December 20, 2024 • 31 mins
Eric Eggers & Peter Schweicher fill in for Sean Hannity and sit down with Senator Rand Paul to break down the battle over raising the debt ceiling.... again.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Peter Schweitzer. I'm here with Eric Eggers. We
are filling in for Sean on the Sean Hannity radio show.
He's getting some well deserved rest, and we are tracking
events on Capitol Hill where it is Christmas chaos in
the Capitol. They are apparently right now getting ready to vote.
They may already have started to vote on the third
version of this bill. The first two, of course, were
(00:23):
shot down. This is planed C and Eric, this third
version apparently is going to provide government funding through March,
is going to provide disaster relief and pharm assistance. It
is not going to get rid of the debt ceiling issue,
which was the problem with the previous bill. So we're
going to track that and in a couple of minutes
we're going to have on Senator Rand Paul, who is
(00:43):
in the middle of all of that chaos and craziness.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You talk about Christmas chaos in the Capitol, which I
just want to point out. You know, you're a best
selling author and you and I host the podcast together
called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer, so you do
have some broadcast experience, but to drop the triple alliterative
on national radio Triple c An. It's impressive, and I
just want to acknowledge that in front of everybody. But
it is actually quite chaotic. You know, you're the one
(01:08):
that pointed out we're actually in a weird spot where
last night with the vote, you had Elizabeth Warren agreeing
with Donald Trump. Yeah, you had thirty eight members of
the House disagree, and that's one of the reasons why
we're having a new vote. One of the members of
Congress that disagreed Nancy Mace, we spoke to last hour,
and she said that one of the problems that they
have is that they are actively lied to. Those are
(01:29):
her words about what the US Senate can and cannot
do in terms of the House. Can they take up
these single subject bills? She says, we are told that
they cannot do that. So one thing we will ask
Rand Paul about is, hey, are you prepared to take
more than one vote to keep the government open if
it means that, you know, we don't have to pass
(01:49):
a bill that increases spending, no matter how many pages,
whether it's a fifteen hundred and forty seven or one
hundred and sixteen. Nancy Mace's point was the pages went down,
the spending stayed the same. Seems to be the sticking point.
What I want to know from you, Peter Schwatzer, You've
spent a career documenting the ways in which members of
Congress use positions of public power for personal financial gain.
(02:14):
Of all the things that were in that fifteen hundred
page bill, the thing that jumped out to both of
us was the idea that Congress was trying to vote
itself a pay raise. What was your reaction to that?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising. I mean, and this
is the problem. There are no incentives, really no incentives
for a member of Congress to limit the federal budget,
federal spending, and there are very few incentives to avoid
trying to figure out creative ways to self and enrich. Now,
they don't want to do it in public, they want
to try to hide it. They embed it, and they
(02:46):
do it in a way that is hard to track.
So it's not going to necessarily say a forty percent
pay raise. What it's going to say is this law
is this legislation is going to amend a previous issue
when it comes to how much members of Congress are
paid and that's how they get the pay raise, and
that is the inherent problem. So I applaud Nancy Mace,
(03:08):
I applaud Chip Roy and some of the other people
who set on principle you know what, No, we have
to stop spending money. And this is going to be
the challenge, I think for Donald Trump, because every American president,
even Ronald Reagan, who was the president I grew up on,
the president that I love very hard to get presidents
to stop spending money because it helps you look good,
(03:31):
You're helping your constituency, you're helping the country, It sort
of helps the economy boom. The problem is you are
passing down debt for the next generation. So this is
going to be an early indication of how much progress
of any we're gonna make on that topic.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So it's interesting that you use that metaphor, because, yeah,
you've made the point, and we've made the point on
our podcast and elsewhere. That's spending, largely government spending, our money,
tax dollar spending is on autopilot, right And part of
the problem with that is there are very few incentives
to keep you from doing it, Like zero who's in
favor of you not spending money It's the example I
(04:06):
like to use is if you decide to pay off
your house, ye what you know, no one makes more money.
If you decide to pay off your house, pay off
your mortgage. You know, the bank wants you to have
the loan, your financial advisor wants you to keep the
money in the market. So no one's making money if
you do that. And what's interesting now about this moment
is the reaction on social media to what they try
(04:27):
to do actually suggests that there might be an incentive
to rain down spending because for the first time the
American people via social media channels, because of Elon Musk
and because of the mandate that we now have with
him and Vivicrimswami, there is a political incentive to do
it because that seems to be what the American people
are supporting.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
There is, there is, and look, I think dose is great.
I think having two outsider smart businessmen who are running
this is a great way to do it. Here's the
fundamental problem, though, Eric, if you look at the numbers
of our federal budget, if you were to cut the
work of the federal government in half, which is probably
not going to happen, it's going to be more like
(05:05):
ten to twenty percent. Even if you cut the federal
workforce in half, it's going to put a minor dent
in the deficit. The vast majority of spending by our
federal government is on entitlement programs. It's fixed. And while
a lot of people, Donald Trump has come out in
favor of it, Elizabeth Warren has come out in favor
of getting rid of the debt ceiling. And it seems
(05:27):
this ridiculous, archaic thing that every once in a while
you have to vote to raise the debt ceiling. It's
literally the only time members of Congress actually have to
talk about federal spending. The rest of the time they don't.
So I'm not in favor of getting rid of it.
It seems ridiculous. It's just kind of is the government
going to shut down? Is it not going to shut down?
It's ridiculous, it seems, but it's the only time they
(05:50):
actually have to address the fact that they are spending
us into oblivion.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Are you concerned that Donald Trump seemed to support something
that would have suspend that discussion, that one kind of
crux where you actually have to have a hard conversation
for the next two years and given his track record previously. Look,
Donald Trump did a lot of things really well. You
and I were both very supportive of the idea of
his reelection. But the reality is is that if there's
(06:16):
one thing that maybe wasn't great under Donald Trump, and
it's consistent with every president, spending did not go down.
I mean that the deficit did not go down, the
debt did not go down. This is a moment to
have a hard conversation with the American people. But what
is positive is we seem to be having it together.
And you know, you use the word chaos. We made
the point in the first hour. Chaos is a good thing.
(06:38):
This is a healthy thing. This is actually what democracy
is supposed to look like. We were told that democracy
was on the ballot, and we vote for Joe, we
vote for Donald Trump, and you know, that's the actual threat.
Joe Biden is the one that was going to save democracy.
And then unfortunately he like had to take a nap,
and so he went away, and then here comes Kamala
Harris and then somehow the person who received no primary
votes was the one that was going to defend democracy.
(07:00):
And so unfortunately, right or actually fortunately, Donald Trump did
win and as a result, we actually this is what
democracy and action really looks like.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And look, I mean I
think Donald Trump wants to get rid of the debt
ceiling because he's a businessman, and he says, this is inefficient.
Why do we need to do this? This is kind
of a rote thing for us to be doing. But
I think that rote thing is absolutely necessary. I hope
that he's going to reverse course because when he announced
his support for that, Ye, those on the left, Elizabeth Warren,
(07:31):
the Americans Prospect, which is a very left wing publication,
they said Trump is offering us the deal of a lifetime.
