Interview: The Impact of the BBB to You, A New Census & Everglades Restoration w/Rep. Brian Mast

Interview: The Impact of the BBB to You, A New Census & Everglades Restoration w/Rep. Brian Mast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Two sides to the story. There's only one side to
the facts. Welcome to the Brian Mud Show and thank
you for listening. That is good to have you, and
it's always good to check in with Congressman Brian Mass
who joins us now. Good morning, congressmen, Good morning, how
you doing well. Don't get tired of winning, and we've

(00:25):
seen a fair amount of that coming out of the administration.
I know you're proud of a lot of what was
accomplished with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. If you
want to highlight just a few of the things there
that you think matter right now, especially for those of
us in Florida.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, I mean this is largely a tax bill. So
this is a you know, you and I are going
to have a tax conversation right now. To put it
in a very simple term, though, if you're driving to
work right now, you keep more money in your pocket
because of the Big Beautiful Bill. And to give some examples,
right we the tax brackets, the tax brackets are low,
or where you used to pay fifteen percent in taxes,

(01:04):
now you pay twelve percent in taxes. And if you're
a Democrat and you voted against this bill, you're saying, well,
we want people to pay more. Or where you used
to pay twenty five percent in taxes, say forty to
sixty thousand dollars, now you're paying twenty two percent. Right,
Or where you used to pay twenty eight now you're
paying twenty four percent. All of those levels are permanently

(01:25):
lower because of a bill Republicans wrote and Democrats refused
to vote for. Right now, if you're going to work
as a bartender, maybe not a bartender at this time
in the morning now, maybe waitstaff somewhere. But if you
work as a bartender or wait staff, or you work
for tips somewhere, right, President Trump wanted no tax on tips.
So the first twenty five thousand dollars no tax on

(01:48):
those tips. So you go to work tonight, you're a
bartendering to make twenty five grand tips. You're not paying
tax on that overtime. You're not paying tax on twelve thousand,
five hundred of overtime. And Social Security, you know, we
double the state in deduction. If you're a married couple
on Social Security, you're basically going to have in total
about thirty six thousand dollars of total write off before

(02:09):
you're paid a dime of taxes on Social Security and
those are just those things. It doesn't even get into
the small business stuff and everything else. It was a
great bill if you go to work, Like I said,
that's the bottom line. You go to work, you keep,
you walk away with more money in your pocket.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it's a good takeaway. And you know, kind of
segueing off of that, there's an open conversation right now
about tariff revenue and whether that revenue should be applied
towards debt and deficit spending or whether it should be
issued as a rebate to Americans. Where do you come
down on that, Well, let's.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Broaden the conversation beyond, you know, just tariff revenue and
talking about debt and deficit in total. So for the
Republican Party and Doge, we have a specific goal right now,
and this is a goal that hasn't existed before, to say, Okay,
we're going to take our debt and deficit and go
from just paying interest on the debt to pay paying
principle on the debt. Right just like anybody, you want

(03:02):
to pay principle on your home, get that loan down,
You want to pay principle on your car, get that
loan down. We want to actually pay the principle on
the debt of the United States of America. Now, whether
that comes from tariff revenue or whether that comes from
you know, take your pick of places, just you know,
DOGE and cutting spending. I chair the Foreign Affairs Committee,
and we cut a ton of spending out of the

(03:23):
State Department right wherever it comes from. We want to
take those resources and get to the point now that
we that we are actually paying on the debt. And
the goal for that with DOGE is cut four billion
dollars a day of spending from the United States government.
Get do that for about three hundred and sixty five days,
and get to the point that we're cutting literally about

(03:44):
a trillion and a half dollars of spending so that
we're actually paying principle.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
So there is some math at a certain level, especially
if interest rates were to come down, which they should.
We saw the run rate on one point nine percent
during the six full months of Trump's presidency, with yesterday's
consumer price index report two point seven when you factor
in the other six months of Biden's term. So they

(04:11):
fed too late, as the President would say, in interest rates.
But if you got rates down and the cost of
servicing the debt world ass and we take a look
at the growth rates that we can operate with. There
is a conversation about potentially running surpluses here in the
NASO distance. Is that part of what you're banking on,
along with your conversation about continuing cuts.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah. So I came into Congress back in twenty seventeen.
That's when we did the first tax cuts build a
Tax Cuts in Jobs Act, and Democrats said, oh, this
is just a tax cut for the wealthy. It was
a tax cut for everybody, everybody at every income level,
which I couldn't be more proud of. But they said, oh, well,
this is gonna you know, there's not going to be
as much tax that came in. The tax roles actually

(04:57):
had greater receipts even though we cut people's taxes because
the economy grew. There was a larger pie that was
being taxed, but everybody was being taxed less on their
piece of the pie. That's what we believe will happen
with this by cutting taxes again, the pie, the GDP,
the growth in the United States of America, we will

(05:17):
have a bigger pie, but everybody's going to pay less
taxes on their piece of the pie. You're going to
get to eat more of your pie.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Speaking of the pie, we've been shafted in the size
of our pie. In the state of Florida. We knew
this coming out of the twenty twenty census back then.
We have the open conversation about what to do about it. Now, First,
your thoughts. At the federal level, President Trump looking to
maybe work on a new census, and also at the
state level, Governor de Sants calling on the state to redistrict.

