The Government Not So Shutdown

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I don't know how all of you listening to this
are able to just carry on with your days as
the nation struggles through the terrors the overwhelming weight and
burden of the government shutdown. I extend my condolences to
all of you as we slug it out during this

(00:20):
time of trial. Oh you mean you forgot that there
was a government shut down? You didn't notice there was
a government shut and perhaps you were just learning for
the first time that, Yes, since when Friday last week,
we've had a government shut down going on. I've discussed
it a couple times on the show. I think government

(00:42):
shutdowns are the most overrated stories in all of American politics.
It's a really, really big deal for people who live
in literally one part of the country, Washington, d C.
Where lots and lots of people who live in Washington
DC are employees of the federal government or contractors working

(01:04):
on projects funded by the federal government. So when a
government shut down happens, it's a really big deal there,
and it's just not a really big deal anywhere else
in America. Yeah, there are federal employees scattered across the country,
but they're just not scattered in as big a concentration
anywhere as they are in Washington, d C. The problem

(01:25):
is that a huge chunk of the media is located
in Washington, d C. And all of our members of
Congress are in Washington, d C. Trying to put together
some kind of deal to resolve and the government shutdown.
So it's like this big story, and I think members
of Congress on both sides assume that it's a bigger leverage, pressure,

(01:47):
pain point for one side or the other, that there's
hay to be made politically by blaming one side or
the other for the government shut down, and on the
whole with these things, I guess it's kind of a
you know, it's a bit of a take. It takes
two to tango. I mean, right now, Republicans are in
the majority, but they don't have sixty votes in the Senate.

(02:09):
So if they want to keep the government open, they
need to do some kind of compromise to get at
least seven Democrats to agree with them to keep the
government open. And whatever they've done has not convinced seven
Democrats to go along with it. At the same time,
Democrats have to realize they're not in power and they
need to compromise on something to get enough Republicans to

(02:32):
join with them if they wanted to keep the government open,
or some of them have to concede to some Republican
points to keep the government open, and Democrats are refusing
to do so. But I just don't know that there's
much haye to be made either way, especially a shutdown
that's happening now, you know, a year out, you know,

(02:52):
thirteen months out from an election. I just don't think
it's going to be that politically remembered the time we
roll around to November of twenty twenty six, let alone
going to be like a significant issue in the November
twenty twenty six off year elections. Now here's the other

(03:12):
funny thing, though, the whole setup of the government shutdown,
which is basically, we have federal spending bills that keep
these different functions of the government funded, and they sunset
at a certain point, and then if some new spending
bill isn't passed to keep it funded, then we have
a quote government shutdown. But these government shutdowns, they only

(03:35):
apply to certain kinds of things. They're not a big
deal because a lot of federal spending and federal activity
is still chug chug chugging along. Here's a good little
piece for National Review about this, written by Dominic Pinot,

(03:56):
who's their kind of economics guy. The federal government has
been out of money, he writes, since eighteen thirty five.
That was the last year in which the US had
no national debt. So it might seem a little silly
to say that the government has to shut down because
it ran out of money on October first, end Well,

(04:19):
it is silly. Government shutdowns are not a requirement of
the Constitution or of common sense. They are the product
of the interaction of statutes that Congress can and he
thinks should change. Government shutdowns don't improve the quality of
governance or the country's fiscal health, and Congress should end
them forever. It's not just because Democrats caused the ongoing shutdown.

(04:43):
In twenty twenty three, when Republicans nearly caused a shut down,
I also argued that Congress should end shutdowns forever. It's
his pino writing, there is simply no reason to pick
arbitrary dates on which it suddenly matters that the government
doesn't have enough money to pay its bills, especially because
most of what the government does keeps happening during shutdowns anyway,

(05:05):
and this is one of the key things. Most of
what the government does keeps happening during shutdowns. The political
calculation for shutdowns often includes the belief that voters will
feel the pain and demand a way out, which the
party that caused the shutdown hopes will mean granting its wishes.

