic control modernization.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
In that bill we certainly needed, by the way, like
I as I think people understand how desperately the need
was for modernization. What the Trump administration inherited. You and
I both remember the very first night a dear friend
of ours became the cabinet member in charge of Transportation,
Secretary John Duffy. The first night he and his family
(12:51):
went into his building where his office was going to be,
and we had that horrific crash with a helicopter that
came across and hit that plane at Reagan National. Your
wife was in the air that night, and it brought
up even a bigger issue like how does this happen?
And we realized there was a massive modernization that was
desperately needed for the safety as more and more planes
(13:12):
are flying each and every day. You fly every week,
I fly almost every week as well. I want to
know I'm safe. I want to know when my family's
on a plane that they are safe. And this is
something that's good for every American that flies well.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And we had two major victories this year in the
Senate on aviation safety. The first was in the Working
Family Tax Cut. We invested twelve and a half billion
dollars in terms of modernizing our air traffic control. Air
traffic controllers right now in the tower. If you look
at the technology they've been using, it is literally nineteen
(13:45):
fifties and nineteen sixties technology. They're using radar, they're using
little slips of paper, they're using floppy disc. They have
computers with floppy disc. When I talk to anyone under thirty,
they don't know what a floppy disk is. But saying
that's the technology that they're using. So there's twelve and
a half million dollars. They've been the FAA, the Trump
administration has been ripping up copper wiring that was failing
(14:08):
and replacing it with fiber. They'd been getting new and
updated computers, getting new technology, all designed so the air
traffic controllers can know where the planes are and can
manage the airspace to avoid collisions. You know, you mentioned
the horrific accident that happened over d C. Ronald Reagan
Airport at the end of January. That accident, an American
(14:31):
Airlines flight was flying from Wichita, Kansas, landing at d C.
Reagan and as you know, it hit an Army black
Hawk helicopter. Sixty seven lives perished that instant. As you noted,
Heidi was literally in the air scheduled to land at Reagan.
About an hour after that, I was sitting at dinner.
(14:53):
I was having dinner with Mike Waltz, who was at
the time President Trump's National security advisor now he's the
Ambassador of the UN in a good friend of mine,
and we were at dinner when we both got notified.
In fact, my body man, who you know he came
up and thankfully he did this right. He started with
Heidi's okay, but I need to tell you what just happened,
and that was a good way to start. I'm glad
(15:14):
the Heightie's okay started. But if you look at aviation safety,
a second big victory that we just had on aviation
safety happened this week, which is in response to what
happened there, I began drafting legislations called the Road Act,
and the Road To Act is designed to mandate that
(15:34):
all aircraft in the sky use what's called ADSB technology
ADSB out and ADSB in, and that is advanced technology
to help the other planes in the sky and the
other aircraft see each other and to help the air
traffic controllers have the information on the precise location in
real time. With radar, there's a delay, whereas ADSB gives
(15:58):
it to you in real time. Now, why is that
directly relevant to the crash. Well, the Army Blackhawk helicopter
had ADSB technology installed, they had it turned off. Yeah,
and so the American Airlines pilot couldn't see the Blackhawk
helicopter and didn't know it was there until the two collided.
(16:19):
It and Unfortunately, we discovered the Army had a policy
of leaving ADSB turned off just as a routine matter.
It was indefensible. And so the Rotor Act mandates number one,
that the military followed the same rules as everybody else.
If you're going to be flying, particularly through crowded airspace
at an airport, use the technology so the other aircraft
(16:41):
can see where you are and so you don't have
a collision. And it mandates that everyone use ADSB technology
in and out in the planes. That legislation. You know,
it's interesting. We had the Senate just passed this week
the National Defense Authorization Act that we passed that ever year,
that is the big military authorization that we pass and
(17:03):
someone in the House of Representatives dropped a provision in
in the dark of night that would have allowed the
Army to keep ADSB turned off. Well, this week I
passed the Road To Act and repealed that provision. And
so when the House passes it and the President's signs it,
which I think will happen in January, everyone will be
safe for flying.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
There is one thing that I actually think will end
up being your legacy. One day, long, long down the road,
when you're long and gone, and people say, what did
Ted Cruz do? I actually believe this will be brought
up for an extremely long amount of time. It is
going to be transformative to this country, to the young
people in this country, and it deals with education. It
(17:45):
is something you've been championing for decades, an idea that
you love, and now it became reality and you had
to fight tooth and nail to keep it in the
big bill. Talk about this victory and what it means
application wise, especially moving forward.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Well, look, I agree with you in terms of the
magnitude of this victory. And let me say, when we
were in the middle of drafting the Working Families Tax
Cut in April of this year, we did a retreat
of all the Senate Republicans and we were talking about
all the different elements that we wanted the bill, and
everyone had different priorities, and I stood up kind of
midway through and I said said, look, there are a
lot of things in this bill that are incredibly important.
(18:24):
Cutting taxes, investing and securing the border, rebuilding the military.
All of that matters a ton. But I said, we
had to think for a minute about legacy, about what
will be remembered ten twenty thirty years from now, what
will be remembered when we're dead and buried? And I said,
I've got two suggestions, two suggestions that fall into the category.
(18:47):
The first was school choice and the second was what
has now become the Trump Accounts. Now, both of those
suggestions I wrote the legislation for, and both of them
are in the bill. Let's start with school choice. What
is in the bill. This will kick in. This will
start kicking in in a year. And what it will
(19:07):
do is every taxpayer in America can give up to
seventeen hundred dollars to a scholarship granting organization in the States.
If you do so, you will get a dollar for
dollar tax credit. Now, importantly, this is not a deduction,
it's a credit. What does that mean. It means if
Ben Ferguson writes a check for one thousand, seven hundred
(19:29):
dollars to an organization that gives scholarships to kids in Texas,
you owe one thousand, seven hundred dollars less to Uncle Sam.