They have wanted to get out from under the debt
ceiling forever because they don't believe that debts and deficits matter,
and of course it does. All you have to do
is look at our federal budget. We are now going
to be get set next year to be spending more
(07:54):
money as a federal government on paying interest on our
debt than we're paying on national.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Defense, which is not a thing you hear. And that's
another thing that unfortunately the American people are lied to.
And that's another thing that we have spent time talking
about in this program. There's reported in the Wall Street
Journal that showed how extensively the Biden administration efforted to
lie to us about how weak Joe Biden was. You
and I our last podcast episode, which you can find
(08:20):
at the drill down dot com, was about Bill Clinton
and Bill Clinton's new memoir and the lies he's telling,
Yeah in his book about kind of actually you because
some of your great reporting was in this book, Clinton Cash,
and it was about how much money Bill Clinton made
and how much you know, how much money that don't
the foundation raked in when Hillary was Secretary of State,
(08:42):
And like there's a Washington Post review that says, oh no,
there's all been debunked. And even though donations to the
Clinton Foundation dropped ninety three percent after she stopped becoming
to presidential candidate and was no longer secretary of State.
So you know, we've been lied to on a regular basis,
and unfortunately, you know, that's actually the fight it needs
to happen. It's not about the dead ceiling, it's not
about spending. It's about can you continue to lie to
(09:04):
the American people. And that's where we have a brand
new tool at our disposal. And I do think it
is the new Trump administration with Elon Musk's support, because,
to quote him, the media is no longer the gatekeepers
like everyone else at the media, and each lie gets
called out for the falsehood that it is.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I mean, what do all these stories have in common?
You know, the Clinton and the Clinton scandals, what happened
with the Bidens, the issue of Joe Biden's cognitive ability
or lack thereof. In every single case, you had mainstream
media acting as gatekeepers, trying to prevent people from having actual,
real information that they have a right to know about,
(09:41):
that they deserve to know about. And the news organizations
are supposed to report on those days I think are gone.
You now have with Twitter acts. The debate over this
budget is the one that is absolutely at the center
point of the conversation. That's a Twitter acts.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
So, Rand Paul, we thought we were going to have
it five ten. It turns out there's an other debate happening,
not just on this program, but there's a debate happening
on the Senate floor, and Rand Paul is actually in
the middle of it right now.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
So he you mean, he's picking sitting on the Senate
floor to talking to me. I'm shocked.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I often am shocked. Ironically, we talked about Clinton cash.
I want to give Rand Paul a hard time for
getting us in trouble by leaking some of those revelations.
In the meantime, we are talking about the federal spending
and the efforts of Dog and we have a caller,
a John, who wants to talk about what exactly that
could look like. John from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
There, Hey, fellows, I really hope when they're tankering the
budget they're not going to take away those critical tax
deductions for our sex club sees.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Okay, yeah, Well everybody's got their pet project, right.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Hey, it's the holiday season, John, you know, and everybody's
got unwined a little bit.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, but here's the thing when
it comes to all these debates, and this is the
problem why cutting money is so difficult. It's cutting money
because everybody has a constituent, see right. And so when
you say we're going to cut this program and it's
going to be two point five billion dollars, whether it's
what John wanted or something else, you are now going
(11:08):
to have that industry rising up and all they have
to do is pick up a few powerful members of
Congress to make that sort of go away. So the
exciting thing about the conversation with Doge, with the Veck
and with Elon Musk is that we are having this
conversation that going to come up with really smart ideas
(11:28):
and smart solutions. The reality is they're very easy. There
are very few easy solutions that can just take effect
without Congress having to vote for it. So you're gonna
have to get this through Congress. There's a razor thing
Republican majority, and we've already seen there's some Republicans that
are willing to, you know, let's say, go off the reservation.
(11:51):
So it's not going to be as easy as it sounds.
But you've got to keep fighting the fight because it's
worth fighting for.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Is that another Elizabeth Warren reference? Just checking anyway, We're
going to continue to have the difficult conversations, sometimes about
topics like John Ray, sometimes about other people you know,
and other compromising positions. Let's just say, but that's a
conversation we continue to like to have with you. Thank
you for joining us on your Friday, the last Friday
(12:17):
before the Christmas holiday, and we appreciate Sean giving us
a chance to talk about the work we've done on
our drill Down podcast. We'll be right back after this.
He's Peter Schweitzer. I'm Eric Eggers. You can find our
work at the drill Down dot com. And we're back
on the Sean Handy Show after this break.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
This is Peter Schweizer. I'm here with Eric Eggers. We
are filling in for Sean Hannity. We do the drill
Down podcast. We would love for you to check it out.
We are tracking a number of stories, including the vote
on Capitol Hill. We're going to be joined by Senator
rand Paul we hope at the bottom of the hour.
He's actually on the Senate floor right now. Also tracking
the story in Germany, this horrific story in maud dee
(12:56):
Burgh where apparently a car was driven through a Christmas market.
There are numerous fatalities, eighty people injured. It was an
attack and they have now apparently arrested a Saudi man
who is fifty years old. He's apparently a doctor who
was there on a permanent residence permit and they believe
(13:19):
that he is the individual that's behind this attack. They
are saying it is a loan attack. That's what they
believe at this point.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And to me, one of the startling things about this
story is apparently there was some disturbance yesterday. There was
tension between people in the German market and a group
of migrants, and there was you know, some a public
a fray if you like. And the point that people
are making who are commenting on this tragedy, because you've
got anywhere from two to eleven people being reported dead,
(13:46):
eighty people injured, as you noted, But while we in
America can see videos of the car which is grotesque
and horrific, just careening through this crowd of people, people
in Germany and in Europe could not share this same
video wow, because of censorship laws in case it was
presented or portrayed as something as being anti migrant. And
(14:08):
we've seen other reports of censorship law keeping people from
commenting and people are being held accountable for social media
posts in Europe. It's a very different experience there than
it is for us in the United States, where you
and I can sit here and host the program and
criticize the President of the United States and talk about
how many migrants might be deported. Moving forward, on Trump administration.
(14:30):
Those are freedoms we enjoy still in this country that
others in the world do not.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, here's the other thing that strikes me in this
And of course this is one individual. It's not indicative
of everybody. But you know, apparently there was this issue
that happened yesterday and we don't know who started and
what happened, and it's terrible, but one individual decides that
he's going to take it out on a bunch of
other innocent people that were probably not even involved in
(14:55):
that confrontation. And it just speaks to what is evil.
And you know, they are terrible things going on in
the Middle East right now, innocent people that are dying.
But you look at what the Israelis do to They
target the perpetrators, the individuals that are the terrorists, the
people that are actually victimizing and killing people. They go
(15:17):
to great lengths to avoid tangential casualties they do, unfortunately
happen when these perpetrators hide behind innocent people. But in
this case, the guy is looking to take out as
many innocent people as possible. It's terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
As an excellent point, it's an excellent point about horrific tragedy.