(05:25):
But most voters feel no pain. And that's the point.
None of you, most of us listening to this, outside
of like a few select people who either work for
the federal government and are furloughed and you're gonna get
your back pay once the shutdown ends, or like the
one example that's constantly brought up every time on the

(05:47):
radio when the government shutdown is either on us or
looming is people who work in the tourism industry and
run hotels and stuff near Yosemite. Okay, because the national
parks are closed and people income to Yosemite, and that
hurts some people in the San Joaquin Valley, especially around Oakhurst. Okay,
outside of you, no one is affected, No one is

(06:10):
really hurt. Social Security checks still go out, ding Medicare
and Medicaid coverage continues during government shutdowns, ding ding those programs.
Plus interest payments on the national debt, which also continue

(06:31):
to be made during shutdowns, account for about three quarters
of all federal spending. I will also add the military,
which is so between the military, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security,
that's like most of the federal budget is just spent

(06:53):
on those things. Like that's trillions of dollars every year.
Those programs, PENO rights plus interest payments are also so
bubba sorry, let me go back. Those programs plus interest
payments on the national debt, which also continue to be

(07:14):
made during shutdowns, account for about three quarters of all
federal spending. So we're not even really shut down. We're
like one quarter shut down. It's like a quarter of
federal government spending is shut down. Military personnel still getting
their checks. Old people are still getting Medicare, they're still

(07:38):
getting Social Security, people still get medicaid coverage. That's all happening,
and that's like the vast bulk of the whole federal government.
Those programs plus interest payments are also, by the way,
the long run drivers of the new national debt. The

(08:02):
rest of the federal budget is roughly balanced over the
long run. That means that a lapse in government funding
causes the balanced part of the budget to stop while
the deficit causing part continues as before. It's nonsensical. So
that I guess that's one thing that's interesting. Like there

(08:23):
was all this sort of tough Republican talk that Russell
Vaught is the head of the Office of Management and
Budget and he had, you know, he was a big
wig Good Heritage Foundation, uh during in between Trump administrations
and was one of the Project twenty twenty five guys
Trump keeps. It was sort of saying in Prescott, I'm

(08:44):
gonna let this guy loose, and he's you know, all
these employees who are furloughed temporarily during the shutdown, he
can start firing people permanently. And I don't know how Now,
maybe that would be good in so far as a
lot of the you know, career employees of the federal
government are you know, a bunch of liberals who don't

(09:09):
need to have us continue to pay them to do
their jobs. But it's not going to be some massive
cost saving, is sort of the point. Like it's Medicare
and Medicaid and Social Security, which are the main things
driving the national debt. Because it's not a balanced part

(09:30):
of the budget. The costs just keep exploding, exploding, exploding
for those programs in a way that's not proportionate to
increases in revenue that from taxes that the federal government's receiving.
So all the stuff, you're not really going to be
able to look at a government shutdown as some grand

(09:50):
opportunity for budget slashing cuts to help us achieve some
greater form of parity. But even within you know, writes
the one quarter of spending that is supposedly shut down,
much of it continues Active duty military. Okay, so he's
the military is in that one quarter. Active duty military

(10:13):
and federal law enforcement are included in ordinary appropriations, but
they are deemed essential and continue to operate during shutdowns.
So the military, the FBI, the dea ICE, I guess,
the border patrol. Probably those are all federal law enforcement.

