April 9, 2025 • 20 mins
Brian is joined by Congressman Thomas Massie to talk about the “Dual Loyalty Disclosure Act” and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Five.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I think you have care CD Talk station a very
happy Wednesday, extra special Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
And of course I always.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Call my favorite hour radio here on the fifty five
here see morning show when we get to here from
Congressman MASSI followed by Judge Jennena Paulatana, who may be
very well be listening. Welcome back, Congressman Massy. Always a
distinct pleasure to have you on my program.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Great to be on your show again, Brian, don't know
where to start.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I want to start with Terris, but I know we
got other things to talk about, so let's start with
and you can explain to my listeners the Dual Loyalty
Disclosure Act, which I know is on your short list today.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
So this is a bill I introduced just last week,
and it says that when you file to run for
a federal office, if you are a citizen of another
country as well as the United States, that you have
to disclose that. And the concern here is that we
may have members of Congress who are citizens of other
(00:57):
countries and therefore have to other countries. When you are
sworn into office, you take an oath to the US Constitution.
We want to know who else you're obligated to. And
people say, is this ever happened? How do you know
there are members of Congress with dual loyalty. Well, it's
hard to know. That's why we have the bill. But
(01:18):
sometimes when they run for president, we find out or
they find out that they do have citizenship in another country.
The two conservative examples I can give you was that
I think it was Michelle Bachman had a citizenship in
Switzerland and Ted Cruz had citizenship in Canada, and they
both renounced their citizenship, which I think is what you
(01:41):
should do. And by the way, my personal preference is
that you only have citizenship in the United States. But
I thought it would be easier to get a bill
passed that requires you to close it and then the
voters can decide whether you should be a dual citizen
serving in Congress.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, I think that makes perfect sense. I one of
my dear friends from you know, high school age married
a French girl, and he's been living in France now
for the past thirty at least thirty, maybe forty years,
and I know he considers himself more French than a
US citizen. He's critical of US government, its policies and
some even some of the freedoms we enjoy. So I
know where his loyalties lie, so it stands to reason
(02:19):
that they could be could certainly something like that could happen.
So the big question is who would be against this
common sense proposal?
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Congressman Massy nobody should be against it.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
I don't know yet, although I've only got I think
four co sponsors for it, Clay Higgins, Marjorie Taylor Green,
and one of the I think Andy Biggs, and somebody
else joined here recently. So if you're listening to this
show and I'm not your congressman, please call their office
and ask them to co sponsor this bill.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
All right, I guess is it in committee right now?
I know these things have to come out of committee
in order to be advanced to the floor, and of
course needs to be put up for vote on the floor.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So where are we in process?
Speaker 4 (03:00):
So it's I introduced it so recently that I'm not
sure that it's if it's been referred to a committee yet,
And sometimes they're referred to more than one committee, but
this is such a short bill, I think it would
just go to one committee, and it would be the
committee that oversees election law, and I'm not sure which
(03:21):
one that is. It's not one that I serve on
because the way I structured this bill is it requires
an FEC disclosure, just like when you file to run
for office, you have to disclose your financial you have
to give financial statements. So it's just one more thing
that you have to disclose when you run for office.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Pivoting over to something that it really really gets under
my skin, the idea that I can't find out and
can't see from labeling where it is that my food
has been manufactured. Country of origin labeling. We used to
have that at some point, didn't we, And somewhere along
the lines that got eradicated.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Well, listen, your phone has the country of origin label,
Your car on the sticker has country of origin label.
Your shoes, your suit, your socks. You can know which country,
your tools, which country those things came from. Except now
with beef and pork, since twenty fifteen, when Congress removed
(04:22):
the requirement to label the country of origin on beef
and pork, you can't necessarily know.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
And what's more is a lot of times this stuff will.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Be stamped USDA US Department of agriculture, and people read
that label and they think, oh, this has made the
USA no that could be from any country in the world.
So I think we made a mistake in twenty fifteen
when we removed country of origin labeling for beef and pork.