(05:46):
We have a select committee that has been started in
the state House. Your thoughts.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
We need to have an honest accountability for who lives
where in the United States of America. And this has
always been one of the big part of debate. Does
it matter that you count illegal immigrants or just legal people? Now,
of course, the states with a lot of illegal immigrants,
like California and New York, well they want you to
count the illegal immigrants because they're going to get more

(06:11):
representation out of that. Now that President Trump has come
in cracking down getting people out of this country that
are here illegally, overstayed their visas or just cross the
border illegally. It is time to have a real census
that actually reflects the people legally living in America and
then have that representation per state. So I'm all for

(06:32):
having a new census and having the redistricting that accounts
for where are the actual centers of population or where
are they not. That's an honest electoral process for the
United States of America, and I think it couldn't be better.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
So, Brian a couple things about that. It would require
an Act of Congress to go ahead and do on
midstream a new one right now, the funding for it
to be provided, but also to just go ahead and
conduct it given the close margins in the House, in
the likelihood that a lot of blue state Republicans even
might not go along with it, and then the unlikelihood
of getting Democrats on board to break a filibuster and

(07:08):
the Senate the political will seems unlikely that way. What
about is there a potential to correct the data from
the twenty twenty census? Boris ag James Authbyer this week
seems to be hinting at that a mathematical method that
had never been used to calculate SINSUS data was used

(07:28):
in twenty twenty called deferential privacy. Could we go back
and just use the same data and potentially correct it
at the Commerce Department.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
There's definitely a potential that you can do that, and
there's a potential that we could move something legislatively right
both of those. There's what's possible and there's what's probable.
I always say, now, you talked about the probability going
through the House of Representatives slim margins. Some Republicans that
are in blue states like California, New York, maybe they
don't want to agree to that. This is what I

(07:58):
would say about that. For everything that we've been doing
along the line, whether it be passing appropriations or doing
the big beautiful bill, or you know, securing the Southern border,
things like that, it has been tight. And sometimes we've
had to do the vote even multiple times because it
failed the first time, and then we get it through
the second time. And the point that I'm simply making
is is much of the hurdles that we've had, we

(08:20):
continue to get the job done. We continue to get
these big bills over the finish line and deliver to
the American people what we promised. And so even with
this absolutely. It would be a difficult lift to move
doing another census, but I have a lot of confidence
in the fact that we continue to get these things
over the line.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Speakaway, Congressman Brian mass Brian, something that we're passionate about.
You've worked very hard on over the years. Our waterways
are water management. I've been interested to talk to you
about something that went down last month where you had
this day that signed a new agreement with the Army
Corps to theoretically oversee large aspects of the Everglades restoration plan.

(09:06):
Is this what we have been looking for to get
some of the arbitrary and bad decisions of leadership the
Army Corps of Engineers out of the way of doing
what we need to do to protect our waterways.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Look, everybody knows I get a lot of issues with
the US Army Corps of Engineers. I've hammered them for years.
The South Florida Water Management District is the state partner
on these water projects. They partner with the federal government
and quite often the state agency comes in and they're
putting up fifty percent of the money. Right, So they
have an invested interest in this, and they're saying Listen,

(09:39):
if you give us the rains to do this instead
of the core the rains to do this, we think
we can get this done a year or two or
five years sooner. And if we get it done sooner,
the prices aren't going up, so we can get it
done at less of a cost. And the state agency
is constantly begging to have that latitude. Now they're going
to come out and make that promise to all of you.

(10:00):
You're the talkspayer, you're paying these things. It comes out
of your pocket. If they're making that promise to you, Hey,
we can get it done at the same quality. We
can get it done sooner and online sooner, and that
means we can do it at a lesser press. That's
just being a good steward of your dollars.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, that makes sense. What is the currently the land
as far as you're concerned. I mean, are we on
track again or are we still dealing with problems with
the current leadership the Army Corps.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
The current leadership of the Army Corps. I think it's
a day to day an issue to issue things. Sometimes
I agree with the work that they're doing, truthfully, and
sometimes it's like beating my head against the wall in
dealing with some of the things that they're doing. To
give you an example, you're well educated on the fact
that we redid the management schedule for Lake Okachobe called

(10:48):
Lowsome Lake o Kachobe System Operating Manual, and we worked
on that for several years. It was a huge frustration
to me that the corp of Engineers came in and
they didn't even operate that new management cycle for even
a year before they came in and they said, you
know what, we're going to deviate from this new management plan.
We're not going to see if everything works on this,

(11:09):
We're going to deviate from it. And they started discharging
water this past winter back in the last December and
discharged it all the way up until I want to
say May May. And it wasn't huge amounts and it
wasn't done with the summertime alga blooms. But just to
begin with, why are you deviating from the plan without
even giving it a year or two years to run

(11:31):
a cycle? That to me was a frustration. So a
lot of times it's like being your head against the
wall with them, But sometimes they do good work too well.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Brian, I always appreciate you being there and doing good
work in Congress for us.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Good to talk with you, Good to talk with you too,