(10:34):
They're all operational. What begins under the guise of financial
considerations quickly becomes a somewhat arbitrary exercise in branding jobs
quote essential. What ends up happening is that some agencies
have almost their entire workforce furloughed, while others are almost
fully staffed, even though they are all covered under the

(10:57):
same appropriations process that failed. In addition to the essential
non essential determinations, which, by the way, if we have
whole federal departments that we deem non essential, why do
we have them? Maybe we just cut those out. Maybe
we just whatever the federal workforce is, whatever the non

(11:20):
furloughed federal workforce is right now, Maybe those are the
federal employees we keep and we just ditch all the rest.
I don't know. Agencies also have varying abilities to scrape
together funding of their own, such as by exhausting self
funded revenue they may receive from payment of fees. As
of Monday, ninety three percent of workers at the Equal

(11:43):
Employment Opportunity Commission were furloughed, but zero, which maybe how
bad do we need the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? I mean,
it's so basically this government office for auditing employers all
over the country to I mean, yeah, yes, employers should

(12:10):
not discriminate in their hiring on the basis of race.
Do we need a federal government office to enforce that?
Can we not enforce that with private lawsuits? Can we
not enforce that with private action? Is it not already
ably enforced by every single state in the Union having
laws in this regard. Do we need a federal Equal
Employment Opportunity Office? I don't think we do. And it's

(12:33):
not because I'm oh, yes, I really love it when
employers say that they're never going to hire a black person.
That's not why. That's a bad attitude to have. That's wrong,
that's bad. Let me just emphasize that, do we really
need a federal Equal Employment Opportunity commit office? Do we
need a federal version of that when we already have

(12:53):
a duplicative version of that in every single state in
the Union, and we have the various civil rights acts
where people can sue to enforce that privately, like doesn't
necessarily if all of their staff are furloughed right now?
Do we really need to fund this at the federal
level now? As of Monday, ninety three percent of workers

(13:18):
at the Equal Employment Opportuny Commission were furlowed, but zero
percent of workers at the Smithsonian Institution work. Why is
the Smithsonians Institution not furlowed? Ninety one percent of the
Securities and Exchange Commission workers were told not to come
to work, but ninety eight percent of Treasury employees are
still working. NASA obviously not that important. That not that important.

(13:42):
With eighty three percent of workers furloughed the Small Business Administration,
over three quarters are still working. All told, about a
quarter of civilian federal employees were furlowed at the start
of this shutdown, which is actually a lower proportion than normal.
In past shutdowns, administrations had planned to furlough thirty five

(14:04):
to forty percent of civilian federal employees. For most of
the furloughed employees, a government shutdown is basically a strange
type of vacation because the duration of that vacation is
decided by Congress. Furloaed workers are not allowed to work
or even be signed in on government computer networks. Far
from being a harsh punishment of faceless bureaucrats, shutdowns are

(14:25):
kind of nice for them while they last. Furload and
active employees both go Both go unpaid during a shutdown,
but they are legally entitled to backpay once the shutdown's over.
The Government Employee Fear Treatment Act was passed unanimously by
the Senate and by a four hundred eleven to seven
margin in the House in twenty nineteen before receiving Donald

(14:46):
Trump's signature. It makes official what was already standard practice,
since Congress realizes that the whole charade of shutdowns is
not really the employee's fault and they shouldn't be punished.
So that's the thing, Like, where's the pressure point? No
one is going without even the people who aren't working
during a federal shutdown, the federal civilian employees, of which

(15:08):
we're only talking about a small percentage of them anyway,
they all know they're going to get back pay when
they come back to work. So how much pressure is
it that we have a government shutdown? If a shutdown
lasts a week or so, most workers won't don't even

(15:29):
miss a paycheck if they do miss one. Most federal
workers are well compensated, so they can dip into their
personal savings for a bit until the government reopens and
they're made whole again. In the end, most voters and
federal workers don't feel much pain from government shutdowns. Federal
contractors generally do not receive back pay, and they are
among the only people who are hurt by shutdowns rather
than be so, And where are a lot of these

(15:52):
federal contractors located? The bulk of them Washington, DC? Rather
than being a wake up call about omnipresent federal fiscal recklessness.
Shutdowns are pointless political stunts that don't even work for
the politicians who start them. Rather than learning from Republicans
repeated failures in this area, Democrats seem intent to learn