I fought it tooth and nail. I lost the argument
(04:52):
because they came to us and said, oh, the World
Trade Organization has ruled against you in a suit from
Canada and Mexico. Well the suit was really, I believe
brought by the meat packers who want to be able
to sell you meat from anywhere in the world and
put that USDA label on it make you think it
came from the United States. And in any case, the
(05:14):
World Trade Organization, in my opinion, does not have authority
over Congress. I can't find them in the constitution right
any kind of superior court. In fact, even the Supreme
Court is a co equal branch with the legislative branch
according to our constitution. So I don't believe we have
to follow World Trade Organization. But here's what the World
(05:34):
Trade Organization said in twenty fifteen. They said that Canada
and Mexico can impose retaliatory tariffs on your farmers if
you keep requiring country of origin labeling. So that was
enough to scare enough of my colleagues into removing country
of origin laboring. Here. The thought just occurred to me, though,
when Trump put these tariffs on, and now we got
(05:56):
all these other countries and they're going to reciprocate with terror. Okay,
if we're in a full blown trade war or trade dispute,
go ahead and put the labels back on.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I mean, this is part of the deal.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Let's get back the territory we lost and label our
dagone food about where it came from. Well, one more,
go ahead, one more thing. While I'm on this topic.
The US Olympic Association even advised Olympic athletes to be
careful about eating meat in China and in Mexico because
(06:28):
even though they do ban the use of anabolic steroids
and their animals, they're still using them. There's no enforcement,
and so you could eat that meat and fail a
drug tast at the olmpage.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Oh my god. Well, and you just illustrate a great point.
First off, I wasn't aware of the reality of what
you just told me. So now I am a more
informed consumer, and I was just making the point earlier
when I saw the topics of conversation, most notably on
this one. If I'm standing at the supermarket and I've
got a pile of ground beef in front of me,
(07:03):
and it's labeled, you know, manufactured, raised, you know, all
United States processed, and I got another pile of meat
that doesn't have anything related to that that, I'm left
to guess. I wonder where that came from. Do they
have the same safety standards as we do. It's the
same level of uh, you know, oversight in those countries,
and that allows me to make an informed decision.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And plus, perhaps I.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Would just like to support the American farmer and buy
United States grown and processed beef.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
That's here's what's more of that.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
That mystery pile of beef, it's probably it's certainly.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Going to say USDA on it. So the average.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Consumer is going to think that the mystery pile, the
mystery meat is from the USA, but the USDA label
does not imply that. And the other thing is it
may say product of the USA. Just because they grounded
up in the United.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
States, process processed in the United States does not mean
that that meat was grown here.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
So this is something there are some various bills on
this in the Senate. In the House, I'm looking at
drafting my own bill to reinstitute country of origin labeling.
And you know, the libertarian argument here is buyer beware
and if you know, if the consumers want to buy
the mystery meat, let them buy the mission. But but
(08:24):
I'm a constitutionalist here, and we have the authority Congress
does to regulate trade when it comes across the border.
And I think you know, even the Founders endowed Congress
with the ability to set standards for weights and measures.
That's in Article one, Section eight, the Directive toward Congress.
You know, so that a pound weighs a pound whether
(08:45):
you're buying it in Kentucky or Ohio.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
So this falls under.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Both of those categories, the ability for Congress to set
standards and also the ability to regulate commerce with other countries.
And it's really no extra imposition to put that on
the label. There are some who would say it is,
but the.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Consumers have the right to know we do.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And there's something that I always look at for and
I've noticed that quite often you will see, at least
in so far as seafood is concerned. You'll see country
of origin on seafood. Like, I do not want to
buy farm raised shrimp from Vietnam or China or Malaysia
or wherever the hell it comes from. I want Gulf
of Fill in the Black Mexico, United States wild caught
(09:32):
shrimp and you can find it.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
You want to know why.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
That is why because the seafood lobby is not as
powerful as the meat processing lobby, and so you still
have to label the country of origin on seafood for poultry,
and there's not a whole.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Lot of post processing.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
On seafood, so you know, you can generally eat it
as eat it or sell it as it came out
of the ocean a lot of times. And so you
don't have that same oligarchy that controls the seafood industry
that you do in the beef and pork industry.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Oh that is it's just to still have to label it.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So if they had more money and could pay off
lobbyists and congress people elected officials, then I wouldn't be
able to know where my shrimp came from. That's really
what this comes down to.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
That is what it comes down to.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Brother always telling it like it is, Congress and Messi,
let's pause. We'll bring you back because I do want
to talk a little bit about tariffs and a couple
other topics that I know you're usually fair game for
pretty much anything. Let's pause, and let me take nineteen
fifty five KERCD Talk Station Brian Thomas with Congressman Thomas
mass Always a wonderful thing to having Congress Massi on
(10:43):
the program. Always even made better because Judge of Poultana follows,
and we'll be talking with Judge of Platano on tariffs.