And the loss of human life. Unfortunately, that is a
profound distinction that is oftentimes not made in the way
those issues are covered by the media. We're going to
continue to try to make more excellent points. In the
last thirty minutes of the show. He's Peter Schweizer on
Americ Eggers This Sean Handy Radio show'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Sean Handy Radio Show. My name
(15:53):
is Eric Eggers. I'm joined by author Peter Schweitzer. We
co host a podcast called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.
We're talking about lots of different stories, the things that
are happening right now, and we're very excited right now
to be joined by US Senator Rand Paul, who just
came from i think, giving a speech on the Senate floor.
Senator Paul, can you give us the latest in this
ongoing discussion over whether or not and how we should
(16:16):
continue to fund the United States government?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Well, you know, you know, I was proud of conservatives
yesterday stood up in the House and said that an
unlimited debt ceiling where you can spend as much as
you want with no dollar limit for two years. So
that's just not fiscally conservatives. So most of these guys
and men and women were in the Freedom Caucus, but
they stood up, they were fiscally conservative and said we
won't vote for that. So they voted down the unlimited
(16:41):
debt ceiling idea. But today there's still another vote going
on and it'll be coming over to the Senate soon
and it'll be a continuing resolution that means we will
continue to spend money at the same rate as we
have been all year. But that same rate has led
to a two trillion dollar deficit this last year. So
I think continuing spending at the same rate without reducing
spending it's a terrible idea. But it's worse than that.
(17:03):
They added one hundred billion dollars that they will borrow
for disaster. They added another thirty billion they're going to
borrow for farmer subsidies. And then they also this week
in the Senate voted for an expansion of Social Security
by two hundred billion dollars, even though so Security is
on its way to bankruptcy and actually currently spends more
(17:23):
than it takes in. So it isn't a good week
to be for fiscal conservativesm Yes, conservatives are standing up
and fighting, but we're losing. The swamp is winning the
big government, Republicans are spending and borrow more money, and
the Democrats are happily going along with all of it.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Well, that's the thing, Senator for Paul that I've always
appreciated about you, which is what you say is what
you vote. And the problem is there are a lot
of people in the Republican Party who talk like they
are fiscal conservatives, but they don't actually end up doing that.
Is this going to get easier when we have a
(17:59):
Republican House and a Republican Senate and Donald Trump is
the presidency or are we going to have this continued
problem with Republicans failing to actually live up to what
they promised the American people they would do.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
You know, in many ways, we've met the enemy, and
it's to us. I mean it's within the Republican Party.
The Democrats are of no value. They will not lie
to you. Though they don't care about the debt. They
believe in this modern monetary theory that you can just
print money at the Fed forever and buy whatever you want.
Republicans go home to the Rotary and the Chamber of
Commerce and Lions Club, and they tell you how they
(18:33):
hate big government and they want to balance the budget,
and they vote for all the spendings. So it's about split.
This week we had to vote on expanding soial Security,
but SOID Security this year lost forty billion. So you know,
all the payroll taxes we pay, and we pay a
ton of payroll taxes, we spent forty billion more giving
soci security benefits than we brought in in taxes. So
(18:54):
what we did is this bill. Not me, I voted
against it, but about half of the Republicans. I think
twenty four of us voted against No. Twenty five of
us actually voted against us. In twenty four voted for him.
But by expanding so security by two hundred billion, that
means the deficit yer this year, instead of being forty billion,
will be sixty. So they've increased the social security and
(19:14):
deficit by fifty percent, and it's running out of money
and we'll be out of money by twenty thirty three.
So it's a perpetual fight, and it really is people
need to identify, and in Republican states they need to say,
you know, is my senator, is my congressman conservative? Or
is he really part of this wall.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You mentioned that it's not been a good week to
be a fiscal conservative, and I say this sort of
tongue in cheek, but sort of seriously, is it ever
a good week to be a fiscal conservative? I mean,
Mitt Romney ran on this platform to you know, to
bring back fiscal restraint in twenty twelve, and he lost soundly,
and it doesn't seem like we've kind of taken that
issue seriously since then. It is this something that you
(19:55):
think we have given up on as a country or actually,
do you feel like the fact that in the last
week people started to point out some of the ridiculous
spending measures that were in that original bill, that fifteen
hundred and forty seven page bill, and they highlighted how
bad that was. Did that give you any hope at all?
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Well, you know, Vivek and Elon had brought a lot
of attention to government waste. I've been talking about it
for a decade and it's easy to find the waste.
But they're drawing good attention to it. But that the
battle's just getting started, so we have to get rid
of it. And I'll give you another example. So a
lot of the science way, so called science. Let's say
a million dollars spent studying Japanese quail to see if
(20:34):
you give them cocaine, are they more sexually promiscuous on cocaine.
That usually draws laughter because people said, that's ridiculous. You
had to make that up. Now it was a million dollars.
It came to the National Science Foundation. Well about a
year ago, big government Republicans passed a bill called the
Chip Sacked, which subsidizes big chip manufacturers like Intel. So
Intel's a probably nearly a trillion dollar company and it's
(20:56):
getting government subsidies. But it also doubled the size of
the National Sizence Foundation that has studies on the Panamanian
frog to see if the country frogs have a maten
called in the you know, the city frogs. I mean
it goes on and on. I mean, it's it's just
insane that a million point five spent on If you
take a selfie of yourself while smiling and then look
(21:17):
at it later in the day, will that make you happy?
My favorite one is from a while back where they
wanted to find out what makes you more aggressive tequila
or gin? And you all know the answer. Come on.
But they had an experiment and they said codfish gin
and they said the other half of the codfish tequila. Now,
(21:39):
I don't know how you get a codfish to drink tea.
They did.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It happen very carefully.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
And you are right at tequila tequilax ressive than people too.
But you know it's just that insanity. But then Republicans
go along with doubling the size of that. That's the downside.
You want to hear the plus side, We do lower taxes.
We agree on this regulation. We most of us appreciate
of the power of capitalism and appreciate the wealth and
(22:08):
prosperity that is dragging everybody up. I mean, the statistics
are amazing. How even despite the inflation of the last
three or four years, the overall historical trend is that
the middle class is moving up and moving up even
into the upper class. So there is good news about
capitalism that we need to talk about. But there's some
you know, we have to keep our eyes open and
(22:31):
not take her eye off the ball as far as
the spending goes.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, no, I agree with you on that. We want
to play a clip for you. We had Nancy Mason
earlier and this is what she was told by the
leadership in the House as far as what the Senate
could or couldn't do involving the spending legislation that's coming
for Just listen to Nancy Mace and give us your
thoughts whether this is true or not true.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
I said in Eating Sick with groups of every public
where the lie was stated that if we do single
subject bills tonight, do a clean CR, do a separate
a disaster relief fill in, a separate farm extension or
farm type bill, that the Senate could only take up
one bill. That is a lie. There is nothing limiting
(23:17):
the Senate from taking up three bills. We also as
a House could do three separate single subject bills and
then do what's called a mervh a erv. And what
the merv would do is we would do this three
separate voats and then combine the bills together as they
were sent over to the Senate, so they only have
one vote. So like, there are many options in vehicles
(23:38):
in ways that we can go about this. But again
Republicans are lied to. Because they were lied to, they
got scared, and so it sounds like we're going to
do the CR again. The cr that we did last night,
but no debt ceiling. So it's just the same thing
a different year.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
So Senator Paul, is that true? The Senate can only
handle one bill at a time.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
The rules in the Senate are are Caine byzantine and
hard to understand. But without consent, and I'm one of
the ones who is flying the ointment off often. If
I don't consent to let them bring up three bills tonight,
they can't because it takes a while, you have to
go through several votes, procedural votes. It slows things down,
and that can be good if you're preventing bad stuff,
(24:22):
and most of the stuff where they're passing is bad.