(16:14):
the lesson on their own. And then he talks about
different ways in which, you know, maybe they could change
the system basically to avoid government shutdowns. Now, when we return,
maybe we'll talk about some of those things, and what

(16:34):
will there be any ultimate grand resolution of this whole thing?
That is next on the John Girardi Show. Government shutdowns
are both not that big a deal and kind of pointless.
They don't really cause any discernible pain for almost anybody
other than federal contractors, not even for federal employees. It's

(16:58):
only a very small percentage really of the federal civilian workforce.
The military is still going. Only a small percentage of
the federal civilian workforce is actually furloughed right now, and
they're all gonna get paid whenever the government opens again.
They're all going to get back paid. So essentially, nobody's
gonna lose any money out of this, other than federal contractors.

(17:22):
They might take a little bit of a hit, but
they're all located in Washington, d C. Most of the
country just does not give a rip. Now, there are
ways in which we could not have this silly charade
of federal government shutdowns. There were some interesting proposals for this.

(17:44):
Senator James Langford from Oklahoma and a member of Congress
from Texas introduces bill basically saying when funding lapses that
they should just have continuing automatic continuing funding for fourteen days,
restricting travel by members of Congress, so forcing Congress to
be in this fourteen day window when they're stuck in Washington,

(18:06):
DC to force them to make a deal. Rand Paul
had a more interesting idea of the Republican senator from Kentucky,
the one of the few real fiscal hawks in Congress.
He had the proposal that basically, if the government fails

(18:27):
to if we get to a government shutdown, that automatically
we would be at that we would continue spending, but
at ninety four percent of the previous year's level. Every
ninety days the funding would be cut by an additional
one percent until Congress passes a new funding package. Now
that would work because Democrats would lose their ever living

(18:48):
minds if they only spent at ninety four percent of
the prior year's level, and if that percentage kept going
down every ninety days, you know, ninety three percent, ninety
two percent now here. Here's the thing, though, the main problems,
the main deficit driving things with the federal government. It's
all stuff that has nothing to do with the government shutdown.

(19:13):
I don't think this is some grand moment for Republicans
to finally reclaim fiscal sanity. Nor does the whole the
sort of setup of the government shutdown really do much
of anything to force members of Congress to think about
saying fiscal policy or reigning and spending or anything. It
just doesn't. The big drivers of the deficit, of our

(19:38):
annual deficits and of the national debt are Social Security,
which keeps going during the shutdown, Medicare, which keeps going
during the shutdown, Medicaid, which keeps going during the shutdown.
You know, if you want to argue the military is
this huge spender, and we do spend a lot on

(19:59):
the military, obviously there's very as there is for those
other programs. There are arguments in favor of it, but
that keeps going during the government shutdown. So all of
these things. And this is a constant thing that some
people noted, like when Elon Musk was in the Trump

(20:20):
administration and doing his whole doge thing, like, was it
good that he found a whole bunch of wasteful things. Yeah,
but we're talking about pennies on the sidewalk next to
Fort Knox. The main drivers of the national debt, national

(20:42):
deficit are not you know, Usaid, USAID. Now, there was
a lot of waste at USAID, a lot of stuff
that I didn't want the federal government spending money on.
And it's fifty billion dollars, which is more money than
I'm ever going to see at any one time in
my life. It's good to cut, It's good to cut
things that are wasteful and bad. And many of many, many,

(21:05):
many of the things, not every single thing, but many, many,
many of the things at USAID were bad. At the
same time, though USAID is fifty billion, Medicaid is a trillion.
Just Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare are similar monsters like

(21:29):
it were, It's it's not even close. The things that
are driving the national debt and our annual year over
year deficits. That's that's the stuff that's doing it, and
unless and until we get some handle on that, we're
gonna just keep having this massive year over year over

(21:49):
year over year deficit spending. So I just don't think,
you know, and to what now? If you know, Trump
has expressed sort of these economic opinions about just not
being that concerned about deficit spending, there's also just the

(22:13):
flat political reality that Trump has just baldly embraced, you know,
on twenty sixteen debate Republican debate stage, you know, is
asked to all the candidates, are you committed to reforms
for Social Security that would help to rein it in
and rein in its sort of fiscal irresponsibility, And every
Republican on that stage raise their hand except for Donald Trump.