You just give less on your taxes. So it's basically
free money. From your perspective, what that is going to
do is it is going to produce tens of billions
of dollars of scholarships for kids in K through twelve
(19:52):
education all across the country, and ten twenty thirty years
from now, literally millions of kids who were stuck failing schools,
many of them African American kids, Hispanic kids, low income kids,
who are in schools where there's violence, where they're not learning,
where they're not able to get the education. You're failing
and we're failing them. Look, you know, if it's a
(20:15):
five year old, it's not the five year old's fault.
If the kindergarten is a crappy kindergarten, that's not the
kid's fault. That is, at the end of the day,
school choice is about. I think it's the civil rights
issue of the twenty first century. I think every child
deserves access to an excellent education, and it shouldn't matter
what your race is, what your wealth is, where you live.
(20:38):
This provision thirty years from now, we're going to look
back and literally there're going to be millions of kids
who would have been failed by the system, but instead
got a scholarship and ended up being able to go
to a Catholic school, to a Jewish day school, to
a private school, and to be safe, not to be
at risk of violence, to learn to read. And if
(21:03):
you get education, it opens up every other opportunity for
the rest of your life. And if you don't get
an education, you're screwed. And so that is in there. Look,
I've been fighting for school choice for thirty years. The
school choice movement is the domestic priority I care the
most about.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
By the way, let's go back from here. That maybe
miss that episode.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I don't think people understand just how hard democrats the teachers'
unions didn't want this to happen, and how hard you
had to fight to keep it in there, because there
was many times where we thought it may not make.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It look And it was particularly difficult because the Senate Parliamentarian.
To get anything through the reconciliation process, you have to
go through the Senate Parliamentarian, and there are Kane rules
for what is allowed and what is not allowed when
you're doing reconciliation. Three times the Senate Parliamentarian struck this
school choice provision. And normally the way that happens, it's
(22:01):
like litigation where you have both sides. The Democrats get
to argue. So the Democrats argued to the parliamentarian stripped
this out and fought tooth and nail. Now, normally it
is staff. It is staff of senators who go in
and argue on both sides. It is very unusual for
a senator to do this. I did this myself. I
went in and argued to the parliamentarian and her team directly,
(22:24):
and we ended up rewriting the provision. We rewrote it
three times to get it through. When she objected to something,
we rewrote it to address that, and we got it
in the second provision that is going to have just
just generational impacts or the Trump accounts and starting.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I love there called drum accounts. There is a great
marketing measure. But this started with you, senator, and you
could easily call this the cruise accounts the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, but he's in sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, and so
he gets to have his name on it. And that's great.
He signed it in the law and it is historic.
But I did write the provision and I got to
say the impact. What's going to happen next year? Next year,
on July fourth, every child in America is going to
have a personal investment account open for them. Newborn children
(23:16):
will have one thousand dollars automatically seeded into it.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
This is amazing.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Parents, families, employers can put up to five thousand dollars
a year in a tax advantage account and all of
that will be invested in the S and P five
hundred will be invested in a broad based equity index,
invested in the stock market. Two massive benefits from this
Number One, every child at America will get the benefit
(23:44):
of compound growth, and that is incredibly powerful. A little
girl born next year, she has one thousand dollars put
in it automatically. If her parents or family or an
employer puts five thousand a year, that's invested in the
stock market. We grow at the historical rate of average
seven percent of the S and P five hundred. By
the time she is eighteen, she will have one hundred
(24:10):
and seventy thousand dollars in that account.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
And if she keeps investing five thousand a year, by
the time she's thirty five, she will have seven hundred
thousand dollars in that account. That's transformation. And we're not
talking rich kids. We're talking the kids of a single mom,
talking everybody. We're talking everybody that's money that that she
can use to buy a home, to start a business,
(24:35):
to get an education. I mean, that changes her entire life.
But secondly, and this is the part as a conservative
that I'm really excited about. We are creating a whole
new generation of capitalists, a whole new generation of kids.
Every kid is going to be an owner of the
biggest employers in America, and so they won't think about
companies as big, mean, scary corporations. They'll look at their
(24:59):
phone and they'll see the app and say, look, I
owned I own one hundred bucks of Apple, or or
or Boeing or McDonald's. And that I think will change
the country. And and without exaggeration, Ben, I think those
two provisions are the most consequential provisions of the entire bill.
And you know, it was interesting, as you know, a
(25:19):
couple of weeks ago, I was I was at the
White House with the President for a big press conference
on the Trump accounts, and and Michael and Susan Dell
were there, and the two of them are giving six
and a quarter billion dollars to put to put money
in the accounts of millions of kids all over the country.
And we deliberately wrote this so that philanthropists could do that.
(25:40):
That was part of the design. I wrote the legislation
so these accounts would be able to accept gifts of philanthropy.
And and it was interesting at the press conference where
where we were talking about the effect and transformational effect
and and you could actually see President Trump. I think
he he really got the impact of this at the
(26:01):
press conference in a way I don't think he ever had.
And there was a reporter who asked him, said mister President,
are these Trump Accounts going to be a major part
of your legacy? And you could kind of see him
thinking about that and then just like, yes, yes they will.
And I think that's absolutely right. Look, I mean, in
terms of my tenure in the Senate, there is nothing
(26:23):
I am more proud of doing in the Senate in
thirteen years fighting for Texans than passing the biggest school
choice program in American history and passing the Trump Accounts
into law. And both of those they're going to impact
not just you're in my kids, but our grandkids and
their grandkids. Those are victories at an historic level. And
(26:44):
that's why I say we keep We've won victories we've
never seen at this level center.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
As we're doing our year review, I love getting to
say this one. We had a big win on the
issue of space. We're not talking about you finding aliens
or anything, but we do have an update on space
that's near and dear to your heart with NASA and Houston.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Of course talk about the big victory there.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Well. In the Working Families tax cut, we invested ten
billion dollars in NASA and commercial space, and in particular
in going back to the Moon. And again because that
falls within the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee, I wrote
this provision. And we are in a race to go
back to the Moon. We're in a race with China.