But there's a chance I will give them consent tonight.
And the leverage I have of blocking these bills is
that I have two amendments that they'll defeat me on,
but I will bring forward the American people will know
that we care some of us. I will put forward
something called the Government shut Down Prevention Act, and if
I get a vote on that, and they let them
(24:44):
bring all the bills up tonight, even though I will
vote against the bills. The Government shut Down Prevention Act
says when there's not an agreement. When there's an impass
and government's going to shut down, it doesn't shut down.
It just continued funding, but with six percent less funding.
And that's a pretty significan and cut and would probably
draw people back to the negotiating table because they don't
(25:05):
like the idea of cutting. For me, it would be
great because we're at impasse all the time, and I
think cutting six percent would be a good idea, which
is consistent with my penny plan, which would balance the
budget in five years. I have another bill that says,
for this two hundred billion dollar expansion of Social Security,
that you could pay for it by gradually raising the
age of eligibility three months per year for twelve years,
(25:27):
so by the time you get to twenty thirty six,
it would be it would go from sixty seven to seventy.
And people like, oh, you don't like old people too.
It's like, no, I aspire to be an old person.
I want to save it for what I am there.
I want to save it for all the rest of
the next generation. And you can't save it if you
don't fix it, and you can't just keep adding expenses.
So this will be the first time if we get
(25:48):
this vote tonight on raising the age that this will
have been offered maybe ever on the Senate floor, maybe
since nineteen eighty three and eighty three. I think they
did it too legislation, so it must have come up
in a This may be the first time we voted
on it since eighty three, and I will lose, but
it'll be it'll presage or give for notice to the
(26:10):
people what's coming into this vote will have to happen again.
Eventually we'll have to be done well.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
This is one of the things I appreciate about you,
Senator Paul. You really come up with some amazing policy ideas.
So instead of doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting a different result, you come up with
some amazing reform ideas. I know you're a supporter of
the idea of single subject bills, so you don't get
these monstrous trains that kind of go through the legislative
(26:38):
process where they add a lot of pork. Another great
idea that I don't know if you actually introduced legislation,
but you talked about the fact of having transparency if
an amendment is offered to a bill, actually have some
explanation of who actually wrote the bill? Was that a lobbyist?
Who was it that actually wrote that regislation? And that
to me seems to be the path we have to
(27:00):
go forward to in a Trump term, where you have
the House and Senate actual structural reform, because if we
keep doing the same thing, the Democrats at some point
are probably going to come to power again and we're
going to keep having these same problems over and over again.
How optimistic are you with the new administration, with the
(27:21):
new House and Senate, that we're actually going to get
changes to the manner in which we do things, not
just the cuts, which of course are important as well.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Well. I think you bring out a good point as
far as that the process makes a difference in what
ultimately the result is. For example, our founders intended that
they're in history suggests that there would be individual appropriation bills.
There's twelve different departments of government, there's twelve different spending bills.
If you pass eleven of them and then the twelfth
one is the Treasury, and you say, I don't want
(27:51):
eighty thousand new RS agents. We control the House of Representatives,
why wouldn't they pass ten or eleven of these? That
way ten to twelve of government is still open, and
say to the Department of Treasury, you can rot in
hell if you don't get rid of these IRS agents
are people for this, and we're going to fund you
at eighty percent of the level. We're going to retrench
(28:11):
all that money for RS agents and we're not going
to do it. Pick some one item you're going to
win on instead. That never happens. We never win, We
never exert the power of the purse because what happens
is the Democrats the Republicans will put something forward of
the Democrats will say we don't like that, and then
the Democrats say, you shut down the government, and the
repuman say, we're afraid to do that. But the thing is,
(28:33):
you don't have this big sort of cataclysmic shutdown of
government if you can pass some of the spending bills,
get them off the table. So what you're discussing is
one twelfth of the government coming to a halt for
a while while we forced to compromise. But the way
I perceive what happens is even when we take over
the House, like right now we have the House, how
(28:53):
much what percentage of the power of the person we're
using zero, not ten percent. We're not getting fifty percent
of it want so the bill that put forward this
continued resolution one hundred billion for disasters, thirty billion for farmers,
and another two hundred billion for SOB security. That's not
a compromise. They've already sold themselves out before we even
get to the Senate. So it's not like they're waiting
(29:15):
in the Senate wants something worse. They've already produced something
so bad, so big in spending and so much debt,
that the Senate's going to pick it up in overpass
it tonight. Also, not me, the Democrats and the big
government Republicans will.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
It's really fun to hear you, Senator Paul, because you
know you're just coming off the Senate floor. You're talking
to the American people. You're telling them what votes are
going to happen. You're saying we're going to lose. But
here's why we're doing it. I think, to be honest,
this is exactly the kind of transparency and invitation to
the American public into the process that I do think
our founding fathers wanted in our country is better because
of it. So thank you for taking the time to
join us and giving people some insight into the process,
(29:52):
not just today but moving forward. Thank you very much
for the time today, sir, Thank you as Senator Ran
Paul he is author Peter Sweitzer, I am Eric Eggers.
Together we host the podcast called The Drill Down, which
you can find at the drill down dot com. And
we'll be right back on the Sean Handity Radio Show
right after this.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
And Eric Eggers, we've been covering for Sean Hannity on
the Seawan Handerity Radio Show. We thank you Sean for
giving us the opportunity to sit in front of this
microphone and talk to your audience. We hope you're having
a RESTful time over the holidays. And thank you Linda,
producer Linda for guiding us every step of the way.
We have done this, I think now five times, and
we appreciate it every single time we have a chance
(30:31):
to do.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, farbait for me to correct you my boss here
at the Government Accountability Institute, But this is actually our
sixth time doing it, and each and every time we
really cherish the opportunity to speak directly to the American
people about like really important issues. And today we talked
about this pending fight over how to fund the government.
We also talked about the way that the government's gotten
used to being able to lie to us, the American people.
One point to make in all the discussion about hey, hey,
(30:54):
what's the House doing, what's the Senate doing? And we
know what Donald Trump supports, you know who, we haven't
heard from who Joe Biden.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
No.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
And that's just the real thing. And that's because we
don't know what he's doing where he is, and that
continues to be a massive scandal American history, one that
we were happy to be able to experience with you,
with the American people today.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Well, Merry Christmas, Happy Hontike and everybody. We appreciate you
taking the time to listen to us. God bless and
happy New Year.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Merry Christmas, America. Thanks again, Sean Handy Show is over.