And he points out in his column that these tariffs
were implemented or asserted by Donald Trump pursued to the
International Economic Emergency Powers Act of nineteen seventy seven, which
permits the President to impose tariffs on goods coming from
(11:05):
outside the US in the case of economic emergency. And
he initially cited the fentanyl crisis with regard to the
twenty five percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And I
think we can easily agree that fentanyl is a bit
of a crisis. But moving over, apparently that had broader
implications than originally intended, and so he cited this economic
(11:25):
imbalance this trade deficit we have with so many countries,
as the predicate the emergency to trigger them, but we
apparently have been experiencing a trade imbalanced since nineteen thirty one,
which according to the judge anyway, and I suppose people
are free to have their own conclusions on it. This
isn't a sudden or unexpected event. Ergo, it's not an emergency.
And I know some of the Democrats are trying to
(11:47):
advance legislation to block the tariffs, nullifying the emergency authority.
Trump sided to an Act of Tariffs by Representatives Meeks
and Larson and Neil, all Democrats. Where is Congressman Massey
on this?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
This is great And by the way, everything you said
is correct. So the President declared a national emergency in
order to invoke these tariffs. Now, under the National Emergencies Act,
there's an expedited way to bring a vote to the
floor to countermand the president's declaration of an emergency. If
Congress says, no, you know what, this is not an emergency,
(12:22):
We're going to have a vote on it. And the
way you do it doesn't even require the Speaker of
the House's permission. And so what the Democrats are trying
to do. Now here's where the nefariot stuff happens. Because
I was in the center of the sausage factory last Congress.
I served on the Rules Committee where they.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
I think they're skirting the law.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
The law says, if the President declares the national emergency,
then anybody in Congress can bring a bill to the
floor undoing the national emergency without Speaker's permission. But what
they do is in the Rules Committee they insert a
little bit of text in one of these big resolutions
(13:05):
that says, oh, by the way, that National Emergency Act
thing that this Congressman is trying to bring to the floor,
it's not his resolution isn't in the right order, and
so we're going to turn it off using this procedural
slide of hand. And then my colleagues they vote for
this rule, let's say, the rule that brings the big
(13:25):
beautiful bill to the floor. Well, inside of that, they've
get this provision to turn off the National Emergencies Act
privileges for whoever's trying to bring the bill to the floor,
so they can stop the bill from coming to the floor,
even though the law says the bill needs to come
to the floor. They can use a rule, this procedural
resolution in Congress to stop a vote on that bill.
(13:48):
They have done this once already, and I was the
only Republican to vote against that procedural resolution. I may
have been one of ten who actually knew it was.
Inside of that procedural r they were turning off privileges
under the National Emergencies Act. So they've already once stopped
a vote on the emergency that enables the tariffs. They've
(14:12):
already once stopped it, and that was about three weeks ago,
and I think they'll do the same thing again.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
They use the Rules Committee to do this.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Last Congress, I served on the Rules Committee, and before
I got on the Rules Committee, I said, if you
pull this crap on anything, whether it's War Powers Act
they do it on War Powers Act too, or anything,
I will blow the whistle and I will vote no
in the Rules Committee. And so they never did it.
They didn't pull these tricks for the two years I
was on the Rules Committee. But they're back to their
(14:41):
old ways.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So I guess where do you see this going? I mean,
regardless of what whether you're in favor of the East tariffs,
do you think they're gonna go dood or do economic damage?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Will they get away with it? In this case, they're
going to.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
Get away with it.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
And what's more, there will be no vote. You know,
at least in the Senate, they voted on this because
they don't have a rules committe. In the Senate, they
actually followed the National Emergency Act.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Law in the Senate.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
In the House, they're going to get away with turning
it off and not even having a vote because Republicans
reflexibly vote for these procedural resolutions, and we're in the majority,
and I may be the only one that votes against
it unless I can wake up some of my colleagues.