(22:35):
And Trump was like, I ain't touch in social Security,
I ain't touch in medicare. I want old people to
vote for me. And who was the guy who won
the twenty sixteen primary and was elected president twice? Donald Trump,
not any of those other guys. So, I mean, that's
the blunt reality of it. Whatever kabookie dance we're doing

(22:56):
right now around the shutdown is not going to really
have any impact when it comes to resolving anything significant
with the national debts or deficit spending or anything like that.
When we return, I want to talk about this story.
The members of Congress are talking about shady stuff with

(23:18):
the twenty twenty census that shortchanged Republican states. That's next
on the John Girardi Show. The twenty twenty census is
getting more and more attention because of ways in which
it could have shortchanged Republicans. Now, let's talk about the census.
The census is in the Constitution. It's mandated every ten years,

(23:44):
and basically every ten years we do a nationwide census,
and it's very important for the makeup of the House
of Representatives and thereby for presidential elections because presidential elections
of every state gets a certain number of electoral College votes.

(24:04):
And the number of your electoral College votes is the
number of members of the House of Representatives that you
have plus two for your two senators. So Wyoming has
only one House seat because their population is small enough,
they only get one member of the House of Representatives,

(24:25):
but they get two senators just like every other state does.
So Wyoming has three electoral college votes. Alaska has three
electoral College votes. Hawaii though has two House members, they
get a grand total of four electoral College votes. California
has I believe fifty House members. Therefore they get fifty

(24:50):
two electoral College votes. So accurately counting how many people
are in a state, particularly if it's a left leaning
state or a right leaning state, that one side or
the other can expect to win during a presidential election,
that's a really big deal. Okay, it's a really big deal.
It could swing the outcome of an election and thus

(25:17):
making sure you're counting the right people. There's this fight
that was going on briefly during the Trump era, during
Trump won, where the Trump administration was originally was trying
to argue we shouldn't count illegal aliens as part of
apportionment or the kinds of persons were counting for apportionment purposes,

(25:37):
like California could just import a whole bunch of illegal
aliens have them count or otherwise unqualified persons have them
count for their apportionment purposes, and then that politically advantages
Democrats with getting more House seats and with getting a

(25:59):
leg up in the electoral college. Trump lost that fight
in the first Trump administration, and it looks like they're
trying to set things up that if there is a
vance administration that is in charge of conducting the twenty
thirty census, that such mistakes are not done again. Now,

(26:22):
Jim Banks, the US Senator from Indiana, has this letter
that he sent to Howard Ludnick from the who's the
Secretary of Commerce, and he writes this, I urge you
to investigate in correct errors from the twenty twenty census
that handed disproportionate political power to Democrats and illegal aliens.
The Census Bureau adopted a new and opaque methodology called

(26:44):
differential privacy that by design scrambles the populations of states
and voting districts. As prepared by the Biden administration, the
twenty twenty census reports miscounted the population of fourteen states,
wrongly allocating six congressional seats and Electoral College votes to
the Democrat Party. Now, the census itself was undertaken in

(27:08):
twenty twenty. Trump was president in twenty twenty, but the
Biden administration came into power in January twentieth of twenty
twenty one. Some of their work went into is thought
the outcomes that resulted so based on the census, the

(27:29):
next year's elections the next election. So if the census
happens in twenty ten, then we're talking about the twenty
twelve elections, and it happened in twenty twenty. This impact
of the twenty twenty two elections. New redistricting lines are
drawn for members of the House of Representatives on the
basis of the census, the number of House seats that
a state gets, and the demographic data that you know.