This is Peter Schweitzer. I'm here with Eric Eggers. We
are filling in for Sean on the Sean Hannity radio show.
He's getting some well deserved rest, and we are tracking
events on Capitol Hill where it is Christmas chaos in
the Capitol. They are apparently right now getting ready to vote.
They may already have started to vote on the third
version of this bill. The first two, of course, were
(00:23):
shot down. This is planed C and Eric, this third
version apparently is going to provide government funding through March,
is going to provide disaster relief and pharm assistance. It
is not going to get rid of the debt ceiling issue,
which was the problem with the previous bill. So we're
going to track that and in a couple of minutes
we're going to have on Senator Rand Paul, who is
(00:43):
in the middle of all of that chaos and craziness.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You talk about Christmas chaos in the Capitol, which I
just want to point out. You know, you're a best
selling author and you and I host the podcast together
called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer, so you do
have some broadcast experience, but to drop the triple alliterative
on national radio Triple c An. It's impressive, and I
just want to acknowledge that in front of everybody. But
it is actually quite chaotic. You know, you're the one
(01:08):
that pointed out we're actually in a weird spot where
last night with the vote, you had Elizabeth Warren agreeing
with Donald Trump. Yeah, you had thirty eight members of
the House disagree, and that's one of the reasons why
we're having a new vote. One of the members of
Congress that disagreed Nancy Mace, we spoke to last hour,
and she said that one of the problems that they
have is that they are actively lied to. Those are
(01:29):
her words about what the US Senate can and cannot
do in terms of the House. Can they take up
these single subject bills? She says, we are told that
they cannot do that. So one thing we will ask
Rand Paul about is, hey, are you prepared to take
more than one vote to keep the government open if
it means that, you know, we don't have to pass
(01:49):
a bill that increases spending, no matter how many pages,
whether it's a fifteen hundred and forty seven or one
hundred and sixteen. Nancy Mace's point was the pages went down,
the spending stayed the same. Seems to be the sticking point.
What I want to know from you, Peter Schwatzer, You've
spent a career documenting the ways in which members of
Congress use positions of public power for personal financial gain.
(02:14):
Of all the things that were in that fifteen hundred
page bill, the thing that jumped out to both of
us was the idea that Congress was trying to vote
itself a pay raise. What was your reaction to that?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising. I mean, and this
is the problem. There are no incentives, really no incentives
for a member of Congress to limit the federal budget,
federal spending, and there are very few incentives to avoid
trying to figure out creative ways to self and enrich. Now,
they don't want to do it in public, they want
to try to hide it. They embed it, and they
(02:46):
do it in a way that is hard to track.
So it's not going to necessarily say a forty percent
pay raise. What it's going to say is this law
is this legislation is going to amend a previous issue
when it comes to how much members of Congress are
paid and that's how they get the pay raise, and
that is the inherent problem. So I applaud Nancy Mace,
(03:08):
I applaud Chip Roy and some of the other people
who set on principle you know what, No, we have
to stop spending money. And this is going to be
the challenge, I think for Donald Trump, because every American president,
even Ronald Reagan, who was the president I grew up on,
the president that I love very hard to get presidents
to stop spending money because it helps you look good,
(03:31):
You're helping your constituency, you're helping the country, It sort
of helps the economy boom. The problem is you are
passing down debt for the next generation. So this is
going to be an early indication of how much progress
of any we're gonna make on that topic.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So it's interesting that you use that metaphor, because, yeah,
you've made the point, and we've made the point on
our podcast and elsewhere. That's spending, largely government spending, our money,
tax dollar spending is on autopilot, right And part of
the problem with that is there are very few incentives
to keep you from doing it, Like zero who's in
favor of you not spending money It's the example I
(04:06):
like to use is if you decide to pay off
your house, ye what you know, no one makes more money.
If you decide to pay off your house, pay off
your mortgage. You know, the bank wants you to have
the loan, your financial advisor wants you to keep the
money in the market. So no one's making money if
you do that. And what's interesting now about this moment
is the reaction on social media to what they try
(04:27):
to do actually suggests that there might be an incentive
to rain down spending because for the first time the
American people via social media channels, because of Elon Musk
and because of the mandate that we now have with
him and Vivicrimswami, there is a political incentive to do
it because that seems to be what the American people
are supporting.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
There is, there is, and look, I think dose is great.
I think having two outsider smart businessmen who are running
this is a great way to do it. Here's the
fundamental problem, though, Eric, if you look at the numbers
of our federal budget, if you were to cut the
work of the federal government in half, which is probably
not going to happen, it's going to be more like
(05:05):
ten to twenty percent. Even if you cut the federal
workforce in half, it's going to put a minor dent
in the deficit. The vast majority of spending by our
federal government is on entitlement programs. It's fixed. And while
a lot of people, Donald Trump has come out in
favor of it, Elizabeth Warren has come out in favor
of getting rid of the debt ceiling. And it seems
(05:27):
this ridiculous, archaic thing that every once in a while
you have to vote to raise the debt ceiling. It's
literally the only time members of Congress actually have to
talk about federal spending. The rest of the time they don't.
So I'm not in favor of getting rid of it.
It seems ridiculous. It's just kind of is the government
going to shut down? Is it not going to shut down?
It's ridiculous, it seems, but it's the only time they
(05:50):
actually have to address the fact that they are spending
us into oblivion.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Are you concerned that Donald Trump seemed to support something
that would have suspend that discussion, that one kind of
crux where you actually have to have a hard conversation
for the next two years and given his track record previously. Look,
Donald Trump did a lot of things really well. You
and I were both very supportive of the idea of
his reelection. But the reality is is that if there's
(06:16):
one thing that maybe wasn't great under Donald Trump, and
it's consistent with every president, spending did not go down.
I mean that the deficit did not go down, the
debt did not go down. This is a moment to
have a hard conversation with the American people. But what
is positive is we seem to be having it together.
And you know, you use the word chaos. We made
the point in the first hour. Chaos is a good thing.
(06:38):
This is a healthy thing. This is actually what democracy
is supposed to look like. We were told that democracy
was on the ballot, and we vote for Joe, we
vote for Donald Trump, and you know, that's the actual threat.
Joe Biden is the one that was going to save democracy.
And then unfortunately he like had to take a nap,
and so he went away, and then here comes Kamala
Harris and then somehow the person who received no primary
votes was the one that was going to defend democracy.
(07:00):
And so unfortunately, right or actually fortunately, Donald Trump did
win and as a result, we actually this is what
democracy and action really looks like.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And look, I mean I
think Donald Trump wants to get rid of the debt
ceiling because he's a businessman, and he says, this is inefficient.
Why do we need to do this? This is kind
of a rote thing for us to be doing. But
I think that rote thing is absolutely necessary. I hope
that he's going to reverse course because when he announced
his support for that, Ye, those on the left, Elizabeth Warren,
(07:31):
the Americans Prospect, which is a very left wing publication,
they said Trump is offering us the deal of a lifetime.