And by the way, my vote doesn't indicate whether I'm
for or against the tariffs, when my vote says, bring
(15:32):
it to the floor as the law requires, and let's
vote on it. And so now I can give you
my view on tariffs. For the first one hundred and
fifty years of this country, we were the whole country
was funded with tariffs because we didn't have an income tax.
And if you wanted to replace the income tax, like
(15:53):
get rid of it and replace it with tariffs, I'm
all in, Like I would rather have a sales tax
on stuff coming from China or Canada to fund this
government than to have a tax on everybody's labor in
this country.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
But that's not the proposal.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
No, it's not there.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
He's adding a tariff in addition to the income tax.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
And what's more is it's not.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
A broad based tariff. This is this is my other
pet peeve. When you go in and you say, oh,
we need to tear if the steel industry, or we
need to tear if I don't know, the clothing industry.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Or the widget industry. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
The problem is the government doesn't know which widgets you
should be buying more of or less of, or what
the price of those widgets should be. But when they
go in individually and assigned tariffs on different widgets, then
they're playing, you know, like they're better than the free market.
It doesn't work that way. And that's and here's what's more.
(16:57):
It creates an industry of lobbyists. Has got done talking
about the meat packing industry lobbyists. It creates an industry
of lobbyists who come to Congress and ask for exemptions
for their particular industry or their particular company.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Going back to the seafood industry not having as much
money as the beef and pork industry.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Yeah, so this is and I and so then it
starts wasting our time in Congress because there's another group
of lobbyists who evolve that come and try to get
these exemptions from these terraffs for their industry. And they'll
be also over at the White House lobbying the President. Hey,
don't teariff our thing. Our widget does you know needs
(17:44):
to get into the country without a tariff on it.
So we'll see how this all settles out. I honestly
think you know, some people are saying that the stock
market getting fidgety right now, in the bond market and
all that that's due to the terraffs. I think it's
due to the fact that the uncertainty of the tariffs
that the president can wake up on one side of
(18:06):
the bed and say we need to tear iff this
this morning, and then tomorrow you can wake up on
the other side of the bed and say we need
to tear iff that this today. Yeah, if there was
certainty behind it, I think they wouldn't have to price
the uncertainty in the market.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But you saw that the other day, there was this
rumor going around that he was going to withdraw these
tariffs that he had said he was going to impose,
and the market went back up. And then he said no, no,
where did that rumor come from, and the market went
back down again. So there is a huge amount of
uncertainty built into all this, and obviously uncertainty creates fidgety
markets and a concerned populace. Congress from Thomas Messy, your honor,
(18:45):
Judge Ennenponto is listen, listening right now, send it awave
out to you, and I'll go ahead, just real quickly.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
ARCA one, section eight says Congress should be doing this,
not the President, and that would give you more certainty.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Well, I guess in closing the International Economic Emergency Powers Act,
much like the War's Power Act, I guess a lot
of people can make an argument that that's not constitutional,
because we do have the provision for a declaration of
war and the Congress does have the power of the purse.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Right correct, there you are.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Whether it's constitutional or not, it is the law, and
the Rules Committee is circumventing the law by saying these
are not the droids you're looking for. They're saying this
is not a war powers resolution, or this is not
an emergency National Emergency Act resolution, and so we're going
to turn it off and it's not coming to the floor.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
I think that's skirting the law.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, I really do. Well. Could end up in the courts.
I don't know, but you know what.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I love you, Congressome Massy for explaining this to us
and revealing the sausage making process and the shenanigans that
go on each and every day in Congress.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
God bless you, sir.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I appreciate your willingness to come on the program and
speak truth to powers I always say. And waiting in
the wings, I know you're a fan. Judge Ennita Politano,
Congressom Massy, best of health, my friend will talk real soon.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
All right, we left you and the judge as well,
so we'll talk.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
To you soon. Eight twenty nine. Here fifty five krs.