China has said publicly they are going to go to
(27:27):
the Moon by twenty thirty and they're trying to get
back there. And it's also a race not just to
get there, but to also to build sustained human habitation
on the surface of the Moon, to begin mining on
the surface of the Moon. That's the next challenge that
we're moving towards. China is moving full speed ahead, and
we did major investments to say America is going to
(27:49):
beat China back to the Moon. We are going to
have sustain human habitation on the lunar surface or in
CIST lunar orbit. And that investment, it is in the bill,
is critically important. And the objective is for us to
land on the Moon by twenty twenty eight, two years
before China, with President Trump still in the Oval office,
(28:09):
and that investment will make it. And I'll tell you
this is a point I made if we lose. If
we were to lose the race to the Moon, I
think the impact of seeing the Chinese on the Moon
before we could get there, I think it would be
a bigger blow to the country than Sputnik was Sputnik
when the Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik around the Earth,
(28:31):
it was a massive blow. It started the space race,
and I think losing the Moon to China would be
orders of magnitude worse. That investment is in there. It matters,
and it matters also enormously. They're over fifty thousand high
paying jobs in Texas that are directly connected to space,
so it's big for jobs, jobs in the economy as well.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Selfishly, I just think it would be so cool for kids'
minds to be blown to NHD people walking on the
Moon just the wonder and the and the inspiration that
would come from that for an entire generation, you know,
with everything that's yes, yeah, and technology driven, Like just
to have a moment of pause where we're like, we
(29:14):
went to the moon and you can see at HD.
I can't imagine what that does for kids that are
dreamers for their futures and their education as well.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Look, I spend a lot of time at at at
Johnson Space Center. I spent a lot of time with NASA,
and and like the the inspiration that astronauts provide. Uh.
Now do you know the connection that Rice University has
to us going to the moon the first time? No?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
I do not.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
So it was at Rice University at the at the
Rice Stadium. You've been to that that football stadium? Uh,
that that JFK gave the speech where he committed we
will go to the moon within a decade and and
and in fact what he said, he said, Uh, why
does Rice play the University of Texas. They do so
(30:00):
not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
And that was that was his explanation for why are
we going to the moon. We're going to the moon
for the same reason Rice plays ut not because it
easy because it's it's hard, and it inspires millions of kids.
We're gonna do that again. But it's also critical. Listen
there there there are major economic benefits. I've predicted for
(30:23):
a long time. The first trillionaire is going to be
made in space. That may well be elon Musk He's
already halfway there. I think. I think the mining that
we're going to see on the Moon and ultimately on
Mars is going to generate enormous economic activity. And it
also matters from national security, and and and and from
a military perspective. Controlling what is quite literally the high
(30:45):
ground is really important for keeping America safe.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Cafe standards. I want to make sure we get this
in there before the end of the show. Let's talk
about that victory as well.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Another provision I wrote in the bill, we zeroed out
cafe standards. Now what is the cafe standards. They're the
rules the Biden administration put in place to drive up
the cost of your car and drive up the cost
of your truck. And what they did is they jacked
up the mileage it had to get to what were
unsustainable levels. And they were doing that because they wanted
(31:15):
to ban the internal combustion engine. They wanted to make
it impossible for you to buy a gasoline car. They
wanted to force you to buy an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Now, look, let's be clear. It also put you and
your family at risk. Yeah, because of having to be
forced to make the cars lighter, they had to get
rid of the steel in cars that made them so safe,
like tanks. And that's the reason why everything's now in
plastic and the bumpers and I've had a small wreck.
You see how things just shatter. It's because they're trying
(31:43):
to meet those standards.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah. Look, my first car was a nineteen seventy eight
Ford Fairmont. It was my grandfather's car that he gave
it to me. It was we called it the green Bomb.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
When you were younger, I knew it. That was confirmation, right.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Are you kidding? That was the coolest car. We called
it the green Bomb, and it was a And if
you got a sixteen year old boy, all sixteen year
old boys are idiots. And for the teenagers listening, I apologize,
but I was there. I was an idiot, And I
promise you when you get older, you understand it's just
part of life. Growing up and like putting your kids
in a car that is big enough that if they
(32:17):
hit something like an idiot, that they're not going to
be badly hurt or killed. That matters. We zeroed it out.
The effect of that is going to be to lower
the cost of you getting a car or a truck,
lower it by thousands of dollars. That's another victory that
is in the bill. And it also is going to
save life, just as you said, because you'll be able
(32:37):
to make cars that are safer with more steel and
less plastic.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yeah, it really is incredible.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Finally, one last thing I do want to hit, and
it's important one to end the show. Take it down
act something that you worked so hard on and became
reality as well this year, and it keeps kids safe.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, it's a great victory. Look that there is a
growing problem with what what's called non consensual intimate imagery,
and we're talking both real world so called revenge porn
where you have boyfriend or girlfriend, they have an intimate relationship,
they take explicit pictures or videos of each other, and
then they have a breakup and they get one of
them is ticked off and decides, all right, I'm gonna
(33:11):
stick it to you, and I'm going to release this
to the world, and it is a grotesque violation of privacy.
Nobody has a right to do that to somebody else.
There is, secondly, a more recent aspect of that, which
is deep fakes, and people are using AI to create
(33:32):
deep fakes, where they take pictures of real people and
they use AI to make it appear that they're naked
or in explicit and sexual situations. More than ninety five
percent of the victims of this are women or teenage girls.
And so I drafted a bill that's called to Take
It Down Act. That number one makes it a crime,
(33:53):
makes it a felony to post non consensual intimate imagery,
either real pictures or fake pictures. And secondly, it gives
you the right, if God forbid, you're the victim of this,
any tech platform that is displaying that content, you have
a federal statutory right to demand they take it down
and they have to take it down immediately. And we
(34:14):
passed that through the Senate, We passed that through the House.