They have wanted to get out from under the debt
ceiling forever because they don't believe that debts and deficits matter,
and of course it does. All you have to do
is look at our federal budget. We are now going
to be get set next year to be spending more
(07:54):
money as a federal government on paying interest on our
debt than we're paying on national.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Defense, which is not a thing you hear. And that's
another thing that unfortunately the American people are lied to.
And that's another thing that we have spent time talking
about in this program. There's reported in the Wall Street
Journal that showed how extensively the Biden administration efforted to
lie to us about how weak Joe Biden was. You
and I our last podcast episode, which you can find
(08:20):
at the drill down dot com, was about Bill Clinton
and Bill Clinton's new memoir and the lies he's telling,
Yeah in his book about kind of actually you because
some of your great reporting was in this book, Clinton Cash,
and it was about how much money Bill Clinton made
and how much you know, how much money that don't
the foundation raked in when Hillary was Secretary of State,
(08:42):
And like there's a Washington Post review that says, oh no,
there's all been debunked. And even though donations to the
Clinton Foundation dropped ninety three percent after she stopped becoming
to presidential candidate and was no longer secretary of State.
So you know, we've been lied to on a regular basis,
and unfortunately, you know, that's actually the fight it needs
to happen. It's not about the dead ceiling, it's not
about spending. It's about can you continue to lie to
(09:04):
the American people. And that's where we have a brand
new tool at our disposal. And I do think it
is the new Trump administration with Elon Musk's support, because,
to quote him, the media is no longer the gatekeepers
like everyone else at the media, and each lie gets
called out for the falsehood that it is.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I mean, what do all these stories have in common?
You know, the Clinton and the Clinton scandals, what happened
with the Bidens, the issue of Joe Biden's cognitive ability
or lack thereof. In every single case, you had mainstream
media acting as gatekeepers, trying to prevent people from having actual,
real information that they have a right to know about,
(09:41):
that they deserve to know about. And the news organizations
are supposed to report on those days I think are gone.
You now have with Twitter acts. The debate over this
budget is the one that is absolutely at the center
point of the conversation. That's a Twitter acts.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
So, Rand Paul, we thought we were going to have
it five ten. It turns out there's an other debate happening,
not just on this program, but there's a debate happening
on the Senate floor, and Rand Paul is actually in
the middle of it right now.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
So he you mean, he's picking sitting on the Senate
floor to talking to me. I'm shocked.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I often am shocked. Ironically, we talked about Clinton cash.
I want to give Rand Paul a hard time for
getting us in trouble by leaking some of those revelations.
In the meantime, we are talking about the federal spending
and the efforts of Dog and we have a caller,
a John, who wants to talk about what exactly that
could look like. John from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
There, Hey, fellows, I really hope when they're tankering the
budget they're not going to take away those critical tax
deductions for our sex club sees.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Okay, yeah, Well everybody's got their pet project, right.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Hey, it's the holiday season, John, you know, and everybody's
got unwined a little bit.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, but here's the thing when
it comes to all these debates, and this is the
problem why cutting money is so difficult. It's cutting money
because everybody has a constituent, see right. And so when
you say we're going to cut this program and it's
going to be two point five billion dollars, whether it's
what John wanted or something else, you are now going
(11:08):
to have that industry rising up and all they have
to do is pick up a few powerful members of
Congress to make that sort of go away. So the
exciting thing about the conversation with Doge, with the Veck
and with Elon Musk is that we are having this
conversation that going to come up with really smart ideas
(11:28):
and smart solutions. The reality is they're very easy. There
are very few easy solutions that can just take effect
without Congress having to vote for it. So you're gonna
have to get this through Congress. There's a razor thing
Republican majority, and we've already seen there's some Republicans that
are willing to, you know, let's say, go off the reservation.
(11:51):
So it's not going to be as easy as it sounds.
But you've got to keep fighting the fight because it's
worth fighting for.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Is that another Elizabeth Warren reference? Just checking anyway, We're
going to continue to have the difficult conversations, sometimes about
topics like John Ray, sometimes about other people you know,
and other compromising positions. Let's just say, but that's a
conversation we continue to like to have with you. Thank
you for joining us on your Friday, the last Friday
(12:17):
before the Christmas holiday, and we appreciate Sean giving us
a chance to talk about the work we've done on
our drill Down podcast. We'll be right back after this.
He's Peter Schweitzer. I'm Eric Eggers. You can find our
work at the drill Down dot com. And we're back
on the Sean Handy Show after this break.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
This is Peter Schweizer. I'm here with Eric Eggers. We
are filling in for Sean Hannity. We do the drill
Down podcast. We would love for you to check it out.
We are tracking a number of stories, including the vote
on Capitol Hill. We're going to be joined by Senator
rand Paul we hope at the bottom of the hour.
He's actually on the Senate floor right now. Also tracking
the story in Germany, this horrific story in maud dee
(12:56):
Burgh where apparently a car was driven through a Christmas market.
There are numerous fatalities, eighty people injured. It was an
attack and they have now apparently arrested a Saudi man
who is fifty years old. He's apparently a doctor who
was there on a permanent residence permit and they believe
(13:19):
that he is the individual that's behind this attack. They
are saying it is a loan attack. That's what they
believe at this point.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And to me, one of the startling things about this
story is apparently there was some disturbance yesterday. There was
tension between people in the German market and a group
of migrants, and there was you know, some a public
a fray if you like. And the point that people
are making who are commenting on this tragedy, because you've
got anywhere from two to eleven people being reported dead,
(13:46):
eighty people injured, as you noted, But while we in
America can see videos of the car which is grotesque
and horrific, just careening through this crowd of people, people
in Germany and in Europe could not share this same
video wow, because of censorship laws in case it was
presented or portrayed as something as being anti migrant. And
(14:08):
we've seen other reports of censorship law keeping people from
commenting and people are being held accountable for social media
posts in Europe. It's a very different experience there than
it is for us in the United States, where you
and I can sit here and host the program and
criticize the President of the United States and talk about
how many migrants might be deported. Moving forward, on Trump administration.
(14:30):
Those are freedoms we enjoy still in this country that
others in the world do not.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, here's the other thing that strikes me in this
And of course this is one individual. It's not indicative
of everybody. But you know, apparently there was this issue
that happened yesterday and we don't know who started and
what happened, and it's terrible, but one individual decides that
he's going to take it out on a bunch of
other innocent people that were probably not even involved in
(14:55):
that confrontation. And it just speaks to what is evil.
And you know, they are terrible things going on in
the Middle East right now, innocent people that are dying.
But you look at what the Israelis do to They
target the perpetrators, the individuals that are the terrorists, the
people that are actually victimizing and killing people. They go
(15:17):
to great lengths to avoid tangential casualties they do, unfortunately
happen when these perpetrators hide behind innocent people. But in
this case, the guy is looking to take out as
many innocent people as possible. It's terrible.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
As an excellent point, it's an excellent point about horrific tragedy.