The Detoxication Judge of POLYTONU is up. Next, fifty five
KRC the talk station
Five.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I think you have care CD Talk station a very
happy Wednesday, extra special Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
And of course I always.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Call my favorite hour radio here on the fifty five
here see morning show when we get to here from
Congressman MASSI followed by Judge Jennena Paulatana, who may be
very well be listening. Welcome back, Congressman Massy. Always a
distinct pleasure to have you on my program.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Great to be on your show again, Brian, don't know
where to start.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I want to start with Terris, but I know we
got other things to talk about, so let's start with
and you can explain to my listeners the Dual Loyalty
Disclosure Act, which I know is on your short list today.
Speaker 5 (00:35):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
So this is a bill I introduced just last week,
and it says that when you file to run for
a federal office, if you are a citizen of another
country as well as the United States, that you have
to disclose that. And the concern here is that we
may have members of Congress who are citizens of other
(00:57):
countries and therefore have to other countries. When you are
sworn into office, you take an oath to the US Constitution.
We want to know who else you're obligated to. And
people say, is this ever happened? How do you know
there are members of Congress with dual loyalty. Well, it's
hard to know. That's why we have the bill. But
(01:18):
sometimes when they run for president, we find out or
they find out that they do have citizenship in another country.
The two conservative examples I can give you was that
I think it was Michelle Bachman had a citizenship in
Switzerland and Ted Cruz had citizenship in Canada, and they
both renounced their citizenship, which I think is what you
(01:41):
should do. And by the way, my personal preference is
that you only have citizenship in the United States. But
I thought it would be easier to get a bill
passed that requires you to close it and then the
voters can decide whether you should be a dual citizen
serving in Congress.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, I think that makes perfect sense. I one of
my dear friends from you know, high school age married
a French girl, and he's been living in France now
for the past thirty at least thirty, maybe forty years,
and I know he considers himself more French than a
US citizen. He's critical of US government, its policies and
some even some of the freedoms we enjoy. So I
know where his loyalties lie, so it stands to reason
(02:19):
that they could be could certainly something like that could happen.
So the big question is who would be against this
common sense proposal?
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Congressman Massy nobody should be against it.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
I don't know yet, although I've only got I think
four co sponsors for it, Clay Higgins, Marjorie Taylor Green,
and one of the I think Andy Biggs, and somebody
else joined here recently. So if you're listening to this
show and I'm not your congressman, please call their office
and ask them to co sponsor this bill.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
All right, I guess is it in committee right now?
I know these things have to come out of committee
in order to be advanced to the floor, and of
course needs to be put up for vote on the floor.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So where are we in process?
Speaker 4 (03:00):
So it's I introduced it so recently that I'm not
sure that it's if it's been referred to a committee yet,
And sometimes they're referred to more than one committee, but
this is such a short bill, I think it would
just go to one committee, and it would be the
committee that oversees election law, and I'm not sure which
(03:21):
one that is. It's not one that I serve on
because the way I structured this bill is it requires
an FEC disclosure, just like when you file to run
for office, you have to disclose your financial you have
to give financial statements. So it's just one more thing
that you have to disclose when you run for office.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Pivoting over to something that it really really gets under
my skin, the idea that I can't find out and
can't see from labeling where it is that my food
has been manufactured. Country of origin labeling. We used to
have that at some point, didn't we, And somewhere along
the lines that got eradicated.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Well, listen, your phone has the country of origin label,
Your car on the sticker has country of origin label.
Your shoes, your suit, your socks. You can know which country,
your tools, which country those things came from. Except now
with beef and pork, since twenty fifteen, when Congress removed
(04:22):
the requirement to label the country of origin on beef
and pork, you can't necessarily know.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
And what's more is a lot of times this stuff will.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Be stamped USDA US Department of agriculture, and people read
that label and they think, oh, this has made the
USA no that could be from any country in the world.
So I think we made a mistake in twenty fifteen
when we removed country of origin labeling for beef and pork.