The first Lady Milania Trump, was a big champion. She
joined with me and I was in the Rose Garden
right next to the President and right next to the
First Lady when he signed that legislation, protecting kids, protecting
teenage girls, teenage boys, women, protecting everyone, and also standing
(34:35):
up to the abuse of AI creating deep fakes and
victimizing people.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's so important.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
If you've ever known, and I know a family lost
to a child because this, they took their own life
because of the shame and they were being bullied. It
was online and it was actually not even them. It
was a fake picture, but everyone thought it was this person.
After you meet with those families, you've done it. You
have a heart for them.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
This is going to save lives as well.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I want to say it again, do not forget Download
Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts with
this show Monday, Wednesday Friday. We also do as a
video pod. You can watch it on YouTube or Facebook
as well. And the sender and I will be back
with you more on this. I can promise you a
big wins ahead in the new year as well, So
make sure you don't miss a single episode. And if
you're listening on the radio right now, thank you so
(35:23):
much for listening as well. We'll see you back again
real soon.
Welcome in as verdict with Centater Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
with you and Senator This is one of those fun
shows we get to do towards the end of the year,
and that's talking about the GOP open up a canawoop
bay on the Democrats, especially in the Senate. We had
big wins for the American people that are going to
have a real impact, especially on a lot of Americans
(00:22):
millions in twenty twenty six from many of the laws
that were passed are actually enacted on a scale one
to ten. How excite are you about the results from
this year?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Thirty seven?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Thirty seven? Okay, I like that.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Look this year, it is not an exaggeration to say
we had historic victories in the Senate. We had victories
at a order of magnitude we've never seen. And so
this show, we're just going to walk through all of
the victories we've won in the Senate. I'll tell you,
in my thirteen years in the Senate, I have never
(00:55):
had a year like this, with so many major victories,
with so many accomplishments that are lasting and transformational. And
and and look we came in and started the year
with President Trump being sworn in and the Trump administration
hit the ground running with with a head of steam.
(01:16):
But the Senate, and the Senate is now, Congress is
out now for Christmas. We'll come back after New Year's.
What we accomplished this year is transformation. All right. Let's
start with the border. We came in. The border was
wide open, the worst illegal immigration in history. We now
(01:36):
have a president and an administration that will follow the law.
Illegal border crossings dropped more than ninety nine percent.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
That is static, incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Tom Holman at the White House this week was talking
about he's worked under I think it's five six presidents.
Crazy and he's like, I've never seen something like this
where we have like zero illegal immigration because we secured
it and we said you're not going to get away
with it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And if you look legislatively, by far, legislatively, the biggest
accomplishment was the Reconciliation Bill that President Trump signed on
July fourth. It's interesting that used to be called the
one big beautiful bill. You will now see just about
every Senator referring to it as the working Family's tax cut.
(02:21):
Same bill, and there's a reason, which is they did
a bunch of polling and the Working Family Tax Cut
polls about forty points better than the one big beautiful bill,
and so it happens to be a major tax cut
for working family. So the working Family's tax cut is
an accurate name. But you're going to notice everyone calling
it the working Family's tax cut. Now that legislation, in
(02:45):
this no hyperbole, has more conservative victories in it than
any bill that's ever passed into law, I believe in
the history of the Republic. Let's break it down.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I'll just say, what are the big ones for you?
Because there's some in there that there's been this quote frustration.
I think a lot of this is the left in
the media trying to drum up that Donald Trump's not
getting it done for you.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
He forgot about you.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So much of what people need to understand is the
passing of this bill means the enacting of the bill
in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, many of the provisions go into effect in twenty
twenty six. You're gonna start seeing the real benefits in
the economy kicking in in force in twenty twenty six.
All right, Look, the Working Family's tax cut, the biggest
element of it was extending and making permanent the Trump
tax cuts. If we had not done that in two
weeks on January first, there would have been a four
(03:39):
trillion dollar tax increase that would have been crippling to
the economy. So making those tax cuts permanent is enormously important.
We also made them bigger, so we passed no taxes
on tips. That was my legislation. By the way, people
will start seeing the benefits of that next year. So
if you're a waiter, if you're a waitress, if you're
a bartender, if you work in a nail salon, if
(04:01):
you're a taxicab driver, that the millions of Americans who
rely on tips are going to see real, meaningful tax relief.
We've also got no tax on overtime, millions of Americans
who earn a significant portion of their income on overtime
that's now tax free. No tax on Social Security for
the millions of seniors at home relying on Social Security.
(04:24):
All three of those are going to effect in twenty
twenty six. All three of those are going to provide
really meaningful relief. What else do we have? You look
at the investments that we have over one hundred billion
dollars in secure in the border. So Trump is enforcing
the law that was critical that produced the immediate drop.
(04:46):
And now we provided the funding to build the wall,
to put in technology, to hire border patrol, to hire ice,
to invest in law enforcement. All of that is designed
to make these massive improvements stick. That is, as a conservative,
there's never been a hundred billion dollar investment in securing
the border. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I was speaking yesterday to a realature group. They asked
me to come and speak, and they said to me,
they never could have imagined that securing the border would
have such a positive impact as they've described it for
American families. They said they were witnessing over the last
basically four and a half years, the age of first
(05:30):
time home buyers had skyrocketed, where home ownership was unattainable
for families, young families in their thirties. It was now
getting to be forty before people were getting the first
time home buyer. Rent had gotten out of control. And
they said they can't wait for twenty twenty six because
they are seeing now with two million plus deportations, people
(05:51):
have stopped coming across the border illegally. They believe it's
going to be a great year for American families. And
first time home buyers because now you're not having to
heat with so many illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, and we covered that on Wednesday's pod that the
new data came out that showed rents dropped significantly, and
they dropped significantly because the President has deported two million
people who are here illegally. Those people are now not
buying homes, they're not running apartments and supply and demand.