And the loss of human life. Unfortunately, that is a
profound distinction that is oftentimes not made in the way
those issues are covered by the media. We're going to
continue to try to make more excellent points. In the
last thirty minutes of the show. He's Peter Schweizer on
Americ Eggers This Sean Handy Radio show'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Sean Handy Radio Show. My name
(15:53):
is Eric Eggers. I'm joined by author Peter Schweitzer. We
co host a podcast called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.
We're talking about lots of different stories, the things that
are happening right now, and we're very excited right now
to be joined by US Senator Rand Paul, who just
came from i think, giving a speech on the Senate floor.
Senator Paul, can you give us the latest in this
ongoing discussion over whether or not and how we should
(16:16):
continue to fund the United States government?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Well, you know, you know, I was proud of conservatives
yesterday stood up in the House and said that an
unlimited debt ceiling where you can spend as much as
you want with no dollar limit for two years. So
that's just not fiscally conservatives. So most of these guys
and men and women were in the Freedom Caucus, but
they stood up, they were fiscally conservative and said we
won't vote for that. So they voted down the unlimited
(16:41):
debt ceiling idea. But today there's still another vote going
on and it'll be coming over to the Senate soon
and it'll be a continuing resolution that means we will
continue to spend money at the same rate as we
have been all year. But that same rate has led
to a two trillion dollar deficit this last year. So
I think continuing spending at the same rate without reducing
spending it's a terrible idea. But it's worse than that.
(17:03):
They added one hundred billion dollars that they will borrow
for disaster. They added another thirty billion they're going to
borrow for farmer subsidies. And then they also this week
in the Senate voted for an expansion of Social Security
by two hundred billion dollars, even though so Security is
on its way to bankruptcy and actually currently spends more
(17:23):
than it takes in. So it isn't a good week
to be for fiscal conservativesm Yes, conservatives are standing up
and fighting, but we're losing. The swamp is winning the
big government, Republicans are spending and borrow more money, and
the Democrats are happily going along with all of it.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Well, that's the thing, Senator for Paul that I've always
appreciated about you, which is what you say is what
you vote. And the problem is there are a lot
of people in the Republican Party who talk like they
are fiscal conservatives, but they don't actually end up doing that.
Is this going to get easier when we have a
(17:59):
Republican House and a Republican Senate and Donald Trump is
the presidency or are we going to have this continued
problem with Republicans failing to actually live up to what
they promised the American people they would do.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
You know, in many ways, we've met the enemy, and
it's to us. I mean it's within the Republican Party.
The Democrats are of no value. They will not lie
to you. Though they don't care about the debt. They
believe in this modern monetary theory that you can just
print money at the Fed forever and buy whatever you want.
Republicans go home to the Rotary and the Chamber of
Commerce and Lions Club, and they tell you how they
(18:33):
hate big government and they want to balance the budget,
and they vote for all the spendings. So it's about split.
This week we had to vote on expanding soial Security,
but SOID Security this year lost forty billion. So you know,
all the payroll taxes we pay, and we pay a
ton of payroll taxes, we spent forty billion more giving
soci security benefits than we brought in in taxes. So
(18:54):
what we did is this bill. Not me, I voted
against it, but about half of the Republicans. I think
twenty four of us voted against No. Twenty five of
us actually voted against us. In twenty four voted for him.
But by expanding so security by two hundred billion, that
means the deficit yer this year, instead of being forty billion,
will be sixty. So they've increased the social security and
(19:14):
deficit by fifty percent, and it's running out of money
and we'll be out of money by twenty thirty three.
So it's a perpetual fight, and it really is people
need to identify, and in Republican states they need to say,
you know, is my senator, is my congressman conservative? Or
is he really part of this wall.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You mentioned that it's not been a good week to
be a fiscal conservative, and I say this sort of
tongue in cheek, but sort of seriously, is it ever
a good week to be a fiscal conservative? I mean,
Mitt Romney ran on this platform to you know, to
bring back fiscal restraint in twenty twelve, and he lost soundly,
and it doesn't seem like we've kind of taken that
issue seriously since then. It is this something that you
(19:55):
think we have given up on as a country or actually,
do you feel like the fact that in the last
week people started to point out some of the ridiculous
spending measures that were in that original bill, that fifteen
hundred and forty seven page bill, and they highlighted how
bad that was. Did that give you any hope at all?
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Well, you know, Vivek and Elon had brought a lot
of attention to government waste. I've been talking about it
for a decade and it's easy to find the waste.
But they're drawing good attention to it. But that the
battle's just getting started, so we have to get rid
of it. And I'll give you another example. So a
lot of the science way, so called science. Let's say
a million dollars spent studying Japanese quail to see if
(20:34):
you give them cocaine, are they more sexually promiscuous on cocaine.
That usually draws laughter because people said, that's ridiculous. You
had to make that up. Now it was a million dollars.
It came to the National Science Foundation. Well about a
year ago, big government Republicans passed a bill called the
Chip Sacked, which subsidizes big chip manufacturers like Intel. So
Intel's a probably nearly a trillion dollar company and it's
(20:56):
getting government subsidies. But it also doubled the size of
the National Sizence Foundation that has studies on the Panamanian
frog to see if the country frogs have a maten
called in the you know, the city frogs. I mean
it goes on and on. I mean, it's it's just
insane that a million point five spent on If you
take a selfie of yourself while smiling and then look
(21:17):
at it later in the day, will that make you happy?
My favorite one is from a while back where they
wanted to find out what makes you more aggressive tequila
or gin? And you all know the answer. Come on.
But they had an experiment and they said codfish gin
and they said the other half of the codfish tequila. Now,
(21:39):
I don't know how you get a codfish to drink tea.
They did.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It happen very carefully.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
And you are right at tequila tequilax ressive than people too.
But you know it's just that insanity. But then Republicans
go along with doubling the size of that. That's the downside.
You want to hear the plus side, We do lower taxes.
We agree on this regulation. We most of us appreciate
of the power of capitalism and appreciate the wealth and
(22:08):
prosperity that is dragging everybody up. I mean, the statistics
are amazing. How even despite the inflation of the last
three or four years, the overall historical trend is that
the middle class is moving up and moving up even
into the upper class. So there is good news about
capitalism that we need to talk about. But there's some
you know, we have to keep our eyes open and
(22:31):
not take her eye off the ball as far as
the spending goes.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, no, I agree with you on that. We want
to play a clip for you. We had Nancy Mason
earlier and this is what she was told by the
leadership in the House as far as what the Senate
could or couldn't do involving the spending legislation that's coming
for Just listen to Nancy Mace and give us your
thoughts whether this is true or not true.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
I said in Eating Sick with groups of every public
where the lie was stated that if we do single
subject bills tonight, do a clean CR, do a separate
a disaster relief fill in, a separate farm extension or
farm type bill, that the Senate could only take up
one bill. That is a lie. There is nothing limiting
(23:17):
the Senate from taking up three bills. We also as
a House could do three separate single subject bills and
then do what's called a mervh a erv. And what
the merv would do is we would do this three
separate voats and then combine the bills together as they
were sent over to the Senate, so they only have
one vote. So like, there are many options in vehicles
(23:38):
in ways that we can go about this. But again
Republicans are lied to. Because they were lied to, they
got scared, and so it sounds like we're going to
do the CR again. The cr that we did last night,
but no debt ceiling. So it's just the same thing
a different year.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
So Senator Paul, is that true? The Senate can only
handle one bill at a time.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
The rules in the Senate are are Caine byzantine and
hard to understand. But without consent, and I'm one of
the ones who is flying the ointment off often. If
I don't consent to let them bring up three bills tonight,
they can't because it takes a while, you have to
go through several votes, procedural votes. It slows things down,
and that can be good if you're preventing bad stuff,
(24:22):
and most of the stuff where they're passing is bad.