I fought it tooth and nail. I lost the argument
(04:52):
because they came to us and said, oh, the World
Trade Organization has ruled against you in a suit from
Canada and Mexico. Well the suit was really, I believe
brought by the meat packers who want to be able
to sell you meat from anywhere in the world and
put that USDA label on it make you think it
came from the United States. And in any case, the
(05:14):
World Trade Organization, in my opinion, does not have authority
over Congress. I can't find them in the constitution right
any kind of superior court. In fact, even the Supreme
Court is a co equal branch with the legislative branch
according to our constitution. So I don't believe we have
to follow World Trade Organization. But here's what the World
(05:34):
Trade Organization said in twenty fifteen. They said that Canada
and Mexico can impose retaliatory tariffs on your farmers if
you keep requiring country of origin labeling. So that was
enough to scare enough of my colleagues into removing country
of origin laboring. Here. The thought just occurred to me, though,
when Trump put these tariffs on, and now we got
(05:56):
all these other countries and they're going to reciprocate with terror. Okay,
if we're in a full blown trade war or trade dispute,
go ahead and put the labels back on.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I mean, this is part of the deal.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Let's get back the territory we lost and label our
dagone food about where it came from. Well, one more,
go ahead, one more thing. While I'm on this topic.
The US Olympic Association even advised Olympic athletes to be
careful about eating meat in China and in Mexico because
(06:28):
even though they do ban the use of anabolic steroids
and their animals, they're still using them. There's no enforcement,
and so you could eat that meat and fail a
drug tast at the olmpage.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Oh my god. Well, and you just illustrate a great point.
First off, I wasn't aware of the reality of what
you just told me. So now I am a more
informed consumer, and I was just making the point earlier
when I saw the topics of conversation, most notably on
this one. If I'm standing at the supermarket and I've
got a pile of ground beef in front of me,
(07:03):
and it's labeled, you know, manufactured, raised, you know, all
United States processed, and I got another pile of meat
that doesn't have anything related to that that, I'm left
to guess. I wonder where that came from. Do they
have the same safety standards as we do. It's the
same level of uh, you know, oversight in those countries,
and that allows me to make an informed decision.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And plus, perhaps I.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Would just like to support the American farmer and buy
United States grown and processed beef.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
That's here's what's more of that.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
That mystery pile of beef, it's probably it's certainly.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Going to say USDA on it. So the average.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Consumer is going to think that the mystery pile, the
mystery meat is from the USA, but the USDA label
does not imply that. And the other thing is it
may say product of the USA. Just because they grounded
up in the United.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
States, process processed in the United States does not mean
that that meat was grown here.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
So this is something there are some various bills on
this in the Senate. In the House, I'm looking at
drafting my own bill to reinstitute country of origin labeling.
And you know, the libertarian argument here is buyer beware
and if you know, if the consumers want to buy
the mystery meat, let them buy the mission. But but
(08:24):
I'm a constitutionalist here, and we have the authority Congress
does to regulate trade when it comes across the border.
And I think you know, even the Founders endowed Congress
with the ability to set standards for weights and measures.
That's in Article one, Section eight, the Directive toward Congress.
You know, so that a pound weighs a pound whether
(08:45):
you're buying it in Kentucky or Ohio.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
So this falls under.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Both of those categories, the ability for Congress to set
standards and also the ability to regulate commerce with other countries.
And it's really no extra imposition to put that on
the label. There are some who would say it is,
but the.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Consumers have the right to know we do.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And there's something that I always look at for and
I've noticed that quite often you will see, at least
in so far as seafood is concerned. You'll see country
of origin on seafood. Like, I do not want to
buy farm raised shrimp from Vietnam or China or Malaysia
or wherever the hell it comes from. I want Gulf
of Fill in the Black Mexico, United States wild caught
(09:32):
shrimp and you can find it.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
You want to know why.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
That is why because the seafood lobby is not as
powerful as the meat processing lobby, and so you still
have to label the country of origin on seafood for poultry,
and there's not a whole.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Lot of post processing.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
On seafood, so you know, you can generally eat it
as eat it or sell it as it came out
of the ocean a lot of times. And so you
don't have that same oligarchy that controls the seafood industry
that you do in the beef and pork industry.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Oh that is it's just to still have to label it.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So if they had more money and could pay off
lobbyists and congress people elected officials, then I wouldn't be
able to know where my shrimp came from. That's really
what this comes down to.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
That is what it comes down to.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Brother always telling it like it is, Congress and Messi,
let's pause. We'll bring you back because I do want
to talk a little bit about tariffs and a couple
other topics that I know you're usually fair game for
pretty much anything. Let's pause, and let me take nineteen
fifty five KERCD Talk Station Brian Thomas with Congressman Thomas
mass Always a wonderful thing to having Congress Massi on
(10:43):
the program. Always even made better because Judge of Poultana follows,
and we'll be talking with Judge of Platano on tariffs.