That means that it drives down the cost of a home.
(06:22):
It drives down the cost of rent for Americans.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, it really does. It's incredible. And that's just one
of those massive victories. And it's not just that. It's
also the national security part of this. I mean, really,
do you hear home prices and national security really to
one simple issue that's something that you'd been fighting so
hard on to another victory.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Well, and in the Working Families Tax Cut, we invested
one hundred and fifty billion dollars in rebuilding the military
so we can stand up to our adversaries, so we
can stand up to China and the other enemies we
have across the globe. And the way it works in
the Senate is when you're drafting that bill, each committee
chairman drafts whatever is in their jurisdiction. So I am
(07:03):
the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
That committee covers about forty percent of the US economy.
What that means is that everything within that jurisdiction I wrote.
I had the lead pen and wrote. So, for example,
one thing that is in the Commerce jurisdiction is the
Coast Guard. So we invested twenty four and a half
(07:27):
billion dollars in the Coast Guard. Now, to give you
a sense of how important that is, how significant that is.
What what do you think the annual budget of the
Coastguard is?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I honestly have no clue.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It's between eleven and twelve billion. Okay, So we invested
more than two hundred percent the annual budget of the
Coastguard into the Coast Guard. I mean, I mean it is.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
His store were purposely and deliberately underfunded by the Left
and the Biden administration because they didn't want them to
be able to do this job.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Well, look, it was what we were investing in. Let
me tell you what we invested. It was specifically in capital,
so rebuilding infrastructure, building new ships, building new helicopters, and
a massive portion of it is polar ice cutters, So
polar ice cutters in the Arctic. We're getting our asses
kicked by China and by Russia, and we don't have
(08:18):
the capability right now to build Arctic ice cutters. Well,
we've invested billions in building new ice cutters. And the
beauty of it is that's bringing shipbuilding back to the
United States. One company, Davies, announced a billion and a
half dollars investment in a shipyard in Galveston, Texas to
build those ships. Let us compete with China, but also
(08:39):
bringing manufacturing capacity back to the United States.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Operation Overlord the D Day Beaches.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
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hope you'll join me next spring on the d DA
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(09:30):
rating with the BBB all your sight seeing in Paris.
To dial pound two fifty say the keyword Conservative Tours.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
You'll have the option to receive.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
A one time auto dialed text message from my Heartmedia Center.
There was so much a focus on the economy and
this last year and the wins, but there were some
really big wins within that. One of them deals with
the airwaves, and it deals with national security, It deals
with people and what you can have access to explain
(09:59):
this big win because it didn't get as much media
attention as it probably should have.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, look, as you know, my number one priority is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
There are lots of major wins this year that we
passed into law that are impacting job creation, that are
creating more high paying jobs in Texas and all across
the country. One of the big ones is spectrum. Now,
what is spectrum? Electromagnetic spectrum is how everything communicates, how
(10:26):
our cell phones work, how Wi Fi works, how TV
and broadcasts and everything goes out over spectrum. The largest
holder of spectrum in the United States is the United
States government. United States government has massive quantities of spectrum
that it owns that are not available to the private sector.
I wrote into the Working Families Tax cut a mandate
(10:48):
that the federal government auction off eight hundred megahertz a
spectrum to the private sector. Now, now what does that mean.
That means that in the coming years that is going
to generate over one hundred billion dollars for the US government.
I mean, the spectrum is incredibly valuable. That's real money
that goes directly to the US Treasury. Now, why will
(11:12):
it generate over one hundred billion dollars? Because that spectrum
is incredibly valuable. Number one, it's it's it's valuable for
our phones. It's valuable to beat China in the race
for five G and then beat China and the race
for six G. And you've got to have the spectrum
to invest in that. What that means is you're going
to see You're gonna see the big phone companies. You're
(11:33):
going to see AT and T and Verizon and Sprint
investing tens of billions of dollars into new capacity to
use that spectrum. All of that means more jobs. That
means more people setting up towers, more people building that innovation.
It also it supercharges the tech world, much of the
(11:53):
AI world. Winning the race for AI having that spectrum
available means the private they can compete for all sorts
of different uses for using that spectrum. And I'll tell
you that was not an easy battle, because most of
that spectrum that the government holds is either the Department
of War or the intelligence agencies have them and they
(12:14):
don't like to give them up. We won that fight.
That will generate thousands and thousands of that will produce
thousands and thousands of new jobs. Another big win in
the Working Family Tax cut is air traffic control modernization.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
In that bill we certainly needed, by the way, like
I as I think people understand how desperately the need
was for modernization. What the Trump administration inherited. You and
I both remember the very first night a dear friend
of ours became the cabinet member in charge of Transportation,
Secretary John Duffy. The first night he and his family
(12:51):
went into his building where his office was going to be,
and we had that horrific crash with a helicopter that
came across and hit that plane at Reagan National. Your
wife was in the air that night, and it brought
up even a bigger issue like how does this happen?
And we realized there was a massive modernization that was
desperately needed for the safety as more and more planes
(13:12):
are flying each and every day. You fly every week,
I fly almost every week as well. I want to
know I'm safe. I want to know when my family's
on a plane that they are safe. And this is
something that's good for every American that flies well.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And we had two major victories this year in the
Senate on aviation safety. The first was in the Working
Family Tax Cut. We invested twelve and a half billion
dollars in terms of modernizing our air traffic control. Air
traffic controllers right now in the tower. If you look
at the technology they've been using, it is literally nineteen
(13:45):
fifties and nineteen sixties technology. They're using radar, they're using
little slips of paper, they're using floppy disc. They have
computers with floppy disc. When I talk to anyone under thirty,
they don't know what a floppy disk is. But saying
that's the technology that they're using. So there's twelve and
a half million dollars. They've been the FAA, the Trump
administration has been ripping up copper wiring that was failing
(14:08):
and replacing it with fiber. They'd been getting new and
updated computers, getting new technology, all designed so the air
traffic controllers can know where the planes are and can
manage the airspace to avoid collisions. You know, you mentioned
the horrific accident that happened over d C. Ronald Reagan
Airport at the end of January. That accident, an American
(14:31):
Airlines flight was flying from Wichita, Kansas, landing at d C.