But there's a chance I will give them consent tonight.
And the leverage I have of blocking these bills is
that I have two amendments that they'll defeat me on,
but I will bring forward the American people will know
that we care some of us. I will put forward
something called the Government shut Down Prevention Act, and if
I get a vote on that, and they let them
(24:44):
bring all the bills up tonight, even though I will
vote against the bills. The Government shut Down Prevention Act
says when there's not an agreement. When there's an impass
and government's going to shut down, it doesn't shut down.
It just continued funding, but with six percent less funding.
And that's a pretty significan and cut and would probably
draw people back to the negotiating table because they don't
(25:05):
like the idea of cutting. For me, it would be
great because we're at impasse all the time, and I
think cutting six percent would be a good idea, which
is consistent with my penny plan, which would balance the
budget in five years. I have another bill that says,
for this two hundred billion dollar expansion of Social Security,
that you could pay for it by gradually raising the
age of eligibility three months per year for twelve years,
(25:27):
so by the time you get to twenty thirty six,
it would be it would go from sixty seven to seventy.
And people like, oh, you don't like old people too.
It's like, no, I aspire to be an old person.
I want to save it for what I am there.
I want to save it for all the rest of
the next generation. And you can't save it if you
don't fix it, and you can't just keep adding expenses.
So this will be the first time if we get
(25:48):
this vote tonight on raising the age that this will
have been offered maybe ever on the Senate floor, maybe
since nineteen eighty three and eighty three. I think they
did it too legislation, so it must have come up
in a This may be the first time we voted
on it since eighty three, and I will lose, but
it'll be it'll presage or give for notice to the
(26:10):
people what's coming into this vote will have to happen again.
Eventually we'll have to be done well.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
This is one of the things I appreciate about you,
Senator Paul. You really come up with some amazing policy ideas.
So instead of doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting a different result, you come up with
some amazing reform ideas. I know you're a supporter of
the idea of single subject bills, so you don't get
these monstrous trains that kind of go through the legislative
(26:38):
process where they add a lot of pork. Another great
idea that I don't know if you actually introduced legislation,
but you talked about the fact of having transparency if
an amendment is offered to a bill, actually have some
explanation of who actually wrote the bill? Was that a lobbyist?
Who was it that actually wrote that regislation? And that
to me seems to be the path we have to
(27:00):
go forward to in a Trump term, where you have
the House and Senate actual structural reform, because if we
keep doing the same thing, the Democrats at some point
are probably going to come to power again and we're
going to keep having these same problems over and over again.
How optimistic are you with the new administration, with the
(27:21):
new House and Senate, that we're actually going to get
changes to the manner in which we do things, not
just the cuts, which of course are important as well.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Well. I think you bring out a good point as
far as that the process makes a difference in what
ultimately the result is. For example, our founders intended that
they're in history suggests that there would be individual appropriation bills.
There's twelve different departments of government, there's twelve different spending bills.
If you pass eleven of them and then the twelfth
one is the Treasury, and you say, I don't want
(27:51):
eighty thousand new RS agents. We control the House of Representatives,
why wouldn't they pass ten or eleven of these? That
way ten to twelve of government is still open, and
say to the Department of Treasury, you can rot in
hell if you don't get rid of these IRS agents
are people for this, and we're going to fund you
at eighty percent of the level. We're going to retrench
(28:11):
all that money for RS agents and we're not going
to do it. Pick some one item you're going to
win on instead. That never happens. We never win, We
never exert the power of the purse because what happens
is the Democrats the Republicans will put something forward of
the Democrats will say we don't like that, and then
the Democrats say, you shut down the government, and the
repuman say, we're afraid to do that. But the thing is,
(28:33):
you don't have this big sort of cataclysmic shutdown of
government if you can pass some of the spending bills,
get them off the table. So what you're discussing is
one twelfth of the government coming to a halt for
a while while we forced to compromise. But the way
I perceive what happens is even when we take over
the House, like right now we have the House, how
(28:53):
much what percentage of the power of the person we're
using zero, not ten percent. We're not getting fifty percent
of it want so the bill that put forward this
continued resolution one hundred billion for disasters, thirty billion for farmers,
and another two hundred billion for SOB security. That's not
a compromise. They've already sold themselves out before we even
get to the Senate. So it's not like they're waiting
(29:15):
in the Senate wants something worse. They've already produced something
so bad, so big in spending and so much debt,
that the Senate's going to pick it up in overpass
it tonight. Also, not me, the Democrats and the big
government Republicans will.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
It's really fun to hear you, Senator Paul, because you
know you're just coming off the Senate floor. You're talking
to the American people. You're telling them what votes are
going to happen. You're saying we're going to lose. But
here's why we're doing it. I think, to be honest,
this is exactly the kind of transparency and invitation to
the American public into the process that I do think
our founding fathers wanted in our country is better because
of it. So thank you for taking the time to
join us and giving people some insight into the process,
(29:52):
not just today but moving forward. Thank you very much
for the time today, sir, Thank you as Senator Ran
Paul he is author Peter Sweitzer, I am Eric Eggers.
Together we host the podcast called The Drill Down, which
you can find at the drill down dot com. And
we'll be right back on the Sean Handity Radio Show
right after this.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
And Eric Eggers, we've been covering for Sean Hannity on
the Seawan Handerity Radio Show. We thank you Sean for
giving us the opportunity to sit in front of this
microphone and talk to your audience. We hope you're having
a RESTful time over the holidays. And thank you Linda,
producer Linda for guiding us every step of the way.
We have done this, I think now five times, and
we appreciate it every single time we have a chance
(30:31):
to do.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, farbait for me to correct you my boss here
at the Government Accountability Institute, But this is actually our
sixth time doing it, and each and every time we
really cherish the opportunity to speak directly to the American
people about like really important issues. And today we talked
about this pending fight over how to fund the government.
We also talked about the way that the government's gotten
used to being able to lie to us, the American people.
One point to make in all the discussion about hey, hey,
(30:54):
what's the House doing, what's the Senate doing? And we
know what Donald Trump supports, you know who, we haven't
heard from who Joe Biden.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
No.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
And that's just the real thing. And that's because we
don't know what he's doing where he is, and that
continues to be a massive scandal American history, one that
we were happy to be able to experience with you,
with the American people today.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Well, Merry Christmas, Happy Hontike and everybody. We appreciate you
taking the time to listen to us. God bless and
happy New Year.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Merry Christmas, America. Thanks again, Sean Handy Show is over.
The Sean Hannity Show News
Host
Sean Hannity
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.