And he points out in his column that these tariffs
were implemented or asserted by Donald Trump pursued to the
International Economic Emergency Powers Act of nineteen seventy seven, which
permits the President to impose tariffs on goods coming from
(11:05):
outside the US in the case of economic emergency. And
he initially cited the fentanyl crisis with regard to the
twenty five percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And I
think we can easily agree that fentanyl is a bit
of a crisis. But moving over, apparently that had broader
implications than originally intended, and so he cited this economic
(11:25):
imbalance this trade deficit we have with so many countries,
as the predicate the emergency to trigger them, but we
apparently have been experiencing a trade imbalanced since nineteen thirty one,
which according to the judge anyway, and I suppose people
are free to have their own conclusions on it. This
isn't a sudden or unexpected event. Ergo, it's not an emergency.
And I know some of the Democrats are trying to
(11:47):
advance legislation to block the tariffs, nullifying the emergency authority.
Trump sided to an Act of Tariffs by Representatives Meeks
and Larson and Neil, all Democrats. Where is Congressman Massey
on this?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
This is great And by the way, everything you said
is correct. So the President declared a national emergency in
order to invoke these tariffs. Now, under the National Emergencies Act,
there's an expedited way to bring a vote to the
floor to countermand the president's declaration of an emergency. If
Congress says, no, you know what, this is not an emergency,
(12:22):
We're going to have a vote on it. And the
way you do it doesn't even require the Speaker of
the House's permission. And so what the Democrats are trying
to do. Now here's where the nefariot stuff happens. Because
I was in the center of the sausage factory last Congress.
I served on the Rules Committee where they.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
I think they're skirting the law.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
The law says, if the President declares the national emergency,
then anybody in Congress can bring a bill to the
floor undoing the national emergency without Speaker's permission. But what
they do is in the Rules Committee they insert a
little bit of text in one of these big resolutions
(13:05):
that says, oh, by the way, that National Emergency Act
thing that this Congressman is trying to bring to the floor,
it's not his resolution isn't in the right order, and
so we're going to turn it off using this procedural
slide of hand. And then my colleagues they vote for
this rule, let's say, the rule that brings the big
(13:25):
beautiful bill to the floor. Well, inside of that, they've
get this provision to turn off the National Emergencies Act
privileges for whoever's trying to bring the bill to the floor,
so they can stop the bill from coming to the floor,
even though the law says the bill needs to come
to the floor. They can use a rule, this procedural
resolution in Congress to stop a vote on that bill.
(13:48):
They have done this once already, and I was the
only Republican to vote against that procedural resolution. I may
have been one of ten who actually knew it was.
Inside of that procedural r they were turning off privileges
under the National Emergencies Act. So they've already once stopped
a vote on the emergency that enables the tariffs. They've
(14:12):
already once stopped it, and that was about three weeks ago,
and I think they'll do the same thing again.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
They use the Rules Committee to do this.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Last Congress, I served on the Rules Committee, and before
I got on the Rules Committee, I said, if you
pull this crap on anything, whether it's War Powers Act
they do it on War Powers Act too, or anything,
I will blow the whistle and I will vote no
in the Rules Committee. And so they never did it.
They didn't pull these tricks for the two years I
was on the Rules Committee. But they're back to their
(14:41):
old ways.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So I guess where do you see this going? I mean,
regardless of what whether you're in favor of the East tariffs,
do you think they're gonna go dood or do economic damage?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Will they get away with it? In this case, they're
going to.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
Get away with it.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
And what's more, there will be no vote. You know,
at least in the Senate, they voted on this because
they don't have a rules committe. In the Senate, they
actually followed the National Emergency Act.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Law in the Senate.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
In the House, they're going to get away with turning
it off and not even having a vote because Republicans
reflexibly vote for these procedural resolutions, and we're in the majority,
and I may be the only one that votes against
it unless I can wake up some of my colleagues.