Reagan and as you know, it hit an Army black
Hawk helicopter. Sixty seven lives perished that instant. As you noted,
Heidi was literally in the air scheduled to land at Reagan.
About an hour after that, I was sitting at dinner.
(14:53):
I was having dinner with Mike Waltz, who was at
the time President Trump's National security advisor now he's the
Ambassador of the UN in a good friend of mine,
and we were at dinner when we both got notified.
In fact, my body man, who you know he came
up and thankfully he did this right. He started with
Heidi's okay, but I need to tell you what just happened,
and that was a good way to start. I'm glad
(15:14):
the Heightie's okay started. But if you look at aviation safety,
a second big victory that we just had on aviation
safety happened this week, which is in response to what
happened there, I began drafting legislations called the Road Act,
and the Road To Act is designed to mandate that
(15:34):
all aircraft in the sky use what's called ADSB technology
ADSB out and ADSB in, and that is advanced technology
to help the other planes in the sky and the
other aircraft see each other and to help the air
traffic controllers have the information on the precise location in
real time. With radar, there's a delay, whereas ADSB gives
(15:58):
it to you in real time. Now, why is that
directly relevant to the crash. Well, the Army Blackhawk helicopter
had ADSB technology installed, they had it turned off. Yeah,
and so the American Airlines pilot couldn't see the Blackhawk
helicopter and didn't know it was there until the two collided.
(16:19):
It and Unfortunately, we discovered the Army had a policy
of leaving ADSB turned off just as a routine matter.
It was indefensible. And so the Rotor Act mandates number one,
that the military followed the same rules as everybody else.
If you're going to be flying, particularly through crowded airspace
at an airport, use the technology so the other aircraft
(16:41):
can see where you are and so you don't have
a collision. And it mandates that everyone use ADSB technology
in and out in the planes. That legislation. You know,
it's interesting. We had the Senate just passed this week
the National Defense Authorization Act that we passed that ever year,
that is the big military authorization that we pass and
(17:03):
someone in the House of Representatives dropped a provision in
in the dark of night that would have allowed the
Army to keep ADSB turned off. Well, this week I
passed the Road To Act and repealed that provision. And
so when the House passes it and the President's signs it,
which I think will happen in January, everyone will be
safe for flying.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
There is one thing that I actually think will end
up being your legacy. One day, long, long down the road,
when you're long and gone, and people say, what did
Ted Cruz do? I actually believe this will be brought
up for an extremely long amount of time. It is
going to be transformative to this country, to the young
people in this country, and it deals with education. It
(17:45):
is something you've been championing for decades, an idea that
you love, and now it became reality and you had
to fight tooth and nail to keep it in the
big bill. Talk about this victory and what it means
application wise, especially moving forward.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Well, look, I agree with you in terms of the
magnitude of this victory. And let me say, when we
were in the middle of drafting the Working Families Tax
Cut in April of this year, we did a retreat
of all the Senate Republicans and we were talking about
all the different elements that we wanted the bill, and
everyone had different priorities, and I stood up kind of
midway through and I said said, look, there are a
lot of things in this bill that are incredibly important.
(18:24):
Cutting taxes, investing and securing the border, rebuilding the military.
All of that matters a ton. But I said, we
had to think for a minute about legacy, about what
will be remembered ten twenty thirty years from now, what
will be remembered when we're dead and buried? And I said,
I've got two suggestions, two suggestions that fall into the category.
(18:47):
The first was school choice and the second was what
has now become the Trump Accounts. Now, both of those
suggestions I wrote the legislation for, and both of them
are in the bill. Let's start with school choice. What
is in the bill. This will kick in. This will
start kicking in in a year. And what it will
(19:07):
do is every taxpayer in America can give up to
seventeen hundred dollars to a scholarship granting organization in the States.
If you do so, you will get a dollar for
dollar tax credit. Now, importantly, this is not a deduction,
it's a credit. What does that mean. It means if
Ben Ferguson writes a check for one thousand, seven hundred
(19:29):
dollars to an organization that gives scholarships to kids in Texas,
you owe one thousand, seven hundred dollars less to Uncle Sam.
You just give less on your taxes. So it's basically
free money. From your perspective, what that is going to
do is it is going to produce tens of billions
of dollars of scholarships for kids in K through twelve
(19:52):
education all across the country, and ten twenty thirty years
from now, literally millions of kids who were stuck failing schools,
many of them African American kids, Hispanic kids, low income kids,
who are in schools where there's violence, where they're not learning,
where they're not able to get the education. You're failing
and we're failing them. Look, you know, if it's a
(20:15):
five year old, it's not the five year old's fault.
If the kindergarten is a crappy kindergarten, that's not the
kid's fault. That is, at the end of the day,
school choice is about. I think it's the civil rights
issue of the twenty first century. I think every child
deserves access to an excellent education, and it shouldn't matter
what your race is, what your wealth is, where you live.
(20:38):
This provision thirty years from now, we're going to look
back and literally there're going to be millions of kids
who would have been failed by the system, but instead
got a scholarship and ended up being able to go
to a Catholic school, to a Jewish day school, to
a private school, and to be safe, not to be
at risk of violence, to learn to read. And if
(21:03):
you get education, it opens up every other opportunity for
the rest of your life. And if you don't get
an education, you're screwed. And so that is in there. Look,
I've been fighting for school choice for thirty years. The
school choice movement is the domestic priority I care the
most about.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
By the way, let's go back from here. That maybe
miss that episode.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I don't think people understand just how hard democrats the teachers'
unions didn't want this to happen, and how hard you
had to fight to keep it in there, because there
was many times where we thought it may not make.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It look And it was particularly difficult because the Senate Parliamentarian.