(27:54):
How the lines itself are drawn are done based on
the census data from prior year as prepared by the
Biden administration. The twenty twenty Census reports miscounted the population
of fourteen states, wrongly allocating six congressional seats and electoral

(28:16):
College votes to the Democrat Party. The reports may have
also miscounted the population in a number of voting districts,
and the reports definitively included illegal aliens without tracking those
states those aliens citizenship status. If left uncorrected, these errors

(28:36):
will continue diluting the political power of American citizens. Census
data plays a crucial role in allocating political representation and
government funding. Under the Constitution, each state gets congressional representatives
and electoral College votes based on the whole number of
persons within the state. The number of persons is in

(28:58):
turn established by a constitutionally mandated decennial census. Federal agencies
rely on census data to allocate billions of dollars in
federal funding, much of which hinges on population, and states
use census data to draw congressional and voting districts, which
the Supreme Court has held must be equal within a state.

(29:20):
The integrity of the American political system depends on knowing
exactly how many people are in each state and each
voting district. In the past, the Census Bureau has gotten
those numbers right without statistically significant errors, but in twenty twenty,
the Census Bureau made widespread errors. These errors happened for
various reasons, but in part because the Census Bureau published

(29:41):
census data using a new methodology that intentionally miscounted the
population and masked demographic data. The methodology, differential privacy, injects
noise into individual voting districts called blocks for census purposes.
Differential privacy achieves this by randomly changing some correct demographic

(30:03):
data into false demographic data in order to make it
impossible to guess individual residents identities within a census block.
Bureaucrats have been architecting differential privacy for over twenty years,
and the Biden administration used the methodology when interpreting and
publishing data from the twenty twenty census. So you have
to sort of think, Okay, probably a lot of the

(30:23):
people working for the Census Bureau in twenty twenty, even
though it was under Trump, probably a lot of the
people working there were all a bunch of lefties. Biden
comes into power, and he's utilizing this differential privacy thing
to on the basis of legen trying to protect the
identities of specific individuals within voting blocks voting districts. But

(30:45):
it's also obscuring whether or not someone is in the
country legally to begin with, and that raises the question
should a person who's not legally in the country be
counted for purposes of the census. It seems to me
obviously not. It's like rewarding Democrats because basically they are

(31:06):
trying to bring in as many aliens as possible into
states like California, thereby increasing number of congressional seats California has,
advantaging Democrats differential privacy is opaque and liable to mistaken

(31:28):
count totals. Sure Enough, the twenty twenty census overcounted the
population in eight states and undercounted it in six. The
most extreme undercount was Arkansas at five percent. Wow, Arkansas
was undercounted by five percent of its population. That's a
big deal, and the largest overcount so Arkansas, Red state

(31:50):
undercounted by five percent. The largest overcount was Hawaii, Blue state,
overcounted at six point seventy nine percent. As a result
of these errors, Democrats gained at least six net congressional
seats and electoral college votes. As problematic as the twenty
twenty census was for apportionment, it may have been disastrous

(32:14):
for redistricting. Differential privacy alters the total population of individual
voting districts, meaning that any voting district draws since the
twenty twenty census may in fact have been based on
fake data and may even be unlawful. The worst part
is that we don't even know how many voting districts
are problematic. A file containing the original, unaltered census data exists,

(32:37):
but only a few bureaucrats have access to it. It
is crucial that the Census Bureau republishes the twenty twenty
census using the raw data so that states have a
clear picture of their voting districts. The Census Bureau must
also use a methodology for the twenty thirty census that
accurately counts state in voting district populations and that does
not disproportionately benefit one political party. Finally, it is crucial

(33:00):
that the Census Bureau takes steps to ensure that the
twenty thirty Census does not allocate political power to illegal aliens.
Counting illegal aliens as part of a state's population means
that states with more illegal aliens get more government funding
and more voting power. States with sanctuary cities benefit the most. Okay,