And by the way, my vote doesn't indicate whether I'm
for or against the tariffs, when my vote says, bring
(15:32):
it to the floor as the law requires, and let's
vote on it. And so now I can give you
my view on tariffs. For the first one hundred and
fifty years of this country, we were the whole country
was funded with tariffs because we didn't have an income tax.
And if you wanted to replace the income tax, like
(15:53):
get rid of it and replace it with tariffs, I'm
all in, Like I would rather have a sales tax
on stuff coming from China or Canada to fund this
government than to have a tax on everybody's labor in
this country.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
But that's not the proposal.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
No, it's not there.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
He's adding a tariff in addition to the income tax.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
And what's more is it's not.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
A broad based tariff. This is this is my other
pet peeve. When you go in and you say, oh,
we need to tear if the steel industry, or we
need to tear if I don't know, the clothing industry.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Or the widget industry. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
The problem is the government doesn't know which widgets you
should be buying more of or less of, or what
the price of those widgets should be. But when they
go in individually and assigned tariffs on different widgets, then
they're playing, you know, like they're better than the free market.
It doesn't work that way. And that's and here's what's more.
(16:57):
It creates an industry of lobbyists. Has got done talking
about the meat packing industry lobbyists. It creates an industry
of lobbyists who come to Congress and ask for exemptions
for their particular industry or their particular company.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Going back to the seafood industry not having as much
money as the beef and pork industry.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Yeah, so this is and I and so then it
starts wasting our time in Congress because there's another group
of lobbyists who evolve that come and try to get
these exemptions from these terraffs for their industry. And they'll
be also over at the White House lobbying the President. Hey,
don't teariff our thing. Our widget does you know needs
(17:44):
to get into the country without a tariff on it.
So we'll see how this all settles out. I honestly
think you know, some people are saying that the stock
market getting fidgety right now, in the bond market and
all that that's due to the terraffs. I think it's
due to the fact that the uncertainty of the tariffs
that the president can wake up on one side of
(18:06):
the bed and say we need to tear iff this
this morning, and then tomorrow you can wake up on
the other side of the bed and say we need
to tear iff that this today. Yeah, if there was
certainty behind it, I think they wouldn't have to price
the uncertainty in the market.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But you saw that the other day, there was this
rumor going around that he was going to withdraw these
tariffs that he had said he was going to impose,
and the market went back up. And then he said no, no,
where did that rumor come from, and the market went
back down again. So there is a huge amount of
uncertainty built into all this, and obviously uncertainty creates fidgety
markets and a concerned populace. Congress from Thomas Messy, your honor,
(18:45):
Judge Ennenponto is listen, listening right now, send it awave
out to you, and I'll go ahead, just real quickly.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
ARCA one, section eight says Congress should be doing this,
not the President, and that would give you more certainty.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Well, I guess in closing the International Economic Emergency Powers Act,
much like the War's Power Act, I guess a lot
of people can make an argument that that's not constitutional,
because we do have the provision for a declaration of
war and the Congress does have the power of the purse.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Right correct, there you are.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Whether it's constitutional or not, it is the law, and
the Rules Committee is circumventing the law by saying these
are not the droids you're looking for. They're saying this
is not a war powers resolution, or this is not
an emergency National Emergency Act resolution, and so we're going
to turn it off and it's not coming to the floor.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
I think that's skirting the law.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, I really do. Well. Could end up in the courts.
I don't know, but you know what.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I love you, Congressome Massy for explaining this to us
and revealing the sausage making process and the shenanigans that
go on each and every day in Congress.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
God bless you, sir.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I appreciate your willingness to come on the program and
speak truth to powers I always say. And waiting in
the wings, I know you're a fan. Judge Ennita Politano,
Congressom Massy, best of health, my friend will talk real soon.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
All right, we left you and the judge as well,
so we'll talk.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
To you soon. Eight twenty nine. Here fifty five krs.
The Detoxication Judge of POLYTONU is up. Next, fifty five
KRC the talk station
Brian Thomas News
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