To get anything through the reconciliation process, you have to
go through the Senate Parliamentarian, and there are Kane rules
for what is allowed and what is not allowed when
you're doing reconciliation. Three times the Senate Parliamentarian struck this
school choice provision. And normally the way that happens, it's
(22:01):
like litigation where you have both sides. The Democrats get
to argue. So the Democrats argued to the parliamentarian stripped
this out and fought tooth and nail. Now, normally it
is staff. It is staff of senators who go in
and argue on both sides. It is very unusual for
a senator to do this. I did this myself. I
went in and argued to the parliamentarian and her team directly,
(22:24):
and we ended up rewriting the provision. We rewrote it
three times to get it through. When she objected to something,
we rewrote it to address that, and we got it
in the second provision that is going to have just
just generational impacts or the Trump accounts and starting.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I love there called drum accounts. There is a great
marketing measure. But this started with you, senator, and you
could easily call this the cruise accounts the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, but he's in sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, and so
he gets to have his name on it. And that's great.
He signed it in the law and it is historic.
But I did write the provision and I got to
say the impact. What's going to happen next year? Next year,
on July fourth, every child in America is going to
have a personal investment account open for them. Newborn children
(23:16):
will have one thousand dollars automatically seeded into it.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
This is amazing.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Parents, families, employers can put up to five thousand dollars
a year in a tax advantage account and all of
that will be invested in the S and P five
hundred will be invested in a broad based equity index,
invested in the stock market. Two massive benefits from this
Number One, every child at America will get the benefit
(23:44):
of compound growth, and that is incredibly powerful. A little
girl born next year, she has one thousand dollars put
in it automatically. If her parents or family or an
employer puts five thousand a year, that's invested in the
stock market. We grow at the historical rate of average
seven percent of the S and P five hundred. By
the time she is eighteen, she will have one hundred
(24:10):
and seventy thousand dollars in that account.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
And if she keeps investing five thousand a year, by
the time she's thirty five, she will have seven hundred
thousand dollars in that account. That's transformation. And we're not
talking rich kids. We're talking the kids of a single mom,
talking everybody. We're talking everybody that's money that that she
can use to buy a home, to start a business,
(24:35):
to get an education. I mean, that changes her entire life.
But secondly, and this is the part as a conservative
that I'm really excited about. We are creating a whole
new generation of capitalists, a whole new generation of kids.
Every kid is going to be an owner of the
biggest employers in America, and so they won't think about
companies as big, mean, scary corporations. They'll look at their
(24:59):
phone and they'll see the app and say, look, I
owned I own one hundred bucks of Apple, or or
or Boeing or McDonald's. And that I think will change
the country. And and without exaggeration, Ben, I think those
two provisions are the most consequential provisions of the entire bill.
And you know, it was interesting, as you know, a
(25:19):
couple of weeks ago, I was I was at the
White House with the President for a big press conference
on the Trump accounts, and and Michael and Susan Dell
were there, and the two of them are giving six
and a quarter billion dollars to put to put money
in the accounts of millions of kids all over the country.
And we deliberately wrote this so that philanthropists could do that.
(25:40):
That was part of the design. I wrote the legislation
so these accounts would be able to accept gifts of philanthropy.
And and it was interesting at the press conference where
where we were talking about the effect and transformational effect
and and you could actually see President Trump. I think
he he really got the impact of this at the
(26:01):
press conference in a way I don't think he ever had.
And there was a reporter who asked him, said mister President,
are these Trump Accounts going to be a major part
of your legacy? And you could kind of see him
thinking about that and then just like, yes, yes they will.
And I think that's absolutely right. Look, I mean, in
terms of my tenure in the Senate, there is nothing
(26:23):
I am more proud of doing in the Senate in
thirteen years fighting for Texans than passing the biggest school
choice program in American history and passing the Trump Accounts
into law. And both of those they're going to impact
not just you're in my kids, but our grandkids and
their grandkids. Those are victories at an historic level. And
(26:44):
that's why I say we keep We've won victories we've
never seen at this level center.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
As we're doing our year review, I love getting to
say this one. We had a big win on the
issue of space. We're not talking about you finding aliens
or anything, but we do have an update on space
that's near and dear to your heart with NASA and Houston.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Of course talk about the big victory there.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Well. In the Working Families tax cut, we invested ten
billion dollars in NASA and commercial space, and in particular
in going back to the Moon. And again because that
falls within the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee, I wrote
this provision. And we are in a race to go
back to the Moon. We're in a race with China.
China has said publicly they are going to go to
(27:27):
the Moon by twenty thirty and they're trying to get
back there. And it's also a race not just to
get there, but to also to build sustained human habitation
on the surface of the Moon, to begin mining on
the surface of the Moon. That's the next challenge that
we're moving towards. China is moving full speed ahead, and
we did major investments to say America is going to
(27:49):
beat China back to the Moon. We are going to
have sustain human habitation on the lunar surface or in
CIST lunar orbit. And that investment, it is in the bill,
is critically important. And the objective is for us to
land on the Moon by twenty twenty eight, two years
before China, with President Trump still in the Oval office,
(28:09):
and that investment will make it. And I'll tell you
this is a point I made if we lose. If
we were to lose the race to the Moon, I
think the impact of seeing the Chinese on the Moon
before we could get there, I think it would be
a bigger blow to the country than Sputnik was Sputnik
when the Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik around the Earth,
(28:31):
it was a massive blow. It started the space race,
and I think losing the Moon to China would be
orders of magnitude worse. That investment is in there. It matters,
and it matters also enormously. They're over fifty thousand high
paying jobs in Texas that are directly connected to space,
so it's big for jobs, jobs in the economy as well.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Selfishly, I just think it would be so cool for kids'
minds to be blown to NHD people walking on the
Moon just the wonder and the and the inspiration that
would come from that for an entire generation, you know,
with everything that's yes, yeah, and technology driven, Like just
to have a moment of pause where we're like, we
(29:14):
went to the moon and you can see at HD.