(33:21):
so you'll have states that have states or individual cities
with sanctuary state sanctuary city provisions, which basically means our
local law enforcement is not going to cooperate. Our local
or state law enforcement is not going to cooperate with
federal law enforcement, not going to communicate with federal law enforcement,
not going to facilitate their enforcement of federal immigration law

(33:45):
to remove illegal aliens from our state. That is like
directly politically beneficial to California to do that, because the
more illegal aliens in California, the more power they'll get
in the census if illegal aliens continue to be count
Although the Supreme Court stopped the Trump administration from requesting

(34:07):
citizenship and excluding illegal aliens from the twenty twenty census,
that decision was purely procedural and did not address whether
individuals who are present in the country unlawfully may be
excluded from the census. Yeah, so Trump lost on that,
but he didn't lose on the substance of the question.
It was I think it was a violation of the
Administrative Procedures Act. I think it was John Roberts just

(34:29):
being ticked off at Trump and finding some reason to
vote against him. It didn't actually get to the substance
of the question. Can the federal government just state were
absolutely not counting illegal aliens. There's a credible argument that
the framers of the Constitution designed the census to cover
lawful inhabitants and not those who are present illegally. At
the very least, the American people and their representatives deserve

(34:52):
to know how many people are here unlawfully. The twenty
thirty census must therefore request citizenship status and ensure that
differential privacy is not used to mask citizenship data. To
this end, again, this is Senator Jim Banks right, And
to Howardluttnik from the Commerce Department, I asked that you

(35:12):
respond to the following questions by November sixth, twenty twenty five.
Does the Census Bureau intend to republish the twenty twenty
census results using unaltered data so states can fully understand
apportionment and redistricting errors. Two? What measures are the Department
of Commerce and the Census Bureau taking to correct the
errors in the twenty twenty census that led to the
improper apportionment of political power across the states? Three? Does

(35:36):
the Census Bureau intend to abandon the differential privacy methodology
for the twenty thirty census and return to a method
that presents accurate counts of state in voting district populations.
Four does the Census Bureau intend to request the citizenship
status of illegal aliens in the twenty thirty Census? Now,
the answer to a lot of those questions, what are
we going to do in the twenty thirty Census? We

(35:56):
don't know. It depends on the outcome the twenty twenty
eight elections. Okay, so that's the first thing. If jd
Vance wins the twenty twenty eight election, the twenty thirty
census is going to be done a different way, end
of story. If he loses and a Democrat wins, it's

(36:18):
going to be done. They're going to do everything possible
to obfuscate and try to count illegal aliens in ways
that advantages Democrat states and disadvantages of Republican states. But
one of the things people have pointed out, actually, bron
De Santis is pointing this out because he thinks Florida
has been shortchanged by at least one congressional seat as

(36:39):
a result of these miscounts. Basically, DeSantis pointed out that
if Trump had lost Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Harris would have
won the presidential election by like two vote two electoral

(37:01):
College votes. So just the simple lack of apportionment could
have it could have swung the twenty twenty four election
on the basis of the census being cooked like that
would have been a huge crisis. The other thing to
note is that I don't think we're done with this

(37:21):
mid decade redistricting stuff. If the Trump administration can take
steps to correct what was inaccurate in the census, I
could see Florida trying to redraw its maps to add
an additional seat and try to change things to help
Republicans in the twenty twenty eight presidential elections. So I

(37:44):
don't think we're done with mid decade redistricting when we return.
This is why the swamp is bad. Next on the
John Girardi Show. The twenty twenty census was bad. They
undercounted Republicans, they overcounted down Democrats. They counted illegal aliens
as part of the population to swell Democrat numbers. Give

(38:05):
Democrats more House seats, give Democrats more Electoral College seats.
This is why liberal career employees of the federal government
are bad. If any of them are furloughed, we should
try to fire them. It's just bad. That'll do it.
John Girardi Show. See you next time on Power Talk