I can't imagine what that does for kids that are
dreamers for their futures and their education as well.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Look, I spend a lot of time at at at
Johnson Space Center. I spent a lot of time with NASA,
and and like the the inspiration that astronauts provide. Uh.
Now do you know the connection that Rice University has
to us going to the moon the first time? No?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
I do not.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
So it was at Rice University at the at the
Rice Stadium. You've been to that that football stadium? Uh,
that that JFK gave the speech where he committed we
will go to the moon within a decade and and
and in fact what he said, he said, Uh, why
does Rice play the University of Texas. They do so
(30:00):
not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
And that was that was his explanation for why are
we going to the moon. We're going to the moon
for the same reason Rice plays ut not because it
easy because it's it's hard, and it inspires millions of kids.
We're gonna do that again. But it's also critical. Listen
there there there are major economic benefits. I've predicted for
(30:23):
a long time. The first trillionaire is going to be
made in space. That may well be elon Musk He's
already halfway there. I think. I think the mining that
we're going to see on the Moon and ultimately on
Mars is going to generate enormous economic activity. And it
also matters from national security, and and and and from
a military perspective. Controlling what is quite literally the high
(30:45):
ground is really important for keeping America safe.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Cafe standards. I want to make sure we get this
in there before the end of the show. Let's talk
about that victory as well.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Another provision I wrote in the bill, we zeroed out
cafe standards. Now what is the cafe standards. They're the
rules the Biden administration put in place to drive up
the cost of your car and drive up the cost
of your truck. And what they did is they jacked
up the mileage it had to get to what were
unsustainable levels. And they were doing that because they wanted
(31:15):
to ban the internal combustion engine. They wanted to make
it impossible for you to buy a gasoline car. They
wanted to force you to buy an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Now, look, let's be clear. It also put you and
your family at risk. Yeah, because of having to be
forced to make the cars lighter, they had to get
rid of the steel in cars that made them so safe,
like tanks. And that's the reason why everything's now in
plastic and the bumpers and I've had a small wreck.
You see how things just shatter. It's because they're trying
(31:43):
to meet those standards.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah. Look, my first car was a nineteen seventy eight
Ford Fairmont. It was my grandfather's car that he gave
it to me. It was we called it the green Bomb.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
When you were younger, I knew it. That was confirmation, right.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Are you kidding? That was the coolest car. We called
it the green Bomb, and it was a And if
you got a sixteen year old boy, all sixteen year
old boys are idiots. And for the teenagers listening, I apologize,
but I was there. I was an idiot, And I
promise you when you get older, you understand it's just
part of life. Growing up and like putting your kids
in a car that is big enough that if they
(32:17):
hit something like an idiot, that they're not going to
be badly hurt or killed. That matters. We zeroed it out.
The effect of that is going to be to lower
the cost of you getting a car or a truck,
lower it by thousands of dollars. That's another victory that
is in the bill. And it also is going to
save life, just as you said, because you'll be able
(32:37):
to make cars that are safer with more steel and
less plastic.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yeah, it really is incredible.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Finally, one last thing I do want to hit, and
it's important one to end the show. Take it down
act something that you worked so hard on and became
reality as well this year, and it keeps kids safe.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, it's a great victory. Look that there is a
growing problem with what what's called non consensual intimate imagery,
and we're talking both real world so called revenge porn
where you have boyfriend or girlfriend, they have an intimate relationship,
they take explicit pictures or videos of each other, and
then they have a breakup and they get one of
them is ticked off and decides, all right, I'm gonna
(33:11):
stick it to you, and I'm going to release this
to the world, and it is a grotesque violation of privacy.
Nobody has a right to do that to somebody else.
There is, secondly, a more recent aspect of that, which
is deep fakes, and people are using AI to create
(33:32):
deep fakes, where they take pictures of real people and
they use AI to make it appear that they're naked
or in explicit and sexual situations. More than ninety five
percent of the victims of this are women or teenage girls.
And so I drafted a bill that's called to Take
It Down Act. That number one makes it a crime,
(33:53):
makes it a felony to post non consensual intimate imagery,
either real pictures or fake pictures. And secondly, it gives
you the right, if God forbid, you're the victim of this,
any tech platform that is displaying that content, you have
a federal statutory right to demand they take it down
and they have to take it down immediately. And we
(34:14):
passed that through the Senate, We passed that through the House.
The first Lady Milania Trump, was a big champion. She
joined with me and I was in the Rose Garden
right next to the President and right next to the
First Lady when he signed that legislation, protecting kids, protecting
teenage girls, teenage boys, women, protecting everyone, and also standing
(34:35):
up to the abuse of AI creating deep fakes and
victimizing people.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's so important.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
If you've ever known, and I know a family lost
to a child because this, they took their own life
because of the shame and they were being bullied. It
was online and it was actually not even them. It
was a fake picture, but everyone thought it was this person.
After you meet with those families, you've done it. You
have a heart for them.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
This is going to save lives as well.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I want to say it again, do not forget Download
Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts with
this show Monday, Wednesday Friday. We also do as a
video pod. You can watch it on YouTube or Facebook
as well. And the sender and I will be back
with you more on this. I can promise you a
big wins ahead in the new year as well, So
make sure you don't miss a single episode. And if
you're listening on the radio right now, thank you so
(35:23):
much for listening as well. We'll see you back again
real soon.
Host
Ben Ferguson
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